4th Jun 2012

CR IP TI ON BS SU

MONDAY, JUNE 4, 2012

‘Thunder’ will fall on Israel if it attacks: Khamenei

Djokovic, Federer escape French Open booby traps

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NO: 15469

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www.kuwaittimes.net

RAJAB 14, 1433 AH

Supplement Inside

MP Adasani files to grill social affairs minister MP Kandari calls for major Cabinet reshuffle

Max 42º Min 32º High Tide 10:33 Low Tide 04:19 & 17:46

By B Izzak

Sandstorm stops Kuwait oil exports KUWAIT: Bad weather has disrupted oil exports from Iraq’s southern offshore terminal and forced Kuwait to halt all of its oil exports, a shipping source and government official said yesterday.

Kuwait’s oil exports have been completely halted due to a severe sandstorm, a spokesman for staterun Kuwait National Petroleum Co (KNPC) said. The state produced around 2.77 million barrels per day (bpd) in May, slightly up from 2.75 million bpd in April, according to a recent Reuters survey. Kuwait has three refineries -Shuaiba, Mina Abdullah and Mina Al-Ahmadi - with a total refining capacity of around 930,000 bpd.

Oil exports from Iraq’s southern Basra terminals dropped to 1.65 million barrels per day (bpd) yesterday due to dust storms and high winds, the shipping source said. Iraq had been pumping around 2.25 million barrels per day (bpd) from all its outlets in the Gulf on Saturday, including about 600,000 barrels per day from a new single-point mooring offshore export terminal, the shipper said.

“Dusty weather and high winds halted loading operations at the floating terminal and stopped ships berthing at Basra ports,” the shipper said, asking that his name not be used because he was not authorised to speak to the media. — Reuters

KUWAIT: An ice cream vendor plies the streets during a heavy sandstorm yesterday. — Photo by Yasser Al-Zayyat

KUWAIT: Newly-elected opposition MP Riyad AlAdasani yesterday filed a request to grill Minister of Social Affairs and Labour Ahmad Al-Rujaib over allegations of financial and administrative irregularities, corruption and mismanagement. The grilling is the second against Rujaib, a former interior ministry undersecretary who was appointed as minister in February, after opposition MP Saifi Al-Saifi filed to grill Rujaib last week.

Opposition Islamist MP Mohammad Al-Kandari meanwhile called for a major Cabinet reshuffle with the aim to include at least six ministers in the 16-member Cabinet from the opposition majority bloc in a bid to end the political impasse in the country. And several opposition MPs warned Prime Minister HH Sheikh Jaber Al-Mubarak Al-Sabah against rejecting two laws passed by the National Riyad Al-Adasani Assembly last month in which all Cabinet ministers voted for the laws.

MP Obaid Al-Wasmi said if the Cabinet rejects the two laws - one stipulating the death penalty for insulting God and the Prophet (PBUH) and the second calling to set up a new technology university - he will file to grill the prime minister. Under Kuwaiti law, the government has the right to reject laws passed by the Continued on Page 13

153 feared dead in Lagos plane crash

DAMASCUS: Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad delivers a speech at the parliament yesterday. — AP

Assad likens bloody crackdown to surgery Houla killings ‘monstrous’ BEIRUT: Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad defended his government’s crackdown on opponents yesterday, saying a doctor performing messy emergency surgery does not have blood on his hands if he is trying to save a patient. In his first speech since January, Assad appeared unmoved by scathing international criticism of his ferocious response to the 15-month-old revolt against his rule, which has killed up to 13,000 people, according to activist groups. He also denied responsibility for last week’s Houla massacre of more than 100 people, saying not even “monsters”

would carry out such an ugly crime.

He said terrorists have pushed his country into war. “When a surgeon in an operating room ... cuts and cleans and amputates, and the wound bleeds, do we say to him your hands are stained with blood?” Assad said in a televised speech to parliament. “Or do we thank him for saving the patient?” Assad insisted the revolt was the work of foreignbacked extremists - not reformers seeking change. Although the country has faced widespread international Continued on Page 13

Zawahiri recalls Laden generosity DUBAI: Osama bin Laden led a frugal life, spending all his personal wealth on attacks against the West and serving his guests good food, Al-Qaeda leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri said in a video posted online yesterday. In the half-hour tape titled “Days with the imam, Par t Two” a bespectacled Zawahiri, who took up the reins of AlQaeda after bin Laden’s killing just over a year ago, fondly recalled his predecessor’s meagre comforts. “When you entered his house you would be sur-

prised. It was a very simple house, with some wooden beds and plastic coverings and ver y little furniture,” said Zawahiri, wearing a white turban and speak ing conversationally. “If the Sheik h invited us to his house, he would give us what he had in the way of bread, vegetables, rice - whatever was available he would give us.”

Bin Laden was killed in Pakistan last May in a night-time raid by US special forces, ending a 10-year manhunt that Continued on Page 13

LAGOS: At least 153 people are feared dead after their plane plunged into a residential area in Nigeria’s economic capital Lagos yesterday, officials and residents said. Thick smoke rose from the area near the Lagos airport and flames could be seen coming from the building. Residents said the plane had been coming in low, making a loud noise, when it slammed into the residential area.

Some residents said it appeared that the plane nose-dived into the neighbourhood. Wreckage including a detached wing could be seen in the neighbourhood as the inferno burned. The cause of the crash was not immediately clear.

Hundreds of residents swarmed the area to see what had happened. “It was a Dana (airline) flight out of (the capital) Abuja to Lagos with about 153 people on board,” Nigeria’s head of civil aviation Harold Demuren told AFP. Asked if anyone likely

survived the crash he said, “I don’t believe there are any survivors.”

Lagos State police spokesman Joseph Jaiyeoba told AFP the plane went down in the Iju neighbourhood on the mainland of the city where the bulk of the city’s population lives.

“It was flying low with a lot of noise for about five minutes before it crashed into the residential area,” one resident said. “It then burst into flames.” Another resident, Tunji Dawodu, said “I was just coming out of church around 3:30 pm when I heard a loud noise.” “I thought it was an explosion,” he said. “Then there was a huge flame from the building where the plane has crashed into.” A spokesman for Nigerian airline Dana confirmed one of its planes was involved in the crash but could not immediately provide further details. “I can confirm that one of our planes crashed LAGOS: Residents of Iju district gather at the site where a Dana airtoday on the outskirts of Lagos,” Continued on Page13 craft crashed into a two-storey building yesterday. — AFP

Queen sails in 1,000-boat flotilla LONDON: Queen Elizabeth II sailed yesterday on a royal barge at the centre of a spectacular 1,000-boat river pageant on the Thames, the set-piece of celebrations to mark her diamond jubilee. The queen travelled down the river on the red-and-gold Spirit of Chartwell with hundreds of kayaks, steamers and tugs in front and behind the ceremonial barge. The banks of the Thames were thronged with hundreds of thousands of spectators waving Union Jack flags.

