26th Oct

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www.kuwaittimes.net

NO: 15610- Friday, October 26, 2012

Kuwait Times Editor-in-Chief Abd Al-Rahman AlAlyan wishes HH the Amir Sheikh Sabah AlAhmad Al-Sabah, HH the Crown Prince Sheikh Nawaf Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, HH the Prime Minister Sheikh Jaber Al-Mubarak Al-Sabah, Cabinet members, Heads of States around the world, Kuwaitis, expatriates and our valued readers Eid Mubarak. Kuwait Times will not be published on Saturday and Sunday. Next issue will be published on Monday.

Millions flock

to Mount Arafat

See Page 10

MAKKAH: Pilgrims pray outside Namira mosque in Arafat near the holy city of Makkah yesterday. Saudi authorities say around 3.4 million pilgrims - some 1.7 million of them from abroad - have arrived in the holy cities of Makkah and Medina for this year’s Hajj pilgrimage. — AP

Local FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2012

Kuwait’s my business

Local Spotlight

Eid: Peace, love and harmony

One number can put you out of business fast!

By Muna Al-Fuzai

By John P Hayes muna@kuwaittimes.net local@kuwaittimes.net

have no doubts that the Eid AlAdha, the Hajj, is a holy occasion for Muslims and an integral part of their rituals. They all understand and know how to celebrate this annual event that means so much to them. Part of the reason for the Eid break is to let the Muslims experience the joy of the holy holiday.

I think of the Eid holiday as a break for peace, love and harmony, away from the normal pressure of life and work, and also as an opportunity for family gathering and spending quality time. In Kuwait, the Eid holiday seems doubly blessed as it has come alongside a weekend, making it a long and relaxing period for everyone because we do not need to worry about anything except how and where to spend our time with the family.

In Kuwait, there are not too

I

many places to go to on such a holiday unless you have a large circle of friends and relatives. For expatriates who have been living in Kuwait for long, and many of them may have been born as well in Kuwait, they would have the time and a similarly inclined group to hang out with and enjoy every minute of this holiday. For those who have arrived in Kuwait recently and also for some expats, the Eid is also a chance to explore Kuwait, meet new friends and catch up with reading or follow the upcoming election news about the presidential campaign in the USA. I have also noticed that the Asian Muslims community in Kuwait participates in a lot of activity all year long, including the Eid. Entire families get together on such an occasion and recall the Eid celebrations back home. I think doing this is something very

important and helps overcome any feeling of homesickness that a newcomer may encounter.

It is really strange how people can become so sentimental spending holidays, especially days like the Eid or any holy holiday, away from family and friends. It adds to the sense of being alone and away from home.

So, may we treat the religious holidays as days meant to count out blessings that we have in our life. The gifts we keep receiving thorough our life from our creator, Allah. I do believe the blessings will keep coming all our life if we remain thankful. And although some may think that gifts are all about money in this life, I think they are also about comfort, love, health and peace. That is the true formula for harmony, and no man can ask for more.

Happy Eid!

hree Dog Night, once the most popular band in America, told us that “One is the loneliest number.” But in business, it may be the most dangerous number. It’s one number that can put you out of business fast!

Fact: You have one supplier for a product or service that’s critical to your customers. If something happens to that supplier, what happens to your business? Will your customers wait until you find another supplier?

Fact: You have one piece of equipment. It breaks down.

What now? Your customers won’t mind that you can’t help them today, and maybe not for a month?

Fact: You have one contact who can send more business your way whenever you need it. He falls out of grace and gets replaced. What now?

Fact: You have one star sales person. She gets a better job.

What now?

Fact: The one politician you backed just lost re-election.

What now?

Fact: Your one employee in Accounting knows who owes you money. He just got run over by a bus. What now?

T

How many ones you got?

You get the idea.

One of anything in business is almost always a wreck waiting to happen. Start looking for the ones that exist in your business now.

And just in case you’re thinking that two is better, remember that Three Dog Night also told us, “Two can be as bad as one.”

How many systems you got?

It’s often said that people are a business’s greatest asset.

Sounds good, doesn’t it? But it’s not true. Not even employees believe it’s true. Product, service, location may all out-score the importance of employees, especially if they’re not well trained.

Systems also come before employees.

How many systems operate your business?

Systems (not people) make businesses work efficiently, effectively, and happily. The most valuable businesses are operated by a series of systems that people follow. There are systems for operations, marketing, sales, training, customer relationships, etc. Each system may be propelled by several more systems. In Operations, for example, there may be systems for HR, IT, Finance, etc.

Systemization is one of the reasons why franchised businesses are successful. You may not own a franchised business, or care to, but you’d be extremely happy if your business ran like a well-oiled franchise operation. Who wouldn’t want a business like McDonald’s or Starbucks or Holiday Inn or Sign-ARama? These businesses never stop generating revenue for their owners, and that’s without the owners ever stepping foot into most of the locations.

How does that happen?

Systems. But you need more than one.

Systems that tell people what to do, when to do it, and how to do it. And that includes what to do if the boss doesn’t show up. After all, there’s only one of you, too! Watch out for those buses and reckless drivers.

How can you improve your business? Dr. John Hayes will help you discover points of opportunity. Free analysis for qualifying businesses. Send a paragraph describing your business; selected businesses may be featured in Kuwait’s My Business.

Dr. Hayes has worked with an impressive international list of independent and franchised businesses. He is a professor in the College of Business at GUST. Contact him at questions@hayesworldwide.com, or via Twitter @drjohnhayes.

Local FRIDAY, OCTOBER 19, 2012

Conspiracy Theories

Eid Mubarak

By Badrya Darwish

badrya_d@kuwaittimes.net

H

ello everyone! It is Eid today, and it is Friday. That makes it virtually two Eids for Muslims. Friday is a day for prayer and family, and tradition says that this day is different for Muslims all over the world wherever they have the Friday prayers and men have to go to the mosque. It is a blessed day.

It is also said that du’a, the prayer said at sunset on Friday, could be more accepted on Friday. This Friday is Eid Al-Adha when many people sacrifice a sheep, cow or a camel. Of course, this is done as ordained in the Holy Quran Surat Safat Verse 102 where Abraham sacrificed a sheep for his son Ismail. Poor or rich, it is the tradition to sacrifice an animal. This is considered a blessing.

Back to the Arab world and the Eid this year and the year before, and the year before that. I do not mean that previous Eids were marvelous but it seems this one is the worst. See the people in Syria? It seems that it is the people who are being sacrificed there every day. And why forget Libya? We thought it was over but no, it isn’t. They have invented a new story that the son of Gaddafi has just died. Even the way the son of Gadafi Khamees was killed was sad. Look at the situation in Egypt. Look at the situation in Jordan. And do not forget Gaza and Bethlehem, dear folks.

I am sorry for harboring a more negative view on the first day of Eid where people should rather be in a festive mood.

Honestly, if you were in my shoes, could you celebrate the Eid with all this happening around us?

I hope this is a lesson for all of us in Kuwait to look around us and make a wise judgment before we head to the streets and destroy the peace in our country. Or it will be too late to cry.

Have a happy Eid! Eid Mubarak Follow me @BadryaD

HILY MAKKAH: A Muslim pilgrim cries as he prays at sunrise on a rocky hill called the Mountain of Mercy, on the Plain of Arafat near the holy city of Makkah, Saudi Arabia, yesterday Saudi authorities say around 3.4 million pilgrims — some 1.7 million of them from abroad — have arrived in the holy cities of Makkah and Medina for this year's pilgrimage. —AP

KUWAIT: This is how Jaber Al-Ahmad Hospital will look like when the project is completed.

Local FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2012

By Nawara Fattahova

T

he orphanage in Kuwait, which is housed in an old building, has been in a dire need of refurbishment. This is where Khair Al-Kuwait (Kuwait Welfare) Charity stepped in and started a charity project called ‘Al Nuweira’ (kind of flower).

The project aims to restore and rehabilitate the orphanage and to turn it into a better place for the kids who call it home.

Individuals and companies can contribute by purchasing furniture for the 50 children who currently live in the orphanage.

Khair Al-Kuwait was set up to take care of the orphan children from unknown parents, which are under the responsibility of the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor. “HH the Amir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah has donated KD 350,000 for this project only,” said Fawzi Al-Ruweishid, Member of the Board and the Head of the Establishing Committee, explaining that individuals can also participate in this project by buying the necessary furniture and building materials for the orphanage.

Built in 1960, the orphanage’s building needs reconstruction. “There are many old and broken things in the orphanage that need to be replaced. We want to make the place become a real home for the kids living in it, and they should not feel as if

The refurbished Orphanage.

they are living in some institution or a school,” said AlRuweishid, adding that there are also guests from outside Kuwait who come to visit the orphanage.

“We want to show them that this is an ideal place to raise kids. Our main goal is to make every child feel that this is his own home,” he said.

The Al-Nuweira project started in 2010 and has a four-phase plan. The orphanage has 17 houses including a medical clinic, education club, and a place for the teachers and supervisors.

“We have already finished the first phase in January this year, which included four houses for the children, the clinic, the theatre, and a multipurpose hall. Now we are about to finish the second phase that includes six houses for the children, a central kitchen for them, and outdoor games,” he explained.

The third phase will include the construction of another six houses for the children, while the fourth phase includes the outdoor area including the courtyards between the houses.

Then there will be a fifth phase which will include the rest of the buildings including the administrative one, and will cover indoors and outdoors.

“We aim to unify the general appearance and look of the all the houses. We are planning to execute the third phase in February 2013, and by the end of the year we may complete the project,” he pointed out.

Local FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2012

mission for any financial donations, otherwise they will shut down any charity collecting money,” he said. “It is better when the donor sees where his donation (furniture and materials) went,” he said.

About 50 children live in the orphanage. Each house at the orphanage consists of three rooms for the children, and two children stay in each room. The total number of children staying in one house is six. Each house includes a room for the social specialist, who tracks these children. Each house also has a storage room, kitchen, washing room, two toilets for kids, one toilet for the specialist, and one toilet for the assistants,” he further said.

Khair Al-Kuwait plans to continue working on this project even after its completion. “After reconstructing the building, we aim to help the Ministry with providing staff and specialists from the field to work at the orphanage. We know that the bureaucracy in the public sector delays the work, so we aim to help them in this regard,” concluded Al-Ruweishid.

People who would like to donate and participate in this project may purchase some of the furniture or building materials for the children through the charity’s cooperation with IKEA and Abyat. “The reason for choosing these two stores is that they are popular and very big, so we can find most of what we need there. Also, these two stores have a variety of children’s furniture and kids’ corner and therefore, the children enjoy visiting them. We aimed to make the orphan kids choose the furniture for their rooms, so we took them shopping. We wanted them to feel that they are going out with their family,” said AlRuweishid.

“We then made a list of the things that we still need and we have put it on a prominently displayed board at these stores.

Now, the customers will be able to see it and buy the stuff mentioned therein if they would like to help,” he said.

He further explained that the donors are not under any obligation to buy these particular items. For instance, if they find similar piece somewhere else, they can buy it. “We are not supporting any particular store, and we do not aim to make any

profits. If some people like to donate their own furniture, they can do that, provided that it is suitable for the orphanage,” AlRuweishid said, explaining that once somebody brought a huge leather sofa which was too big for the rooms and they had to return it.

Al-Ruweishid explained that according to the law, charity organizations are not allowed to collect money for donations.

That is why Khair Al-Kuwait cannot raise funds for this project.

“Only the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor can give per-

Local FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2012

Maximus

Alice

By Ben Garcia

K

uwait is just like any other third world country that is struggling to set up a permanent institution that provides care for and protects animals and their natural habitat. With the help of an organization such as the Kuwait Society for the Protection of Animals and their Habitat (K’S PATH), the attitude of the Kuwaiti people and its government has undergone a drastic change during the last seven years, especially when it comes to caring for animals. “One of the many positive improvements we have noticed over the last seven years is that the people’s perception in Kuwait is really changing. Many now talk about animals and pets nowadays.

Earlier, you rarely heard Kuwaitis talking about dogs. But nowadays they are involved in their care and that is a very good sign,” K’S PATH Chairperson Ayeshah Al-Humaidhi said, while talking to the Friday Times.

Alwin

Al-Humaidhi also announced the second ‘Bark in the Park’ fundraiser event, which will take place on Saturday. “I am particularly delighted that the current government had also changed its policies as far as dealing with the problem of over population of animals is concerned. They have now become very sensitive towards issues such as euthanasia or killing stray dogs and cats by administering poison. I should say that our programs have been successful,” she beamed. “That is a massive step in the right direction. You know that animal welfare started in the west and is now spreading to the third world countries. That is why an organization like us is needed to monitor and set a standard for the welfare of animals and their habitat. What we hope for is a small step in the right direction and that is happening now. More and more people are becoming interested in pet animals, although we have also noticed an increase in the instances of mistreatment and abuse against animals. But owners, who mistreat their animals, are uneducated and probably ignorant about how they should take care of their pets. Therefore, our role is very crucial as we help such people by giving them the right information,” she added. “The subject of animal welfare and protection is also not tackled inside classrooms or included in school curricula, but organizations like K’S PATH are now being invited to schools to launch their campaigns and gather support for their cause from inside school campuses. That was not the case before, but the school authorities have now become enlightened,” she said.

Local FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2012

profit programs and for the benefit of animals that have been rescued and are being cared for at our shelter. In fact, we have rescued hundreds of animals from all over Kuwait, who needed our help and support. We also run a sanctuary for migratory birds and farm animals and we support education programs that generate awareness among children on how to care for their pets. We usually teach children how to care and respect the environment. We also have a habitat protection and conservation program, which we sponsor and advocate,” Al-Humaidhi added.

Summer

Mowgili

Meanwhile in response to public demand, the Kuwait Society for the Protection of Animals and their Habitat is once again preparing for an event on Saturday, which will focus on dogs. The event will take place at the KOC Ahmadi Japanese Gardens from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. and is the second fundraiser dubbed as ‘Bark in the Park.’ This event intends to build upon the success of the first ‘Bark in the Park’ held in January 2012 in Misref. The second ‘Bark in the Park’ will bring together Kuwait’s dog-loving community and their beloved canines for a splendid day filled with dog competitions, which will be replete with fabulous prizes. It will also see a variety of vendors present and is expected to generate great memories for the community. The event will celebrate man’s best friend -

Sunny

K’S PATH runs a shelter in Wafra that also houses rescued animals. Anyone can adopt a dog or other pet animals, but only those are considered for ownership, who display a real affection for animals and those who have enough money to take care of them. They should also be willing to take them to the vet when sick and give them a bath and enough exercise and play. “Dogs will love you unconditionally if they are properly cared for in the place they consider their territory or their home. “Don’t expect them to behave normally if they are not cared for properly,” she said.

Sally

the dog - and draw attention to responsible dog ownership in Kuwait, as well as the measures the community can take to help solve the stray dog and dog overpopulation problems in Kuwait. Al Humaidhi said that the success of the first ‘Bark in the Park’ had paved the way for a similar event. Around 300 dogs had participated in the first event, along with their masters. “We organize several events during the year for our non-

Local FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2012

In love with shooting Kuwait’s Olympic medalist targets higher goals in 2016

By Velina Nacheva

“S

hooting is my life,” says Fehaid Al-Deehani, a 46year-old Kuwaiti target shooter who shot a bronze medal for Kuwait in the 2012 London Olympics.

That was a just a few days before he brought home a gold medal from Slovenia at a World Cup Final, the top competition held annually by the International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) that decides the highest ranks for elite shooters around the world. Al-Deehani opened the doors of his diwaniya to narrate to the Friday Times the story of his love for sports and shooting.

The Olympic Games were a very special occasion for AlDeehani and his entire family who are dedicated sportsmen and hunters. “Once you hear the country’s anthem and see the flag being raised when you are being awarded a medal is a special feeling that is hard to describe,” he said, adding that he had the opportunity to live this twice. “It is a very special honour to have an Olympic medal,” he said.

Sitting among a pile of medals and recognitions, he explains that commitment, fitness and manner are the top qualities of a good shooter. “Shooting is a fantastic, majestic sport. I really consider it my life,” Al-Deehani said, adding he plans to coach his children too in the same family sport once they graduate from college.

The love for shooting is a shared family tradition. It was AlDeehani’s father who taught the children how to shoot. When he was six-year-old, he started shooting and fell in love with the sport. “Since that age, we loved shooting with rifles and shotguns,” he said explaining that his real and more serious involvement with the sports came when he accompanied his older brother Fahad to the Al-Ahmedi shooting Club which belongs to the Kuwait Oil Company. After Al-Deehani graduated from the military college in 1988, he took up shooting as a full time commitment.

At the very first test, he came up with the best score for a beginner. “I got 16 targets out of 25 in skeet which is very difficult to get for a novice. Many people start with one or two targets out of 25,” he recalled. His talent was spotted by one of the members in the club, Abujahal, who saw him shoot and told his brother that one day Al-Deehani will be a champion.

“His words became my dream,” Al-Deehani said, explaining that Abujahal was also the first person he called after he got the World Champion ranking. “I called him and told him about the achievement and that I became a world champion. He started crying.”

Hunting is Al-Deehani’s hobby which he picked at the age of 16. Hunting in Kuwait, he says, is different when compared to other places around the world. “We hunt while in a car and this is uncommon for other countries,” he said.

Global view The accolades that he has won over the years are numerous. The sharp shooter had won a bronze earlier in the 2000 Sydney Olympics in the same shooting discipline. Apart from the two Olympic bronzes, Al-Deehani brought more than 90 international medals to Kuwait. He admits to being overwhelmed with emotion when shooting at the Olympics. “I wasn’t there as Fehaid Al-Deehani. This was not me who was shooting and concentrating and competing,” he said, recalling the moment when he was actually focusing on the target and pulling the trigger in the Olympic Games final. “I was not able to concentrate fully and I felt I was off the mark. Fear seized me that the double trap scenario may come back to me when my shotgun had malfunctioned.” The feeling that his gun might play a trick on him in the finals was quickly replaced by confidence.

In the London Olympic Games, Al-Deehani’s gun had malfunctioned and he had missed a few targets - a mishap that did not allow him to win the gold medal. On the following day, he was competing using a different gun that he had borrowed from Qatar’s shooter. “In this competition, I was analyzing the gun and where to shoot and what gap I should leave for the targets,” he said explaining that professional shooters know that nobody can shoot with two different guns. Changing the gun has an impact on the results of any sports shooter, he said.

The media’s presence and the global outreach due to the

KUWAIT: Fehaid Al-Deehani, Kuwait’s target shooter and Olympic medal winner shows his latest medal from the World Cup Final held last month in Slovenia. popularity of the social media brought the game more into focus than was the case during the competition in Sydney.

Millions watched his entry as a flag bearer for Kuwait’s delegation. “This was a very emotional moment for me. When we entered the stadium and Kuwait’s name was announced, I kissed the flag. It was such an emotionally surcharged moment when I got an Olympic medal at these Olympic Games.”

Al-Deehani had originally planned to quit sports shoot-

ing after this year’s medal but has now decided, at the behest of HH the Amir, to look forward to the upcoming Olympics in 2016. Judging by his commitment and his love for the sport, one can be sure that he will shoot right at the bull’s eye.

Local FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2012

Amir exchanges Eid greetings with Arab leaders KUWAIT: His Highness the Amir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah exchanged greetings with Kings and Leaders of Arab and Muslim countries on advent of Eid Al-Adha.

HH the Amir expressed, in his sentout cables, warm sentiments to Arab and Muslim nations, wishing them stability and prosperity.

HH the Amir received yesterday cable of congratulations on Eid AlAdha from HH the Crown Prince Sheikh Nawaf Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah.

HH the Amir also received congratulation cables from Chief of the National Guards Sheikh Salem Al-Ali Al-Salem Al-Sabah, Deputy Chief of the National Guards Sheikh Mishaal Al-Ahmad Al-

Jaber Al-Sabah, HH the Prime Minister Sheikh Jaber Al-Mubarak Al-Hamad AlSabah, Sheikh Nasser Al-Mohammad Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, and First Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister Sheikh Ahmad Al-Humoud Al-Jaber AlSabah.

The Kuwaiti senior officials expressed loyalty to the homeland and

to the people of Kuwait and prayed to Almighty God to bestow blessing on HH the Amir.

They also wished Kuwait and its people further progress and prosperity. HH the Amir thanked them for their sentiments and wished Kuwait and its people further development and security. — KUNA

Three-member robbery gang held in Khaitan KUWAIT: The Khaitan police arrested a three-member gang that specialized in shoplifting and robbing shoppers in malls and near banks. Police recovered various stolen items, cash and some documents from the car used by the gang members. The car itself was stolen. The trio confessed to committing various crimes in Kuwaiti areas. Police, who had set up a task force after receiving several complaints, maintained a consistent surveillance which led it to the car that the thieves were using outside a building in Kheitan area. The gang was arrested from a flat where they used to stash their stolen items.

Citizen stalks wife A citizen stalked his own wife from one place to another and finally, not liking what he saw, insulted her, prompting her to complain to the police. When the police questioned him, he denied stalking her but professed his love for her.

However, the wife spurned him. The police took an undertaking from him not to bother her anymore.

Filipina robbed A Filipina expat accused her friends of stealing KD 8,000 from her flat in Salmiya. The expat, who owns a women’s saloon, told the police that she intended to deposit the money in the bank but found it missing the same day when her friends visited her. The police have summoned the friends for questioning.

Bootlegger arrested The Farwaniya police arrested a Bangladeshi expat red handed while selling bootleg liquor in Jleeb Al-Shoyoukh. A police patrol saw the man handing over a bottle of water to another and receiving money from him. When the police approached him, he tried to flee but was arrested along with seven bottles.

Yukon break-in A gang in a black Yukon broke into several cars in Jaber AlAhmad area and stole whatever they could lay their hands on.

Detectives are investigating after receiving several complaints.

Bangladeshis arrested Two Bangladeshis were arrested for stealing international calling codes and selling them at a cheaper price. A police patrol became suspicious when they saw several Asians milling around two persons using mobile phones. The two were arrested with the mobiles and a laptop. The duo confessed to stealing the codes by hacking, and selling the number to Asians for a cheaper price.

Stranger at doorstep Detectives in Abu Halifa are on the lookout for a man accused by a woman of attempting to storm her flat and attack her. A security source said the 29-year-old woman told the police that she was surprised when a man she knew came knocking at her door late at night. When she refused to open the door, he continued to insist. He was under the influence of alcohol, and left only after she told him that she has called the police. Detectives are now looking for him.

Youths in brawl The Farwaniya police brought four young men under control when a fight broke out among them at a coed cafe when they were sitting with two women. The women left the scene before the arrival of the police, who took the quarreling men to the police station.

KUWAIT: A Kuwaiti checks out a sheep before buying it for Eid Al-Adha celebration at the Al-Rai sheep market yesterday. —Photos by Yasser Al-Zayyat

KUWAIT: A sheep is loaded into a truck at the sheep market.

Sheep prices skyrocket at local market on Eid 87,000 Australian sheep imported KUWAIT: Kuwait Livestock Transport and Trading Company (KLTTC) announced that it imported 87,000 live Australian sheep to meet the market’s demand during Hajj and Eid Al-Adha.

KLTTC Managing Director Faisal Saud Al-Bader said that the company has taken steps to ease the difficulties of consumers in getting their sacrificial sheep on this important occasion.

Al-Bader said the company made sheep available in authorized slaughter houses for KD49 apiece. He said this has been done as the company’s responsibility to meet the needs of the consumers.

He said people must slaughter their sheep in slaughter houses for

public health and safety reasons.

Meanwhile, it was reported that sheep prices reached KD 150 per head, breaking all previous records.

Citizens who were upset over the spiraling prices of sheep resorted to import sheep.

The prices of sheep varied from KD 100 to KD 150 for local, Saudi, Jordanian and Syrian sheep. Iranian sheep are also available in the market at a hefty price, it was reported.

It was noticed that citizens were not buying sheep on Wednesday as they thought that prices would drop gradually. Goat auction also started yesterday by selling six goats for KD 140 each, which means goat will be retailed for not less than KD 150.

KUWAIT: Sheep merchants await customers at the sheep market in Al-Rai yesterday.

Kuwait mission rallies support for council nomination UNITED NATIONS: The Kuwaiti mission is engaged in intensive campaign in preparation for elections for membership in the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) for the 2013-2015 term, due at the UN General Assembly on October 31.

On the occasion of Kuwait’s nomination for the upcoming polls, Kuwait’s Permanent Delegate to the UN, Ambassador Mansour Ayyad Al-Otaibi, held a reception for ambassadors of brotherly and friendly states at the mission headquarters, late on Wednesday. Leading the diplomatic campaign to win support for the candidacy for the key seat, ambassador Al-Otaibi has met his counterparts at the UN, promoting Kuwait’s development aid activities throughout the world, shedding light on diverse voluntary contributions, activities of Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development (KAFED), which gas given grants, technical support and loans to more than 100 nations to help them attain sustainable development-with an overall

sum exceeding $18 billion. Moreover, the Kuwaiti diplomatic mission has distributed publications about Kuwait’s achievements at the social and economic levels. Kuwait had occupied a seat in the council twice, since it joined the UN in 1963. It was elected for the 1967-1996 and 1992-1994 terms. Kuwait’s nomination for the membership of the international body is follow-up of such international efforts that were fruitful last year, when it won a seat in the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council. Contenders for the post are the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Nepal, Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan. The UN General Assembly will hold voting to choose four of the five candidates. They will succeed Bangladesh, Iraq, Mongolia and the Philippines, membership of which expires in the year-end. Ambassador Al-Otaibi, addressing the UN General Assembly, early this week, called for supporting the UN Economic and Social Council, and declared Kuwait’s nomination for the 2013-2015 mandate. — KUNA

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2012

Bleak holiday in Aleppo; Troops bombard towns

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Sudan-Tehran links under scrutiny after arms factory blast

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Chinese police offer cash for tips on immolators

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MAKKAH: Muslim pilgrims climb a rocky hill called the Mountain of Mercy on the Plain of Arafat near the holy city of Makkah, Saudi Arabia yesterday. — AP

Pilgrims perform Haj rituals Muslims flock to Mount Arafat, pray for Arab Spring states MOUNT ARAFAT: Vast crowds of Muslim pilgrims flocked to Mount Arafat yesterday to perform the main hajj rites, with those from Arab Spring states praying fervently for freedom and stability. Men, women, and children from 189 countries streamed from dawn to the site in western Saudi Arabia, some setting up small colorful tents in which they slept and prayed. Beggars and street vendors also dotted the roads searching for generous souls among the 2.5 million believers expected to converge on the plain for the most important rituals of the five-day hajj.

According to Makkah governor Prince Khaled Al-Faisal, around 1.7 million people had travelled from abroad for the pilgrimage, many of them from Middle Eastern countries which have been shaken by Arab Spring uprisings. On the vast plain surrounding Mount Arafat, prayers reflected the instability sweeping the region. “God destroy Bashar,” prayed 30-year-old Mohammed Ahmed, referring to Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, as he stood atop the “Mount of Mercy” in Arafat plain. His mother nudged him nervously, urging him to keep quiet.

“Now regime troops will kill our whole family back home” in Syria’s northern Idlib province, swathes of which-but not all-are under rebel control. In the crowds, Syrian worshippers were seen

carrying a large rebel flag, a symbol of the 19-months-long deadly uprising against Assad’s regime in which according to activists more than 34,000 people have died. The Syrian government did not send any pilgrims this year, but hajj visas were granted to Syrian refugees in Jordan and Lebanon.

Libyan pilgrim Ruqaya Al-Fayturi, 58 said she was praying for “security and stability in Libya and all other Arab and Muslim countries.” The region was hit by a wave of uprisings that began in 2010 toppling autocrats in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen. In Syria meanwhile, the once peaceful mass protests against Assad have degenerated into a bloody civil war. For Mai, a 34-year-old Egyptian, the hajj is a “gift” from God that she will use to pray for “victory and peace in Egypt and all Muslim countries,” she said.

Others who descended on the plain from early morning focused on the religious significance of the day. “We came from Makkah. We walked from the Grand Mosque to Mina and then we took the buses to Arafat. All for the love of the prophet,” said one Egyptian man sitting on a straw mat with members of his family.

“The more tired we get, the more God will reward us,” he said.

Focus of the rituals is the “Mount of Mercy” where the Muslim Prophet Mohammed is believed to have delivered his final hajj

sermon before his death. Many pilgrims made themselves comfortable between the huge rocks, tears streaming down their faces as they prayed.

A preacher urged pilgrims not to climb the slippery stone staircase leading up the hill, bellowing over loudspeakers: “Neither the prophet, nor his followers have ever climbed the hill. Please do not climb it.” Pilgrims have in previous years slipped and fallen while attempting the ascent, and others have been killed in stampedes. After sunset, the pilgrims head to Muzdalifah, between Mina and Arafat, where they collect stones to throw at the devil, one of the last rituals which takes place Friday and marks the first day of Eid al-Adha, the feast of sacrifice.

The symbolic “stoning of the devil” is followed by the ritual sacrifice of an animal, usually a lamb. During the remaining three days of the hajj, the pilgrims continue the stoning ritual before performing the circumambulation of the Kaaba shrine in Makkah and heading home. The hajj is one of the five pillars of Islam that every capable Muslim must perform at least once. More than 100,000 members of the security and civil defense forces have been deployed to ensure the safety of the pilgrims, while some 3,000 CCTV cameras have been installed across hajj sites.— AFP

International FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2012

Jerusalem’s secular Israeli minority showing life JERUSALEM: Hundreds of people packed a Jerusalem community center recently for what many in Jerusalem consider a subversive act: They attended a lecture on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath. The seemingly harmless event, in which the popular Arab-Israeli journalist Sayed Kashua talked about pluralism and tolerance, broke a long-standing ban on holding activities in public buildings on the Jewish day of rest.

That turned Kiryat Yovel, a tranquil neighborhood in west Jerusalem, into the latest battleground in Jerusalem’s protracted culture war between Jewish conservatism and pluralism. After years of setbacks, Jerusalem’s secular population has begun to push back against what many believe are heavy-handed tactics by the city’s ultra-Orthodox residents to impose their religious mores on the general population. A growing number of restaurants now open on Saturday, an array of cultural events have sprouted up, and for the first time in years, a longtime exodus of secular residents for nearby suburbs appears to have halted.

“We’re not against the ultra-Orthodox, we’re for tolerance and integration and against intimidation. But from no public services offered on Saturdays to promoting gender segregation, the community is undermining the very basis of our democratic state,” said Dina Azriel, a leader in the grassroots “Free Kiryat Yovel” initiative, which sponsored the recent lecture. While most Israelis are secular, Israel’s founding fathers gave Judaism a formal place in the country’s affairs, and Orthodox rabbis strictly govern religious events such as weddings, divorces, and burials for the Jewish population. The ultra-Orthodox are also perennial kingmakers in Israeli coalition politics, though they make up only about 10 percent of the country’s population.

The influence of the ultra-Orthodox is especially pronounced in Jerusalem, where their numbers are proportionally much larger than the national average. Jerusalem, Israel’s largest city, is split almost evenly into thirds between secular and modern Orthodox residents, Muslim Palestinians, and the ultra-Orthodox Jews. Many modern

Orthodox Jews live and work with the secular population while maintaining a religious life style, in contrast to ultra-Orthodox, who choose to live in insulated enclaves. The ultra-religious have used their large numbers and political muscle to shape modern Jerusalem. The city grinds to a virtual standstill on the Jewish Sabbath, with businesses closed, public transportation halted and few options for entertainment.

Attempts to change this status quo have prompted violent backlashes from the ultra-Orthodox, who haven’t hesitated to block roads, clash with police or send tens of thousands of activists into the streets when ordered by their rabbis. In 2009, the city experienced riots when it allowed a parking lot near Jerusalem’s Old City to open on the Sabbath to serve out-of-town tourists. In recent years, the ultra-Orthodox have grown bolder, pressuring the local bus company, Egged, to operate gendersegregated lines through religious neighborhoods, attempting to separate men and women on public sidewalks and ripping down billboards with female images on

Bleak holiday in Aleppo Troops bombard towns as fighting rages ALEPPO: Like many Syrians living on the frontline of the war, Abu Hamid is not slaughtering a sheep this year and not celebrating Eid al-Adha. The only thing he’s worried about is staying alive. “There will be no party. There will be no celebration this year, because all the people are refugees, and I’m scared of dying,” he says, standing tall in his jalabiya at a sheep market on the edge of Syria’s second city. Shelling and air strikes in his neighborhood, he says, forced him to shut up the family home in Aleppo and move his five children, wife and extended family into his shop on the outskirts of the city where they are camping out.

Business is slow at the scraggy, stoney land given over to sheep merchants desperately trying to make a quick sell in the last few days before Eid. “I came here to the market just to pass the time and see what’s going on, but I can’t buy a sheep because I don’t have the money,” said Abu Hamid. It is the tradition for the four-day Muslim festival to buy and slaughter an animal to feed the family, guests and donate as charity to the poor.

Sheep of all sizes, both large and scrawny, were roped to the ground, but few customers were looking and even fewer were buying. “This year won’t be like before. This year, there’ll be no Eid in Syria,” says Mohammed Aasi, 20, who has a clothes shop in Aleppo.

“I came to buy a sheep but can’t find what I need and the prices are so expensive. We’re talking about around 15,000 Syrian pounds ($220). Last year it was 1112,000,” he said, his blond hair and beard closely cropped. “People don’t have enough money even to buy new clothes and there won’t be anything special because everyone is so sad,” he added.

Hopes are slim in Aleppo of a truce dur-

ALEPPO: An injured Syrian man is treated at local a hospital in the center of Syria’s northern city of Aleppo, following shelling by government forces. — AFP ing Eid, which begins on Friday, as announced by peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi from Cairo. The administrator of one field hospital who asked that its name not be published, said only six people had been brought in with injuries on Wednesday, wondering if it was a sign of a possible ceasefire.

“There may be a truce, I’m not sure, but there isn’t a lot of fighting today,” he said. In the cluttered lobby, two medics bent over a man as blood poured out of shrapnel wounds in his head and dripped onto the floor, turned into bloodied footprints by shoes of the doctors stitching his injuries. Islamist group the Al-Nusra Front, which has claimed the majority suicide bombings in the Syrian conflict, has rejected any question of a truce. President Bashar al-Assad’s regime says it will take a “final decision” yesterday and the Free Syrian Army, the main rebel group, says it will only

observe a truce if government forces stop shooting first. But for Umm Ahmed, 36, shopping with her sisters and youngest daughter for shoes for winter, there is little hope of a happy festival.

FIGHTING RAGES Syrian troops bombarded a town near Damascus yesterday and fighting raged in and around the northern city of Aleppo, a day before a proposed truce for a four-day Muslim religious holiday. President Bashar Al-Assad’s government was expected to make a statement later in the day on whether it accepts the temporary ceasefire advocated by UN-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi. The Syrian authorities said on Wednesday they were still studying the plan, but Russia’s envoy to the United Nations said Damascus had indicated to Moscow that it would agree to it. —Agencies

them. Because of the threat of vandalism, Egged recently decided to cease all advertising on its Jerusalem buses by October 2013.

The “Free Kiryat Yovel” movement was formed after ultra-Orthodox activists were allowed to build a kindergarten that maintained a wall to separate religious and nonreligious preschoolers. It took four years of petitioning the local community center to win a permit for the Sabbath lecture. “We’re in a really critical time right now, and I’m not optimistic,” said Sarit Hashkes, who runs another secular rights group, called “Be Free Israel.” “What we’re seeing now is cooperation of state and police officials with the ultra-Orthodox. Women are being pushed aside, and everything is pushed more to the right.” The group is behind a number of initiatives, like offering discount cards to patrons to use at restaurants that are open on the Sabbath to increase “secular buying power.” Hashkes said momentum among the secular population is percolating, but not without an equally fierce backlash. — AP

Iraq seeking to reinstate disbanded army officers BAGHDAD: Efforts by Iraq’s premier to court disbanded army officers from Sunni areas of the country can help boost security and support for the Shiite leader ahead of upcoming elections, analysts and observers say. Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki has called for officers from Iraq’s mostly-Sunni north and west who served under now-executed dictator Saddam Hussein to be reinstated as long as they have no Iraqi blood on their hands. His call is seen as a pragmatic bid to damp violence in areas which remain among Iraq’s least stable, but also a strategy to boost the popularity of Maliki, who is from the country’s Shiite majority, ahead of provincial and national polls in 2013 and 2014.

“Maliki’s initiative comes from a need to draw on the experience of these officers in boosting security, especially in Sunni-dominated areas,” said Hamid Fadhel, a politics professor at Baghdad University. But “there is a political goal, along with the security goal, with this initiative,” he added. “Maliki wants to present a nationalist platform, to break the limits of just one sect in the next elections.” Ahead of the last polls in March 2010, Maliki flirted with running on a cross-sectarian slate before leading a mostly-Shiite alliance to a narrow second-place finish.

He later managed to form a government by banding with other Shiite parties, outmaneuvering the mostly Sunnibacked Iraqiya bloc which had finished first in the polls. While his National Alliance coalition remains the largest in parliament, it won little support in Iraq’s Sunni-majority provinces of Anbar, Nineveh, Salaheddin, Diyala, and the disputed province of Kirkuk. And though violence is dramatically lower than its peak in 2006 and 2008, when tens of thousands were killed in brutal communal bloodshed, unrest remains higher in Iraq’s north and west than in the Shiite-dominated south.

Maliki also faces persistent accusations of sidelining Sunni Arab politicians, namely Vice President Tareq Al-Hashemi who dismissed a death sentence issued against him for allegedly running death squads as political. So far Maliki’s proposals have seen little progress. A committee headed by acting Defence Minister Saadun Al-Dulaimi has called for procedures to be finalized to bring 209 former army officers back into the security forces in Nineveh, while similar steps are due in other provinces. In the restive Diyala province north of Baghdad, more than 950 ex-officers applied to be reinstated, said local official Ziyad Maleh who is responsible for processing the requests.

Officials in Anbar and Kirkuk declined to say how many officers applied for reinstatement while authorities in Salaheddin would only say that dozens signed up. “This is a good move, and it is necessary at this time to call on the experiences of former officers in maintaining the stability and dignity of the country,” said Saadun Majid Al-Ajili, an ex-major in Saddam’s army, who applied to rejoin the military. — AFP

International FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2012

US military hypersonic aircraft trial set for 2013 Craft designed to fly at six times the speed of sound WASHINGTON: The last of four unmanned experimental US military aircraft designed to fly at six times the speed of sound is expected to be tested next year, the program manager said on Wednesday, months after its predecessor broke up during a trial. The third test flight of the craft, known as the Waverider or X-51A, broke apart over the Pacific Ocean seconds into a test flight in August. US Air Force officials said at the time they did not know if or when their fourth aircraft would fly.

Preliminary results from an investigation into what went wrong during the August flight indicate that a ìrandom vibration issueî caused one of the control fins to deploy early, the X-51 program manager at the Air Force Research Laboratory, Charlie Brink, told reporters on a conference call. ìI canít say conclusively thatís it, but itís looking more and more like the cause,î Brink said, adding that investigators quickly ruled out a software or power malfunction as a cause of the aircraftís break up. The Waverider was designed to reach speeds of Mach 6 or above, six times the speed of sound and fast enough to zoom from New York

to London in less than an hour.

Analysts say the military has its eye on using the Waverider program to develop missiles with non-nuclear warheads that could strike anywhere in the world within an hour. Results from the investigation into the third aircraftís failed test flight are expected to be complete in midDecember, Brink said. ìIím fairly confident that in the next couple of months weíll have the investigation complete and weíll move on. Weíre already preparing the fourth flight vehicle. Weíre doing those things in parallel,î he said. Engineers are already modifying the final test X-51A to be ready in late spring or early summer of 2013, he said.

PROGRAM DETAILS CLASSIFIED The aircraft is known as the Waverider because it stays airborne, in part, with lift generated by the shock waves of its own flight. The Boeing Coís Phantom Works division performed design and assembly on the aircraft, according to the military. Four X-51A aircraft were built for the military, one of which flew for more than three

minutes at nearly five times the speed of sound during a 2010 test flight, the Air Force said.

The experimental aircraft are expected to crash at the end of test flights in any case, and are not considered retrievable. Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne designed the X-51Aís ìscramjetî engine, which uses the forward motion of the craft to compress air for fuel combustion, according to a description of the project from the military. After being dropped from a B-52 bomber, a solid-rocket booster is used in the initial phase of the planeís flight to bring it up to speeds that can allow its engine to take over, by drawing in air through the craftís forward momentum.

The cost of the experimental aircraft has not been disclosed because many details of the program are classified. In 2004, NASA reached a speed of Mach 9.6, or nearly 7,000 miles per hour, with a jet-powered aircraft. But that vehicle, known as X-43, only flew for a few seconds and its copper-based engine was not designed to survive the flight. Engineers have hoped to see the hypersonic X-51A travel for five minutes of powered flight. —Reuters

AT SEA: Ships of China Marine Surveillance and Japan Coast Guard steam side by side near disputed islands, called Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China, in the East China Sea yesterday. Chinese surveillance ships entered waters near the disputed islands for the first time in three weeks Thursday, prompting a strong protest from Japan, which says China’s air force has also sharply increased its operations in the area.— AFP

Tokyo governor quits to set up new party TOKYO: Beijing-baiting Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara, whose bid to buy disputed islands ignited a smoldering row between Japan and China, resigned yesterday to start his own national political party. The outspoken 80-yearold Ishihara said Japan’s pacifist post-war constitution was “ugly” and needed to be reframed.

“As of today, I will resign as Tokyo governor,” Ishihara told a news conference, brandishing a white envelope, in an announcement that took Japan’s political and media establishment by surprise. “I’m planning to return to national politics. I want to do so by forming a new party with my associates.” Newspaper reports earlier said Ishihara wanted to forge a grouping big enough to rival the two largest established parties before an expected general election.

But they had made no mention of the fourterm Tokyo governor stepping down from a

position he has held for more than 13 years.

Ishihara, whose pronouncements on history have irked China-he once denied the 1937 Rape of Nanking ever happened-said he saw much wrong with national politics. “There are several contradictions, big contradictions, which we hope the state itself will solve,” he told reporters.

“One contradiction, bigger than anything, is the Japanese constitution, which was imposed by the (post World War II US) occupying army, and is rendered in ugly Japanese.”

Like many on the right of politics, novelistturned-politician Ishihara objects, among other things, to Article 9 of the constitution, which bars Japan from waging war. Ishihara, an irascible voice for decades in Japan’s national dialogue, will co-opt members of the tiny rightwing Sunrise Party for his new venture, the daily Yomiuri Shimbun reported. He will also

seek to join hands with the mayor of Osaka Toru Hashimoto, a straight-talking maverick whose recently-formed Japan Restoration Party has ambitions to seize control of the powerful lower house.

Embattled Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda is under pressure to call a general election after telling opposition parties he would go to the polls “soon” if they supported his unpopular bill to double the consumption tax. His own approval ratings are low and his ill-disciplined Democratic Party of Japan is likely to be given short shrift by voters disillusioned with its three years in office. But the establishment Liberal Democratic Party-to which Ishihara once belonged-has largely been unable to capitalize on Noda’s poor standing and many commentators say a national ballot would produce stalemate.—AFP

China shows off prison and rights record BEIJING: China gave foreign journalists rare access to a prison yesterday in an attempt to show progress in improving human rights ahead of the country’s leadership change. Rows of police officers greeted busloads of reporters on the eastern outskirts of Beijing before a limited and carefully controlled tour of the 1,000person capacity No 1 Detention Centre and its 200-bed hospital.

It is “very good to improve the transparency of our work so that the international community can see more clearly the actual situation here in China of public security supervision and law enforcement”, said Zhao Chunguang, the director of detention supervision, in a welcome address. Outside, the centre for pre-trial prisoners and convicts serving short sentences looked menacing with concrete walls, barbed wire and watchtowers.

Inside it was spick-and-span and as brightly painted as a kindergarten. No inmates were visible on the tour of the hospital or in the brightly painted cells, which included four beds and a bathroom separated by frosted glass, as well as an outdoor area for detainees to exercise. “It is a very good activity to invite foreign media friends to visit and interview in the public security supervision centers,” added Zhao. The tour-organized amid a stream of state-run media reports about legal reforms, corruption crackdowns and welfare expansionsfits into a wider effort to burnish the Communist Party’s record before its power handover. In a once-in-a-decade transition at the party Congress next month, a new set of leaders will replace President Hu Jintao and other top officials. While some reforms have been undertaken in China, the No. 1 Detention Centre bore little resemblance to the cramped institutions described in rights reports that depict beatings as well as inadequate food, beds and medical aid.

Detainees are unable to meet lawyers, the reports say, while other offenders including dissidents disappear into unofficial “black jails” or are sentenced to “reeducation through labor” by administrative panels. Zhao ticked off improvements being implemented that were also outlined in a high-level white paper on judicial reform publicized this month-and which were meant to be demonstrated during the tour. No confessions should be extracted through torture, he said. Indeed, interrogation rooms featured floor-to-ceiling metal bars to keep questioners and detainees apart as well as security cameras trained on both.

The walls were covered in a special material to muffle sound, while the straight-back metal chair for detainees included a gleaming waist strap. Another improvement showed off was the new standard of providing one bed per inmate, a change from the previous practice of squeezing as many as 10 onto an elongated mattress, an official explained. Also on the tour were psychological counseling rooms, medical facilities like a pharmacy, X-ray and blood-test lab, and areas where detainees could meet family members and lawyers. “The level of protection of detainee rights is a direct reflection of the level of protection of human rights in the country,” Zhao said. — AFP

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2012

International FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2012

Fearing drug cartel, Mexican village turns vigilante URAPICHO: At the entrance of this western Mexican village, farmers in ski masks carry rifles as they man a checkpoint to protect their people, fearful that a drug cartel may strike at any time. Urapicho, a hillside village surrounded by forests, corn fields and cow pastures, has become the latest community in the western state of Michoacan to take security in its own hands against the menace of organized crime.

The decision by the residents of Urapicho to turn into a vigilante village highlights the state of fear that many Mexicans live in amid a brutal drug war, and their distrust of local police. “The barricade is there to prevent anybody who wants to hurt the population from coming in,” said a 52-year-old corn farmer, who like others in Urapicho refused to give his name for fear of retaliation. People in this village of 1,500 say they were at peace until the bodies of two suspected drug cartel members turned up on the road leading up to Urapicho in August.

Since then, villagers say, some residents have received threatening phone calls from people blaming them for the deaths while rumors swirl that the gang wants to make Urapicho pay for its slain comrades. Hundreds of people attended a meeting in the village square to discuss what to do next. By a show of hands, they agreed to set up a 24-hour checkpoint, placing rocks on the road to slow cars entering the isolated village. Armando Ballinas, a state public safety official, said the cartel provided financial aid to some villagers and began to threaten them when they refused to work for the gang. The discovery of the bodies heightened those tensions.

The state of Michoacan is the scene of a turf war between two cartels, La Familia Michoacana

and its splinter group the Knights Templar, which are fighting for control of drug trafficking routes. The feud has sparked street shootouts, kidnappings and brutal killings in the state, with bodies sometimes turning up on the side of roads. Now in Urapicho, four burly men, one of them wearing a military green jacket, carry shotguns and assault rifles under a blue tent while others hide behind trees as they check the identification papers of unknown visitors.

Only one paved road leads up to the village, a quiet hamlet with a bullring and brick homes where women wear colorful Purepecha indigenous dresses and sell them on the street while men in straw hats tend to the fields. Local police are not welcome in Urapicho-like in the rest of Mexico, municipal police have a reputation for corruption. A municipal police commander countered that indigenous villages traditionally want to “impose their own law.” The villagers say they want the more trustworthy army instead to set up a permanent post. President Felipe Calderon deployed tens of thousands of troops across the nation to crack down on cartels in 2006. Since then, an estimated 60,000 people have died in the drug war.

“The government is the one that must take care of this issue but until now we have had no support,” said a 30-year-old musician wearing a baseball cap. “We want peace.” Many Urapicho residents work outside the village but around 80 farmers and street vendors have stopped going to their jobs for fear of being kidnapped or killed, villagers said. “The country in general is living through this situation,” Nicolas Zalapa Vargas, the mayor of the municipality of Paracho, which includes Urapicho said. “This situation is not exclusive to Michoacan, Paracho or

Urapicho.” Talks will be held with the state government to discuss the village’s petition to have an army outpost as well as its own community patrol, he said.

The people of Urapicho are following in the footsteps of the bigger nearby town of Cheran, where residents took up arms last year against illegal loggers raiding their forest. More than a year after its revolt, the town of Cheran now has brick checkpoints manned by armed men

URAPICHO: A masked resident of Urapicho village, in Michoacan state, member of a security commission, stops a car while guarding a main entrance of the town. - AFP

Hurricane Sandy slams into Cuba At least 55,000 people evacuated HAVANA: Hurricane Sandy, strengthening rapidly after crossing the warm Caribbean Sea, slammed into southeastern Cuba yesterday with 105 mph winds that cut power and blew over trees across the city of Santiago de Cuba. A Cuban television reporter, reporting by telephone from the communist island’s second largest city, held the phone up to a window so viewers could hear Sandy’s roaring winds that he said had left the city “completely dark” and created a “very tense” situation. He said the Category 2 storm had toppled many trees across the city of 500,000 people situated some 470 miles southeast of the capital Havana.

The National Hurricane Center said in Miami at 5 am, Sandy, with maximum sustained winds of 105 mph, was preparing to move off Cuba’s northeastern coast. The eye of the storm came ashore just west of the city with waves up to 29 feet and a six-foot storm surge that caused extensive coastal flooding, Jose Rubiera of the Cuban weather service said in a television report. Heavy rains were falling throughout the storm-stricken region, with forecasters predicting 6 to 12 inches for most areas and as much as 20 inches in isolated places.

Rubiera said Sandy had intensified rapidly as it neared land fueled by 88 degree (31 Celsius) waters on its way from Jamaica, struck earlier in the day by the storm when it was still at Category 1 on the five-step Saffir-Simpson hurricane intensity scale. A Category 2 storm has winds between 96 and 110 mph (154 and 177 kph), leaving Sandy within a whisker of becoming a Category 3 hurricane. Rubiera said a weather station on the Gran Piedra, a mountainous outcropping near Santiago de Cuba, had had gusts up to 152 mph (245 kph). At least 55,000 people had been evacuated ahead of Sandy, Cuban officials said, principally because of expected flooding.

HEADED FOR BAHAMAS Forecaster said the storm, moving north at 18 mph (30 kph), would cross the island within a few hours, heading toward the Bahamas,

and women wearing blue uniforms with the words “community patrol” emblazoned on the back. In Urapicho, some residents are uneasy with the security arrangement. A 27-year-old grocery store worker said she didn’t like having to show what was in her bags at the checkpoint, or having to explain why she was going out at a certain time. “It’s not good,” she said as she sold candy to a child. “We can’t be at ease with this.” — AFP

where hurricane warnings have been posted for the southeastern Ragged Islands, the central Bahamas and the northwestern Bahamas. A tropical storm warning along the Florida east coast has been extended northward to Flagler Beach and a tropical storm watch has been issued for the northeastern Florida coast from Fernandina beach southward to north of Flagler Beach.

The storm would maintain much of its intensity as it marches across Cuba, the hurricane center said. “After a slight jog to the north-northeast very early this morning ... Sandy appears to have resumed a northward motion ... and this general motion is expected to continue for the next 24 hours or so,” it said. Sandy was not expected to enter the Gulf of Mexico, where the United States has extensive oil and gas installations.

The Cuban government suspended flights to and from eastern Cuba, along with bus and train services in the area. Nearly 1,000 tourists were taking shelter in their hotels, officials said. Officials put agricultural products including sugar and coffee into warehouses out of harm’s way.

Almost 3,000 Cubans working on the coffee harvest in Santiago de Cuba were sent home.

In Holguin province, processing plants for Cuba’s main export nickel continued operations, Cuban television said. Cubans battened down the hatches as the storm approached. “The weather is getting very ugly,” said 45-year-old self-employed worker Esteban O’Reilly in Santiago de Cuba. “I’ve lit a candle to the Virgin of Charity, the patron saint of Cuba, to ask that Sandy not do much damage.” Student Elizabeth Cusido, 23, said the storm was more than she could bear. “The only thing I can do is close my eyes and hope that nothing happens,” she told Reuters. “I have tremendous fear of the winds and floods.”

At the Guantanamo Bay US Naval Base, electricity was out and all but emergency workers were confined to quarters, said a Reuters reporter at the base to cover war crimes tribunals. In Jamaica, Sandy earlier caused widespread power outages, flooded streets, damaged homes and led to at least one death. —Reuters

Women alarmed by rape remarks RENO: Shanleigh Brethauer was eager to support Mitt Romney at a Nevada rally, but when she heard of recent comments by a fellow Republican on pregnancy and rape, she let out a worried “Oh wow.” The 19-year-old coffeeshop barista was among several women supporters at Romney’s event Wednesday in the gaming city of Reno who expressed revulsion over US Senate candidate Richard Mourdock’s controversial gaffe.

The anti-abortion conservative from Indiana found himselfand by extension his fellow Republican Romney, who backs him for the Senate-in hot water when he said in a debate that “even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape... it is something that God intended to happen.” Brethauer, who made the 45-minute drive from Carson City to Reno to see Romney, said that while she is determined to give Romney her first-ever presidential vote on November 6, the outrage over Mourdock is valid.

“I could see how it could hurt him,” she said, referring to the impact of Mourdock’s words on Romney’s bid to unseat President Barack Obama. “That actually really could,” she said, as the prospect of a Democratic ad blitz highlighting the remarks sank in. “Oh wow. I just thought about it.”

Undecided voter Courtney Kelly said it was “pretty upsetting” to hear the rape comments. “I grew up Christian, and I mean, God doesn’t intend for those things to happen,” said Kelly, a 24-year-old bank branch manager, adding that she was pleased that the campaign had distanced Romney from the remarks. Romney, however, has not dropped his support for Mourdock, for whom he taped a campaign ad recently. Kelly was unequivocal about whether Mourdock could hurt Romney’s chances: “From a women’s standpoint, absolutely.”

Nevada is one of a handful of toss-up states, including Florida, Ohio and Virginia, where small numbers of wavering voters could decide the election.

Romney would prefer that battleground voters zero in on the sluggish US economy in the closing days of the race, rather than the highly-charged issue of abortion. Women comprise about 53 percent of the electorate, so with just 12 days to go before Americans vote in an election that by all accounts is going down to the wire, Obama and Romney are courting female voters. —AFP

International FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2012

India risks backlash hurrying overdue welfare reform BEELAHERI: India is shaking up the way it gets billions of welfare dollars to the poor with a plan that could one day reshape the economy and tackle graft keeping millions in poverty, but in one small town a pilot of the new system is proving unpopular.

Putting India’s technological prowess to work to bring the entire 1.2 billion population within the reach of government, the widely feted unique identity (UID) project set up by Infosys cofounder Nandan Nilekani two years ago has so far scanned the irises of 210 million people into a biometric database.