Heavy rain which had fallen in the morning cleared for the start of the pageant before returning later, though it had no effect on the enthusiasm of the cheering crowds.

Street parties were held around the country to mark the 60th year of the queen’s reign, with some moving the festivities inside when the weather changed.

While it was raining in Britain, sandstorms in Kuwait also failed to dampen the spirits of Britons residing here, who celebrated with parties and get-togethers. British schools in the state have also planned a series of events to mark the occasion.

Earlier, the heir to the throne Prince Charles and his wife Camilla dropped in on

one street party in Piccadilly in central London and sat at a table draped in a Union Jack, chatting with residents. The biggest event on the Thames for 350 years started with the ringing of eight Jubilee bells on a

barge at 1340 GMT, and was due to end in the early evening when the last boats complete the 11-km journey. The queen, dressed in a white hat and a silver and white coat and Continued on Page 13

LONDON: Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II (center left) stands amid members of the royal family (left to right) Prince Charles, Prince Philip, Camilla, Catherine, Prince William and Prince Harry on the royal barge ‘Spirit of Chartwell’ during the Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant on the River Thames yesterday. — AFP (See Page 40)

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MONDAY, JUNE 4, 2012

LOCAL

Govt’s plan to reduce expat population raises questions Crackdowns against illegal residents

By Ben Garcia KUWAIT: Muhammad, a Palestinian highly-skilled worker, was born and raised in Kuwait and will definitely be affected if the proposal to limit expatriate populations in Kuwait is enforced. The government is studying a series of measures to reduce the size of the expatriate community in Kuwait to 45% of the total population.

Muhammad was born in Kuwait in 1985 to Palestinian parents, who had fled their war-torn country. His parents arrived in Kuwait in the early 80s and worked hard to create a stable life for their family.

Muhammad completed his education up to high-school level in Kuwait before pursuing higher education in Jordan. After obtaining a degree in Communication and English Literature, he came back to Kuwait to stay with his parents and work.

Given the possibility of Kuwait’s regulations for expats changing, Muhammad fears that he will be driven out of Kuwait. According recent reports, the policy requires the introduction of maximum periods of time that expatriate labor forces are allowed to stay in the country. The period of time varies based on their qualifications: a maximum of six years residency for marginal labor forces, a maximum of eight years residency for unmarried medium-skilled labor forces, the maximum of a 10 year residency for married medium-skilled labor forces and a maximum of 12 years

residency for highly-skilled labor forces. Open residency visas will only be given to those with a rare expertise.

“The main goal of setting these averages is to prevent cases of long settlement, after which an expatriate can call for the right to citizenship as per the United States agreements that Kuwait signed,” revealed the reports. Moreover, the proposal calls for measures to “clean the country” from marginal labor forces through measures including security campaigns to arrest residents living in violation. “I think the proposal is unfair,” said a 27-year old Palestinian expat, who has spent most of his life in Kuwait. “You are denying me of my full rights as human to exist in this world. You are not giving me a chance. I think it’s against international laws. You are not offering a solution, you are ignoring the rights of others to coexist,” he added.

The proposal, which is being prepared by the Ministry of Interior in coordination with the cabinet, further calls for the establishment of a quota system to, “...maintain balance between the numbers of different expatriate communities and between the size of the Kuwaiti community.” The proposal outlines steps for a governmental plan designed to restore the demographic balance in Kuwait through a set of regulations to be passed by the cabinet.

If passed, John, a Filipino mechanic who has been in Kuwait since 1988, will also suffer. He came

to Kuwait via his sponsor, a Saudi citizen. After serving his employer for two years, he was transferred to a Kuwaiti employer. Since then, he has been working with him a mechanic. He supported and raised his family and, even though his children are adults, he wanted to stay in Kuwait to help support his grand-children, who are now enrolled in school and need his help. John is now 58 years old. “I would love to stay in Kuwait. I love this country very much, even though we are experiencing some bad treatment. But I’m used to the weather here, I’m accustomed to the attitude of the people here, and even the traffic. I’m used to the arrogance from some, but I still want to live here and even die and be buried here,” he said. “I hope they’ll consider our love for the country. I didn’t flee during the war, I stayed here and I know how the people of Kuwait suffered during that time. I was just one of many witnesses to the atrocities made by Saddam Hussein.”

Others have a different opinion regarding the government’s plan.

According to a Jordanian expat who lived most of his life in Kuwait, the plan will not prosper now but, if it does, he wouldn’t mind following the regulations. “It’s their country and if the system is implemented we cannot say no. What they’ve done is for the sake of their country and their people. It is according to their economic needs. The fact is that many Kuwaitis are now graduating from colleges and universities

and they need jobs; we cannot tell them to accommodate us while their people are having trouble finding work while we earn money; it’s not right.”

An Indian expat said that the proposal is very unrealistic, suggesting that Kuwait would only be ready for such a change if it eradicated the ‘wasta’ (connections) system, “ Wasta can do anything.

However, I believe that they must have a very good explanation for the proposal. Maybe they are going to implement exemptions. Maybe they are ready to implement taxation. We don’t know yet if the proposal is the most viable way to reduce the number of expats.”

The proposal also addresses the process of recruiting marginal labor forces and suggests means to limit it, for example by limiting the issuance of commercial visas to business owners, capital owners, labor forces with high pay and labor forces with high academic qualifications. The recommendations also include a ban against the transfer of any kind of entrance visas into a work permit. It also suggests the formation of a committee to examine a worker’s skills before approving their work permit. The Ministry of Interior, the proponent of the law, could not be reached for comment as of press time.

However, the Ministry of Interior has been carrying out extensive crackdowns against illegal residents, in which they reportedly apprehended nearly three thousand violators over the week.

KUWAIT: Firefighters are seen tackling a blaze engulfing a car which was involved in an accident on the Fifth Ring Road near the Farwaniya Bridge Saturday night. No injuries were reported in the incident. — Photos by Fouad Al-Shaikh

Expats in Kheitan lament power cuts KUWAIT: Expat workers residing in Kheitan on block 6, street number 36, are struggling with continuous power cuts. The cuts exceed 12 hours per day during summer month and, as of yet, officials have failed to pay any attention or care to the problem.

Expats suffering with the power cuts have been forced to leave their apartments and sleep in the street or on rooftops. They said that their suffering is indescribable, and appealed to officials to put an end to the problem. A victim of the cuts, Mohammad Tawfiq, said that when the electricity is cut

their home becomes hellish. He added, “My roommates and I are using candles to do most of our work, but the heat forces us outside.” Tawfiq appealed to officials to intervene quickly to solve the problem by cutting the power permanently or strengthening the current. He added that after 12 hours at work, it is unbearable to arrive home and face such high temperatures. The heat, he added, made it difficult to eat and complete even the simplest of tasks.

Another resident, Mizher Hussein, said that the cuts can last the whole night long.

“ When we call the elec tricity emergenc y department, nobody answers, and if they do, we get ignored as if we were not human.” He added. Because of the low rent in the area, he cannot afford to move.

“When we call the electricity emergency department, and they realize that we are in K h e i t a n , t h e y i gn o re u s,” s a i d M u s t a f a Hashim. He expressed hope that officials would play a positive role in disconnecting the power from the violating buildings in order to reduce the pressure and avoid power cuts.

News

in brief Traffic at Kuwait ports paralyzed by dust storm

KUWAIT: Operations were still on hold for the second day in a row at Kuwait’s two major seaports, Shuwaikh and Shuaiba, following extremely dusty weather conditions, revealed a port official yesterday.

Suliman Al-Yahya, head of marine operations at Shuwaikh port, said that wind speeds exceeded 60 kilometers per hour, while horizontal sight dipped below 300m, leaving port authorities with no choice but to halt all operations at the facilities.

Operations were halted for a second day running as the extreme dust storm across the country raged on. Five incoming vessels were on hold along with another outgoing vessel that was instructed not to move until weather conditions improved.

For his part, acting marine operations chief at Shuaiba port, Tawfiq Shehab, reiterated Al-Yahya ‘s statement regarding the situation. Five vessels await departure at the port while nine other arrivals are on standby.

Unpaid phone bills lead to disconnection in June KUWAIT: Ministry of Communication called on its subscribers to pay their dues for the telephone service to avoid programmed disconnection this month.

Director of Public Relations at the Ministry, Ahmad Ramadan, told the press yesterday that the ministry will send an initial warning notification on June 10 as a reminder to pay the bills, and a second notice on June 18.

The ministry, however, will start disconnecting unpaid phone lines on June 24, after the second message is sent out. Home phone lines exceeding KD 50 in overdue bills and commercial lines topping KD 100 will be automatically listed for disruption.

The programmed disconnection will include phone lines that were pre-agreed to be paid according to an installment plan but the payment was delayed. It will also include annual fees of six months and more for home and business lines for nonKuwaitis and business lines for Kuwaitis.

An early payment will guarantee continuation of phone services, Ramadan advised. He further added that the ministry provides an online payment option through its website or through the official “e-gate” website. Subscribers can also call (123) for any inquires. — KUNA

Call to take precautions against skin diseases KUWAIT: Dermatologist Dr Mohammad Al-Otaibi has advised residents of Kuwait to take precautions against skin diseases and complications that result from excessive exposure to sunlight during summer.

Summer is a season for various skin diseases, as a result of high temperature, climatic changes, dust and humidity, said Dr Al-Otaibi, a dermatologist and skin pathologist at As’ad Al-Hamad Dermatology Center said..

Some of the commonly known and recorded diseases during the hot season are light allergy, sunburns, particularly among beach goers, infection of body folds, fungal infection, and other complications caused by swimming in pools, such as jellyfish.

Direct exposure to the sun light between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. may cause light allergy, skin swelling and may activate various skin diseases such as the red wolf as well as allergies caused by perfumes, said Dr. Al-Otaibi added.

Ultraviolet (UV) radiation interacts with chemical substances and materials, such as cologne, perfumes, soap

and some detergents used for cleaning clothes, and this interaction may cause skin inflammations and problems.

Protection creams should be applied to the skin half an hour before going out and should be used every two hours during the hot weather.

Dr Al-Otaibi advised wearing cotton clothes and abstention from using per fumed soap. He also brought attention of parents to the fact that the ultraviolet rays penetrate water level and is effective 60 cm in depth, thus children immersed in water are also exposed to dangers of sun burning. He also recommended that women abstain from using cosmetics on uncovered parts of their body.

Parents must not yield to children’s desire to spend long hours at the beach, for extensive exposure to the sun and heat may damage skin cells and lead to serious complications and illnesses, such as skin cancer.

Summer has already set in Kuwait, with the temperature reaching above 40 degrees at mid-days. —KUNA

Former official utilizes social media to reclaim senior post KUWAIT: Authorities are reportedly in advanced investigations that could soon lead them to reveal details of a network that spreads falsified information through social media “in order to create sectarian, religious and tribal tensions”, in addition to damaging the reputation of “prominent figures in the state including HH the Amir”.

These statements were made by senior security officials quoted by Al-Rai in a front page story yesterday. The official mentioned organized work of a group led by “a former senior security official”.

“The group spreads false information on Twitter, Facebook, blogs and other social networks that give a negative image regarding the situation in Kuwait”, said one of the sources who were granted anonymity to speak about the subject.

In addition to that, the sources explained that these operations “aim to give decision makers in Kuwait a false impression that the majority of young citizens are frustrated by the ongoing situation in the political scene and oppose the ruling system”. “The group wants to deliver a fake message that the case of frustration could erupt into public disorder”, a source added.

Regarding the motives behind these efforts, the sources indicated that its leader wanted to “pave the way” for him to be returned to his old post “by giving the impression that he is the only per-

son capable of maintaining order once chaos erupts”. The sources also mentioned former “political, economic and sports figures” who are close to the group’s leader and could benefit from his efforts by regaining their posts.

A current lawmaker “who co-owns business projects with the group’s leader” is reportedly active in promoting the senior security official during meetings with HH the Amir “by repeatedly mentioning his capability to handle oppositionist youth groups”, the sources further indicate.

Meanwhile, the report also mentions four expatriate members of the network who according to the sources have “suddenly left Kuwait after feeling that they could be put under mentoring”. The four suspects are reportedly close to the prime suspect “given their experience in broadcasting news online, as well as in monitoring due to previous experience they have in using spying devices”. The sources also point out that the group members used “multiple accounts with face names to spread false news around the day”, and communicated with each other “using SIM cards from Egypt, the United Kingdom and China”.

The reports conclude by indicating that a file containing all information and details about the case is expected soon to be filed to senior state officials after the end of investigations “in the very near future”. — Al-Rai

MONDAY, JUNE 4, 2012

LOCAL

MPs vow retaliation if cabinet rejects laws ‘Dealing with two cabinets’ KUWAIT: The Cabinet will lose any remaining support it has from the parliament’s majority should it reject a draft law to establish the Jaber University for Technology, and another draft law to enforce death penalty against offenders of the Prophet Mohammad (BPUH), and that based on MPs’ reactions to the government’s speculated plans. “Rejection of the laws would mean that we are dealing with two cabinets”, said MP Jamaan AlHarbash on Saturday, referring to the fact that the Cabinet votes in approval of both regulations when they were passed by the government. Meanwhile, MP Abdurrahman Al-Anjari urged the education minister Nayef Al-Hajraf and the justice minister Jamal Al-Shehab to “defend their positions [when they voted in favor of the drafts laws respectively] or resign”.