Now, in a more ambitious version of programs that have slashed poverty in Brazil and Mexico, the government has begun to use the UID database, known as Aadhaar, to make direct cash transfers to the poor, in an attempt to cut out frauds who siphon billions of dollars from welfare schemes. “We can ensure that the money goes to the correct person and the role of middleman is ended with direct transfer of benefits to the needy,” Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told a crowd of thousands in the Rajasthani town of Dudu on Oct 20, as he launched the program, accompanied by the president of his Congress party, Sonia Gandhi.

Following a slew of reforms aimed at jolting Asia’s third largest economy from a deep slump, the plan could over medium term bring some order to India’s troublesome fiscal deficit by plugging leakages of subsidized grain, fuel and fertilizer. Two years ago, a McKinsey report estimated such an electronic platform for government payments to households would save up to $18 billion annually - enough to wipe out one-sixth of a fiscal deficit that could hit 6 percent of GDP this fiscal year.

In the next year alone, the government plans to transfer the wages for over 50 million workers in a rural job scheme, along with pensions for 20 million senior citizens and about 5 million education scholarships and some fuel subsidies directly to bank accounts linked with the Aadhaar identity number. But in Beelaheri, a small village in the Rajasthani region of Kotkasim where the kerosene pilot began last year, hundreds of bank accounts have been set up without referencing the UID database, as the government pushes ahead with the politically rewarding cash transfers before readying Aadhar to identify the correct beneficiaries.

Critics warn good intentions are already being undermined by the hurry ahead of a national election due in 2014 and by vested interests, including bureaucrats and politicians in states, who stand to lose discretion over distributing funds. The government is aiming for about two trillion rupees ($37.22 billion) of cash transfers under different schemes by March 2014 even if the distribution of the ID numbers is incomplete, according to several media reports. By lowering costs, Aadhaar could make a planned food subsidy program that is a pet project of the leftleaning Sonia Gandhi easier to finance, for example. The Congress party is banking on that program to help it win a third consecutive term, despite voter anger at graft.

REALITY CHECK The pilot project in Beelaheri, a village of 2,000 people some 130 km southwest of Delhi, replaces kerosene subsidies with cash rebates and has been running since December. It has massively lowered demand for the subsidized fuel, which weighs on government finances. But teething problems are immediately visible. Hundreds of new Aadhaar ID cards are strewn in messy piles on the counter of a small tea-shop on the edge of the village. Locals drift in and rifle through the cards, looking for their own. The government has begun the cash transfers even to people who have not received their cards, said Pushkar Raj Sharma, a local government official overseeing the scheme in the area. On the back foot over multiple corruption allegations, the government is desperate to win back voters with effective welfare programs without further blowing out a fiscal deficit being closely watched by global credit ratings agencies.

The government is likely to spend over $55 billion this fiscal year ending in March on fuel, fertilizer and food subsidies, as well as a flagship scheme guaranteeing 100 days of work a year to rural laborers, and other welfare programs. Launched by Singh in 51 districts, the government says the direct cash transfer plan will eliminate millions of fraudulent benefit claimants over the next 4-5 years. It says Aadhaar could reduce subsidies by about one percentage point of GDP. The Kotkasim plan, one of five small pilot projects across India, offers insight into issues the wider Aadhaar-direct transfer project may face when it is rolled out nationally.—Reuters

Afghanistan, Pakistan eye US vote with foreboding End of NATO operations raises fears of bloody chaos KABUL: The US election is a side-show on the frontline of the war on terror where Afghans feel abandoned by Washington’s looming troop withdrawal, which some in Pakistan fear could cause more violence and instability in their country regardless of who secures the White House. The Afghan conflict, America’s longest war, is now in its 12th year and both President Barack Obama and his challenger Mitt Romney are stressing their determination to bring the majority of US troops home by the end of 2014.

For some Afghans, ruled by President Hamid Karzai’s fragile government and battered by daily Taleban attacks around the country, the end of NATO combat operations raises fears of a return to the bloody chaos of the 1990s. “If they withdraw foreign troops from Afghanistan, civil war in Afghanistan will start again,” Del Agha, a driver aged around 30 said. “I want from the new US president that NATO forces should stay in Afghanistan a bit longer, till there is good security in Afghanistan.”

But analysts say little will change in US policy towards the region regardless of who wins on November 6. The vast majority of NATO’s 105,000 troops, 68,000 of them American, will leave Afghanistan and the country will have to learn to stand on its own feet particularly if it is to secure the billions of dollars in foreign aid it wants. “The idea is that it’s time for the Afghans to perform. Our performance in the next years will determine the level of our relationship with the Americans, the level of their financial support,” Omar Sharifi of the American Institute of Afghanistan Studies said.

One crucial aspect of the US-Afghan relationship as yet unresolved is the legal status of American forces who remain in the country after 2014.

Washington wants its troops to have immunity from prosecution in local courts, but Karzai says Afghans will not accept that.

After failing to secure a similar deal in Iraq, Obama left no permanent US military presence there. In Pakistan, itself battling rising Islamist extremism, there are fears the NATO withdrawal will mean a surge in violence spilling across the border and an intensification of America’s hugely unpopular drone campaign against militants.

While Pakistan publicly calls the missile strikes an infringement of its sovereignty, the United States sees them as a vital tool in the fight against militants allied to the Taleban and Al-Qaeda.

Analyst and retired senior army officer Talat Masood said the continuation of the program would depend on conditions on the ground, not on who occupies the Oval Office. “If the militants continue their operations within Pakistan and increase their activity in Afghanistan, then of course the use of drones will increase because there is no question of using ground troops,” he said. US-Pakistan relations lurched from crisis to crisis in 2011, first when a CIA contractor shot dead two people in Lahore, then when the US carried out a secret raid to kill Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and culminating in a botched US air strike that killed 24 Pakistani border guards.

Mistrust remains high and the next US president will face a tricky balancing act, trying to continue the process of repairing ties while pressuring Pakistan to do more to tackle extremists in its territory. In a rare note of agreement during Monday’s final presidential debate, Romney backed Obama on the use of drone technology, while the president revealed the depths of the suspicion that bedevils relations with Pakistan. —AFP

MOGADISHU: Somalis carry swordfish on their heads from the ocean to the market in Mogadishu, Somalia yesterday. — AP

AU readmits Mali, plans to recapture north ADDIS ABABA: The African Union readmitted Mali after suspending it from the pan-African bloc following a coup in March, and backed plans for authorities there to recapture the north from Islamists. “Council decides to lift the suspension of Mali’s participation in the activities of the AU,” the Union’s Peace and Security Commissioner Ramtane Lamamra, told reporters. Mali’s membership was revoked after army officers overthrew the elected government seven months ago.

The subsequent chaos gave free rein to a rebellion by Islamic extremists and Tuareg separatists who took over large swathes of the country’s north, before the Islamists forced out their former Tuareg allies. On Wednesday the AU also endorsed a plan urging the “restoration of state authority of the northern part of the country”. The plan, which also calls for free elections in Mali early next year, would be presented to the United Nations Security Council for endorsement, said Lamamra.

Last week officials from the United Nations, the AU, Mali and the regional bloc ECOWAS met in the Malian capital to devise a strategy to defeat rebels in the north. The AU called for Mali’s

authorities to set up a national body to open talks with any armed groups in the north “willing to engage in dialogue to find the political solution to the crisis”, said Lamamra. ECOWAS has assembled a force of some 3,000 troops to try to retake Mali’s desert north, an area roughly the size of France. An AU statement Wednesday said it was working with Mali, the UN, EU and others on plans “for the early deployment of an African-led international force to help Mali recover the occupied territories in the North”.

Hundreds of jihadist fighters, mainly from Sudan and Western Sahara, arrived in northern Mali over the weekend to support the Islamist groups ahead of the planned regional intervention.

Western governments are fearful that northern Mali could become a sanctuary for radicals. The armed Islamists have already enforced a harsh version of sharia law there, forcing women to cover their heads and banning cigarettes, alcohol and music. In one incident Islamists stoned an unmarried couple to death. They have also amputated the limbs of thieves and whipped people accused of having violated their interpretation of Islamic laws on marriage and the drinking of alcohol.—AFP

International FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2012

Guns, climate, gays missing in presidential race WASHINGTON: Of the roughly 50,000 words spoken in this month’s three presidential debates, none were “climate change,” “global warming” or “greenhouse gas.” Housing was discussed in the first debate, but the word “foreclosure” was mentioned in none. Nor was gay marriage.

The 2012 presidential campaign, not just the debates, has focused heavily from the start on jobs, pushing other once high-profile issues to the sidelines. It dismays activists who have spent decades promoting environmental issues, gay rights, gun control and other topics, sometimes managing to lift them to the top tiers of national attention and debate.

With fewer than half of Americans believing that human activity contributes to global warming, according to Pew Research, President Barack Obama talks far less about climate change than he did four years ago. When he locked up the Democratic nomination in June 2008, he said future generations would recall “this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” Obama hasn’t come close to making such claims in recent months.

Last June, 3,100 US temperature records were broken and much of the nation was in drought, said Daniel Kessler, spokesman for 350 Action Fund, which tries to raise awareness of global warming. And yet the three presidential debates, and the sole vice presidential forum, produced “absolute silence on climate science,” Kessler said. He said he believes voters would respond favorably “if candidates put out a bold vision” on climate change. Instead, the topic generates far less discussion than it did four years ago.

Other topics suffering downgrades in presidential campaign attention include: GUNS Gun rights sometimes have played big roles in US elections. In 1993, for instance, the recently elected President Bill Clinton signed the Brady Bill, which required background checks on many gun buyers. A new ban on assault weapons soon followed. But it contributed to heavy Democratic congressional losses in 1994, and the law expired 10 years later. Despite high-profile mass shootings - including those involving Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in early 2011, and dozens of Colorado movie theater patrons

Sudan-Iran links under scrutiny after explosion KHARTOUM: Sudanís links to Iran came under scrutiny yesterday after Khartoum accused Israel of a deadly missile strike on a military factory in the heart of the Sudanese capital. The cabinet met in urgent session late Wednesday after the government said evidence pointed to Israeli involvement in the alleged attack at around midnight Tuesday on the Yarmouk military manufacturing facility in southern Khartoum.

Sudan accused the Jewish state of a similar raid 18 months ago.

Analysts, however, said they had not ruled out an accidental cause for the latest blast. Israeli officials have expressed concern about arms smuggling through Sudan and have long accused Khartoum of serving as a base of support for militants from the Islamist Hamas movement.

Israel refused all comment on the Khartoum allegations, but Amos Gilad, a top Israeli defense official, called Sudan ‘a dangerous terrorist state.’ Gilad, director of policy and political-military affairs at the defense ministry, refused to reply directly when asked whether Israel was involved in the attack, which Sudan said was conducted by four radar-evading aircraft. ‘The regime is supported by Iran and it serves as a route for the transfer, via Egyptian territory, of Iranian weapons to Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists,’ he told his country’s army radio yesterday.

‘Sudanese President Omar AlBashir is regarded a war criminal.’

Bashir is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide in

in July - questions about gun rights and gun control have generated scant discussion this year.

They weren’t mentioned in the first debate between Obama and Republican Mitt Romney, which focused on domestic issues. A voter asked about assault weapons in the second, town-hall-style debate, on Oct 16. Obama cautiously spoke of “seeing if we can get an assault weapons ban reintroduced.” Romney said he favors no new gun laws. The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence criticized the lack of discussion in the first debate. After the second, it chiefly praised the woman who asked about the assault weapons ban.

IMMIGRATION In recent years, immigration has been a big issue in national elections. Then-Texas Gov George W Bush backed a pathway to legal status for many illegal immigrants when he ran for president in 2000. But Republican activists and members of Congress increasingly took hard stands against illegal immigrants. In this year’s Republican primaries, Romney positioned himself to the right of Texas Gov Rick Perry,

former Speaker Newt Gingrich and others when it came to being tough on illegal immigration. He said illegal immigrants should be encouraged to “self-deport.”

Romney has softened his rhetoric somewhat since then. He told Hispanic leaders in June he would replace Obama’s executive order allowing 800,000 young illegal immigrants to remain in the country with a longterm solution. But Romney didn’t detail his plans, and immigration has played a smaller role in the general election than it did in the primary.

GAY RIGHTS The gay rights advocacy group Human Rights Campaign recently noted on its website that questions of same-sex marriage and other gay rights issues were not mentioned in the first two presidential debates and the vice presidential debate.

The final Obama-Romney faceoff was likely to be “the last window for the candidates to share their vastly different views” on the topic, the group said. But that debate, on Oct 22, also came and went with no mention of “gay” or “same-sex” - or any type of marriage, for that matter. — AP

Voters besieged in swing states Obama, Romney hunt for votes

KHARTOUM: A Sudanese man shows damages in his home caused by an artillery shell in Khartoum.

Sudan claimed Wednesday that Israeli airstrikes caused an explosion and fire at a military factory south of the capital, Khartoum, killing several people. — AP Sudan’s Darfur region where a rebellion began in 2003. His cabinet issued no statement after its late Wednesday meeting, where Bashir joined anti-Israel protesters in chanting ‘Allahu akbar’ (‘God is greater’). About 300 demonstrators denounced the United States and carried banners calling for Israel to be wiped off the earth. ìThere was supposed to be an agreement between Sudan and Iran to produce some kind of nonconventional weapons,’ a diplomatic source said yesterday. The source, asking not to be identified, said he was also told that the Yarmouk factory was involved in drone production. — AFP

LEESBURG: The phone is ringing off the hook and Alyson Linville won’t answer it. She feels pestered by pollsters and political parties eager to know whether she backs Barack Obama or Mitt Romney.

Linville, a 49-year-old mother and wife who works for the local school district, is a swing voter in a swing county in a swing state that’s critical to a very tight US presidential race. Home is about an hour’s drive from Washington, in a suburb that is affluent, leafy green and split roughly in half between Republicans and Democrats.

Linville voted for Obama in 2008, and even stuck a Vote Obama sign on her front lawn.

But that was four years ago.

Now, with the economy still sputtering, she says: “I wish I would have heard how Obama is going to be doing things differently in a second term.”

Linville harbors doubts about the Republican challenger, too. She spoke to AFP at a Romney rally. The previous week, Michelle Obama spoke right down the street. In September, Romney’s wife Ann stopped by, and in August it was President Obama himself.

Politically speaking, it can get crowded around here. The way the US electoral system is designed means presidential candidates only campaign in a dozen or so states, largely ignoring the rest of the 50 that make up the United States.

The president is in fact elected by an electoral college made up of delegates from each state, and no matter how small the margin of victory in a given state, the winner gets all of that state’s electoral votes. Ones that always vote Democrat, such as California, or consistently Republican, like Texas, do not get a lot of attention.

Instead, the candidates court voters in states that can go one way or the other. This year the most coveted jewels include Virginia, Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania.

Humongous sums are being spent to woo people there. In Virginia, for instance, the Obama and Romney campaigns have already spent $70 million in ads. In New Mexico, by contrast, which is solid Obama country, the total outlay is exactly zero.

“It’s kind of fun. We feel pretty important. We feel like we really are the swing county in a swing state,” said Linville, referring to surrounding Loudon County. But if seeing a candidate up close is a treat, hearing them ten times a day on TV becomes challenging. You really do need a calculator to measure how intensely Loudon County voters are being mobbed. Just in the week that Linville saw Mitt Romney, the Obama campaign and its allies spent $4.1 million on TV advertising in Virginia. The Romney team dished out $4.4 million, according to a data base on

the National Journal website.

To this one must add the money spent by national parties, candidates for the senate and Planned Parenthood or same-sex marriage advocates, says the Sunlight Foundation, a group that promotes transparency in electoral spending.

For the average TV viewer this gush of money translates into dozens of ads a day, concentrated in the morning and evening and interspersed with all the other car, medicine and other ads on American television. When Linville, who is independent, and her Republican husband turn off the TV and go to get the mail, the avalanche keeps spilling out of the mailbox.

“It’s bombarded. We get probably five to ten mailers per day in our mail, every day. We also get at least four to five to six calls a night,” she said, adding that she tells her husband: “Don’t answer it, don’t answer it.” Armies of volunteers and paid staffers take turns reaching out to voters like Linville from the 27 offices that the Obama campaign has set up in Virginia. Hundreds more call from home using mobile apps that allow them to avoid footing the cost themselves. Each conversation is tallied in a data base of people who might conceivably vote for Obama and must be contacted again to urge them to get out and vote, either early, as some states allow, or on election day on November 6. — AFP

International FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2012

WikiLeaks releases new tranche of US military documents LONDON: Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks website yesterday started publishing more than 100 US Department of Defense documents including the first prisoner treatment manual for Guantanamo Bay. The latest release by the anti-secrecy site comes as Assange, who faces charges of rape and sexual assault in Sweden, remains holed up in the Ecuadoran embassy in London with what Quito says are health problems. Assange said in a statement that the newly released documents exposed military detention policies at camps in Iraq and at the

Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

Among the documents is the 2002 manual for staff at Camp Delta at Guantanamo, shortly after it was set up by US President George W. Bush to house alleged Al-Qaeda and Taleban detainees from the “war on terror”. “This document is of significant historical importance.

Guantanamo Bay has become the symbol for systematized human rights abuse in the West with good reason,” said Assange, the founder of the website. He added: “‘The

‘Detainee Policies’ show the anatomy of the beast that is post-9/11 detention, the carving out of a dark space where law and rights do not apply, where persons can be detained without a trace at the convenience of the US Department of Defense.

“It shows the excesses of the early days of war against an unknown ‘enemy’ and how these policies matured and evolved, ultimately deriving into the permanent state of exception that the United States now finds itself in, a decade later.”

US President Barack Obama vowed

within hours of taking office in January 2009 that he would close Guantanamo Bay, saying it was acting as a recruiting tool for Islamist extremists. But Obama has so far failed to do so in the face of deep opposition in Congress to moving inmates to the US mainland, and several people accused of involvement in the 9/11 plots are on trial at the camp.

WikiLeaks first enraged Washington in 2010 by publishing a flood of secret military files on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as a huge cache of diplomatic cables

from US embassies across the world.

Assange, 41, walked into the Ecuadoran embassy in London on June 19 seeking asylum in a bid to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he faces questioning over alleged rape and sexual assault. He was granted asylum on August 16 but Britain has refused to grant him safe passage out of the country, and he remains in the embassy. Ecuador said on Wednesday it has requested a meeting with Britain to discuss the health of Assange, who it says is losing weight and suffering vision problems. — AFP

Hungary far-right party gains as it targets Roma As party gains, its rhetoric grows more extreme DEVECSER: Decades of animosity between Hungarians and ethnic Roma in this small town in western Hungary had attracted little attention until the far-right Jobbik party saw an opportunity to score a few political points. A protest rally organized by the party, a little after a brawl between a Roma family and some local people, turned into a running street battle that has left the town thoroughly shaken but which Jobbik was able to exploit for its own ends. It is a strategy that has worked well for Jobbik, a party that once made use of a “Hungarian Guard” of vigilantes dressed in fasciststyle uniforms to target the Roma.

Support for Jobbik, or the Movement for a Better Hungary, is strong and the party could well hold the balance of power between the ruling Fidesz party and the left wing opposition after parliamentary elections in 2014. That could allow Jobbik to wield a decisive influence over the government, pushing pet issues such as a rethink of European Union membership and a realigning of economic ties towards countries of the east.

Recession-hit Hungary may be forced to accept aid from the International Monetary Fund if economic conditions get worse. That would compel the government to introduce unpopular austerity measures and could mean more votes for Jobbik.

Fidesz insiders deny it, but pressure from Jobbik is widely seen as already influencing the government’s agenda, pushing it towards unorthodox and widely criticized economic policies.

The conflict between Roma and Hungarians is Jobbik’s principal means of achieving the support at the ballot box it needs to push its policies in Budapest. Fidesz has lost more than a million voters since 2010, the opposition remains weak, and more than half the electorate is undecided.

Jobbik meanwhile has retained its base and is the third strongest political force in Hungary.

The party is skilled at making national headlines out of local flare-

ups, which is what happened in Devecser. About a third of the 5,000 inhabitants are Roma. They make a living largely from collecting second hand goods in Austria and Germany and selling them at a giant flea market just outside the town. Many local Hungarians take a dim view of the practice. One day in July, Ferenc Horvath, a stocky Roma furniture dealer, was driving his van along a narrow street when a car blocked his way. He told the driver, who was staying at a nearby house, to move. Words were exchanged and Horvath drove on.

Two days later Horvath’s family and friends returned to the house. In circumstances that remain unclear, a bloody fight ensued. Both sides, Roma and Hungarian, used spades and baseball bats, even a knife. A crowd gathered, mostly local Roma.

According to a report by the interior ministry, the police booked 17 people and started an investigation. To some in Devecser that was not enough.

They asked for help on a far-right online news portal, and someone also called Jobbik.

The party obliged, and organized a protest to demand better public safety. On posters announcing the event extremist groups were listed alongside Jobbik, raising fears of violence.

According to witnesses and a video recording of the Aug. 5 protest, speakers invoked the darkest periods of Hungarian history. Zsolt Tyirityan, the leader of a group called the “Army of Outlaws”, told the crowd to get tough with the Roma, even citing the Nazi idea of Lebensraum, or living space.

“Force demands respect,” he bellowed. “What will we show against these people? Only force! There will be no Gypsy Martin Luther King, no Roma Malcolm X, because we will stamp out this phenomenon that wants to eradicate us from our living space!”

Some of the 1,000 protesters then marched to the Roma part of town, threatening people, throwing rocks and yelling insults. The video shows

thugs throwing half-bricks into the yards of Roma houses and the Roma hurling the bricks back. By chance there were no serious injuries. “They attacked everyone they saw,” Ferenc Horvath said a few weeks later at the flea market. “They called us genetic rejects, or worse. People are still scared out of their wits.” Jobbik denied responsibility for the violence.

However, Jobbik MP Gabor Ferenczi, who put the protest together, later took credit for an increased police presence in the town.

Jobbik registered as a political party in October 2003; by Christmas, it had 2 percent voter support after erecting wooden crosses to protest against the holiday’s commercialisation. In September 2006, violent protests erupted when a recording leaked of Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany admitting that his Socialist party had lied for years about the state of the economy to gain reelection that year. Jobbik took to the streets. It campaigned against police brutality, held rallies and began a meteoric rise. “There was no way to do politics the traditional way any more,” Jobbik chairman Gabor Vona said on a 2010 propaganda DVD. “Local chapters, a board, a program ... it was too little.” “It was just before Christmas that year that I came up with the idea of the Hungarian Guard.”

Later banned, the Guard was a uniformed voluntary vigilante group that bore a resemblance to the fascists of World War II. Unarmed but belligerent, it helped the party target a new political scapegoat: the Roma. In October that year, a teacher was lynched by a Roma mob in eastern Hungary, provoking nationwide outrage. Jobbik coined the term “Roma crime” and began to vilify the country’s 700,000 Roma as free-loading, lazy, and criminal. The party insists it only targets criminals, but the public perception is far less nuanced and supporters viewed the Guard as a sort anti-Roma defense force. — Reuters

XIAHE: In this photo Dorje Rinchen, a farmer in his late 50s, runs after setting himself on fire on the main street in Xiahe in northwestern China’s Gansu province. This was the second self-immolation death in two days near the Labrang monastery in Xiahe. — AP

China police offer cash for tips on immolators BEIJING: Police in a heavily Tibetan region of far west China are offering tipsters a reward of $7,700 for information about planned self-immolations in a bid to stem a tide of fiery protests against Chinese rule. Since the notice was issued Sunday by police in Gansu province’s Gannan prefecture, two more local Tibetans, a herdsman and a farmer, died after setting themselves on fire near the Labrang Monastery in Gannan.

Dozens of ethnic Tibetans have set themselves on fire in China since March 2011 to protest what activists say is Beijing’s heavy-handed rule in Tibetan regions, including parts of Gansu, Sichuan, and Qinghai provinces as well as Tibet itself. Many have called for the return of the Dalai Lama, their exiled spiritual leader. Gannan police issued a notice saying that the string of recent immolations in the community had “seriously impacted social stability and harmony as well as people’s ability to live and work.” It said that in order to crack down on the demonstrations, people who tip off police about immolation plans will be rewarded 50,000 yuan ($7,700).

The notice said that people who provide information on the “black hands” who organized four recent self-immolations would be rewarded up to 200,000 yuan ($30,000). The notice promised to keep the identity of informers confidential for their protection. “Selfimmolation is an extreme suicidal behavior that goes against humanity, society and the law and deprives people of their right to life,” it said. “The instances of self-immolation that have occurred recently in our prefecture are part of a political conspiracy by the Dalai clique that means to split China and undermine national unity.” — AP

International FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2012

Three dead after five family members shot in California Gunman targets family-owned business DOWNEY: A gunman targeted a family-owned fire extinguisher business Wednesday, gunning down three people at the office and shooting two more at a family home nearby, police said. Three of the five victims died and the two survivors, including a 13-yearold boy, remained in critical condition, said Downey police Lt Dean Milligan.

The violence began just after 11 am in this working class city about 20 miles southeast of Los Angeles when someone from United States Fire Protection Services Inc called 911 to report a shooting.

A couple minutes after police arrived, the injured 13-year-old called dispatchers from the house down the same street, Milligan said. A suspect fled in a 2010 black Camaro that belonged to a victim or a member of their family. “We do not believe this was a random act of violence,” Milligan said. “We do believe there is a specific reason this family was targeted and we want to know why.” Police declined to release the identities of the victims pending the notification of family members, but a neighbor said the fire business is owned by a group of brothers.

Dean Wright, who owns the septic supply business next door, said he didn’t hear gunfire, but the sound of someone yelling, “hey,” caught his attention. When he looked outside, police officers with guns drawn surrounded the building. One of the owners he identified as Robert told him that the gunman shot his mother in the face, injuring her, and killed a secretary. At the family’s home, the shooter fatally shot the wife of another brother and injured the teenage boy, Wright said. Wright wasn’t sure about the identity of the fifth victim, but police said a man was also killed at the business. Wright said the two dead women each had three children.

“So now there are six children without mothers because of this idiot,” Wright said. “It makes me just want to throw up.”

The woman and teenager were

originally at the business, but somehow got to the home in the Camaro before being shot. Police don’t yet know if they drove themselves or were kidnapped by the suspect. There was no sign of forced entry at either location and police believe the suspect spoke with the victims at both locations before the shooting began.

Authorities were initially concerned about the safety of a small boy, age 4 or 5, related to the victims, but he was found unharmed at school. The sus-

ly owned business sells professional firefighting gear and equipment such as hoses and extinguishers, according to its website. In the first hours after the shooting, as news media gathered outside police tape, a man who said his wife worked at the business showed up at the crime scene and said he needed to know if she was safe.

An officer pointed him toward a command post and he pushed past cameras and paced frantically with a

CALIFORNIA: Police stand outside a fire protection business after work place shooting in Downey, California. — AFP pect does not appear to be a former employee, friend or family member and the teenager did not recognize him, Milligan said.

Police have not been able to interview the woman survivor at length because of her injuries. Witnesses told other news media that they saw her bleeding from the head outside the business.

No witnesses to the shootings other than the victims have come forward and police were reviewing surveillance footage in hopes it would give them a glimpse of the shooter. United States Fire Protection Services is in an industrial strip across from a large Coca-Cola Co bottling plant. The fami-

cellphone to his ear before leaving a few minutes later. Blanca Parker, who works in another business on the street, said the owners were very friendly and very aware of security.

“They were hard working,” Parker said.