In the meantime, MP Dr Obaid AlWasmi announced plans to file a grilling motion against Prime Minister HH Sheikh Jaber Al-Mubarak Al-Sabah as soon as the cabinet makes a decision to reject the draft laws “which would be considered

belittling the public’s will”.

On the other hand, MP Saleh Ashour reiterated the fact that HH the Amir has a constitutional right to reject regulations passed by the parliament, urging lawmakers to handle a potential rejection of the aforementioned draft laws “through constitutional procedures”.

The Cabinet repor tedly feels that establishing a new university using faculties of the Public Authority for Applied Education and Training wouldn’t help reduce Kuwait University’s overcapacity problem. Meanwhile, the government believes that enforcing capital punishment for offenders of religious figures must go in line with opinions of all Madhaheb (Muslim schools of law) instead of being based on only one school’s opinion.

In the meantime, MP Dr Hamad AlMuttar supported the Cabinet’s unannounced plans to go ahead with building the North Zoor power plant project, calling in a statement Saturday to learn from the experience of the canceled K-Dow

project. “We’ve already suffered enough as a result of the parliament’s veto on state projects”, Al-Muttar said, referring to pressures after which the cabinet canceled a contrac t between the state owned Petrochemical I ndustries Company and Dow Chemical, followed by a lawsuit in which the International Court ordered Kuwait to pay a $2.16 billion compensation.

The Popular Ac tion Bloc, led by Parliament Speaker Ahmad Al-Saadoun, argue that the government failed to follow a law that regulates establishing shareholding companies to build mega projects, during the tendering process for the Zoor project’s company. The Ministry of Electricity and Water says that the power plant is essential for their plans to meet expected demand and prevent projected shortage in supply by 2014.

In other news, MP Faisal Al-Mislem argued that a recent State Audit Bureau that found no evidence of foul play in the multimillion transfers case “does not prove [former Prime Minister] HH Sheikh

Nasser Al-Mohammad’s innocence”, indicating that the report mentions “obstacles faced during investigations especially when it comes to the fact that the majority of suspected transfers were carried out without printed documents”.

Al-Mislem leads a parliamentary committee probing the case in which the former premier is accused of transferring millions of public funds to private accounts overseas. The SAB’s repor t referred to the parliament last week confirms that “mismanagements” occurred in the suspected transfers, but couldn’t confirm that thefts were involved.

Meanwhile, Al-Qabas reported yesterday that the Ministry of Commerce and Industry failed to provide answers to a parliamentary committee probing the multimillion-dinar deposits case, and that “due to lack of full data such as full names and civil ID number of lawmakers, ministers and their relatives whose accounts and properties are required”, according to sources with knowledge of the issue. — Al-Qabas & Al-Rai

New speed cameras confuse drivers

By Nawara Fattahova KUWAIT: The drivers of Kuwait have definitely noticed the new speed cameras that have been installed either in front of, or behind, the existing, older cameras.

Many are now confused by the addition and are unsure of their real function and if they are operating yet.

The General Director of the Public Relations and Moral Awareness Department, and the Acting Director of the Security Information Department at the M inistr y of I nterior, Col Adel AlHashash told the Kuwait Times yesterday that he was unable to provide further

KUWAIT: Egyptian nationals residing in Kuwait participate in their country’s presidential elections yesterday. The voting process will continue for one full week. The two candidates are Dr. Mohammad Mursi, chairman of Freedom and Justice Party and Genl Ahmad Shafeeq, the last Prime Minister under former president Hosni Mubarak. — Photos by Fouad Al-Shaikh

Labor transactions online soon KUWAIT: Citizens and residents in Kuwait could soon finalize transactions ranging from work permits, and residency renewal, to driver’s licenses and car registrations, online according to new plans mentioned by security sources quoted by a local daily yesterday.

Speaking to Al-Rai on the condition of anonymity, the sources indicate that the Interior Ministry plans to update its electronic archive as a process to precede the step of allowing services to be provided online. “The project allows users to carry out transactions such as issuing visitor’s visas as well as work permits and domestic

worker’s visas, in addition to issuing driver’s licenses and renew car registrations without having to report to relevant department to provide documents”, one source said, explaining that all necessary documents would already be saved in the ministry’s archive.

The sources also confirmed that the new project allows expatriates to renew residencies and issue visitor’s visas to relatives, as well as renew driver’s licenses online.

“The ministry already purchased necessary hardware and software for the project”, one source added without providing a specific timeline for the project’s launch.

Man in custody for smuggling attempt

By Hanan Al-Saadoun

before they could save him.

KUWAIT: Kuwait International Airport custom inspectors recently arrested an Egyptian arriving on a visit visa with the possession of 300 narcotic pills he had hidden in a secret place in his luggage. The suspect admitted to bringing the pills to one of his compatriots.

A 37 year old porter broke his right foot when he slipped and fell in the Friday market, said security sources noting that the man was taken to Al-Sabah hospital for treatment.

Hawalli murder A citizen in his thirties was found stabbed to death near his vehicle in Hawalli, said security sources. Case papers indicate that the murderer was later on arrested at his house in Sabah Al-Salem area. The killer told the police that along with other friends, he and the deceased were drinking and smoking hashish in a Nugra apartment when they quarreled and he stabbed him several times. He added that the deceased decided bandaging his wounds himself but he bled to death

Accident

Car accident A 31 year old Indian sustained various bruises when his car collided into another along the Gulf road, said security sources.

Jordanian injured A 25 year old Jordanian sustained a head injury in a fight with others in Farwaniya and he was rushed to Farwaniya hospital for treatment.

Woman killed A 35 year old Asian woman was instantly killed when she was run over by a speeding vehicle along King Fahad highway.

information regarding the speed cameras.

He added that the Ministry of Interior is set to launch an awareness and information campaign very soon on the issue.

In the meantime, there has been considerable speculation regarding whether or not the cameras are already functioning.

Last year, when the first of such speed cameras was installed on the First Ring Road, rumors spread regarding how the use of a pair of cameras func tioned together. As awareness spreads of the new cameras, many are taking note of their location in order to avoid being fined.