“They worked seven days a week, 247.” Wright, who has owned the House of Wright for 40 years, said the area is relatively safe, but he said the fire business had a robbery a few years ago. “I’ve never seen nor heard of anything close to this,” he said. “I was driving to work this morning and thanking the good Lord for how much I love coming to work.” He said he’d have something else to think about now. — AP

US warship arrives in philippines WASHINGTON: A US Navy aircraft carrier strike force’s visit to Manila is the latest show of American military might partly aimed at countering China’s grip in Asia. But it also provides hundreds of Filipino American sailors a chance to briefly soak in the warm embrace of a second home. US sailor Ryan Regondola, who was born in the southern Philippine city of Davao, said Thursday that the nuclearpowered USS George Washington’s five-day visit underscores America’s enduring friendship with the Philippines. He’s also excited that the mission means a brief reunion with his Filipino dad, as well as Manila street delicacies including balut - boiled duck egg loved by many for its unique taste, but dreaded by others because of the half-formed, feathery embryo that pops out as an eater munches.

“I missed out a lot, so I’m catching up,” Regondola said on board the hulking warship anchored at Manila Bay. “It feels great to be back home.” The Philippines has reached

out to the United States, a longtime defense treaty ally, for help in modernizing its acutely outdated fleet of warships and planes and in training its troops amid renewed entanglement in long-running territorial disputes with China in the South China Sea. Manila’s desire to bolster its external defense and security cover has dovetailed with America’s intention to pivot away from years of heavy military engagement in the Middle East to Asia, where it has been trying to foster closer economic and military alliances with countries such as the Philippines partly as a counterweight to China’s rising clout.

In a highly symbolic gesture in May last year, Philippine President Benigno Aquino III, accompanied by senior members of his Cabinet and military chief of staff, was flown to the USS Carl Vinson to welcome the American warship as it traveled in the South China Sea toward the Philippines for a Manila visit. — AP

In Myanmar’s volatile west, sectarian violence worsens YANGON: Hundreds of homes burned and gunfire rang out as sectarian violence raged for a fifth day between Rohingya Muslims and Buddhists in western Myanmar yesterday, testing the country’s nascent democracy. Security forces struggled to stem Myanmar’s worst communal unrest since clashes in June killed more than 80 people and displaced at least 75,000. The latest violence has spread over several towns, including commercially important Kyaukpyu, where a multibillion dollar China-Myanmar pipeline starts.

The violence is one of the biggest tests yet of a new reformist government that has vowed to forge unity in one of Asia’s most ethnically diverse countries. The United Nations called for calm in volatile Rakhine State, citing reports of hundreds of houses destroyed since Sunday and large numbers of people seeking refuge in over-crowded camps near the state capital, Sittwe.

“The UN is gravely concerned about reports of a resurgence of inter-communal conflict in several areas in Rakhine State which has resulted in deaths and has forced thousands of people including women and children to flee their homes,” Ashok Nigam, U.N. resident and humanitarian Coordinator in Myanmar, said in a statement.

Access to Rakhine State was restricted and information hard to verify, but witnesses said at least three people were killed on Thursday, bringing this week’s death toll to at least five. There were widespread unconfirmed reports of razed and burning homes, gunfights and Rohingya fleeing by boat. A representative of the Wan Lark foundation, which helps ethnic Rakhine Buddhists, said local people told him trouble had flared in the early hours of Thursday in Kyauk Taw, a town north of the state capital, Sittwe. “Fires started in Pike Thel village. About 20 houses were burned.

There was gunfire reported and, as far as we know, three Rakhines were shot dead on the spot,” Tun Min Thein told Reuters by telephone.

CHINA INVESTMENT A senior official from the Rakhine State government also said three people had been killed in Kyauk Taw. Witnesses reported soldiers arriving and at least one road closed. In Yathedaung, a town northwest of Sittwe, security forces opened fire in a Rohingya district and about 10 houses were burned, Tun Min Thein added, reporting what he had been told by locals. Fires also were seen in Pauktaw, a town east of Sittwe. That followed violence in Kyaukpyu, about 120 km southwest of Sittwe, where official media said one person had been killed, 28 wounded and 800 houses burned down. The area is crucial to China’s most strategic investment in Myanmar: twin pipelines that will stretch from Kyaukpyu on the Bay of Bengal to China’s energyhungry western provinces, bringing oil and natural gas to one of China’s most undeveloped regions.

Rohingyas are officially stateless. Buddhist-majority Myanmar’s government regards the estimated 800,000 Rohingyas in the country as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and denies them citizenship. Bangladesh has refused to grant Rohingyas refugee status since 1992. Around 50 boats carrying Rohingyas were reported to have left the Kyaukpyu area on Wednesday and were spotted apparently heading for Sittwe, Tun Min Thein said. It was unclear what set off the latest arson and killing that started on Sunday. In June, tensions had flared after the rape and murder of a Buddhist woman that was blamed on Muslims, but there was no obvious spark this time.

Sittwe was the scene of violence in June but has escaped the latest unrest. Thousands lost their homes in June and many Rohingyas left or were moved out of the town by the authorities. Curfews were imposed in Minbya and Mrauk Oo north of Sittwe from Monday after violence there. It was unclear if the authorities had extended that to other areas. — Reuters

Business FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2012

Britain and China data boost shares

Hyundai beats Europe slump

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LONDON: Customers visit the newly opened Westfield Stratford City shopping centre in east London in this file photo. Britain has exited its longest double-dip recession since the 1950s after its economy returned to growth in the third quarter with a strong gain of 1.0 percent. — AFP

Britain powers out of recession UK economy returns to growth, gains of 1.0% LONDON: Britain stormed out of its longest double-dip recession since the 1950s after its economy returned to growth in the third quarter with a robust gain of 1.0 percent, official data showed yesterday. British gross domestic product, or combined value of produced goods and services, grew at the strongest rate for five years during the JulySeptember period after contracting in the previous three quarters. Market expectations had been for the economy of Britain, which is not part of the eurozone, to have expanded by 0.6 percent in the third quarter compared with the second after falling into a double-dip recession in late 2011.

British Prime Minister David Cameron welcomed the data but warned against complacency amid global economic headwinds. “There is still much to do, but these GDP figures show we are on the right track, and our economy is healing,” Cameron said in a statement. Finance minister George Osborne echoed the

cautious sentiment, saying that “yesterday’s weak data from the euro-zone were a reminder that we still face many economic challenges at home and abroad.”

Britain escaped from a deep downturn in late 2009 but fell back into recession at the end of 2011.

The economy contracted by 0.4 percent in the second quarter of this year after shrinking by 0.3 percent in the firstand by 0.4 percent in the final quarter of 2011. “GDP was estimated to have increased by 1.0 percent in Q3 2012 compared with Q2 2012,” the Office for National Statistics said in a statement.

“The largest contribution to the increase came from the services sector. There was also an increase in activity in the production sector. Activity in the construction sector fell.” Growth was also affected by one-off factors, including the London 2012 Olympic Games and rebounding activity after an extra public holiday for Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee, the ONS said. “Not only did the UK pull out of

its double-dip in Q3, but the one percent quarterly rise in GDP was a fair bit better than expected,” said Vicky Redwood, senior economist at the Capital Economics research group. “Admittedly, much of this reflected temporary factors. We think that the reversal of the Jubilee effect probably added about 0.5 percent, the Olympic ticket sales added 0.2 percent and there may have been a wider Olympic boost. “But even accounting for this suggests that underlying output managed to rise by a small amount-an improvement on recent quarters.

It won’t be plain sailing from now on, though. There are still a number of constraints on the recovery.” Output was meanwhile flat in the third quarter compared with the equivalent period in 2011, the ONS added. Despite emerging from recession, Britain was facing considerable difficulties, not least from tight credit conditions and worries about the impact of the debt crisis in the euro-zone, a key trading partner. — AFP

Red tape, scandal hurt India’s richest MUMBAI: The corruption scandals and red tape that have hampered India’s recent growth took their toll on some of the country’s richest in 2012, Forbes magazine’s latest rankings showed, though the total worth of the wealthiest 100 inched up in a turbulent year. Sunil Bharti Mittal, chairman of telecoms giant Bharti Airtel Ltd and Gautam Adani, chairman of the power-focused Adani Group, dropped out of Forbes’ annual list of the 10 richest Indians, as uncertainty and controversy gripped their industries.

The fallout from a telecoms scandal that saw 2G licenses sold illegally in 2008 has rumbled on through this year as the government has grappled with how to re-auction the airwaves. India’s power and coal industries have been plagued by shortages and delays in mining approvals, due in part to greater scrutiny in the aftermath of accusations the government allocated coal blocks to private companies at below-market prices. — Reuters

Business FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2012

As investors bet on election, odd trading crops up in US NEW YORK: Money managers across the United States are avidly watching the Nov 6 presidential election, gaming out investing strategies in the event of a second term for Barack Obama or a first one for Mitt Romney. Others are simply betting on the election itself. The online betting markets that offer this opportunity have been pretty consistent, with narrow odds favoring Obama. Every so often, however, odd trading occurs as these markets are notably less liquid and active than the average stock exchange.

Tuesday was one such example.

InTrade, a Dublin, Ireland-based website that allows users to play events like the elections by trading contracts on predicted outcomes, showed a rash of bets that caused the odds for the Republican challenger to spike suddenly and then evaporate. The betting site is one of the more popular ones and its presidential election contracts are among the most heavily traded surpasses those it offers on US Supreme Court rulings and the Academy Awards.

Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, was viewed as having slightly less than a 40 percent chance of winning on Tuesday morning, but jumped as high as 48 percent on InTrade that morning before retreating.

“A Rasmussen poll came out showing Romney’s strongest ratings ever, and that caused individual buyers to push the price around in basically a real-time aggregate of sentiment,” said Manoj Narang, chief executive of Tradeworx, a high-speed trading firm in Red Bank, New Jersey. Narang added that while he had used InTrade personally, Tradeworx did not use the service in its strategy. Rasmussen Reports, a pollster that releases daily three-day tracking polls of voters’ election preferences at 9:30 am EDT (1330 GMT), said Tuesday that Romney’s support had risen to 50 percent, compared with 46 percent for Obama.

Carl Wolfenden, exchange operations manager at InTrade, estimated that there were 40 Romney buyers Tuesday morning, compared with five sellers, but “once word got around on the spike, other people stepped in and the market settled a bit. “If someone comes into the market with a lot of money, they can shake things up, but that doesn’t last long. The market tends to bounce back quickly,” he said.

Notably, the Obama contract did not have the inverse reaction. Obama contracts currently show odds of his re-election at about 57 percent, though his odds have waned from late September, when they exceeded 75 percent.

Stock market traders are used to knee-jerk reactions to data and news, and how initial bounces can fade. Romney futures closed at $4.54 on Tuesday but fell 6.8 percent to $4.23 on Wednesday, putting his odds at winning at about 43 percent. Contracts on InTrade range in price between $0 and $10, with each dime representing a 1 percent chance that an event will occur. If Romney wins, his contacts will be sealed at $10, with investors who buy in now reaping $5.77 of profit per share. If he loses, shares will drop to $0.

Obama and Romney contracts each get daily volume of about 50,000 to 60,000 shares, according to Wolfenden. That’s minor compared to the millions of shares traded daily on a stock like Bank of America Corp. The relatively slight volume can make it easier for individual investors to push prices around. It’s “not really a great market,” said Barry Ritholtz, chief market strategist at Fusion IQ in New York, citing the “extremely thin” trading. —Reuters

Britain and China data boost shares UK pick up lifts European shares, sterling LONDON: Global shares and commodity markets rose yesterday, pulled out of their recent slide by encouraging data from Britain and China and the US Federal Reserve’s latest commitment to support growth. Britain left recession in the third quarter, posting its strongest quarterly GDP growth in five years, official data showed. Also lifting the mood were comments from China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology that the country’s factory output should pick up towards the end of the year and a survey showing orders there at their highest levels in months.

European shares, which fell 3 percent in the first half of the week, were riding higher on the more positive market tone, with the FTSEurofirst300 index 0.6 percent higher at 1100.36 points by mid-morning. London’s FTSE 100, Paris’s CAC-40 and Frankfurt’s DAX were all

firmly in positive territory and the MSCI index of global shares, which has also suffered in recent days, was up 0.4 percent. “The UK GDP data clearly surprised on the upside, that has helped the market a lot,” said Daiwa Securities Tobias Blattner.

“And in Greece there are clearly signs that there is an agreement with the Troika and it will be given two more years and there will a third bailout package, so things are clearly moving in the right direction.” In currency markets, the progress in Greece saw the euro claw back above $1.30 following its recent weakness and the stronger-than-expected performance from Britain’s economy sent sterling up against the dollar and euro. The dollar meanwhile hit a fourmonth high against the yen aided by a growing belief among investors that the Bank of Japan will unveil further monetary easing next week.

LONDON: British Prime Minister David Cameron (left) meets tool technician Adam Gorzala during a visit to Panorama Antennas in Wandsworth, south-west London yesterday. — AFP

APPLE EYED US stock futures pointed to a higher open on Wall Street when trading resumes, with results from technology powerhouse Apple and housing and employment figures set to dominate. Data from the European Central Bank provided some welcome relief in crisisstrained Spain, showing the recent haemorrhaging of deposits from banks there stopped last month. For the euro zone as a whole though, other figures from the central bank also showed lending to firms in the region fell at an increased rate, down 20 billion euros.

Sweden’s central bank the Riksbank lowered its path for future interest rates on the back of a gloomy batch of economic data yesterday and economists believe the ECB may soon follow. “With the Euro-zone facing a difficult fourth quarter after almost certainly suffering further GDP contraction in the third quarter...

We have penciled an (ECB) interest rate cut to 0.50 percent in December,” said IHS Global Insight economist Howard Archer.

BASE CASE Following the broader rise in appetite for risk assets, German government bonds fell, mirroring falls in US Treasuries after the Federal Reserve held course on monetary policy on Wednesday. British government bonds also fell as investors cashed in recent gains after the better-than-expected UK growth numbers. Oil prices rose back above $108 a barrel, after falling for a seventh consecutive session on Wednesday. The better Chinese data also helped London copper which added 0.7 percent to $7,872 a ton and gold edged up 0.3 percent to $1,706.79 an ounce in thin trade. “The Chinese economy looks set to improve slightly in the fourth quarter, which will also lift copper demand and put a floor on base metal prices,” said China Futures Co analyst Yang Jun. “But for demand to rise significantly, we need to see a clear and sustained improvement in China’s manufacturing PMI numbers above 50.” Yang added.— Reuters

Huawei partner offered US tech to Iran LONDON: An Iranian partner of Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, a Chinese company that has denied breaking US sanctions, last year tried to sell embargoed American antenna equipment to an Iranian firm, according to documents and interviews. The buyer - an Iranian mobile-phone operator says it cancelled the deal with Huawei when it learnt the items were subject to sanctions and before any equipment was delivered. Huawei, the world’s second-largest telecoms equipment maker, uses products from a US company, Andrew LLC, in some of the systems it sells.

Documents reviewed by Reuters show that Soda Gostar Persian Vista, a Tehran-based supplier of Huawei equipment in Iran, had offered to sell to MTN Irancell 36 cellular tower antennas made by Andrew for 14,364 euros.

The equipment was to be delivered in Tehran on Feb 3, 2012, to “Huawei warehouse ready for installation,” according to a MTN Irancell purchase order dated Nov 30, 2011. Huawei, based in Shenzhen, China, has an agreement with CommScope Inc in Hickory, NC - which owns Andrew - to purchase Andrew antennas and other equipment and use the products in Huawei systems, according to CommScope.

The Andrew antennas were part of a large order for Huawei telecommunications gear that MTN Irancell had placed through Soda Gostar, the documents show. Washington has banned the sale of US technology to Iran for years. Huawei said in a statement that it complies with US law and also requires third parties like Soda Gostar “to follow applicable laws and regulations.” This month, the US House Intelligence Committee criticised Huawei for failing “to provide evidence to support its claims that it complies with all international sanctions or US export laws.”

South Africa’s MTN Group, which owns 49 percent of MTN Irancell, said

the Iranian telecoms firm had requested 36 German-made antennas not subject to sanctions but that “Huawei, through its local partner Soda Gostar, mistakenly provided details of US-manufactured” antennas. “This was later identified as an error and as a result the tender request was cancelled with Huawei and the German goods obtained from a local reseller,” Paul Norman, MTN Group’s corporate affairs officer, said in a statement. He added, “The incident is illustrative of the strong processes in place in MTN and Irancell to ensure compliance” with US sanctions. In a statement, Vic Guyang, a Huawei spokesman, acknowledged that MTN Irancell had cancelled the order. He added, “We did not participate in the delivery of this project because Huawei has been and continues to be in strict compliance with all relevant international and local laws and regulations.” Officials at Soda Gostar could not be reached for comment. Rick Aspan, a spokesman for CommScope, said the company was not aware of the aborted transaction. “Obviously we’re going to look into this a little further,” he said.

He described Huawei as a major customer of antennas and other CommScope telecommunications equipment. “They purchase certain CommScope products that they incorporate into the systems they’re making for their wireless operator customers,” he said. CommScope manufactures its products in a number of countries, including China. Reuters has documented how China has become a backdoor way for Iran to obtain embargoed US computer equipment. In March and April, Reuters reported that China’s ZTE Corp, a Huawei competitor, had sold or agreed to sell millions of dollars worth of US computer gear to Telecommunication Co. of Iran, the country’s largest telecommunications firm, and a unit of the consortium that controls TCI. —Reuters

Business FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2012

EU, IMF insist no Greek creditor deal yet ATHENS: Greece’s finance minister announced he had agreed a new austerity deal with international creditors, but the EU and IMF insisted that while there had been progress, no deal had yet been thrashed out. Yannis Stournaras told parliament Wednesday the socalled troika had granted a long-sought extension in return for a 13.5 billion euro ($17.5 billion) austerity package needed to unlock funds vital to keep the country afloat. But officials at both the European Union were quick to make it clear that the troika had not yet reached any agreement with Athens.

“Substantial progress has been made in talks with Greece but a few outstanding issues remain before a staff-level agreement can be reached,” a spokesman for European economic affairs commissioner Olli Rehn said in a tweet. The International Monetary Fund issued a similar message soon after.

“There has been progress in recent days,

but some outstanding issues remain to be agreed upon to reach full staff-level agreement,” a spokesman said.

“Furthermore, financing issues will be discussed between the official lenders and Greece.”

European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi also said that while there had been progress “the review is not finished yet”. The EU has been negotiating alongside the ECB and the IMF on a new round of spending cuts and reforms by Greece to unlock a 31.2 billion euro ($40 billion) installment from its rescue loans.

A finance ministry source had said earlier that the government hoped to present the deal to a Eurogroup meeting, ending talks that have dragged on since July.

But Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble of key paymaster Germany said: “As far as the German government knows there are no new findings. “When the proposals (from the troika) are on

the table, the Eurogroup will look at them. There is nothing more to add.”

Earlier Stournaras had said that he had finalized the agreement on cutbacks in talks with the troika’s auditors. “We have obtained the extension,” he told parliament, announcing that two draft laws related to the package would be presented to parliament next week.

The new measures, to be voted on by November 12, still have to be approved

by Greece’s three-party coalition government, with key allies remaining split over the painful reforms. According to the draft budget, Greece plans to cut the public deficit to 6.6 percent of output this year-still over twice the EU limit.

‘Greece will be saved by those who dare’-European leaders have long maintained that extra time for Greece means more money from euro-zone taxpayers.

But Stournaras said: “Greece aims to cut its debt through lower interest rates and an extension in the repayment of loans it

has received from the EU and the IMF.” German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung and Greek media had reported that Athens would be given two more years to slash its public debt mountain and implement key labor reforms and privatizations. Greece, heading for a sixth straight year of recession, is desperately trying to unlock the new installment of loans from the troika.

In exchange, Athens has to agree to tough economic reforms, but the measures are deeply unpopular among ordinary Greeks who have taken to the streets in sometimes violent protests.

With unemployment topping 25 percent, the government has been pleading for more time to implement the austerity measures.

Media reports had said Athens would be given to 2016 to cut its deficit to the EU limit of three percent of gross domestic product rather than the previous deadline of 2014. — AP

Brent rises above $108 Nigerian oil exports down

NYABIBWE: One of the few remaining miners digs out soil which will later be filtered for traces of cassiterite, the major ore of tin, at Nyabibwe mine, in eastern Congo. Gold is now the primary source of income for armed groups in eastern Congo, and is ending up in jewelry stores across the world, according to a report published yesterday by the Enough Project. — AP

Gold climbs on strong equities SINGAPORE: Gold climbed on stronger equities yesterday, but was still within sight of its weakest level in seven weeks as the US Federal Reserve helped boost the US dollar’s safehaven appeal by announcing its commitment to economic stimulus measures. Gold had rallied to an 11-month peak of $1,795.69 an ounce in early October following the Fed’s latest program of purchasing mortgage-backed debt, but has since drifted lower as the US dollar strengthened and, more recently, after signs emerged of a slight improvement in the US economy.

Gold had risen $8.27 to $1,710.20 an ounce by 0556 GMT. It fell to a 7-week low of around $1,698 on Wednesday soon after the Fed said it was sticking to its plan to keep stimulating growth until the job market improves. “I think $1,700 is still quite a key support level. Generally gold has been falling due to the dollar strength. Recently, we also saw some stronger economic data coming from the US,” said Lynette Tan, senior investment analyst at Phillip Futures in Singapore.

“I expect that around the $1,700 level, we could also see some bargain hunting,” said Tan, adding that a firmer rupee could help boost demand from top consumer India during the festive season. In a statement after a two-day meeting, the Fed repeated its vow to keep rates near zero until mid2015 and its pledge to keep supporting growth while the recovery strengthens. Despite the absence of surprises, the outcome should give investors confidence to use the dollar as a funding currency for carry trades. —Reuters

LONDON: Brent crude oil rose above $108 per barrel yesterday, consolidating after seven days of falls as betterthan-expected data suggested the world economy was recovering, but analysts said the overall outlook for oil prices was bearish. Britain rebounded from recession in the third quarter, posting its strongest quarterly GDP growth in five years, although the jump was subject to a number of temporary positive factors, including the Olympics.

The reading reinforced positive data from China and the United States that showed the world’s top two oil consumers were weathering the global economic crisis. Additional support for oil came from concerns about supply in Nigeria, which has lost at least a fifth of its oil output in recent weeks due to severe flooding and oil theft, government oil officials said. Brent crude rose 90 cents to $108.75 a barrel by 0937 GMT, snapping a seven-day losing streak which was its longest since July 2010. U.S. oil gained 75 cents to $86.48, after settling down for the fifth straight session.

But analysts said oil prices could ease further as production in the

North Sea resumes and geopolitical risks ease. “We expect Brent prices to ease towards $100 at year-end. The 2012 average remains $110,” ABN Amro Commodity Research team said in a note to clients. “With early elections in Israel (Jan. 22), the immediate threat of an escalation between Israel and Iran is pushed back towards the spring/early summer in 2013.

(Therefore) a lower risk premium could be seen in the near term,” it said.

Nexen is restarting the Buzzard oilfield in the North Sea after a maintenance shutdown and expects output to ramp up in the next seven to 10 days, the company said yesterday.

Buzzard is the largest of the fields that contribute to the Forties crude blend, the most important of the North Sea crudes underpinning the Brent crude benchmark. The restart of the field, shut since early September, has been delayed repeatedly.

SHARP STOCK RISE Prices were under pressure from data showing US crude stocks rose sharply last week as imports increased and refinery utilization fell. Stocks

climbed by 5.9 million barrels, the Energy Information Administration reported. Analysts polled by Reuters had forecast an increase of 1.9 million barrels. US gasoline inventories rose by 1.44 million barrels, compared with analyst expectations for a 700,000barrel climb. Distillate stocks, which include diesel and heating oil, fell by 646,000 barrels in the week, compared with analyst forecasts for a drop of 900,000 barrels. “This report was bearish for crude, gasoline, heating oil and jet kero, and bullish for diesel.

Despite positive macroeconomics signs in US, core products’ demand was weak,” said Societe Generale.

A worsening outlook for Europe kept concerns about demand fresh.

Germany’s private sector shrank for a sixth month running in October as factory order books thinned and demand for exports weakened, surveys showed, suggesting Europe’s largest economy entered a recession in the second half of 2012. Slowing growth in Europe’s biggest economy and a worsening debt crisis across many member states including Spain are among the top concerns for the region for investors. — Reuters

Microsoft courts mobile lifestyles with Windows 8 SAN FRANCISCO: Microsoft will today release a new version of its flagship Windows operating system tailored for a world shifting from personal computers to smartphones and tablets. The software giant gambled by changing long familiar user interface features to make Windows 8 compatible with trends toward keeping programs and data in the Internet “cloud” and relying on mobile gadgets at work and at home. “Microsoft has this vision where they want to go; and it is Windows in the cloud,” said analyst Michael Cherry of Directions on Microsoft, an independent firm that tracks the Redmond, Washington-based company.

“The chasm is very big and Windows 8 is a good first step,” he continued. “But, all of these transitions come with a little pain.” The arrival of Windows 8 will coincide with

the availability of Microsoft Slate tablet computers to challenge Apple’s market-ruling iPads and rivals built on Google’s Android software. Slate tablets will be among Windows 8-powered devices sold in real-world Microsoft stores that will “pop up” today in the United States and Canada. Microsoft promised that the temporary, holidayseason shops will feature a “curated collection of Microsoft’s coolest products.”

Windows 8 and an accompanying version of Microsoft’s free Internet Explorer web browsing program, were designed to optimize touch-screen capabilities. “This is an absolutely critical product,” Microsoft co-founder and chairman Bill Gates said in a video interview posted on the company’s website. — AFP

Business FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2012

High prices dampen Eid in Algeria Food prices push inflation up HADJOUT: This year’s Muslim Eid al-Adha feast will not be the same for Mohamed Acham and his family. Soaring prices in Algeria mean he will not be able to sacrifice a sheep as tradition demands. Like Muslims worldwide, Algerians slaughter large numbers of sheep for the joyful religious holiday to be celebrated there on Friday, but this year many are hesitating. “For the first time in years, I cannot afford a sheep for this Eid. Prices have tripled,” said Acham, leaning on a wall at a cattle market in the town of Hadjout, west of Algiers.

Fruit and vegetable prices have also climbed, making life harder for Algerian families who in the last few weeks have also had to foot the bill for school expenses, extra food costs for the holy month of Ramadan and the Eid alFitr feast afterwards. Rising food prices pushed inflation up to 9.3 percent in the first half of 2012 from 3.8 percent in the same period last year, according to the latest official statistics. Algeria experienced food riots early last year,

but escaped a full-scale uprising like those that toppled some Arab rulers elsewhere, partly because the government raised wages for public sector employees and deferred tax payments to defuse discontent.

The north African nation of 37 million people could afford to do this, and to subsidize staple goods, because of the oil and gas which account for 97 percent of its exports. It depends heavily on food imports from European Union countries. President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s government subsidizes wheat, milk, sugar, electricity and water, as well as fuel. “Maintaining subsidies has put off social unrest,” said economist Abdelwahab Boukrouh, but warned that declining purchasing power would hit the unemployed and the poor hardest. “Inflation is expected to continue its upward trend. The government made a mistake. It should have improved domestic production instead of increasing wages,” he said.

IMPORT DUTIES SUSPENDED “National production meets only 30 percent of our (food) needs,” Boukrouh said. “This is why vegetable and fruit prices will keep soaring, supported by speculation and the government’s inability to regulate the market.” Many Algerians cannot afford red meat, now at 1,300 dinars ($17.50) per kg, but chicken has also gone up in recent weeks. The government has responded by suspending import duties on animal feed such as maize and soya to offset high world prices. “Our primary goal is to mitigate these effects and protect our poultry industry which has 35,000 farmers, 100,000 direct jobs and 300,000 indirect jobs,” Agriculture Minister Rachid Benaissa said. Trade Minister Mustapha Benbada has said the government was planning to establish several wholesale food markets for consumers to try to reduce prices and bring them under control.—Reuters

WPP cuts revenue outlook on Europe, US slowdown LONDON: WPP, the world’s largest advertising group, has cut its revenue outlook for the second time in as many months after a sharp slowdown in September in North America and Continental Europe hit its third quarter. WPP now expects fullyear like-for-like revenue growth of 2.5-3.0 percent, compared with a forecast of 3.5 percent made at the end of August, chief executive Martin Sorrell said yesterday. The assessment follows similarly downbeat comments from rival Omnicom, which warned last week a high level of uncertainty among clients was making it hard to forecast for the next few quarters. WPP shares were down 3.0 percent in early trading.

Sorrell told Reuters he had seen a sharp slowdown in September and the group was “exceeding cautious” about the future. “Goodness knows frankly what happened in September,” he said in an interview. “July and August were OK, they weren’t brilliant but they were in the 3 (percent revenue growth) range, but I think we’re exceedingly cautious now. “It is amazing how many clients have said they got nervous when they looked at September. There is a lot of concern out there.”

WPP revised its outlook after recording a slowdown in thirdquarter like-for-like revenue growth, the key industry metric.

Growth was up by 1.9 percent in the three months, compared with a rise of 3.6 percent in the first half. Analysts had been expecting third-quarter growth of above 3 percent.

The slowdown in client spending comes at a difficult time for advertising groups, as clients generally start to plan their budgets for 2013 at this time of the year. Next year also lacks major events that boost spending like the Olympic Games or US elections. WPP, whose portfolio includes Ogilvy & Mather and Young & Rubicam, works for clients including Ford, Nestle and P&G. It said the summer Olympics had underpinned spending, but money was often switched from other budgets and not new spending. Sorrell said the major concern in the business community had shifted in recent weeks from the euro zone debt crisis to how the US government would tackle its deficit.

To help cushion the blow, WPP will keep a tight grip on costs and seek to keep headcount and costs in line with revenue growth. Operating margins and operating profits were in line with budget and ahead of last year in the first nine months. Analysts said the results were disappointing and they would likely lower their forecasts for 2012 and 2013, but they were not a big surprise after the downbeat assessment from Omnicom. “The third quarter statement will be taken disappointingly but the share price has come off to a degree on expectations things were not great,” Liberum analyst Ian Whittaker said. “Fundamentally we remain a ‘Buy’ but momentum over the next 3 to 6 months is likely to be limited.” — Reuters

SEOUL: A man sweeps the floor of a Hyundai Motor’s showroom in Seoul, South Korea, yesterday. Hyundai Motor Co suffered a fall in third quarter profit versus the previous quarter after strikes dented vehicle production. —AP

Hyundai beats Europe slump SEOUL: Hyundai Motor Co increased its quarterly net profit by 13 percent to $2 billion, squeezing overseas capacity to keep sales going despite damaging labor strikes at home. The South Korean firm, which with affiliate Kia Motors is the world’s fifth-biggest car maker, has outperformed in an industry battered by Europe’s debt crisis - even Volkswagen and Daimler are feeling the pinch but investors are concerned about a go-slow strategy on expanding capacity. Hyundai has not announced plans for a new plant for at least two years, as it focuses on brand and quality rather than aggressively chasing market share - but this has left it short of cars to sell into a recovering US market, where Japanese rivals have muscled back in, as well as in emerging markets.

In a summary note this week, Standard & Poor’s forecast Hyundai and Kia would lose global market share by 2014. “With its growth rate moderating on limited capacity and the global economy weakening, it’ll be a challenge for Hyundai to come up with a magic growth formula,” said Ohm Joon-o, a fund manager at Kiwoom Asset Management, which holds Hyundai stock. On Thursday, hours after a bleak day for European brands - with Ford announcing a plant closure, Peugeot accepting state aid and Volkswagen posting a big drop in profits - Hyundai said its July-

September net profit rose to 2.17 trillion won, a touch above market forecasts and up on last year’s 1.92 trillion won.

GROWTH ENGINE STALLING Hyundai, led by founding family member Chung Mong-koo, bucked the industry slump in Europe and drove up sales in China as Japanese rivals were hit by a popular backlash in a dispute over islands in the East China Sea. Chief Financial Officer Lee Won-hee acknowledged Hyundai benefited from the Japan-China dispute, and would this year report higher-than-expected sales in the world’s biggest autos market.

“Hyundai will return to record earnings in the current quarter,” said Kim Seung-hwan, analyst at Golden Bridge Investment & Securities. “But the problem is next year. Investors are concerned that Hyundai’s growth momentum will stall, which is reflected in the recent share price slump.” Hyundai shares closed up 3.9 percent on Thursday - their biggest one-day gain in 6 weeks - but have slumped 10 percent this month, underperforming the KOSPI index and Japanese rivals Honda Motor Co Ltd, Nissan Motor Co Ltd and Toyota Motor Corp, as investors fret over the group’s long-term growth strategy.—Reuters

THEY ARE THE 99!

99 Mystical Noor Stones carry all that is left of the wisdom and knowledge of the lost civilization of Baghdad. But the Noor Stones lie scattered across the globe - now little more than a legend. One man has made it his life’s mission to seek out what was lost. His name is Dr. Ramzi Razem and he has searched fruitlessly for the Noor Stones all his life. Now, his luck is about to change - the first of the stones have been rediscovered and with them a special type of human who can unlock the gem’s mystical power. Ramzi brings these gem - bearers together to form a new force for good in the world. A force known as ... the 99!

THE STORY SO FAR : Dr. Ramzi sends DARR THE AFFLICTER, BARI THE HEALER, and RAHEEMA THE MERCIFUL to America to help a seriously withdrawn psychiatric patient. But Darr is shocked

www.the99.org

The 99 ® and all related characters ® and © 2012, Teshkeel Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

when he sees who the patient is...

Analysis FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2012

Village cafe shootout spells trouble for Assad Frictions among Alawites on the rise

By Khaled Yacoub Oweis

A

warm autumn day in the Syrian village of Qardaha and a man walks in to a cafe where two customers are arguing. He pulls a gun; shots are fired. The newcomer is wounded and one of the other men killed. But this is no obscure local feud; it reveals frictions among President Bashar al-Assad’s core supporters. For Qardaha is the ancestral home of the ruling dynasty. And the man who strode in with a pistol was the beleaguered president’s cousin. Accounts vary of what happened next.

But the cafe gunfight and subsequent bloodshed in the village involved only Alawites, the religious minority on which Assad has depended in his civil war against mainly Sunni rebels.

The violence shows that fear and anger over his policies may be eroding that support.

Some locals say Mohammed Al-Assad, known as the “Mountain Sheikh” for his powerful family ties, argued in the cafe about smuggling and other rackets that underpin the economy of the Alawite hill towns around the port of Latakia; others believe he took exception to complaints about his cousin’s conduct of the war and about the rising death toll the community is suffering. President Assad’s father Hafez, who led Syria from 1970 until his death in 2000, lies in a grandiose mausoleum at Qardaha, a town of 5,000 nestled amid pine-clad hilltops.

His rule brought wealth and advantage, not least jobs in the army and police, to the long disadvantaged Alawite community, which makes up about 10 percent of Syria’s population. But tribal and other internal tensions have been exacerbated by a war that his son portrays as a battle for survival, not just for himself but for all fellow Alawites against sectarian enemies.

Loyalty in Question?

Recent events around Qardaha, however, suggest to some observers, including Western diplomats, that clan rivalries, thousands of deaths among Alawite fighters and economic crisis could break the loyalty of leading Alawite commanders, even as the community finds itself increasingly a target of rebel anger. With the government severely restricting media access, there is a lack of independent information within Syria but several residents of Latakia region gave similar accounts of events.

One Alawite who has joined the opposition to Assad, Majd Arafat, said there was growing resentment at the suffering of the local population while elite families remained aloof: “The talk all over the mountains is that Alawites are being killed in droves, but none of them are called Assad, Makhlouf or Shalish.” The latter two families are closely related to the Assads. A Western diplomat, noting the failure of defections by Sunni generals to sap the strength of Assad’s forces, speculated that were even a less senior Alawite to break ranks, it might raise expectations of a more damaging split: “The defection of one, even a colonel, would be significant,” he said.

Estimates of casualties are hard to establish in Syria. One activist group which compiles reports has said some 7,300 Assad loyalists have been killed, out of a total of 30,000 war dead.

But many believe the overall toll is higher. One who thinks so is a Syrian businessman, not himself an Alawite, who says he funds units of the mostly Alawite “shabbiha” militia, partly to protect his businesses in the area. Speaking to Reuters anonymously, he reckoned the Alawite community in the coastal mountains alone might have lost 15,000 fighters since last year. In the immediate area of Qardaha, residents estimated that as many as 300 men may have died in the past year, either in battles with rebels or in sectarian ambushes and assassinations.

Unequal Divisions But the burden, as the riches of the past 40 years, has not been shared equally among the Alawite clans. The likes of the Makhlouf and Shalish families are cousins of the Assads, and rose from humble beginnings to make fortunes by virtue of winning government tenders - much to the chagrin of more established Alawites sidelined by Assad and his father. Now those divisions seem to be resurfacing in an environment where the wealth some Alawite mountain leaders have built up through officially sanctioned smuggling and other illicit trades is being threatened by the anti-Assad uprising - and now that many Alawites fear collective retribution from Assad’s enemies.

“Qardaha and its mountains used to be an incubator for regime support. But Assad’s relatives may now have to think twice before walking in the streets,” said the Alawite opposition activist Arafat. “The Alawites are starting to ask themselves ‘why we should back the Assads?’.” The nonAlawite businessman who funds some loyalist militia said abuses in the clandestine economy run by shabbiha chiefs was turning other Alawites against their rulers: “The regime has been turning a blind eye to the criminality of the shabbiha,” the businessman said. “And it is beginning to hurt it.”

Nonetheless, many Alawites, whose religion is an offshoot of the Shiism practised in Assad’s ally Iran, still support the armed forces and the militia units blamed for sectarian atrocities. Many see them as a bulwark for self-preservation: “They are afraid of the other side, which has also proved capable of massacres,” Arafat said. “They still see the Assad regime as providing them with a sort of immunity.”

Details of the cafe shootout at Qardaha on Sept 29, show internal strains are surfacing as the community suffers losses. The man killed in the gunfight was Sakher Othman. Among prominent members of his family was Isper Othman, a cleric killed in a crackdown by the elder Assad in the 1970s. At Sakher Othman’s funeral, a mourner shouted a demand that Assad quit, prompting loyalist gunmen to open fire, killing four people. Alawite opposition activists said several pro-Assad fighters were also killed and wounded as fighting spread.

Since then thousands of shabbiha loyal to the president and commanded by Assad relatives have

imposed their order on Qardaha and surrounding villages, but anger and disputes have continued. Activists list members of a number of prominent families which now oppose Assad, including from the Othman, Qouzi, Muhalla, Iskandar, Issa, Khayyer and Al-Jadid clans.

Homes have been ransacked and several shops owned by anti-Assad Alawites in Qardaha were torched this month, local residents said. Among notable clan hostilities is that opposing the Khayyers to the Assads. Abdelaziz Al-Khayyer, a doctor from Qardaha, spent 12 years as a political prisoner under Hafez Al-Assad. He was detained again in September and has not been heard of since. A delegation arrived from Damascus to try calm passions. It was headed by another prominent Alawite, Walid Othman, father-in-law of Assad’s cousin and Syria’s richest man Rami Makhlouf. Yet within days there was further trouble, with local people saying youths from rival Alawite families clashed in Qardaha.

Recruitment Problems?

These tensions may spell problems ahead for the unity of the Alawite officer corps. And Assad’s forces may also be finding difficulties recruiting in their Alawite heartland - opposition activists say more young Alawites are evading conscription. “They are seeing that the rebels are getting stronger and that their friends are getting killed,” said activist Lubna Merei, from the coastal town of Jableh, south of Latakia.

However, for all that Alawite communal cohesion may face problems, some believe that the way the civil war has taken on such a bitter sectarian dimension - helped in part by the way Assad himself treated his opponents - may mean the moment has passed when many Alawites might side with the rebels.

Munther Bakhos, a veteran Alawite member of the exile Syrian opposition in France, said the rebels lost an opportunity to make allies in the Alawite heartlands in the early stages of the conflict and he believed that it would now be harder for the mainly Sunni opposition to benefit from the infighting there.

“It is naive to think the regime is protecting the Alawites. They are hostage. The regime is using them to defend itself,” Bakhos said. But the sectarian bitterness of the war had made it harder to persuade Alawites to ditch Assad: “There was an opportunity to pull the rug from under its feet in the first few months of the revolution,” he said.

“But now the picture has gotten complicated.” — Reuters

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2012 www.kuwaittimes.net

Performers dance during a rehearsal for "Night & Day", by American composer Cole Porter, in Cape Town, South Africa, yesterday. The show will run from Oct. 26 until Nov. 3, at the Artscape Theatre in Cape Town. — AP

Food FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2012

Little pasta, big impact: W

hat is orzo? How do you cook Israeli couscous? Can you say orecchiette? There’s a dizzying array of dry pastas on store shelves. Some have fancy names for something that’s basically macaroni. We’re giving big pasta like elbows and corkscrews the summer off and downsizing for potluck salads.

Too often dainty pastas like orzo and ditalini wind up in soups, but they’re great for salads and just as economical as their big sisters. And they cook more quickly because of their size, so you can make pasta salad in a snap.

Larger pasta shapes tend to overwhelm the other ingredients.

Small ones make room for scooping it all up in every bite. Pasta salads are must-haves for feeding a crowd because they go a long way. When making, allow about 1 cup of salad per serving if you’re having just one salad and a half cup if you have two or more salads. About 50 percent of your salad should be made up of pasta and the rest should be vegetables or other ingredients.

Here are some smaller shapes to try: Orzo is rice-shaped and less than 1inch long when cooked.

Besides salads and soups, you can serve it as a side dish or stuff it in hollowed tomatoes. Couscous comes in two sizes. The smaller version is sometimes mistaken for a grain; the larger, also called Israeli couscous, is pearl-sized. The latter has been showing up in more and more recipes, including salads. Israeli couscous adds little starchy bursts to today’s Israeli Couscous with Watermelon, Watercress and Feta.

In Italian, orecchiette (oh-rayk-kee-EHT-tay) means “little ears,”

after the pasta’s shape. Orecchiette is a good change-up for salad because it’s not super small but still not huge.

Whatever pasta you choose, putting it in a salad offers an easy way to use the other bits and pieces lurking in your refrigerator.

Have half a bell pepper or cucumber? Chop it up and toss it in.

You can use just about any raw or cooked vegetable in a pasta salad. Meats, too. Think chunks of ham or salami, prosciutto and even leftover rotisserie chicken. Shredded or cut up cheeses are also good additions.

Smaller pastas do better with a vinaigrette-style dressing. That way, they don’t get lost in heavy mayonnaise and other creamy dressings. A fruity extra-virgin olive oil works best, but you also can use regular olive oil. And if you can’t bear to stray from the corkscrew or penne pastas, you can find mini versions. A few years ago, Barilla pasta introduced its piccolini (meaning “little ones”) line of mini pastas. Look for farfelle (bowties), penne, fusilli and gemelli.

Ditalini Chopped Salad Serves: 16 Preparation time: 20 minutes Total time: 45 minutes This is a perfect potluck salad because it feeds a crowd. Bell peppers, cucumber and romaine add crunch, while salami adds that meaty taste. You could substitute leftover chicken for salami.

16 ounces ditalini pasta 2 cups cubed provolone or shredded Italian cheese blend 4 cups chopped romaine 1 medium red onion, diced 1 cup chopped red, yellow or orange peppers 1cup chopped flat-leaf parsley 1 cup seeded and diced cucumber 1/3 pound cubed salami FOR DRESSING 2 large shallots, peeled 3 cloves garlic, peeled 1 cup Dijon mustard

Orzo And Broccoli Salad Serves: 8 Preparation time: 15 minutes Total time: 30 minutes This salad gets a lot of flavor from chopped olives and garlic. Use goodquality vinegar, and substitute 1 tablespoon chopped fresh oregano for dried, if desired.

4 ounces orzo 1 large head broccoli, cut into small florets (about 5-6 cups) 1 cup finely chopped green onions 1 cup sliced black olives 1 small carrot, grated 1 cup corn, cut fresh from the cob, optional 1 teaspoon dried leaf oregano 1 clove garlic, pressed or crushed and finely minced 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper 1/3 cup olive oil

Salt to taste Cook orzo following package directions. During the last 3 minutes, add the broccoli. Drain in a colander and rinse lightly with cold water.

In a large bowl, place the orzo and broccoli, green onions, olives, carrot, corn if using, oregano, garlic and pepper.

In a glass measuring cup, whisk together the oil and vinegar, and then toss with the salad ingredients.

Add salt to taste. Chill one hour before serving.

194 calories (46 percent from fat ), 11 grams fat (1 gram sat. fat ), 22 grams carbohydrates, 6 grams protein, 254 mg sodium, 0 mg cholesterol, 5 grams fiber.

2 teaspoons sugar 1 cup olive oil Salt and pepper to taste Cook the pasta according to package directions. Drain and spread it out on a baking sheet for 30 minutes.

In a large serving bowl, combine pasta, cheese, romaine, red onion, peppers, parsley, cucumber and salami.

For the dressing, place the shallots and garlic in a blender or food processor. Pulse several times to chop. Add the Dijon, vinegar and sugar. Pulse to combine.

With the blender or processor running, slowly add the oil in a steady stream to emulsify. Taste and adjust seasonings and ingredients as necessary. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Pour the dressing over the salad and toss to combine.

290 calories (49 percent from fat ), 16 grams fat (5 grams sat. fat ), 27 grams carbohydrates, 11 grams protein, 525 mg sodium, 21 mg cholesterol, 2 grams fiber.

Food

Orecchiette Salad With Grilled Vegetables

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2012

Serves: 8 Preparation time: 10 minutes Total time: 30 minutes Grilling lessens the natural bitterness of radicchio. A splash of sweet balsamic vinegar balances it.

8 ounces orecchiette (about 2 cups) 1 small head radicchio, halved lengthwise and cored 2 small bulbs fennel, cored and cut into 1/2 inch wedges, plus 1/2 cup chopped fennel fronds 8 assorted baby bell peppers, halved and seeded 1cup olive oil, divided Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper 1 can (15 ounces) cannellini beans, drained and rinsed Juice and zest of 1 lemon 2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley 1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar 3 ounces Parmesan cheese, shaved with a vegetable peeler Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the pasta and cook until al dente (about 2 minutes less than the label directs). Drain and set aside.

Preheat a grill to medium-high. Place the radicchio, fennel wedges and bell peppers in a large bowl; drizzle with 1\2 cup olive oil. Season with salt and pepper. Grill vegetables, turning occasionally, until charred and crisptender, about 4 minutes for the peppers and radicchio, 6 minutes for the fennel. Remove from the grill and let cool, then cut into small pieces.

Transfer to a serving bowl.

Add the cooked pasta, cannellini beans, the remaining cup olive oil, lemon juice and zest, parsley, balsamic vinegar,1 teaspoon salt and pepper to taste. Toss to combine. Add the Parmesan shavings and fennel fronds and toss again gently. Serve immediately or refrigerate, covered, up to 6 hours. Bring to room temperature before serving.

304 calories (37 percent from fat ), 13 grams fat (3 grams sat. fat ), 37 grams carbohydrates, 13 grams protein, 467 mg sodium, 8 mg cholesterol, 6 grams fiber.

ISRAELI COUSCOUS WITH WATERMELON, WATERCRESS AND FETA Serves: 8 (as a side dish) Preparation time: 15 minutes Total time: 30 minutes This refreshing salad blends sweet and salty It will hold an hour or two in the refrigerator but is best served immediately. Substitute spinach or arugula for watercress if you wish.

2 teaspoons kosher salt, divided 1 cup couscous 1 (about 4 pounds) seedless watermelon 8-ounce block feta cheese Grated zest and juice of 2 lemons 1/2 cup olive oil 2 tablespoons honey 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper 2 cups (packed) watercress or arugula In a medium saucepan, bring 3 cups of water and 1 teaspoon salt to boil over medium-high heat. Stir in the couscous and reduce the heat so the mixture simmers.

Cover the pan and cook for 8 to 10 minutes, until the couscous is tender. Drain and set aside to cool for 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, remove and discard the watermelon rind. Cut the flesh into 1/2inch cubes. Set aside. Cut the block of feta in half horizontally so you have two blocks.

Cut each block into 2 inch cubes. Set aside.

In a bowl, whisk together the lemon zest and juice, olive oil, honey, 1 teaspoon salt and black pepper. Add the cooled couscous, watermelon, feta and watercress.

Gently toss ingredients to evenly combine. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Serve immediately.

268 calories (43 percent from fat ), 13 grams fat (5 grams sat. fat ), 33 grams carbohydrates, 7 grams protein, 615 mg sodium, 25 mg cholesterol, 2 grams fiber. — MCT

Beauty FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2012

Fake it if you can’t make it

False lashes take over fashion market D

ifferent types of false lashes allow you to achieve almost any type of look you want. Your lashes can go from bold and dark, to natural and light. They come in a variety of colors including all the shades found in natural lashes. Some are time-consuming to apply while others go on in minutes. The variety allows you to look natural or dramatic and they also come in different lengths. Does this spark an idea?

Strips of lashes * The original types of strip false lashes are still available today but they are more refined and detailed than when first developed. This type of lash is glued along the lid at the eyelash line. This is done with either an adhesive strip that is attached to the lash or with special false eyelash glue. The strip type of lash is not as natural-looking as some of the others offered and can look false when up close.

Cluster lashes * A more natural looking option of lashes comes in small bunches or clusters. This type of lash has about ten hairs in each cluster. These clusters are glued in-between your own lashes. This is a very natural look and it is hard to tell that they are false, even from up close. This application is more time-consuming than the strip type.

Single lashes * The individual lashes that are

added in between your own, are the most natural-looking of all false eyelashes. These are dipped in glue and added throughout your own eyelashes. The amount used will vary upon the thickness you want to achieve. You cannot tell that these eyelashes are false unless you examine them with a magnifying glass. This is the most time-consuming application of all lash types, but if you are going for the natural look this will be worth it.

Colors * False eyelashes are offered in the natural colors for a realistic

look. They also come in purple, green, blue, pink, orange and almost any other color. Colored lashes can be worn out to clubs when wanting to accent your evening attire or can be an addition to your Halloween costume.

There are silver, gold and crystal clear lashes available in many stores and online. Multicolor lashes are available if you really want your eyes to stand out.

Lengths * Several lengths are offered in false eyelashes. Long, medium and short are the more common lengths available in all three of the

types. Strip eyelashes are offered in lengths that make up different looks such as “The Starlet,” where the uneven length lashes impart a star effect. There is a variety of designer eyelash lengths available in the strip type. All lashes can be cut to a length that suits your personal taste. If you are unsure of the length that you would like, it would be better to go longer.

Quick application * For a quick, easy and natural look you can add single eyelashes into your mascara. Put a few lashes at a time on the tip of your applicator and then push them

Mascara: The magic wand M

ascaras come in all types and compositions, from basic thickeners to special purpose ones with glitter, dyes, and all sorts of add-ons. First-time users will certainly be overwhelmed with the range of choices they will find. However, they don’t have to know all types of mascaras, what’s important is to know the basics and major differences. Here are some of the most common types of mascaras to help you out.

There are two basic types of mascaras based on composition: waterproof and non-waterproof.

Waterproof mascaras or waterresistant mascaras are made from pigments, filmifying solvents, and natural and synthetic waxes, mixed in a combination of water and preservatives.

These types of mascaras are designed to withstand moisture and water, so they won’t run when exposed to rain,

tears or sweat. Once they dry, you can only remove these types of mascaras using an oil-based solution (it’s usually sold with the mascara).

Non-waterproof mascaras are not as long-lasting, although they’re not exactly inferior. These types of mascaras are made to be lighter and easier to apply than waterproof mascaras.

Many specialty types of mascaras fall under this category, since the lighter composition allows for more additional ingredients. The main difference is that these types of mascaras run more easily, so you can only use them for short affairs such as shows and parties. In terms of form, the main types of mascaras are powder, cream and liquid.

Powder mascaras are the earliest form in existence, having been around since the product’s invention. The powder can be dusted over the lashes

or applied with a wet brush. These types of mascaras are the best choice for quick application and short events.

Cream mascaras tend to be heavy, but they have the strongest hold and the best thickening effect. These types of mascaras work best for those with light lashes that need extra definition.

Application can be a bit messy, but this can be solved with the use of special grooved applicators.

Liquid mascaras are one of the most common mascara types today.

They are best at darkening and coloring, and often come with additional ingredients such as lengthening fibers and a glossy finish. It is best to use these types of mascaras if you have well-curled lashes that could do with just a bit of definition. www.mascaras.com

into the mascara tube. When you put your mascara on, these tiny follicles attach to your lash line giving you thicker and longer lashes without too much fuss. The mascara acts like a glue keeping them in place. www.ehow.com

Books FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2012

I

n 1962, William Somerset Maugham’s nephew, Robin, his own literary efforts having not amounted to much, informed his wealthy and famous uncle that an American publisher, Victor Weybright, had offered him an advance of $50,000 to write Maugham’s biography. “Obviously I can’t afford to turn down such a good offer,” the younger Maugham explained. “As you know, although I earn enough from my writing to keep me going each year, I haven’t a penny of capital.” The letter’s affectionate tone notwithstanding, Maugham had no trouble grasping its import and responded by sending Robin a check equal to the one he would have received from Weybright. “I give you my word that I shall not write any other biography about you - ever,” Robin replied. “I’m really awfully shy about all this, but I’m also very grateful.”

“Shy” is a peculiar adjective to use to describe blackmail, which was, as Selina Hastings makes clear in her biography, “The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham,” Robin’s intention. Robin had been privy to Maugham’s emotional involvements with other men since he was a teenager, and might well have been the object of more than avuncular interest on Maugham’s part. (“I’m not saying I think there was incest,” Glenway Wescott recalled, “but Willie was infatuated with Robin.”) Nor was Robin’s word to be trusted. Ten years later, in a memoir entitled “Escape From the Shadows,” he quoted his uncle as saying, “I tried to persuade myself that I was three-quarters normal and that only a quarter of me was queer whereas really it was the other way round.”

Fifty thousand dollars, though enough to keep Robin quiet for Maugham’s lifetime, was not enough to keep him quiet after his death.

Forty-five years later, what little remains of the fortifications with which Maugham sought to secure his posthumous reputation has been swept away. Taking advantage of the Maugham estate’s decision to allow scholarly access to the author’s correspondence, as well as the unearthing of a transcript of an interview with Maugham’s daughter, Hastings has written a biography that does not so much give us a new Maugham as add shadings to the old one.

The passage is typical of Hastings’s prose style, which privileges breeziness and readability over compassion. Not that Maugham was a particularly compassionate character.

“Tra-la-la, no more alimony, tra-la-la,” he sang when he learned that his despised former wife, Syrie, had finally died. Upon his reunion with Alan Searle, the great love from whom he was separated for most of the Second World War and who had put on weight in the interval, he remarked acidly, “You may have looked like a Bronzino once, but now you look like a depraved Frans Hals.”