News

in brief

Al-Obaidi targets ‘medical mistakes’ KUWAIT: Minister of Health, Dr Ali Al-Obaidi said that the implementation of the recommendations of His Highness The Amir, Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad, is a top priority in order to improve the level of health services and regain the trust of the people in Kuwait’s healthcare. In addition to improving the health system in Kuwait, he noted that instructions were given to start construction for the new Jahra Hospital, which has a 1000 bed capacity. He emphasized that the government has pumped KD 60 million into the maintenance of hospital wards. He noted that the relationship between the public and private sectors is comprehensive, adding that private sector representatives would be called on to consult the council and take into account their opinions. He further explained that the problem of medical mistakes being made varies from one doctors to another. He further added that a plan was being prepared to avoid future medical mistakes and that it would be presented to the relevant councils upon completion.

Dow investigation committee KUWAIT: The Council of Ministers continued to form an investigation committee in the Dow compensation verdict, which was passed against Kuwait in favor of Dow Chemical American Company, in their weekly meeting. Sources revealed that a report prepared by the petrochemical company stated that the procedures taken by the organization were sound and legal. Sources further warned that non-payment would give the American company the right to claim Kuwaiti assets outside of the country. The sources added that the council will discuss a memorandum prepared by the Minister of Housing, Shuaib AlMuwaizri, to discount housing loans by 50% to reduce the day-to- day pressures of living costs for citizens. The Cabinet shall also discuss a memorandum from Minister of Education, Dr Nayef Al-Hajraf, to increase the budget for scholarships abroad as well as a memorandum from MEW Minister, AbdulAziz AlIbrahim about the formalities for the Al-Zur electrical power station project.

MONDAY, JUNE 4, 2012

LOCAL

kuwait digest

in my view

International paralysis

The inflation problem

By Abdelaziz Al-Uwaisheg

By Waleed Al-Rujaib

O

n Friday, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva discussed the massacre in the Syrian village of Houla, which resulted in the killings of 108 people, including 49 children and 34 women. At the conclusion of its session, it adopted a near unanimous resolution, with only three votes against it (Russia, China, and Cuba) and two abstentions, condemning in the strongest terms the Syrian government. It deplored the “outrageous killings” in Houla and the continued failure of the Syrian authorities to protect civilians.

The Council called on the UN International Commission of Inquiry on Syria to conduct a “transparent, independent and prompt investigation into violations of international law with a view to hold to account those responsible for widespread, systematic and gross human rights violations, including violations that may amount to crimes against humanity.”

In addition, the Council asked the Commission of Inquiry to identify those responsible for the atrocities and to submit a report on the results of its investigation at its next session, which will be held from June 18 to July 6, 2012.

The Friday meeting was the Council’s fourth special session on Syria since the crisis began 15 months ago. The UN estimates that over 9,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in Syria and tens of thousands displaced since the uprising began.

Unfortunately, the results of those sessions and inquiries have been dismal, as the killing has continued in Syria, with no signs of letting up.

I have written previously in Arab News on the UNHRC efforts and on this Commission of Inquiry, which was established at the UNHRC’s second Special Session on Syria. It presented its first report in November 2011 and concluded then that gross violations of human rights had been committed by Syrian military and security forces since the beginning of the protests in March 2011. It later implicated senior officials in those gross abuses, including crimes against humanity.

In March 2012, based on a report by the Commission of Inquiry, the UNHRC condemned Syria for its widespread and systematic violations against civilians. As testimony to international consensus then, as now, only China, Cuba and Russia voted against it. The resolution also urged the Syrian government to immediately stop all attacks on civilians and grant unhindered access to aid groups.

But the Commission of Inquiry reported to the Council in May that gross human rights violations had continued unabated despite Kofi Anan’s efforts.

Needless to say, the Syrian government has not allowed this Commission into the country, just as it has prohibited other international organizations from operating in Syria, and refused to permit foreign media from entering the country. The reason is simple: it does not want any independent investigation of its continuing crimes against the Syrian people.

Meanwhile, the UN Security Council has been paralyzed from action by Russia’s veto, thus allowing the Syrian regime to continue its gross human rights abuses.

Thus despite the fact that UN fact-finding system has made it clear that crimes against humanity and other grave breaches of international law are being committed in Syria, and despite the international consensus on the nature and extent of those crimes, the international community has sat idly by while the Syrian government is shielded from censure by its Russian allies.

Is it really true that there is nothing else that can be done? Are we really that paralyzed?

Could the international community act, legally, to protect those civilians in Syria in the face of the inability or unwillingness of the Syrian government to provide such protection? What can be done, legally, in the face of the government’s responsibility for those crimes and the failure of the UN system to provide quick and effective remedies?

We have faced a similar situation in Kosovo in 1998-1999. Then, as now, Russia shielded its Serbian allies and adamantly refused to allow the UN Security Council to act to protect Kosovo civilians from annihilation by Serbia’s killing machine.

Then, as now, there was a gross mismatch between the Serbian powerful army and the feeble Kosovo resistance. However, a group of countries went outside the UN Security Council and were able to stop the massacres.

Could the Kosovo example be repeated? The principle of “Responsibility to Protect” could help crystallize international action. This concept evolved over the past several years and has been invoked in many conflicts, to very good results.

This principle of “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) was given international stamp of approval in 2005, when the United Nations resolved that all countries have a shared responsibility to prevent and halt genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Between 2005 and 2010 R2P was invoked in only in three important UN resolutions or statements. However, in 2011, it appeared in at least six resolutions, including four Security Council resolutions on Libya, South Sudan and Yemen. R2P was also invoked in action to protect civilians in the Ivory Coast.

The principle is based on the idea that state sovereignty is not absolute, but conditioned by other norms and principles. There is no question that international law holds certain crimes to be an affront to the international legal and moral systems.

They are called “Mass Atrocity Crimes” and include genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing. There is a shared international responsibility to protect civilian populations against those crimes.

The Houla massacre fits perfectly the definition of a “Mass Atrocity Crime.” As such, it should trigger international action to stop such crimes from recurring. UN Security Council consent is useful, but is not necessary in such cases.

R

kuwait digest

Egypt’s nightlife and our MPs

By Ahmed Al-Fahad

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n individual’s vision of scenes, events and people surrounding is certainly defined by what is going on in his mind at that particular point of time. For example, if we happen to send three people to Egypt, and on their return, ask each to describe in detail all that they saw there; we will certainly realize that all of them will surely describe what they had been intending to look for in Egypt.

For example, those that are religiously inclined would surely speak about the Azhar and the famous mosques, such as Mostafa Mahmoud, Omar Mak ram and Al-Badawi mosques.

Shopaholics and sightseers would cer tainly describe the glitzy avenues, shopping malls and traditional marketplaces like Al-Hussein, Khan AlKhalili, and Zanqat Al-Settat. Compulsive gamblers and avid party goers, on the other hand, will surely talk about how they lost or won while gambling in casinos or dancing the night away in nightclubs or even spending the night in the company of belly dancers. This is the general scenario in a country like Egypt.

Now if we choose to apply the same theory on some Kuwaiti MPs who are only concerned about accusing some ministers and officials of being thieves and liars simply because one thief or liar recognizes another thief and liar; as the centuriesold saying suggests.

The one and only thing that is permanently embedded in their minds is how to go about violating the law and the Constitution. It is this probability that makes them the very first suspects in the embezzlement of public funds. These are also those very MPs who constantly lie to the people to further their own interests. They always pretend

to protect the law although in reality; they are among the first to break those laws in broad daylight.

MP Abdulrahman Al-Anjeri explained during one of the interpellation motions that the commission in one of the deals clinched by the Social Insurance Authority was $800 million. Now just imagine if that commission was in Kuwaiti dinars and if this is the net value of the commission paid, one can just imagine the total value of the deal itself? I am sure that such commissions are either paid for contracts signed to buy weapons of mass destruction, or to construct space shuttles. This kind of commission is definitely not paid to acquire shares or to sell portfolios.

The leader of the Hezbollah Hassan Nasarallah has, for reasons that I just can’t comprehend, rejected all acts of violence erupting in Lebanon, such as barricading roads and burning tires. And although I cannot deny the fact that his statements are indeed exemplary, I certainly hope that he sends a similar message to the people in Bahrain and educate those rioters that what they are doing is a crime against their country and against humanity as well.

Closer to home, our very own MP Obaid AlWasmi, after withdrawing the interpellation motion that he was planning to submit against Minister of Finance Mustafa Al-Shamali, said that the main reason for withdrawing the interpellation motion was prompted by his love and respect for the Kuwaiti citizens and the Constitution.

Is Al-Wasmi, the constitutional expert, trying to imply that all those who chose not to withdraw their interpellation motions, do not respect the Kuwaiti citizens and the Constitution? — Al-Watan

kuwait digest

The extinct countries

By Jaafar Rajab

J

ust like dinosaurs whose relatively large size and slow mobility contributed to their inability to adapt to natural changes, the human history has many stories of kingdoms that went extinct due to similar inability to adapt with change.

Prussia was a large kingdom located north of Europe with rich history and long list of rulers. It disappeared however following World War I and World War II, and replaced by independent states in northern Europe.

The Soviet Union, a product of World War II. A country with geographic expansion covering wide areas of Europe and Asia, also disappeared suddenly following the fall of the communist system in the early 90s of the past century.

Before its fall, the USSR was a superpower with massive potentials and geographic resources, in addition to long histor y and imperishable culture. All that could have prevented its fall and the separation of countries that formed its entity when they realized that being part of a large entity doesn’t necessarily translate into security, development and good living conditions.

Yugoslavia, a union of countries in the Balkan Peninsula, was a leading country in the 20th century and contributed to the establishment of the Non-Aligned Movement. However the fall of the Soviet Union led to its subsequent collapse and independence of seven countries whose people discovered that they’ve been living in a face union.

The Kingdom of Egypt was the

name known for a piece of land spreading from Egypt’s shores at the Mediterranean, all the way south to the southern borders of South Sudan. Today, this kingdom has not only become two, but three countries after South Sudan’s secession.

The United Arab Republic was short lived union between the government of President Jamal Abdul-Nasser in Egypt, and the government of President Shukri Al-Quwatli in Syria. It was announced suddenly in 1958, and ended in similar sudden fashion in 1961 following a military coup in Syria. Eventually, no one missed the UAR once it seized to exist.

Let’s stop talking about large countries for a moment. San Marino is Europe’s smallest country with a population of roughly 30,000 people. It is located north of Italy over a total area of 61.2 square kilometers. San Marino is characterized by having the world’s oldest constitution still into effect, and by being the oldest country to ever practice democracy. It’s been able to survive countless crises and wars throughout its history that extends for over 1600 years.

A country’s success and sustainability isn’t measured by its size. If that’s the case, the Ottoman Empire in its last years would’ve been considered the strongest country in the world.

However, there are principles based on which a country’s ability to survive can be established, which include having a democratic system where the people share power and responsibilities, and

having social justice practiced fully. These countries should also acknowledge all components of the society equally, and respect their point of view.

They must also adopt a strong economic system that promotes productivity and fights corruption, and carry clear identity so that every citizen can feel they belong to it. These countries have clear values that each citizen is required to follow, instead of allowing citizens to force their values on the country.

There are many aspects that can guarantee a country’s sustainability and prevent them from becoming followers of regional forces, or eventually face extinction. These aspects certainly do not include practicing oppression, terrorism, killing, discrimination based on race or religious belief, and doing all that while chanting patriotic songs.

Despite its small size, Kuwait is capable to adapt to changes more than others. It contains human resources that are relatively more aware than resources of other countries. It has civil institutions and democratic history it can depend on.

It has a people who share responsibilities of power and legislation. Kuwait has more elements for development and sustainability more than many other nations. If reform can be introduced, and if the public good could be the goal that everyone works to achieve, we can insure Kuwait’s continuation at a time where other countries might collapse. — Al-Rai

ecent data released by the Central Statistical Office indicate that inflation in Kuwait increased by 3.3% last April compared to the same month in 2011, with an increase in the annual inflation index from 146.9 points to 151.7 points. The report further indicates that the price index for food items increased by 6.3% in April 2012 compared to April 2011. It also points out increases in price index for clothes, education and health services, transportation, home appliances and assorted products.

Inflation has become a serious problem for citizens as it continues to increase on an annual basis, putting more burdens on the shoulders of Kuwaitis year after year, and sending them to face difficulties of increasing living costs combined with deteriorated public services after decades of luxurious life.

All that happens and the privatization law for public facilities is yet to be enforced. What will happen to citizens when it is put underway? The law will put citizens’ fate in the hands of companies and merchants whose top priority is to make profit - even on the expense of people’s status of living.

And as inflation continues to grow, there is an almost complete lack of governmental monitoring to prices, and measures to tackle merchants’ greed. Unfortunately, the government favors merchants against citizens in its regulations - as taking no actions against the increasing inflation is one proof for that. Instead of working on reducing prices of commodities and rents, the government is actually approving regulations that benefit business and real estate owners, such as the multibillion dinar portfolio to rescue struggling real estate owners. The government doesn’t only fail to take action against the private sector’s greed, but compensate their loss from the public funds.

The inflation further comes to add more to citizens’ ongoing woes which include unemployment, lack of higher education opportunities for high school graduates, as well as the stateless residents’ problems. The main question is, where are the political forces from all these increasing problems? Can’t they put aside election matters for a minute to focus on citizens’ actual living woes? Isn’t protecting citizens’ interests the job of political groups? — Al-Rai

kuwait digest

Why the deal was opposed

By Abdullatif Al-Duaij

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awmakers whose actions result in Kuwait losing the giant K-Dow project are currently committing a bigger crime than the original one. In their attempt to justify their actions or cover up what they’ve done, they are using the ‘penalty clause’ subject to attack oil sector officials, and subsequently hold them accountable for the $2.16 billion fine Kuwait is required by a court order to pay for the canceled deal.