Hastings, who has written biographies of Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh, explains that this habit of cruelty had its origins in a cruel childhood. Born in Paris to English parents in 1874, Maugham was orphaned early on - the loss of his beloved mother was a particular blow - and sent back to England for his

education. ( “Of Human Bondage” is based on this period in his life.) Toward the uncle and aunt who raised him he felt no great fondness, and as soon as he could, he struck out on his own, entering into medical training at St Thomas’s Hospital in the Lambeth section of London. It was here that he learned the physician’s art of observing the suffering of others, if not with dispassion, then at least with sang-froid; an art he would exploit in his fiction. Visits to the “grim houses” in which desperately poor women, as often as not, died in childbirth propelled him to write his first novel, “Liza of Lambeth,” of which he later observed, “My lack of imagination . . . obliged me to set down quite straightforwardly what I had seen with my own eyes and heard with my own ears.” As Maugham himself was the first to admit, invention was not his strong suit, and if, later in life, he spent so much of his time traveling, it was as much to gather material as to escape his unhappy marriage. “The writer cannot afford to wait for experience to come to him,” he once wrote; “he must go out in search of it.”

Maugham’s earliest successes were in the theater, and by the 1920s, with several plays often running simultaneously in New York and London, he had the money and leisure to devote himself to the form he loved best: the short story. Amazingly, this was an age in which stories could be cash cows. A 1923 contract with the Hearst magazines guaranteed Maugham payment of $2,500 per story, while from his most famous story, “Rain,” he earned more than $1 million in royalties.

In his fiction, Maugham often sought to lay bare the hypocrisies of his characters.

Renowned as a “brilliant castigator of modern morals,” he excelled at dramatizing the exposure of lies and secrets, the duplicities of class and organized religion. Nor did he always take care, when using someone he knew as the basis for a character, to change details or even names. In his novel “Cakes and Ale,” for instance, he modeled the sycophantic, second-rate Alroy Kear on his close friend Hugh Walpole, “palpably exposed,” in Virginia Woolf’s words, “as the hypocritical booming thick-skinned popular novelist.” Much to Woolf’s surprise, Walpole responded to this “flaying alive” not with rage but with bewilderment: “What I mind are a few little things little things that Willie and I had together only he and I knew - those he has put into print.”

Is turnabout fair play? Perhaps. Indeed, as I read Hastings’s biography (and I read it in great gulps), I could not help wondering if Maugham might deserve the “flaying alive” to which she subjects him. After all, here was a man who, despite his passionate erotic partnerships with two men, could write with detached humor that a man who, in a late memoir, so vilified his deceased ex-wife as to provoke one friend, Rebecca West, to denounce him as “an obscene little toad” and another, Graham Greene, to dismiss the memoir as “a senile and scandalous work”; a man who tried to disown his own fragile daughter on the grounds that he had no evidence that he was actually her father.

Hastings makes a strong case against Maugham the man. Where she runs into trouble is in her halfhearted attempt to make a case for Maugham the writer. Is it, in fact, “safe to say,” as she does, that Maugham “will again hold generations in thrall, that his place is assured”?

Probably not. “I know just where I stand,” she quotes him as having said on more than one occasion; “in the very front row of the second-rate.” If so much of Maugham’s fiction comes across today as brittle, arch, worldweary and heartless, it may be precisely because he devoted more energy to maintaining his own double standard than he did to interrogating the double standards of others. He tried to have it both ways, and as his stories so amply demonstrate, those who try to have it both ways rarely come to a happy end.

— www.nytimes.com

Health FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2012

I

t’s not hard to fill up a modern monitor screen with a collection of windows, containing anything from email to an internet browser to a business letter. Moving back and forth between them can be a nuisance. The ideal solution?

Multiple monitors. Theoretically, the average Windows PC can support up to eight monitors, assuming the right connections. In reality, adding a monitor will probably mean you will need to get some extra kit for your computer.

Monitor sales have been on the decline in recent years thanks to the rise in the popularity of laptops and other handhelds. But German technology industry association Bitkom reports the numbers are creeping back up. That’s partially because some laptop owners are now buying an external monitor for use when they do sit at a desk so they can use two monitors. Of course, having a computer display different images on different monitors will mean a bigger drain on the graphics card.

Multiple monitors also mean multiple connections - usually more than that provided by a basic graphics card. “Usually, you can at least hook up one extra monitor,”

says Dirk Lorenz of Stiftung Warentest, a German consumer goods testing organization. But more monitors beyond that will usually mean more cards, not just

ly intense games.

Most graphics cards will have two or more connectors. However, there are a variety of technical options. “Many computers have an

er magazine Chip. On Apple computers, it’s a question of display ports or Thunderbolt connections.

The kind of driver used will also determine how many monitors a

for the extra connections, but also because of the extra computing power that will be necessary, especially if the extra screens will be used for photo editing or graphical-

analog VGA connection, but also a digital option with DVI or HDMI connectors, which allow better image quality,” says Martin Jaeger, an editor with the German comput-

computer can run. “In general, starting with Windows Vista, it should be possible to use up to eight monitors simultaneously, but, in practice, a computer can only run stably with

The legal playing field for bloggers, filmmakers T

he Internet has made it easier than ever before to let others know what you think.

But bloggers who aren’t careful about citing their sources can quickly find themselves on the receiving end of legal warnings if they give the impression that someone else’s words are their own. As websites like Facebook and YouTube make it easier to share interesting videos and documents, more people are likely to get in legal trouble.

Most copyright laws don’t distinguish between professional and amateur publishing, says Till Kreutzer of the German information portal irights.info. “In principle, a private person faces the same sanctions. If you publish something online without the permission of the copyright holder, then it’s forbidden and can have consequences.” Violations can cover anything from the upload of a wedding video featuring copyrighted music in the background to reposting a newspaper article on a blog.

But there are limits. Thus, just about every form of media is allowed to quote or cite the work of others. The problem is that there are no general rules on how many seconds or sentences one may reproduce before crossing a line. “There are no absolute rules, just relative ones,” explains Kreutzer. The main thing to remember is moderation. “If about 90 per cent of a work consists of quotes, then that wouldn’t be allowed.”

German media lawyer Thorsten Feldmann says the true test is whether one used the old work to create something that could be considered a new copyrighted piece. “The copyright law only kicks in when a new work is created.”

There’s always the option of calling the owner

and asking for permission, but Kreutzer sees that as a dead end. “If you want to use the piece of music for a video, you can find that there are up to seven copyright holders and 11 different kinds of law involved. It’s an extremely complex process that’s completely opaque for laymen.”

Things are less complicated with photos, where one can usually just ask the photographer if he allows re-publication of his images.

Feldmann says the simplest option is to use pictures not protected by copyright. “There’s a large selection of pictures that are under free license.

Photos under this so-called creative commons license don’t require a fee, though there are rules that must be followed.”

“Usually it’s enough to say the name of the copyright holder and to note the creative commons license,” says Kreutzer. There are also often restrictions regarding altering the photo. Also be aware of using photos depicting individuals.

People need to approve the use of their image.

It’s even more complicated if minors are involved, as parental approval is also necessary.

Kreutzer says people are most likely to incur legal problems with the incorrect use of a photo or a piece of text. He sees as much lower the odds of someone pursuing a copyright case because some music was used in the background of a YouTube video. But there’s a first for everything. “You can never know,” he says.

And the risks are always greater on social networks or personalized websites, than with a relatively anonymous site like YouTube. Another reason to be on the safe side: any legal case can likely result in significant expenses, starting with legal costs. —dpa

up to six external monitors,” says Jaeger. With the current MacBook Pro, it should be possible to connect two external monitors via Thunderbolt and to have contents relayed seamlessly.

“For best functioning, you should always install the most upto-date driver of the graphics card manufacturer in every computer,” advises Jaeger. Laptops do have one disadvantage: it’s not so easy to alter their hardware or put as much in. But there are still options with mobile computers that let a person hook up more than one external monitor, especially if one makes use of USB ports.

“There are external USB graphics cards for this, which also offer, for example, a DVI port,” says Jaeger.

“There are also USB monitors, though you need the right software to convert the signals.” But such devices have the disadvantage that they don’t always allow a seamless transfer of content. Lorenz says it’s important to keep your hardware consistent. “If possible, stick to the same manufacturer and the same model, since the colour display of the monitors can be different. And that can be very distracting when working.” —dpa

Lifestyle FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2012

An actor portrays serial killer Edward Theodore “Ed” Gein .

An actor portrays serial killer Dr. Henry Howard Holmes.

An actor portrays Ted Bundy on the electric chair at Killers: A Nightmare Haunted House, at Clemente Soto VÈlez Cultural Center. — AFP photos

Serial killers provide the frights at New York haunted house M

odern theater often involves some degree of interaction between actors and the audience. But paying money to be chased by a blood-soaked lunatic? New York’s Halloween season this year features “Killers: A Nightmare Haunted House” in which the public wanders from room to room, perusing gory sights. Set up in a theater in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, “Killers” is less a traditional haunted house than a walk down the grimmest byways of American criminal history.

Actors lurking in dark corners of the installation play a Who’s Who of mass murderers. “Milwaukee Cannibal” Jeffrey Dahmer’s there. Ed Gein, who robbed graves and made himself a “woman suit,” inspiring the movies “Psycho” and “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” inhabits another room. Nearby, there’s psychopathic clown John Wayne Gacy. Though haunted houses have long been a staple of Halloween-crazed America, high-budget productions like “Killers” each year push the gore and fright factor to new limits. For throngs of scare-seekers, each paying between $20 and $60 (15 and 45 euros), the fun starts in the lobby with a display of real-life serial killer artifacts. These include primitive paintings and poems by the likes of Charles Manson, police documents, and the autopsy photos of Dahmer after he was killed in prison.

“It’s on loan from someone who wants to remain anonymous, for obvious reasons,” the show’s spokesman Daniel DeMello said.

Ushers dressed as FBI agents order the crowd into line, before let-

ting small groups enter through the black curtains of the horror house. Those who want to be touched by the actors have fake blood daubed on their foreheads. Once inside, the loudest sound one hears is screaming-the noise could be from an actor, like the woman watching her leg being amputated by a psychotic doctor, or it could, just as easily, be one of the paying guests.

Chainsaws, a bloodstained corridor, Ted Bundy getting the electric chair, a 16th century Hungarian countess preparing a bath of young girls’ blood-even for those not particularly frightened, the staged scenes of depravity deliver a cumulatively creepy effect.

Serial killers: celebs The show’s director, John Harlacher, said serial killers have a peculiar resonance in the United States. “They’re all over the world, but in America the culture elevates them to celebrity,” he said, adding that in a twisted way, American psychos could even be said to embody the traditional national values of “planning ahead, working hard.” But “Killers” has taken flak for glamorizing and making money out of real world evil. “I don’t know why someone would do something like that,” Dorothy Straughter, whose 19-year-old son was among those raped, chopped up or eaten by Dahmer between 1978 and 1991, told the Daily News.

Harlacher, however, said the expected 35,000 visitors to the show won’t see any glamour. “We wanted to strip away the

facade. I hope they’ll come out of here scared to death,” he said. “I hope they’ll feel grossed out by the killers.” So what’s it like embodying a psychopath night after night? “A little weird,” said actor Scott Kozel, a hefty 25-year-old. He plays Gacy, who did “Pogo the Clown” shows at children’s parties and parades in Illinois, ran a successful business, and meanwhile raped and murdered at least 33 young men in the 1970s.

Kozel said his act, in which he pretends to charm male visitors before inviting them to descend through a trapdoor, provokes some extreme reactions. “We’ve seen people just lose it. Last week I saw a guy bigger than me, broad, biceps as big as my head, just screaming like a baby.” “If I can get someone running out screaming, that makes my day,” said the actress playing Lizzie Borden, who was acquitted in the 1892 ax murders of her father and stepmother in Massachusetts, but remains a sinister folk character to this day. Among the public this week was a man who knows a thing or two about scaring people: “Exorcist” director William Friedkin. He emerged giving a thumbs up before disappearing with friends into the Blood Thirst lobby bar. Another visitor, Alexandra Balabuer, 21, was equally enthusiastic. “It was fun,” she said. “I had a lot of fun-I was scared.”— AFP

1960s music hero Riley: ‘The pendulum will swing’

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merican composer Terry Riley, who penned the 1960s piece “In C” that earned him his reputation as “the father of minimalism” in music, thinks the pendulum will swing back to that magical time. “I don’t really look on it with nostalgia, I just wonder how we didn’t hold onto it longer,” Riley, who has remained in the forefront of innovative music ever since, told Reuters. “It was a very brief flame that spluttered out.” The 77-yearold California native who taught at the progressive Mills College in Oakland, Ca during the 1970s, said he had been dismayed by the number of students who abandoned art and music courses and drifted into business.

“To me that was like a sign of the times that materialism was becoming more important than spirituality and I think we’ve been stuck there, that’s where the pendulum has kind of stayed for awhile,” he said, talking after a performance in the ancient French city of Arles. “Of course, it swings back and forth, we all know that, and we’re very hopeful that there will be another age of enlightenment,” he added.

Riley, who braids his grey beard and has a beaming smile, was here to create music for a visual art installation by fellow Californian Doug Aitken, incorporating images of salt mines, bullherding and other features of the Camargue countryside surrounding Arles for a project sponsored

by the Luma Foundation. (http://www.dougaitken-arles.com/alteredearth.html) Riley’s flowing piece in a darkened hall featured spacey, occasionally Hindi-inspired music on piano and souped-up keyboards accompanied by his guitarist son Gyan and violinist Tracy Silverman. It was an instant hit with the local residents and invited guests who showed up to see Aitken’s images and hear Riley. “I thought it was great, it’s not every day you see things like that around here,” said Olivier Cablat, 34, a local photographer.

“The music was great, I love experimental things.”

Still going strong Riley is still going strong as he nears the end of his seventh decade, much of that time spent as one of the leaders of a revolutionary movement in American music that sprang up in the second half of the 20th century. Riley, John Cage, Philip Glass and Steve Reich, to mention just four of the biggest names, stole a march on the European composers who had embraced atonalism, abstruse theories and found almost surefire ways to clear out concert halls. “We all knew each other,” said Riley, who got into music composition and performance without the conservatory training that his son, whose first name comes from Sanskrit, has had.—Ruters

A Pakistani man decorates his cow as he waits for customers at a livestock market ahead of the Muslim sacrificial festival of Eid al-Adha in Lahore yesterday. Eid al-Adha, or the Feast of Sacrifice, honors Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son Ishmael on the order of God, who according to tradition then provided a lamb in the boy’s place. — AFP

Lifestyle FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2012

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roubled Hollywood actor Tom Cruise is suing the publishers of US magazine Life and Style for $50 million over a cover claiming he had abandoned his daughter Suri, his lawyer said Wednesday.

The weekly’s July 30 issue splashed with the headline “Suri in tears, abandoned by her dad,” over a picture of the sobbing 6-yearold, living with her mother Katie Holmes since her shock divorce announcement weeks earlier. Cruise’s lawyer Bert Fields called the magazine’s publishers “sleaze peddlers,” and said he filed a defamation lawsuit Wednesday in the US District Court in Los Angeles, seeking damages of $50 million.

“Tom is a caring father who dearly loves Suri. She’s a vital part of his life and always will be. To say he has ‘abandoned’ her is a vicious lie,” Fields said in a statement. “To say it in lurid headlines with a tearful picture of Suri is reprehensible,” he added. In the lawsuit, a copy of which was obtained by celebrity news website TMZ, Cruise’s lawyers note that the story inside the magazine does not repeat the “abandonment” claims set out in the cover headline. The story explains that, in the photo used on the cover, Suri was in tears after being unable to take a puppy home from a pet store, not due to being abandoned by her father.

But the full story “would not be seen by the vast majority of people who saw the cover,” typically on display at supermarket check-outs, it noted. Holmes announced on June 28 that she was filing for divorce to end her five-year marriage to Cruise, who was reportedly taken completely by surprise by the bombshell. The couple-who wed in November 2006 after a whirlwind romance and a proposal beneath the Eiffel Tower in Paris-struck a divorce settlement less than two weeks later.

Under its terms, Suri lives in New York with her mother while Cruise gets extensive rights to visit and spend time with her. The actor’s lawyer denied that Cruise wanted to make money from the lawsuit, saying he just wants to clear his name. “Tom doesn’t go round suing people. He’s not a litigious guy. But when these sleaze peddlers try to make money with disgusting lies about his relationship with his child, you bet he’s going to sue,” he said.—AFP

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n the opening moments of “Hold These Truths,” Jeanne Sakata’s eloquent one-man drama about civil rights giant Gordon Hirabayashi, the reflective protagonist recites a Japanese proverb he learned from his father while growing up on a farm in Washington state during the Great Depression: “Deru kugi wa utareru,” or, “The nail that sticks up gets hammered down.” The saying, meant to impart the importance of conformity in avoiding danger, is a reminder of both the personal and political conflict that plagues Sakata’s Hirabayashi, an unrelenting idealist who struggles with conventional expectations of family and culture nearly as much as he does in his legendary opposition to the US government’s internment of more than 100,000 Japanese-Americans during World War II. Like any historical play, “Hold These Truths,” which opened Monday at the Theater at the 14th Street Y, presents facts through a prism of literary and theatrical embellishment. The hero in Sakata’s play is framed as a bright-eyed romantic who is coming of age in a world full of injustice and hypocrisy. Joel de la Fuente plays Hirabayashi with buoyant, magnetic enthusiasm, under the direction of Lisa Rothe, and seamlessly steps in and out of several other roles. The most compelling of the secondary characters are Gordon’s mother and father, whom de la Fuente portrays with impressive definition and amusing cheer.

Hirabayashi remains positive and utterly undeterred by prejudice and a string of bitterly distressing outcomes. He goodnaturedly presses on against all odds, ruminates on his love of country and even finds humor in his unenviable predicament. The Seattle-born son of Japanese immigrants was a student at the University of Washington in 1942 when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which authorized the US military to exclude people from designated areas. The order was used to relocate and intern American residents of Japanese ancestry, a majority of whom were native-born US citizens.

Months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and amid widespread backlash against Japanese-Americans, Hirabayashi was one of the first to refuse the “exclusion order,” and became the face of the resistance as he fought the order in closely watched court battles. He was convicted and sentenced to 90 days in prison, a verdict that was upheld by the US Supreme Court. It wasn’t until four decades later that Hirabayashi was vindicated, when a US court in 1987 overturned his conviction and concluded that the government’s internment policies had been based on political expediency, not on any risk to national security.

Hirabayashi died in January at the age of 93. In May, he was honored at the White House when President Barack Obama posthumously presented him with the Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. “Hold These Truths,” formerly known as “Dawn’s Light: The Journey of Gordon Hirabayashi,” had its premiere in 2007 and has received stagings around the country, including theaters in California, Chicago and now New York. The show is one of two plays in Epic Theatre Ensemble’s election-season series that takes a sociopolitical look at what it means to be American. The other play is “Dispatches from (A)mended America,” a documentary theater piece about the 2008 presidential election

by Brandt Adams and Godfrey L Simmons Jr.

This theater image released by Glenna Freedman Public Relations shows Joel de la Fuente during a production of ‘Hold These Truths,’ in New York.—AP Performed in one act and about 90 minutes, “Hold These Truths” provides a concise examination of a fascinating chapter in American history, but also presents Hirabayashi in a more intimate light, revealing internal pressure he faced from family and friends who pleaded with him to put his principals aside in the name of personal safety. Sakata’s Hirabayashi also struggles to resolve conflicts arising from his strong ties to Japanese culture and his romanticism of American life, a society that often confounded him with a frustrating mix of possibility and limitations. His Supreme Court defeat leaves him disenchanted with the body, which he had previously regarded as being “above ordinary weaknesses.” “In my emerging understanding,” he explains, “they became a group of mere people, endowed with all the noble and ignoble qualities of other human beings.” Despite the shift in his outlook, he remains steadfast in his devotion to the Constitution. “Most importantly, I begin to distinguish between the Constitution and the people entrusted to uphold it.”—AP

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ean “Diddy” Combs was a passenger in an SUV that was hit by another car in front of the Beverly Hills Hotel, but the hip-hop and fashion mogul was not taken to a hospital.

Beverly Hills police Lt. Lincoln Hoshino said Combs was riding in a Cadillac Escalade on Sunset Boulevard Wednesday when a Lexus sedan turned left in front of it, and the vehicles collided.

Hoshino says Combs complained of pain, but said he would seek his own medical attention. No one from either vehicle was hospitalized. A phone message left for Combs’ publicist was not immediately returned, and Combs made no mention of the crash on his often-updated Twitter account. Photos posted on celebrity website TMZ showed the Escalade’s bumper badly smashed and Combs lying on grass after the crash. — AP

File photo shows Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs at the National Action Network’s 3rd Annual Triumph Awards in New York. — AP

Lifestyle FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2012

Michael Evanno, 31, shows the tickets he bought for the Rolling Stones concert at Virgin Megastore in Paris, yesterday. — AP photos

Rolling Stones fan who named himself Patrice, 55, and who claims he has seen 54 Rolling Stones concerts, shows the tickets he bought for tonights’ concert in Paris.

Mickael Combert, left, and Dorothee Jacquemin, show the tickets they bought.

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location of what it called “the biggest secret event of the year” without identifying the performer. The investment house has declined to comment. Earlier this month, the band announced they would perform four concerts - two in London and two near New York - to celebrate their 50th anniversary.

The announcement has been overshadowed by fan complaints about high ticket prices, which ranged from 95 pounds ($150) to as much as 950 pounds for a “VIP hospitality” seat.

Tickets have been offered online for several thousands pounds each, British media has reported. Those queueing for tonight’s gig lined up patiently with numbers marked on their hands in red by organizers. Some had driven to Paris from as far away as Hamburg in Germany.

Sebastian Baaske said he set off in his car from Hanover, Germany on Wednesday afternoon in hopes of securing a ticket.

“My girlfriend said I’d regret it if I didn’t... It’s all worth it,” the 35year-old Baaske said. The Rolling Stones, one of rock and roll’s most successful acts, will play the O2 Arena in the British capital on Nov 25 and 29 before crossing the Atlantic to perform at the

Prudential Center, Newark, on Dec 13 and 15.

Guitarists Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood, lead singer Mick Jagger and drummer Charlie Watts will perform on a stage designed around the band’s trademark tongue and lips logo, and organizers have promised a high-tech live experience. Jagger has already hinted that the four concerts would be a prelude for a longer tour.

The band’s last world tour was “A Bigger Bang”, which went on for two years and culminated at the O2 Arena in August 2007. It earned around $558 million, making it the second highest grossing tour in history behind U2’s “360 Tour”. The band behind a string of hits including “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”, “Honky Tonk Women” and “Angie”, started out on July 12, 1962 at the Marquee Club in London’s Oxford Street. — Reuters

he Rolling Stones will perform a short warm-up gig in Paris later on tonight’s for a few hundred fans and announced on Twitter that they were selling tickets for 15 euros ($19.45) each at a music store in the centre of the city. Fans queued from the early hours of the morning at the Virgin Megastore on the Champs Elysees after the British band said that 350 tickets would be available there from noon. “Mobile phones, cameras, video equipment and recording devices are strictly prohibited,” the band tweeted ahead of the gig, which queueing fans said would be held at the Trabendo, a 700-capacity venue in northern Paris.

The Paris music scene has been awash with rumors that the Stones would also play to a crowd of bankers invited by Parisbased investment house Carmignac Gestion at the Mogador Theatre in the heart of Paris on Monday. In recent years, Carmignac has recruited former Velvet Underground frontman Lou Reed and British rocker Rod Stewart to play similar gigs, usually to an exclusive audience.

Speculation that Carmignac had managed to lure the Stones mounted after it sent mystery invitations giving out the date and

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he life of late British singer Amy Winehouse is the focus of a new play opening in January at the Danish Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, the theatre said on Wednesday. The performance, called “Amy”, is to portray the “enormous pressure a sensationalist public put on a young superstar when her problems began,” it said in a statement. The play is based on material from interviews, acceptance speeches, concerts, newspapers, letters and songs from the albums “Frank” and “Back to Black”.

Written in Danish by a consortium of 11 people called “Det roede rum” (“The red room”), it will also depict Winehouse’s relationship with drugs, alcohol and her marriage to Blake FielderCivil. Grammy-winner Winehouse died of alcohol poisoning at her London home in July 2011, aged 27.—AFP

hinese Internet authorities yesterday blocked a “Gangnan Style” parody by dissident artist Ai Weiwei, which took aim at the government’s efforts to silence his activism. The four-minute music video, a parody of South Korean artist Psy’s viral hit, was uploaded to China’s video-sharing site Tuduo on Wednesday. But it was removed by Internet censors after getting thousands of hits, Ai said on his microblog web page.

The parody can still be seen outside China on the video-sharing site YouTube, which is blocked inside the country. Ai, 55, had joined the likes of hipsters, flash mobs, convicts, wedding parties and even UN chief Ban Ki-moon in mimicking the South Korean rapper’s signature horse-riding dance. In his parody, Ai appears in a bright pink T-shirt and satin-lapel black jacket from which he pulls out, about a minute into the clip, a pair of handcuffs-a symbol of Beijing’s efforts to silence him.

Last year Ai spent 81 days in detention amid a roundup of Chinese activists.

In August a court upheld a $2.4 million tax evasion fine against him. He also remains under investigation for posting supposed pornography on the Internet.

A major exhibition of his photo-

graphs, videos, sculptures and installations opened earlier this month at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, but Ai was unable to attend since he is banned from travelling abroad. Psy, 34, whose real name is Park Jae-Sang, rocketed to international fame when

“Gangnam Style”-a techno ode to a trendy Seoul neighborhood-went viral in July on YouTube. It has now notched up more than 530 million views. — AFP

This handout picture taken on October 24, 2012 and received by AFP from Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei shows Ai Weiwei (centre L) dancing his version of the ‘Gangnam Style’ hit by South Korean rapper Psy, with his friend Zuoxiao Zuzhou in Beijing. — AFP

Lifestyle FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2012

Models present creations by Dominican designer Oriett Domenech during the Fashion Week in Santo Domingo on Wednesday.

— AFP photos

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or Philippe Starck, Paris’s famed flea market is a Utopia of sorts, a colorful micro-society he yearned to be part of-and now is, after designing a restaurant and buying a trader’s booth in its heart. France’s best known designer-and one of the world’s most prolific, having put his name to projects ranging from trains to hotels, furniture and foodstuffs-Starck cites the market on Paris’s northern rim, “Les Puces”, as a kind of anchor. Visits with his father to the sprawling network of antique stalls are among his clearest childhood memories, the 63-year-old told AFP. “For me Les Puces has always been deeply ingrained,” Starck said, as workers put the finishing touches to the eatery “Ma Cocotte”, his latest project, which opened last week in an industrial-style building at the market entrance. Though born in the French capital, Starck says he never really knew the city until recently, having lived much of his life abroad. “All that time I spent away, when I thought of Paris, I thought of Les Puces,” said the designer, who with his wife Jasmine often heads straight there when they land in Paris, “even at six in the morning.”

“I feel comfortable here, it’s a model of the way I would like to live,” said Starck, who sees the market and its boisterous community of traders as a kind of “successful Utopian society”. “There is an architecture on a human scale, streets on a human scale, people full of humanity, culture, intelligence, who have their own language-both eloquent and sharp, street-wise Parisian. “These people have known each other forever; they all know each other’s

qualities and failings. They have all traded with one another, they have all fallen out and made up again-that’s what I love about this place.”

‘French, but not “beret and baguette’ But one thing kept nagging at him. “From noon to 1:00 pm, the traders all pull out a table, their saucisson and bottle of red, and have a laugh and a game of cards,” Starck said. “My dream has always been to be around that table with them-and sometimes I was invited-but I never really felt like one of the gang. “I always found it terribly frustrating, so one day my wife said, ‘Why don’t we buy a booth, with a big table in the middle for our friends, and we can make it our base.’”