Unfortunately, the government along with the majority of the public are falling for this demagogic argument.

The penalty clause is not the main problem, the deal’s termination is. The decision to terminate the deal is the reason why the international cour t ordered Kuwait to pay the fine, not because of the penalty clause. Canceling the deal is the real crime; not how much percentage of the deal’s value was put in the penalty clause.

Paying the fine perhaps might not even be a big problem for a country that enjoys lucrative surplus in profit of oil sale. The problem is that those who talked as experts as they pressed for the deal to be canceled continue to dominate the political scene and force their point of view.

To all MPs who put pressure on the previous cabinet to cancel the deal: you put yourselves as heroes and experts in order to cancel a developmental project that would’ve been the first step into a new policy by which Kuwait depends on multiple sources of income, and the corner stone for a development we’ve been eager for decades.

Let’s put the penalty clause aside and consider these aspects. After the project was canceled, it was later proven that it would’ve been a success. This proved that all the fuss made was unjustified, and all allegation that the public funds were at risk were false.

Now that we know the truth, can any of you (the MPs) explain to us why exactly you opposed the deal? It wasn’t because the project was a failure because obviously that never happened. It wasn’t because you have foresight that somehow is sharper than that of those in the field.

That is actually why you focus on the penalty clause today and accuse oil sector officials of squandering public funds.

Let me answer that question for you.

Opposing the deal was for political reasons, as you used the case to play the role of heroes as you didn’t know for sure that the project was going to fail. Your attitude was perhaps for social reasons as well, as many are not qualified to benefit directly from an industrial project in this size.

Dear MPs. I’m asking you to stop talking about the penalty clause for a second and explain to us - given the experts you claim you are - the logical reasons behind your stance against the project. And please, I would like to hear your answer without using the word ‘corruption’, that is if you can do that. — Al-Qabas

MONDAY, JUNE 4, 2012

local

Traffic officer held for reckless driving Drunks toss friend from window KUWAIT: A police officer was arrested recently after he was caught driving his sports car recklessly in Jahra. According to a security source, Jahra Security Department Director, Maj Gen Ibrahim Al-Tarrah, called for backup after he spotted the officer performing reckless stunts on a public street. Following his arrest, the driver was identified as a police officer at the Jahra traffic police department. He was taken into custody to face charges.

11 injured in accident Eleven people were injured when the driver of a bus, which was carrying workers, lost control of the vehicle on Ghazali Street on Saturday. The bus struck a concrete barrier before overturning. Eleven passengers were rushed to Farwaniya Hospital with serious injuries. A case was filed for further investigations.

KUWAIT: On commencement of the summer season, the preventive inspection department of Kuwait Fire Services Directorate intensified its campaigns to make sure various facilities and buildings had enough safety precautions and were in compliance with fire safety conditions. The inspection campaigns focused on buildings accommodating large numbers of people such as private hospitals, apartment buildings, shopping malls, carpentries, nurseries and basements used as warehouses in Jleeb and Farwaniya. KFSD’s coordination and follow up supervisor, Lt Col Yousif Al-Sofag said that the campaigns detected so many violations such as lack of fire licenses, bad storage conditions, blockage of emergency exits, exposed electric wires and badly kept fire extinguishing equipment. — Photos by Hanan Al-Saadoun

News

in brief

Complaints filed at Labor Dept KUWAIT: Several patrons of the Hawally Labor Department filed complaints with Director of the department following poor treatment from employees in the salary certificate division. The patrons claimed that the employees were misusing their authority, failing to abide by set working hours and being inhumane and arrogant. One Mandoub (an employee who completes official paperwork) said that he goes to the department at 6am to get a number before waiting for three hours for the employees to arrive. He said that it is not organized and that the security guards, who act more like bodyguards, are rude and aggressive. He appealed to the Director of the Department, Abdallah Al-Mutoutah, to intervene and put an end to such practices.

Kuwaiti, Jordanian officials meet AMMAN: Kuwaiti investors and Jordanian officials met in Amman late Saturday at the residence of the Kuwaiti Ambassador, Dr Hamad Al-Duaij, to discuss means of bolstering investment. Jordanian Minister of Trade and Industry, Shabib Ammari, said that the meeting discussed means of boosting relations between Kuwaiti and Jordanian investors, as well as addressing possible issues that may hinder cooperation. On his part, Ambassador Al-Duaij expressed hope that the meeting would help find solutions to the problems facing Kuwaiti investments in Jordan.

Kuwaiti and Jordanian investors said that the meeting was a step in the right direction which would help resolve any issues.

Kuwaiti-British cooperation KUWAIT: The country’s National Guards Undersecretary Lt Gen Nasser Al-Daie discussed yesterday ways of bolstering military cooperation with the United Kingdom with Lt Gen Simon Mayall, Middle East Adviser at the Ministry of Defence. The meeting would buttress means of bilateral cooperation that would deep-seat Kuwaiti-British relations even further, Al-Daie said during the encounter attended by British military attache Col John Ensor.

The meeting was also attended by the Guards’ commander of military affairs Major General Walid AlNuwayef and head of contracts and tenders sector lieut. colonel Abdullah Khalid Faisal.

KUNA chief visits Morocco RABAT: Chairman and Director General of Kuwait News Agency Sheikh Mubarak Al-Duaij Al-Ibrahim Al-Sabah was in Morocco yesterday on a visit to enhance media cooperation with the north African country. On his three-day visit, Sheikh Mubarak AlDuaij is expected to sign an agreement with Director General of Morocco’s state news agency Maghreb Arabe Presse (MAP) Khalil Idrissi Hashemi, on boosting bilateral relations through the exchange of news, expertise and information.

MP’s son held The son of an MP was arrested on the King Fahad Highway after he went past the Nuwaiseeb border

checkpoint on his way into Kuwait. Security officers launched a search for the man after customs officials reported an individual refusing to stop for a search after arriving from Saudi Arabia. The suspect abandoned his civil ID at the checkpoint as he left the scene. The suspect was referred to Nuwaiseeb port’s police station following his arrest. No contraband was found during a search. He remains in custody pending investigations to ascertain why he fled the scene.

Drunk friends Farwaniya investigators are looking to identify suspects believed to have dropped a young man from a second floor apartment’s window in Al-Rigaei recently. After the victim was hospitalized, officers headed to the apartment empty. Imported liquor bottles were found, which suggest that the mishap took place between a group of friends who had been drinking in private. Fingerprints were taken from the scene.