The couple duly hunted down and acquired a booth in the heart of the market, which they plan to open to the public late this year, although what exactly will be on offer-food or antiquesremains a “surprise”. But from that idea grew another, that of a fullfledged restaurant in a neighborhood that sorely lacks dining options.

For the project he approached Philippe and Fabienne Amzalak, owners of the Starck-designed restaurant “Bon” in Paris’s swanky 16th district, who agreed to put up the cash — 5.5 million euros, as it turned out-for the project. Starck designed the exterior of the 250-seat eatery, built on a patch of wasteland, to look like “an industrial ruin from the future”, with an ivy-covered red-brick

ground level beneath a grey zinc first floor. Roll-back garage-style windows open in summer to let the air flow through the space, while chimneys dot the space to warm up the winter evenings.

“I wanted something French, but not ‘beret and baguette’,” he said, “so we went for a kind of workers’ canteen feel.” For the interior-with the exception of wooden bistro chairs ordered from the historic Austrian firm Thonet-Starck furnished it almost entirely with objects he and Jasmine ferreted out at Les Puces over the course of two years. Old books and chunky glass vases line the shelves, mismatched armchairs are clustered around 1950s coffee tables, while multicoloured ceramic plates are embedded into the moulded concrete walls leading up the stairs.

A line of vintage chandeliers runs down a giant communal table, with bar stools, before the open-plan kitchen-which Starck insisted must turn out food that is “real, friendly, as organic as possible-and absolutely healthy.” In practice, that means a lowishpriced selection of classic French fare-egg mayonnaise or whole artichoke for starters, spit-roasted chicken or croque monsieur sandwich for mains, before a tarte tatin to round off the meal, followed by an after-lunch stroll through the market.—AFP

Lifestyle FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2012

In this April 14, 1939 file photo, painter and surrealist Frida Kahlo, who was the wife of noted Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, poses at her home in Mexico City.

In this image released by Conde Nast Mexico y Latinoamerica, the late Mexican painter Frida Kahlo appears on the cover of the Nov. — AP photos

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with the publication of her biography by Hayden Herrera that was widely read outside art circles. Fashion designers and photographers have since been captivated by Kahlo and have put together collections, such as Gaultier’s 1998 homage. As recently as last month for Madrid Fashion Week, the spring 2013 designs of Maya Hansen featured corseted dresses, flowers and skeleton patterns.

The show, “Appearances Can Be Deceiving: The Dresses of Frida Kahlo,” will include a black velvet short cape with lace border, a twist on the popular capelet of the time; a worn silk blouse with square neckline of embroidered red, yellow and lavender flowers; and a purple cotton blouse with patterns of red and yellow squares. Also on display will be a long purple skirt with white flowers that look like poppies, a yellow longsleeved ruffle shirt with a pattern of fall leaves and a muslin skirt of sangria color.

Poignantly, the exhibit will show the white corset that Kahlo featured in her self-portrait “The Broken Column.” And there will be an earring that was a gift from Pablo Picasso and was featured in another 1940 painting of herself. Its mate has not been found. Restorers and the exhibit’s curator say many of Kahlo’s blouses were custom made. She bought the fabrics and took them to Indian seamstresses. Some were made of velvet cherry, the fabric often used for traditional elegant dresses in Oaxaca region known as the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Henestrosa, the curator, said the Tehuana dress, named after Indian women of that region, was Kahlo’s signature piece of clothing. She wore it with large gold earrings and flowers in her braided hair. —AP

Museum keeper Ximena Gomez dresses a mannequin with an indigenous shirt known as a ‘huipil’ and a skirt.

A leather corset that belonged to late Mexican artist Frida Kahlo is displayed at the Frida Kahlo museum.

Museum keeper Ximena Gomez places a traditional garment worn by indigenous women known as a ‘huipil.’

The detail of the embroidery on a traditional garment worn by indigenous women known as a ‘huipil’ that belonged to late Mexican artist Frida Kahlo.

he women on the cocktail circuit of the late 1930s were all curvehugging dresses and gelled curls. Not Mexican surrealist painter Frida Kahlo. She graced dinner parties and theaters from Paris to New York in ribbons, full skirts and loose peasant blouses embroidered with vividly colored flowers, and her uni-brow was a bold contrast to the pencil-line eyebrows of the time. Over the years, Kahlo’s look has become as influential as her art, capturing the fancy of trendsetters from Madonna to singer Gwen Stefani and French designer Jean Paul Gaultier. There are YouTube tutorials on how to braid hair like she wore hers, and Vogue Italy lets readers know where to shop for Kahloesque skirts and jewelry.

“She has made stylistically a lasting impression on fashion and style in general because it had both: use of color and she was definitely an icon of the feminist movement,” said Misha Nonoo, a British designer who last month showcased her Spring 2013 collection with the concept of a fictional Kahlo visit to Havana. Now, a full collection from her wardrobe is going on display in Mexico City after being locked away for nearly 50 years in her armoires and dressers: jewelry, shoes and clothes that still carry the scent of the late artist’s perfume and cigarette smoke or stains from painting.

“She had a tremendous self-confidence. She was convinced that what she wore displayed who she was inside,” said Alejandra Lopez, art restorer for the painter’s home, now the Frida Kahlo Museum, where the collection will be shown starting Nov 22 in an exhibit sponsored by Vogue Mexico. Yet Kahlo’s clothing was also an armor of sorts. It was her ally in disguising a life of pain, both physical and emotional. She had polio as a child, a bus accident maimed her at age 18, there were miscarriages, and she endured the countless affairs of her husband, renowned muralist Diego Rivera.

Her long, full skirts hid a tiny, thin right leg, and loose blouses covered the stiff corsets she wore for back pain. “She described how she used her clothes to cover her body imperfections,” the exhibit’s curator, Circe Henestrosa, said during a sneak peek offered to The Associated Press.

After Kahlo died in 1954, her husband ordered her clothes to be locked up for 15 years. He died three years later, leaving art collector Dolores Olmedo as the manager of his and Kahlo’s houses and she refused to give access to Kahlo’s archives of letters, clothes, jewelry and photographs. They were not unlocked until 2004, after Olmedo died.

Museum director Hilda Trujillo said three of Kahlo’s dresses created a frenzy when they were shown in 2007, featured in fashion stories across the world. “The story of Frida started to change with the discovery of her things,” Trujillo said. Her life of suffering was the subject of her paintings, and it inspired books, plays and the 2002 movie “Frida” starring Mexican actress Salma Hayek. Kahlo-mania outside Mexico started in the 1980s

A Nov 1938 Vogue magazine edition with an article about Frida Kahlo by Bertram D Wolfe is displayed at the Frida Kahlo museum.

PETS FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2012

Injured Marine is still serving

New mission is training dogs through Can Do Canines

A

grenade explosion might have put an end to Dan Carbonneau’s effort to serve his country, but he hasn’t let it sway his determination to serve others. He found a new mission: training assistance dogs. The former Marine from Excelsior, Minn., spends 20 hours a week at Can Do Canines in New Hope, Minn., teaching dogs to do everything from punch elevator call buttons to open kitchen drawers. “The dogs help people with disabilities,” he said. “It’s nice to know that you’re doing something positive for the community.”

He came within inches of being someone who might need one of the dogs rather than train them. On Sept 17, 2009, he was serving in Afghanistan when a hand grenade exploded a foot away from him. “Most of the shrapnel went away from me for some reason,” he said. “The rest was absorbed by my (body armor) protection. A friend who was next to me wasn’t so lucky. He took it in the chest.”

Carbonneau, 24, was far from unscathed. He was knocked unconscious and his eardrums were blown out. When he reached the hospital, a traumatic brain injury was diagnosed and Carbonneau was transferred to the Wounded Warrior Battalion at North Carolina’s Camp Lejeune for treatment.

Three years later, he still suffers from daily headaches and tinnitus, but you have to pull that information out of him. Complaining isn’t his strong suit. “I still have all my limbs,” he said. “There are people a lot worse off than I am.” And he’s intent on helping them. Earlier this year, he applied for a fellowship program offered by the Mission Continues (www.missioncontinues.org), a St Louis-based organization that matches post-9/11 veterans with public service projects. When they learned that he had spent part of his time in North Carolina training dogs, it was a natural fit with Can Do Canines, where he started in August.

“He’s doing a great job for us,” said Alan Peters, the executive director. “He’s very patient, and he’s good at reading the dog. A dog can’t tell you, ‘I’m confused.’ You have to keep a very sharp eye on the dog” for signs that it understands what’s being taught. “He’s been a wonderful asset for us.” Carbonneau knows how much a dog can help someone in need. A dog helped him get back on his feet after his injury.

His therapist suggested that focusing on training a pet would help with his recovery.

But he took it a step further: In addition to getting a Belgian shepherd puppy to train at home, he signed up for an apprenticeship with a professional K-9 trainer who was training dogs for the police force.

(Yes, he still has his dog. And, no, it doesn’t get jealous when it smells the odor of other dogs on his clothes.)

The dogs Carbonneau trains at Can Do Canines spend the first few months of their lives with volunteer trainers who take them into their homes. (About 30 puppies are expected to arrive in November and December, and Peters is desperate for puppy raisers.) Working with in-house professional trainer Laura Waudby, Carbonneau is involved with the final stages of training. By the time he starts working with the dogs, they usually have been assigned to a client. The trainers teach them the exact skills they will need to serve that client. If the person is deaf, for instance, the dog is taught hand signals. If a wheelchair is involved, the dog is trained to keep out of the device’s way.

“Typically, when a dog learns to heel, it’s

Dan Carbonneau gets help pushing an elevator call button from Erma, a helper dog that he is training for an organization. — MCT taught to sit down whenever you stop,” Carbonneau explained. “Sometimes we have to cure them of the urge to sit. The wheelchairs can turn suddenly, and the dog has to pivot to stay out of the way.” One of the programs involves teaching the dogs to react to the scent of someone who is going into a diabetic coma. The dogs can sense the change in body chemistry caused by high blood sugar before the diabetic feels any physical symptoms. By using odor patches, the trainers teach the dogs to alert the client that a problem is imminent.

“You want to have a good connection with the dog,” Carbonneau said. “You want the dog to trust you. It takes a lot of patience and a lot of praise.” The patience really comes into play when teaching complicated tasks, such as opening a kitchen drawer. “With the difficult tasks, you break them down into small steps,” he said. “You teach one step at a time and then connect all the steps at the end.” On any given day, he’ll work with five to 10 dogs, but in bursts of time.

“If you work with them too long, they get tired and you start to lose them” in terms of their paying attention, he said. “You have to keep it exciting for them.”

To make sure the dogs have been taught everything they need to know, the last bit of training usually takes place in the client’s home, where the handler can make sure that the person and the dog are working in sync.

As for Carbonneau, working with a client is a

reminder that he’s helping to improve someone’s life. “I get something out of it, too,” he conceded. “But it’s not just me. A lot of post9/11 vets care” about improving the community.

Carbonneau hopes to start business school next year. In the meantime, he’s taking a full load of classes at Normandale Community College. Sometimes his schedule gets a little tight and he has to scramble to squeeze in all

his dog training, but he isn’t considering scaling back. “It’s a big commitment, but this is something I enjoy,” he said. “It gives me something more to do when I wake up than just go to school. I’ve never seen it as a chore.”

— MCT

Dan Carbonneau, who suffered a brain injury as a Marine in Afghanistan, has Erma retrieve a phone. — MCT

Sports FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2012

Giants jolt Tigers in opener SAN FRANCISCO: A roly-poly Kung Fu Panda outslugged the Triple Crown winner. An October outcast outpitched the Cy Young ace. With Pablo Sandoval and Barry Zito taking star turns, this World Series is off to a rollicking start.

Sandoval hit three home runs and joined Reggie Jackson, Babe Ruth and Albert Pujols as the only boppers to do it in the Series, and the San Francisco Giants jolted Justin Verlander and the Detroit Tigers 8-3 on Wednesday night in Game 1. “Man, I still can’t believe it,” Sandoval said.

A boisterous AT&T Park crowd - a sea of black and orange outfits - roared as Sandoval connected in his first three atbats. Popular in the Bay Area for his outgoing personality and unusual physique, he went 4 for 4 and drove in four runs. A Giant panda for sure.

From the first pitch to last, it was basically a perfect game by the Giants.

Coming off a Game 7 win over St. Louis on Monday night, they looked totally fresh. “We played our last game only two days ago,” Sandoval said. “We’re still hot. We just came here and played our game.” Verlander, the reigning Cy Young winner so dominant in this postseason, looked uncomfortable from the outset and constantly pawed at the mound.

As fans filed out singing along with Tony Bennett’s standard “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” the final score raised a nagging question for manager Jim Leyland and his favored Tigers: Did too much rest after a playoff sweep of the Yankees mean too much rust?

“I just didn’t execute tonight,” Verlander said. “It was kind of a battle from the get-go. They took advantage of that and swung the bat pretty well, especially Pablo and (Marco) Scutaro. A couple of good bounces their way, bad for us.” Game 2 is tonight, with Doug Fister starting for the Tigers against Madison Bumgarner.

Left off the 2010 World Series roster by the champion Giants, Zito shut out the Tigers until Triple Crown winner Miguel Cabrera’s RBI single in the sixth.

The Giants won for the 14th straight time with Zito starting.

“Just the opportunity alone was mind-blowing. Me and my wife were dancing around when I heard,” Zito said of getting the Game 1 start. “And then

the boys came out swinging and played great defense.”

Sandoval did his damage with his bat. He donated the wood he used for the first two homers to the Hall of Fame - no need for it anymore, he broke it on the backswing of his second shot.

It was certainly a moment of retribution of Sandoval. He was benched during the 2010 World Series, his production and confidence down, his weight up. In the stands on this night, fans wearing furry panda hats celebrated with him.

“You have to keep working. I’ve never lost faith to be here,” he said.

Get this: It was the first three-homer game at the stadium originally known as Pac Bell Park since the very first one, when Kevin Elster did it for the Dodgers in 2000. Nope, not even home run king Barry Bonds had done this.

Tagged by Sandoval for a solo shot in the first inning, Verlander could only mouth ‘Wow!’ when the Giants star launched a two-run drive in the third that set off another blast of fog horns.

Sandoval reprised his power show from this year’s All-Star game, when his bases-loaded triple highlighted a fiverun first inning against Verlander.

Quite a blast from a team that finished last in the majors in homers.

“We’re not known for our power,” manager Bruce Bochy noted. And if there was any doubt that Verlander was shaky, the clearest sign came in the fourth. That’s when Zito, a career .099 hitter, sliced an RBI single with two outs off the current AL MVP for a 5-0 lead.

The festive crowd stood and applauded when it was announced that Verlander was being pulled for a pinch hitter in the fifth. Sandoval gave his followers another reason to get up moments later when he hit a solo homer off reliever Al Alburquerque in the fifth, answering the cheers by waving his batting helmet in a curtain call.

The Tigers seemed out of sorts in their first game following a five-day layoff. That was an issue in 2006, too, when Verlander and his teammates had nearly a week off before getting wiped out by the Cardinals.

“I’m one that’s been around long enough to know that a lot of things happen in this game. This was a big-hyped game with Justin, probably a lot of pressure on him,” Leyland said. —AP

SAN FRANCISCO: Giants second baseman Marco Scutaro dives for a single

by Detroit Tigers’ Delmon Young in the sixth inning during Game 1 of baseball’s World Series. — AP

SAN FRANCISCO: Giants’ Pablo Sandoval hits a home run during the fifth inning of Game 1 of baseball’s World Series against the Detroit Tigers. — AP

Leave it to the pitcher and the Panda SAN FRANCISCO: The empty champagne bottle sitting in the clubhouse as players passed by on their way to the showers was the only remaining sign of the celebration of a few nights earlier, when the San Francisco Giants somehow found their way into the World Series.

There would be no celebration on this night, because the Giants understand better than anyone that a 1-0 lead in the World Series doesn’t guarantee anything. Not even when it’s done in the most improbable manner on the backs of a couple of former postseason castoffs, one of whom made baseball history with three swings of the bat.

The pitcher and the Panda couldn’t have been a more unlikely combination, though by now it’s hard to be surprised by anything with these Giants. What other team, after all, could start one former Cy Young winner, then put in another when the first finally ran out of the adrenaline that even at its peak could only get him 85 mph on his fastball?

Barry Zito was on the scrap heap two years ago when the Giants won their first World Series since moving to San Francisco more than a half century ago. Pablo Sandoval had a great nickname but a slow bat and a big belly when he lost his job at third base for most of that series.

They weren’t supposed to be the stars of this series, certainly not the featured actors in Game 1. That was the role for Justin Verlander, triple crown winner Miguel Cabrera or Prince Fielder on the heavily favored Detroit Tigers.

But Zito and Sandoval made magic Wednesday night before a frenzied crowd of 42,855 in their Halloween best orange and black at AT&T Park. Together they combined to beat the ace of the Detroit staff and perhaps set the tone for a World Series that might be very different than the one a lot of baseball people imagined.

“After they came in here with Verlander and couldn’t win I’m sure it raises questions in their head about where they’re at,” said Tim Lincecum, the new ace reliever of the Giants.

Where they’re at is down a game in a series that won’t be over until one team wins four. Not exactly buried, but certainly not what the Tigers expected when they sent a pitcher who has been untouchable in the postseason to the mound for an outing that lasted just four innings.

For that, the Giants can thank a hitter who found a way to step away from the family lasagna, and a pitcher who finally found a way to earn his many millions.

“Barry is a story everybody should love. I get choked up just thinking about it,” teammate Aubrey Huff said. “And we all got a chance to witness history tonight. For everything that happened in ‘10 for Pablo to come and do something like this is pretty special.”

It was special when Sandoval - who embraced the Kung

Fu Panda nickname a few years back - hit a line drive off a 95 mph Verlander fast ball in the first inning that never seemed to gain or lose altitude until after it disappeared over the center field fence. He hit another to left off Verlander in the third inning, then hit another line drive off an Al Alburquerque pitch over the center field fence in the fifth to become only the fourth player - Babe Ruth did it twice - to hit three home runs in a World Series game. It could have gone from special to unbelievable had Sandoval hit one more when he came up against Tigers closer Jose Valverde in the seventh. But Sandoval had to settle for a sharp single that still capped one of the greatest World Series performances ever.

“I still can’t believe it,” Sandoval said. “When you’re a little kid, you dream of being in the World Series, but I was thinking of being in this situation, three homers in one game.”

Not too shabby for a player who was benched in the 2010 World Series and told by the Giants a few days later that he had better lay off the lasagna and get in shape or he would be playing the next season in Triple A Fresno.

“I’m sure he looks back at that time, that experience he had, and I’m sure he wasn’t too happy with how it went there in 2010,” Giants manager Bruce Bochy said. “He looks very determined to show that not just us, everybody, what a great talent he is.”

Zito was always a great talent, too, and a great disappointment on this side of the bay ever since he was lured away from the Oakland A’s in 2007 with a $126 million contract to be the ace of the Giants staff. But Zito struggled under the expectations of the big contract and was pitching so poorly in 2010 that the Giants left him off the postseason roster. Junkball pitchers usually have to have smarts, though, just to survive. Zito was smarter than most and kept trying to find a way to win, finally breaking through in the second half of this year thanks to a tweak in his delivery and the addition of a cut fastball.

The Giants have won the last 14 games he’s started, with the biggest a shutout win in St. Louis that kept their postseason hopes alive - but just barely. Still, he was not anyone’s idea of a Game 1 starter, especially going up against the hard-throwing Verlander. “Just awesome, man,” Zito said. “Just a pleasure to be a part of it.”

That’s something all the Giants could say after having to win six postseason elimination games just to get in the World Series. They broke out the champagne after putting away the Cardinals on Monday night, and the tendency after such an emotional win might have been to come out flat. But Sandoval’s home run in the first inning gave them momentum against Verlander, and the game wasn’t as close as the final score indicated. — AP

Sports FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2012

What of cycling’s other secrets?

PARIS: The truth, some say, sets you free.

Could it do the same for cycling, help the sport get back in the saddle and move past the damage done by Lance Armstrong?

It’s certainly an interesting idea, perhaps even a good one. Flush out cycling’s dirty secrets, rinse them all away. Find out who else doped and how they did it, and then close those loopholes to make it harder for riders, now and in the future, to copy their cheating methods, use their doping doctors and be pressured to dope by old-school team managers.

Something, maybe, not unlike the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that post-apartheid South Africa established to confront and forgive its brutal history. Offer amnesty to those who volunteer information about doping, and tough punishments for continuing to harbor cheats and lies.

Having unmasked Armstrong as a drug cheat, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency is pushing the sport to take this next step to “fully unshackle itself from the past,” uncover doping doctors, corrupt team directors, and riders with doping histories

it says remain hidden, undermining any convincing cleanup.

“The past is going to dig itself up, so why not boldly address it?” USADA CEO Travis Tygart said Wednesday in a phone interview. “You have to give this sport a fresh start.”

Among those who support the idea and, for the moment, it is nothing more than that - is Jonathan Vaughters, who rode with Armstrong as a pro. Vaughters testified to USADA about doping on their former US Postal Service team, including his own. He is a cycling mover and shaker, running a pro team, Garmin-SharpBarracuda, and he was among the thousands who packed a Paris auditorium for Wednesday’s unveiling of the Tour route for 2013. Judging from the size and enthusiasm of the crowd, cycling’s showcase race still has ample appeal, despite the disgrace of the rider who was its most successful champion.

If nothing else, getting riders who doped and others who helped them to confess to a truth commission could perhaps be cathartic, both for them and their sport. But Vaughters wants it to be

more ambitious than that.

“Of course, your objective is absolute truth, but what you are after is trying to figure out where things went wrong and where it can be improved,” he said in an interview. “It’s not just so that people will be truthful just for the hell of it, to get the monkey off their back. That’s a bit useless.”

Because people aren’t “just going to walk up to you and say ‘Hey, by the way, guess what I did,’” the first step would be to declare an amnesty period - a year, month, week, whatever - where past doping is “forgiven totally” to encourage confessions, Vaughters said.

“There has to be an absolute amnesty, otherwise why will people be honest with you?”

Then the commission has to dig and probe, interview people individually, “look for specific rumors or issues or whatever else that seems unaddressed and then try to address them,” he said.

“You know: ‘What happened there? What happened here? We’ve heard this rumor of X, Y or Z. Is it true? Is it not true?’ “The point of it is that you’re trying to figure

out what went wrong, how did people avoid testing positive, how did they circumvent anti-doping measures, and so how can that be prevented in the future.”

That this idea is being kicked around and will be discussed by the International Cycling Union at a meeting on Friday is, in itself, a measure of how cycling’s doping past is hard to shake off. Anti-doping controls are better now than in Armstrong’s era and yet suspicion, justified or not, weighs on riders and others who work in the sport today.

The 11 former teammates of Armstrong who testified to USADA identified other people who were involved in doping, but many of those names were blacked out in affidavits the agency published. Do they still work in cycling? If it could answer that, a truth commission would do some good.

Tygart said that during the probe of Armstrong and doping on his teams, USADA uncovered information on “several dozen” other people, some of them still in cycling and so far unidentified.

“That’s just what we found, there are far more there,” he said. — AP

Rockets pound Hornets NEW ORLEANS: Carlos Delfino scored 20 points to lead the Houston Rockets to a 97-90 preseason victory over the New Orleans Hornets on Wednesday night.

Houston (4-2) trailed 45-43 at halftime, but hit six of its first eight shots from the field in the third quarter to take control with a 17-4 run.

Chandler Parsons added 18 points, and Kevin Martin and rookie Terrence Jones had 15 each for the Rockets. Jeremy Lin had two points on 1-of-8 shooting and added five assists.

Delfino and Chandler Parsons each made four 3-pointers.

Ryan Anderson led New Orleans (3-4) with 23 points, hitting 5 of 7 3-pointers. No. 1 overall draft pick Anthony Davis had 13 points, eight rebounds and three blocked shots, and Greivis Vasquez scored 11 points. Jones started in place of an injured Patrick Patterson for Houston. The Hornets played without Eric Gordon, Austin Rivers and Jason Smith. Both teams close out the preseason Friday night. New Orleans will be at Miami, and Houston at Orlando.

In Kansas City, Martell Webster scored 23 points, Chris Singleton added 17 and the Washington Wizards used a huge second half to beat the Miami Heat 101-94 on Wednesday night.

The Wizards trailed by 14 at the half but turned it on after the break to zip past the Heat, while LeBron James sat out the fourth quarter for the defending champions.

Dwyane Wade led the Heat with 23 points and Chris Bosh added 18. James finished with 13 points and six assists. Jan Vesely had 11 rebounds for Washington.

James felt his team’s sloppy play in the third quarter which included seven turnovers - set the tone for Washington’s comeback.

“We came out in the third quarter and turned the ball over too much,” James said. “That allowed them to get back in the game. We can learn from every game, no matter if it’s preseason.”

The Heat welcomed back Mario Chalmers and Udonis Haslem, who each missed the opening six preseason games because of quadriceps strains. Chalmers finished with eight points and five assists and Haslem had eight rebounds.

Bosh and Wade each went 5 of 6 from the floor in the opening quarter and James was 3 for 6 with three rebounds and two assists for Miami, which opened the game on a 12-1 run.

“It was the first time for all of us to get out there together,” Wade said. “To come out with that start, it felt good. “ In Winnipeg, Chase Budinger scored 21 points to lead the Minnesota Timberwolves past the Detroit Pistons 95-76 in a preseason game Wednesday night.

Derrick Williams added 18 points and Nikola Pekovic had 14

NEW ORLEANS: New Orleans Hornets point guard Greivis Vasquez (third from right) drives to the basket underneath Houston Rockets center Omer Asik in the first half of a preseason NBA basketball game. — AP for Minnesota. Jose Barea chipped in with seven assists.

Rodney Stuckey scored 21 points for Detroit, and Greg Monroe and Kyle Singler added 11 apiece. Williams scored 13 points and Pekovic added 10 during an opening burst that gave the Timberwolves a 27-10 lead in the first quarter. Minnesota pushed its lead to 52-29 at the half.

The Pistons showed some life after the break, going on an 8-0 run to close the gap to five. Stuckey scored 13 third-quarter points after putting in eight in the opening half.

The Timberwolves bounced back to stretch their lead to 6853 entering the fourth and were in control throughout the final quarter.

In Memphis, Rudy Gay scored 20 points, Zach Randolph and Marc Gasol added 18 points each, and the Memphis Grizzlies beat the Orlando Magic 115-100 in a preseason game on Wednesday night.

Wayne Ellington added 13 points and Mike Conley had 12

for Memphis. Conley had nine assists and Gasol grabbed 13 boards to help Memphis outrebound Orlando 45-40 and hold a 60-36 advantage in points in the paint.

JJ Redick led the Magic with 23 points on 8-of-13 shooting, including 4 of 5 from 3-point range. Nikola Vucevic had 16 points and nine rebounds, Hedo Turkoglu scored 14 points and Glen Davis added 12.

Both teams shot well from outside the arc. Memphis hit 10 of 16 from long range, including a 4-for-4 showing from Gay. Conley and Ellington knocked down both of their 3-point attempts. Orlando connected on 12 of 21 shots from outside the arc.

Orlando, which trailed by as many as 12 in the first half, pulled to 88-86 entering the fourth quarter. But Memphis broke off a 9-1 run to rebuild the lead to double digits and Orlando would close the gap only slightly the rest of the way.—AP

Sports FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2012

Knaus salvages Kansas to keep Johnson in hunt CHARLOTTE: Chad Knaus was as specific as he could be as he barked out orders from the pit box at Kansas Speedway.

Jimmie Johnson had just led 44 laps around Kansas Speedway, pitted under a green flag and was trying to work his way through traffic when his championship chances were nearly derailed. He spun by himself, hit the wall, and ruined a potentially racewinning car.

Knaus refused to throw away the day. He called Johnson to pit road to take a look at the No. 48 Chevrolet and methodically called out the play-by-play required for the crew to get the car back on the track - and keep the team in the hunt for the Sprint Cup championship.

“I knew he would make it sound better than it really was,” said Johnson, “quarterbacking the situation.” Knaus ordered every Hendrick Motorsports crew member over the wall, and all of them were to take Bondo filler with them. He addressed certain areas of the car first, “hit it with a hammer!” he barked, “right there, between the o and the w!” he pointed toward the Lowe’s logo.

On and on it went, through at least a halfdozen stops on pit road over two caution periods. The crew worked in quick bursts so Johnson could rejoin the field as it passed by under caution, preventing him from falling a lap down.

When it was time to go racing again, Knaus assured Johnson that the car - which had thick black tape covering much of the back and the window - was good to go.

“There’s nothing wrong with that thing.

Nothing,” Knaus radioed. “You just might have a little trouble looking out the back window.”

And there wasn’t anything wrong with it the rest of the race. Johnson drove the battered car to a ninth-place finish, one spot behind series leader Brad Keselowski to keep the Chase for the Cup championship stand-

ings unchanged. He went into Sunday’s race trailing Keselowski by seven points and left with that margin intact.

“He wasn’t lying. It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t efficient,” Johnson said. “Slow on corner exiting down the straightaway because of the fenders being pushed out like they were.

Through the corner, the car had a spoiler on it in a decent location and it was creating downforce. It drove well. That’s what allowed me to work traffic like I did to allow me to get up inside the top 10.”

If Johnson goes on to win his sixth NASCAR championship, he’ll be able to look back to Kansas and his crew’s performance as one of the shining moments of the season.

Squeezing out that top-10 finish not only kept him within striking distance of Keselowski, it allowed Johnson to widen the gap on Denny Hamlin, who finished 13th.

Hamlin now trails Keselowski by 20 points, and is 13 behind Johnson.

That’s important as they head into the final month of the Chase, which shifts Sunday to Martinsville Speedway, where Johnson and Hamlin have combined to win nine of the last 12 races. The two were unbeatable for a ninerace stretch, but haven’t been to Victory Lane since Hamlin’s win in the 2010 Chase. Hamlin, disappointed with the Kansas results, took to Twitter to hint at Martinsville’s importance.

“Time for MAX points,” Hamlin tweeted Sunday night.

He nailed his last bold proclamation, backing up a “we will win next week” tweet after Chicago with a victory at New Hampshire in Round 2 of the Chase.

Johnson, a master at being able to block out the competition, said Hamlin’s public declarations don’t bother him. “It’s a great track for him. Everybody has ways that they express themselves, motivate themselves or their team, fan base,” Johnson said. “Some people

KANSAS CITY: Trevor Bayne (21) passes Jimmie Johnson (48) as Johnson hits the wall during a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series auto race at Kansas Speedway. — AP feel it’s important to do, and how they want to handle it.

Johnson pointed out that he often uses the “(hashtag)sixpack” on his own tweets in reference to his quest for a sixth championship, “to make my fans feel and know that’s where my head is. So I don’t see anything wrong or bad with it.”

Martinsville is also a great track for Johnson, who has six wins and 18 top-10s in 21 career starts. Although he hasn’t won since

spring of 2009, he led 111 laps in April and was en route to the victory until he was wrecked on the final restart. A year ago, he was passed

by Tony Stewart on the final restart. “It’s pressure time, it’s go time, it’s all that stuff with four to go,” he said. “The points as tight as they are, we expect to be one of the cars racing for the win. We’re showing up, racing hard, putting in everything we have got, which is to be expected by everybody at this point, and we’ll see how things turn out.” — AP

Matteson leads in Malaysia

KUALA LUMPUR: Tiger Woods of the United States lines up a putt on the first hole during the round one of CIMB Classic golf tournament at the Mines Resort and Golf Club.— AP

KUALA LUMPUR: Tiger Woods birdied five holes on the back nine in his first trip back to Malaysia since winning the 1999 World Cup to end the day three strokes behind first-round leader Troy Matteson at the CIMB Classic yesterday. Matteson made eight birdies in a bogey-free 8-under 63 for a one-stroke lead over fellow Americans Jeff Overton, Brian Harman and Robert Garrigus.

Woods was 2 under early, but slipped to even par after nine holes after par putts lipped out on the eighth and ninth.

The 14-time major winner started his comeback with a birdie putt over an incline from 20 feet on the 10th, the first of his five birdies on the back nine as he finished with a 66 on the 6,197yard Mines Resort and Golf Club course.

With the temperature hitting 93 degrees and high humidity, Woods appeared frustrated at times as he narrowly missed putts for birdies - including one from 10 feet on the 18th as storm clouds swirled overhead - on

top of the two short putts he missed for par. But he didn’t blame the conditions.

“What is frustrating is turning at even par and I’m eight back,” he said.

“I feel like I just got run over there.

Wind is picking up a bit and it’s going to get more difficult.

“Three or four under par was my number on the back nine - if I could shoot that, I’m still right in the ballgame. I happened to get one more, which was a bonus.”

Woods knew he could have shot a score that would have put him higher than tied for seventh, but he was generally happy with his game.

“I really started hitting the ball quite well at the end of the front nine. I happened to miss two short putts,” he said. “Realistically it could have been seven or eight (under). But even at the turn, and still post five (under), it was a nice little comeback.

“It’s going to take 20-plus this week to win the tournament, so I’ve got to be aggressive and we’ve got to go get it.” Matteson had birdies on Nos. 2, 3, 6

and 11 and finished with four straight, closing his round by holing his third shot from the greenside bunker on the par-4 18th.

“The pin is really tricky on 18. I knew I’d be doing good if I could leave myself seven or eight feet for par, and it bounced and slam-dunked in the hole,” Matteson said. “That’s the first time all year the ball has managed to hit the pin and stay in the hole.”

Matteson placed second at the John Deere Classic in July and had three top-10 finishes on the PGA Tour in 2012 but is yet to win a title. The cosanctioned $6.1 million CIMB Classic doesn’t count for points on the tour this year, but will be added to the schedule in 2013, making it a good title to win.

Defending CIMB champion Bo Van Pelt, 1 under after an opening 70, was coming off a win last week at the Perth International, which was jointly sanctioned by the European and Australasian tours. Jason Dufner, who was second to Van Pelt last week, was 3 under and in a share of 16th.- — AP

Sports FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2012

Azarenka, Sharapova survive marathons ISTANBUL: Victoria Azarenka moved a step closer to securing the year-end number one ranking with a 6-7 7-6 6-4 win over Germany’s Angelique Kerber at the WTA Championships on Wednesday.

Azarenka needed three hours and six minutes to repel Kerber but Maria Sharapova’s 5-7 7-5 7-5 win over Agnieszka Radwanska took even longer to complete, the three hours and 12 minutes contest ending at 02:12 on Thursday morning.

In another tight contest that opened the evening session, number three Serena Williams took down China’s Li Na 7-6 6-3 in one hour and 50 minutes.

Before play began, title holder Petra Kvitova of the Czech Republic pulled out of the tournament due to a viral illness and was replaced by Australian Samantha Stosur.

With her round robin victory in the Red Group, Azarenka only needs to win one more match to secure the year- end top spot.

With their second wins of the Championships, Sharapova and Williams both guaranteed themselves spots in the semi-finals.

Belarusian Azarenka fought off two match points at 6-5 down in the second set in brilliant fashion, ripping an inside-out forehand and

backhand down the line winners.

She won the tiebreaker 7-2 with another forehand winner and managed to stop a Kerber charge in the third set. The hard hitting Azarenka failed to serve out the match at 5-3, but broke the German to win their encounter with a forehand down the line.

“It was definitely a great fight,” Azarenka said. “I’m more proud of the way I handled and stayed in that match.” Sharapova was a set and 2-4 down in the second before storming back to best the Pole, despite having her serve broken five times in the match.

“Today was an example of not playing my best tennis at all, fighting through it, hanging in there, and getting it done,” Sharapova said.

Li and Williams both struggled with their serve, and the American became so frustrated after double faulting twice in the fourth game of the first set that she smashed a racket and received a warning. “I guess I got angry and I wasn’t able to control myself,” she said. “But sometimes I play better after I get really angry.”

After winning the first set tiebreaker 7-2 on a forehand return of serve, Williams broke the former French Open champion to 3-1 in

ISTANBUL: Victoria Azarenka of Belarus returns a shot to Angelique Kerber of Germany during their tennis match on the second day of the WTA championship. — AP

the second set.

Li managed to fight off two match points to hold at 3-5, but Williams won the contest on her third match point when Li erred on a forehand.

“I think she has a good return, but I don’t know how she can return a ball that’s in the net or out,” said Williams, who was broke five times in the match.

“I think most of my serves were

either in the net or out. I lost serve today more than in all of Wimbledon.” Williams will meet Azarenka later on Thursday in a repeat of this year’s U.S. Open final, which Williams won. — Reuters

Wallabies to take on France, England, Italy and Wales

John Isner

Raonic, Isner crash out VALENCIA: Milos Raonic and John Isner were knocked out of the Valencia Open by lower-ranked opponents on Wednesday, denting their chances of clinching one of two remaining berths at next month’s World Tour finals in London.

Eighth-seeded Canadian Raonic lost his first-round match against Luxembourg’s Gilles Muller 7-5 7-6, while American Isner, the fifth seed, was beaten 7-6 4-6 6-4 in the second round by Belgian 21-year-old David Goffin, who reached his third Tour quarter-final of the season.

Seventh seed Marin Cilic of Croatia improved his chances of a spot in London when he cruised past unseeded Spaniard

Fernando Verdasco 6-1 6-4 in the second round. Cilic will play Ivan Dodig in the last eight after the Croatian qualifier beat former world number one Lleyton Hewitt of Australia, a wild card at the indoor hard court event, 6-1 3-6 6-2. Defending champion Marcel Granollers of Spain won his first round match against Czech qualifier Jan Hajek 7-5 6-4. Top seed David Ferrer plays his second-round match against unseeded Spanish compatriot Albert Ramos late yesterday.

Ferrer, the world number five, has already qualified for London along with Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic, Andy Murray, Rafa Nadal and Tomas Berdych. — Reuters

SYDNEY: Loose forward David Pocock will make a welcome return to the injury-depleted Wallabies ranks next month after being named in the squad for the four-test tour of Europe yesterday.

The openside flanker was one of a string of top Australia players absent for all or part of the southern hemisphere international season but returns to the 30-strong party for tests against France, England, Italy and Wales.

Pocock, who suffered a knee injury in August, captained Australia during their 3-0 sweep of Six Nations champions Wales in June but lock Nathan Sharpe, who agreed to postpone his retirement to go on the tour, will remain as skipper.

Coach Robbie Deans told reporters that Pocock, whose absence has been mitigated by a string of impressive performances from Michael Hooper, was unlikely to be fit to face France but should be available for the remaining three matches.

“Poey has done very well... he’s still got a bit to do in terms of being available to be selected but he’s clearly going to be available and hence he’s coming with us,” the New Zealander said.

Also returning from injury is experienced hooker Stephen Moore, who has been sidelined by a hamstring injury since the defeat to the All Blacks in Auckland in late August.

“As well as being proven test performers with valuable experience in the conditions that we will face on this tour, both also provide a significant

leadership element which will add to what is still a relatively young group,” Deans added.

Berrick Barnes, who has started at flyhalf in all five tests against Wales played over the last year, also returns to the squad after missing the win over Argentina and last weekend’s 18-18 draw with New Zealand with a lung problem.

Blindside flanker Scott Higginbotham has been left out of the squad after being banned for two of the tour matches for a headbutt on All Blacks captain Richie McCaw in Brisbane last Saturday. Higginbotham will be on standby in case of injuries.

“To have included Scott within the 30 would have created an additional challenge in terms of selection for the opening two matches, which would have compromised the group,” Deans said.

“Scott was aware once he was suspended that this was a possibility.” Deans is still without several regular first choice players including lock James Horwill, scrumhalf Will Genia, estranged flyhalf Quade Cooper as well as versatile back James O’Connor.

Australia will be keen to retain their second place in the world rankings on the tour to maintain the most favourable draw possible in the pool allocation for 2015 World Cup, which takes place in December.

The Wallabies play France in Paris on Nov. 10, England a week later at Twickenham, Italy in Florence on Nov. 24 before rounding out the tour against Wales in Cardiff on Dec. 1.— Reuters

Sports FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2012

Heat on Magath for Wolfsburg away day DORTMUND: The job of Felix Magath, coach of rock bottom VfL Wolfsburg, could be on the line when the 2009 Bundesliga champions travel to promoted Fortuna Duesseldorf tomorrow. The former Germany international’s 2011 return to the club he led to their only trophy two years earlier was expected to lead to more success but 18 months later another slip-up could prove costly for the strict disciplinarian.

Instead of silverware Magath’s expensively-assembled team are fighting for survival with just five points gained in eight games and only two goals scored against 15 conceded. Wolfsburg’s 2-0 home defeat by Freiburg last weekend unleashed a wave of discontent among their fans as they jeered and whistled the coach and the players. Defeat at in-form Fortuna tomorrow will certainly pile more pressure on Magath who has so far rejected any suggestions he may be on his way out.

“After such a performance (against Freiburg) we have to accept criticism,” he said. “We can fully understand the fans’ disappointment and it is right because no one can be satisfied with such performances. “The only thing that counts is the next game and the next points so we can get out from down where we are.”

Wolfsburg went on a spending spree in the close season but it has still to yield dividends and Magath has begun to introduce extra training sessions.

The coach even went to the extent of rationing the water intake of his players during training as a punishment. Magath still enjoys the backing of the board but a meeting set for later this week to analyse their disappointing start to the season could represent his last warning. Wolfsburg chairman Francisco Javier Garcia Sanz said earlier this week the coach was still very much at the heart of the squad.

“We will discuss all this with our coach. He is the one who is closest to the team,” said Sanz. Austria defender Emanuel Pogatetz believes the players are good enough to turn things around. “We deserved those whistles ... our pride has been dented,” said Pogatetz. “We have not bagged enough points and that creates insecurity but I have seen that the guys are eager. “We will now step on the gas and not feel any self pity.” In complete contrast to Magath and Wolfsburg, coach Jupp Heynckes has inspired leaders Bayern Munich to a record run of eight straight wins in a scintillating start to the season.

Bayern host Bayer Leverkusen on Sunday while champions Borussia Dortmund, 12 points off the top in fourth spot, travel to Freiburg tomorrow. Second-placed Eintracht Frankfurt, five points behind Bayern, visit VfB Stuttgart on Sunday and Schalke 04, in third spot, entertain lowly Nuremberg tomorrow. — Reuters

Ferguson aims to get the balance right at Chelsea LONDON: Manchester United head to Premier League leaders Chelsea on Sunday with Alex Ferguson admitting that not only is he worried about his porous defence but he now has a problem in attack - albeit a “good” one. United, who are second domestically, beat Braga 3-2 in the Champions League on Tuesday after trailing 2-0 inside the first 20 minutes to top Group H with maximum points from their three games.

Javier Hernandez, who has often been overlooked this season despite scoring three goals from four starts, netted twice to rescue the win and the Mexican has given manager Ferguson a selection dilemma for the clash at Stamford Bridge.

“The boy is improving all the time,” Ferguson told reporters.

“He is fantastic in training and he’s always practising. “His goal ratio for us is fantastic. For his second goal he bends around the back of the defender. It is a great ball in from Tom Cleverley but his movement is terrific. He’s given me a problem - but that’s a good thing.” With Robin van Persie, Wayne Rooney and Danny Welbeck also vying for spots upfront, United look spoilt for choice against a Chelsea side who have their own problems.

Among them is the continuing absence of skipper John Terry, serving the second of his four-match English ban for racially abusing Queens Park Rangers defender Anton Ferdinand last year.

They could also be without midfielder Frank Lampard, who was having a scan on the injured calf that caused him to limp out of Chelsea’s 2-1 Champions League defeat at Shakhtar Donetsk after only 18 minutes on Tuesday. The weekend’s other high profile match is fourth-placed Everton facing Liverpool in the first Merseyside derby of the season at Goodison Park on Sunday.

Champions and third-placed Manchester City are at home to Swansea City on Saturday and fifth-placed Tottenham Hotspur visit lowly Southampton on Sunday. Despite it still being relatively early in the campaign, Chelsea’s meeting with United could have a significant bearing on the outcome of this season’s title race. Chelsea’s superb 4-2 come-from-behind win at Spurs on Sunday was their seventh victory out of eight matches this term and they host United as one of the only two unbeaten sides in the league, with City being the others.—Reuters

Sir Alex Ferguson

Sami Khedira

Khedira injury leaves Real short of cover MADRID: The latest injury to Real Madrid’s German midfielder Sami Khedira comes at a tricky time for the La Liga champions with a potential banana skin awaiting at Real Mallorca on Sunday.

Khedira was forced off in the 20th minute of Wednesday’s 2-1 Champions League defeat at Borussia Dortmund when he aggravated a leg muscle problem and his replacement, Luka Modric, is not as accomplished in the central holding role alongside Xabi Alonso.

Another option for coach Jose Mourinho is Modric’s fellow new signing Michael Essien, but with Marcelo, Fabio Coentrao and Alvaro Arbeloa also sidelined, the former Chelsea midfielder has been filling in at left back.

Essien looked uncomfortable against pacy Dortmund pair Lukasz Piszczek and Marco Reus on Wednesday and goalkeeper Iker Casillas acknowledged the left side of defence was a problem.

“It’s true that they got a lot of joy down our left wing,” the Real and Spain captain told reporters. “You noticed it a lot in the game,” he added. “We are suffering a lot of injuries and Khedira’s is another setback.” Real have clawed their way up to fourth after a poor start to the defence of their title but remain eight points behind joint leaders Barcelona and Atletico Madrid and three behind third-placed Malaga. Barca play at Rayo Vallecano and Malaga are away to Espanyol on Saturday, while Atletico host Osasuna on Sunday.

Mallorca, coached by the wily and experienced Joaquin

Caparros, have made a solid start to their campaign and the Balearic islanders are eighth on 11 points.

New signing Giovanni Dos Santos made his debut against Sevilla on Monday and provided two goal assists as Mallorca fell 3-2 at the Sanchez Pizjuan despite twice taking the lead.

The 23-year-old Mexico forward, a graduate of the Barcelona youth academy, signed for Tottenham Hotspur in 2008 but failed to settle and had loan spells with Ipswich Town, Galatasaray and Racing Santander.

After helping Mexico win gold at the Olympic Games in London this summer, he sealed a move to Mallorca, where he hopes to find some of the consistency that has so far eluded him.

“It’s clear that I will get a lot better as long as I keep getting more time on the pitch, I know that,” Dos Santos said in an interview with As sports daily published on Thursday.

“I know that I still need to improve,” he added. Barca have their own selection headaches for the Rayo game, especially in defence with centre backs Carles Puyol and Gerard Pique and right back Daniel Alves all injured.

They will also almost certainly be without Javier Mascherano after he was sent off in Saturday’s 5-4 win at Deportivo Coruna.

Barca said on Wednesday they had lodged an appeal against the dismissal, although the soccer federation (RFEF) is unlikely to exonerate the Argentine, a converted midfielder who plays in central defence. — Reuters

Sports FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2012

South Africa faces Cape Verde in African Nations Cup opener DURBAN: Host South Africa will play debutant Cape Verde in the opening game of next year’s African Cup of Nations. Didier Drogba’s Ivory Coast will be tested by former champions Tunisia and Algeria in the group stage after a tough draw Wednesday for the title favorite.

“This is most certainly the group of death,” Ivory Coast coach Sabri Lamouchi said after his team was drawn alongside Togo and the strong North African pair for the tournament next January and February. Four-time winner Ghana was grouped with Congo, Mali and Niger. Defending champion Zambia will play against Ethiopia before matches with Nigeria and Burkina Faso. “I know all those teams are difficult to play,” Zambia coach and 2012 title-winning mentor Herve Renard said. “Now we have to do the same performance like in 2010 and 2012. We finished first in our group and we have to do the same again.” South Africa, Cape Verde, Morocco and Angola make up Group A. Bafana Bafana and Cape Verde will open the tournament at Johannesburg’s FNB Stadium - formerly Soccer City and the venue for the 2010 World Cup final - on Jan. 19.

Top-ranked African team Ivory Coast will play Emmanuel Adebayor’s Togo first in Group D on Jan. 22, then Tunisia and Algeria in a stern challenge for the Ivorians, who lost in the final last time.

“It is a very difficult group with opponents of the highest quality,” Lamouchi said. “It will be tough to beat each one. Ivory Coast will still be the favorites to come out of the group ... now we must try and pre-

Didier Drogba pare well on the field.”

The Ivorians are still searching for a first title in 20 years despite being Africa’s strongest team for most of the last decade. Ivory Coast

lost two of the last four African Cup finals, both on penalty shootouts.

South Africa meets Cape Verde and Morocco plays Angola in a double-header on the opening day of the championship at the 94,700-seat stadium in Soweto, which also will host the Feb. 10 final.

The remainder of the Group A games will be played at Moses Mabhida Stadium in the east coast city of Durban and Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium in Port Elizabeth. Ivory Coast will be based in the north west city of Rustenburg, Ghana will be in Port Elizabeth and Zambia in Nelspruit, in South Africa’s north east.

The South Africa-Cape Verde match was drawn by South Africa President Jacob Zuma at Wednesday night’s ceremony in Durban.

The host country, which won the title on home soil in 1996, also avoided highly rated Nigeria in a favorable draw for its hopes of a second Cup of Nations triumph. “For a second there I thought it could have been the group of death, so when they picked Angola there was a bit of relief,” South Africa coach Gordon Igesund said. “We won’t underestimate anyone. I think we can go all the way, but obviously we will need momentum and that first game against Cape Verde is hugely important to get the country behind us.”

Cape Verde faces its biggest moment in international football in that opening game after eliminating four-time continental champion Cameroon in a major shock in the qualifying competition.

Ghana’s biggest test will likely come against Mali, which beat the Ghanaians in the third-place match at the last tournament in Gabon and Equatorial Guinea. “Three west African countries in the group makes it difficult,” Ghana assistant coach Maxwell Konadu said. “We are neighbors and know each other very well, so the games will all be tight.”

Less than a year after its emotional triumph in Libreville, Zambia will start its defense on Jan. 21 against Ethiopia, which returns to the African Cup for the first time in 30 years. Zambia also must play a strong Nigeria team, which returns after missing this year’s tournament and which eliminated the Zambians in the quarterfinals two years ago. “It’s a big revenge match for us (against Nigeria),” Renard said. “We lost to them in 2010 on penalties. We also have Ethiopia, who we must show a lot of respect to.”

Nigeria coach Stephen Keshi said: “Every team that qualifies here is a good team. We have great respect for all the teams from Ethiopia to Zambia and also Burkina Faso. We have to take every one of the three seriously and come out and do the job.” The five stadiums hosting games are all former World Cup venues: FNB Stadium, Moses Mabhida, Nelson Mandela Bay, Royal Bafokeng Stadium in Rustenburg and Nelspruit’s Mbombela Stadium. The showpiece FNB will only host the opening game and the final, with the semifinals at Moses Mabhida and Mbombela. South Africa is hosting the 2013 tournament in place of Libya, which lost the event because of security concerns.

2013 African Cup of Nations draw: Group A: South Africa, Angola, Morocco, Cape Verde.

Group B: Ghana, Mali, Niger, Congo.

Group C: Zambia, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia.

Group D: Ivory Coast, Tunisia, Algeria, Togo. — AP

Emmanuel Adebayor

Chan opens at Skate Canada WINDSOR: Reigning world men’s figure skating champion Patrick Chan will open his season on home ice at Skate Canada, the second event on the ISU Grand Prix tour that begins today.

The 21-year-old from Toronto seeks a third consecutive Skate Canada crown after a campaign in which he also claimed the ISU Grand Prix Final, the Canadian national crown and the ISU Four Continents title.

Frenchman Florent Amodio, fifth at this year’s world championships in Nice France, and Kazak skater Denis Ten, who was seventh at the worlds, are among the top rivals Chan will face this weekend in a field that also includes Japan’s Takahito Mura and Nobunari Oda. Japan’s Akiko Suzuki, third at the worlds, is a favorite in the women’s event with compatriot Kanako Murakami, who was fifth in Nice, Russia’s Ksenia Makarova and Georgia’s Elene Gedevanishvili also in the title picture.

Canada’s reigning world ice dance champions and the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic gold medalists, Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, will also debut their new programs at Skate Canada, an event they won in 2007, 2009 and 2011.—AFP

Stars set to shine at Africa Nations Cup JOHANNESBURG: Veteran Ivory Coast striker and skipper Didier Drogba will be among the stars eager to shine at the 2013 Africa Cup of Nations in South Africa: DIDIER DROGBA (Ivory Coast) He has achieved so much in his career, but a Cup of Nations winners’ medal continues to elude the China-based striker. This could be the last chance for the veteran to get his hands on the trophy.

YAYA TOURE (Ivory Coast) The midfield workaholic is the right side of 30, but no less desperate than Drogba to translate the multi-year Ivorian dominance of the African rankings into a Cup of Nations triumph.

ASAMOAH GYAN (Ghana) Needs to banish the Bata blues as his failure to convert a penalty there in the 2012 semi-finals left

Zambia off the hook. The Dubai-based striker remains the Black Stars’ best bet for goals.

ITUMELENG KHUNE (South Africa) Has been in brilliant form lately, saving Bafana Bafana (The Boys) from heavy friendly defeats in Brazil and Poland. Fierce competition for the No 1 shirt has contributed to the improvement of the Kaizer Chiefs stopper.

CHRISTOPHER KATONGO (Zambia) The media-shy China-based striker is an inspirational captain and scorer of key goals, including the winner at home to Uganda in a qualifier that went to a penalty shootout.

MANUCHO (Angola) Signed by Manchester United after 2008 Africa Cup, the giant striker now plays in the Spanish La Liga and proved an inspirational captain when the chips were down in a qualifier with Zimbabwe,

scoring twice to turn the tie around.

SEYDOU KEITA (Mali) Yet another African playing in China. He moved there after several seasons of coming on as a second-half substitute for Barcelona. A classy midfielder who can penetrate the tightest defence with one touch.

VICTOR MOSES (Nigeria) The Chelsea midfielder is among the new faces in the Super Eagles line-up as coach Stephen Keshi tries to reclaim a Cup of Nations trophy last paraded through the streets of Lagos 18 years ago.

YOUSSEF MSAKNI (Tunisia) Tunisians have been raving about the Esperance midfielder for several years and the time has come for him to live up to the hype and show why he has been linked with several European clubs.

ISLAM SLIMANI (Algeria) A striker with local club CR Belouizdad, he burst on to the international scene this year, scoring three of the nine goals that eliminated Gambia and Libya en route to South Africa.

ABDELAZIZ BARRADA (Morocco) The offensive midfielder from La Liga outfit Getafe shone in the first CAF under-23 championship last December and scored vital opening goal for senior team as they played catch-up against Mozambique in a qualifier.

DIEUMERCI MBOKANI (Democratic Republic of Congp) Frenchman Claude le Roy ranks among the most successful European coaches to work in Africa and he raves about striker Mbokani from Belgian champions Anderlecht, who bagged three goals in qualifiers.—AFP

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2012

Khedira injury leaves Real short of cover Page 46

www.kuwaittimes.net

ISTANBUL: Maria Sharapova of Russia reacts during the tennis match against Agnieszka Radwanska of Poland on the second day of the WTA championship. — AP

Azarenka, Sharapova survive marathons

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