Morality campaigns Thirty people were arrested during crackdowns over the weekend from apartments suspected of hosting illegal activities in Salmiya, Hawally and AlShaab. According to a security source, six scantilydressed women and six intoxicated men were arrested in an apartment. Raids at other apartments saw the arrest of 18 people; some of whom were also intoxicated. The detainees were taken to the authorities to face charges.

Teenager stabbed A teenager was hospitalized on Saturday for a stab wound he sustained during a fight in a Salmiya mall. The 19-year-old was reportedly involved in a quarrel between a group of youngsters armed with sharp tools. Police arrested those involved after managing to break up the scuffle. The injured teen, who had suffered a stab wound to his shoulder, was taken to the Mubarak Hospital and the suspects are still in custody.

Kuwaitis explore cooperation opportunities with Bosnia SARAJEVO: Kuwaiti lawmakers from the Friendship Parliamentary Committee underlined yesterday the importance of people’s role in pushing ahead and giving impetus for relations between Kuwait and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Kuwait’s Deputy Parliament Speaker Khalid Sultan Bin Essa, who heads the

delegation, said that Bosnia and Herzegovina has great natural and human potential that can be used by businesspeople to strengthen economic gains for both countries. He added that the Kuwaiti lawmakers visit also seeks to buttress legislative cooperation and exchange of democratic experiences, as

well as to achieve greater convergence between the peoples of the two countries.

Bin Essa stressed that there is a good opportunity to achieve integration in several areas between the two friendly countries in several domains, particularly tourism. The Kuwaiti MP also noted

there are great investment opportunities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, particularly in the property sector. In addition to MP Bin Essa, the delegation includes MPs Walid Al-Tabtabaie, Ahmad Al-Azmi, Bader Al-Dahoum, Adel Al-Damkhi, Mohammad Al-Hatlani and Mohammad Al-Mutairi. — KUNA

MONDAY, JUNE 4, 2012

local

EPA playing major role in safeguarding environment 17 years of successful activities

Kuwait Times: What are the biggest challenges Kuwait is currently facing owing to its climate and geographic placement?

Saleh Al-Mudhaf Al-Mudhaf: The State of Kuwait is located at the northwestern corner of the Arabian Gulf, where it is part of the Mesopotamian Delta Plain and is bordered

by Saudi Arabia from south and SW and by Iraq from west and north.

Kuwait is also situated in the northeastern area of the Arabian Peninsula between Latitude 30∞ 06’ & 28∞ 45’ N and Longitude 46∞ 30’ & 46∞ 36’ E. This location places the country in the Arid Region, particularly in the Zone of Dry Deserts.

Consequently, the desert ecosystem, mainly composed of sands and gravels, constitutes about 80% of the whole country.

Grazing is the major land use in this ecosystem. Rangelands constitute about 96% of the State of Kuwait.

The vegetation of Kuwait’s desert ecosystem is very sparse, dominated by woody shrubs <2m high. The sandy soils are covered with a green carpet of annual grasses during wet seasons only (e.g., 1995-1996).

In general, precipitation is scant in Kuwait, reaching a mean annual total of about 112 mm, while evaporation is very high and varies with location and season. Low precipitation and high temperature result in high seawater salinities throughout the year (3842%), which have drastic impacts on biodiversity and marine fauna productivity. In addition, the winds have a pronounced influence on the oceanographic and sedimentologic nature of the area as well as on the quality of ambient air, seawater and land in Kuwait.

Northwesterly (Shamal) and, to less extent, southeasterly (Kaus) winds prevail throughout the year. The prevailing dry northwesterly (sometime northerly or northeasterly) winds blow southward from areas lying to the north and northwest of the Gulf and are associated with dust storms that reach a maximum in summer, particularly in June and July. They bring large quantities of terrigenous material associated with a variety of organic and chemical pollutants to the Gulf, particularly to Kuwait offshore areas. During dry season (May-September), the prevailing northwesterly winds cause remarkable soil deflation, thereby destroying the vegetation cover. Also, coarser eroded materials by NW winds/storms (mainly sands from topsoils and quarries) cause severe sand encroachment. Other mechanisms of land degradation in Kuwait include overgrazing, camping and recreation in open desert areas and military activities, which lead to clearance of natural vegetation and soil compaction. Of important note is the role of the strong NW winds in transporting large volume of air pollutants from their point sources, such as Power and Desalination Plants (DPDs), factories, and oil-fields and oil-industries, to residential areas downwind, particularly in Kuwait Southern Region.

Being located in arid region, water resources are very limited in the Arabian Gulf countries, particularly in Kuwait where fresh groundwater is restricted to a small water field in Umm Al-Aish Area in the far northern part of the country. Consequently, brackish groundwater has been extensively used for irrigation in large farmlands such as Al-Wafra and Al-Abdally, and hence degraded soils which became saline in some areas.

like to attract your attention to the fact that climatologies use the term “Climate Change” to refer specifically to climate change caused by human activity, as opposed to changes in climate that may have resulted as part of Earth’s natural processes. In this sense, especially in the context of environmental policy, the term climate change has become synonymous with anthropogenic global warming. Also, in the context of climate variation, ant hropogenic factors are human activities which affect the climate.

Of most concern in these anthropogenic factors is the increase in levels of carbon dioxide (C02), a well known greenhouse gas (GHG), due to emissions from fossil fuel combustion, followed by aerosols (liquid substances stored under pressure and released as a fine spray) and other factors such as land use and ozone depletion.

Consequently, taking the right measures towards environment protection by reducing GHG emissions, minimizing the use of aerosols and banning chemical substances causing ozone depletion can definitely reverse the drastic impacts of global warming and climate change.

The following is a summary of measures taken by the State of Kuwait and KEPA to minimize human activities leading to global warming and climate change: (1). The State of Kuwait has signed and ratified the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer (Vienna, 1985), Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer (Montreal, 1982), and Amendments to the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, London (1990), Copenhagen (1992), Montreal (1997) and Beijing (1999). These agreements have been implemented through KEPA environmental laws, regulations and standards as well as national action plans and programmes, and resulted in banning the use, production and export of chemical substances (including aerosols) that deplete the Ozone layer.

(2). In November 2010 the KEPA formed “the National Committee of Green Buildings” under the Decree No. 497/2010.

The Committee gathers under one roof all governmental ministries and organizations, academic and research institutes, and private companies and consultancy/engineering offices dealing with such concept. The main goal of this committee is to lay down the foundation for an applicable scope concept of green buildings (GBs) in Kuwait, to establish a local movement in the country for GBs friendly to environment, water-and-energy saving and GHG emissions reducing, and to set a local code compatible with international standards and backed up by incentives to encourage investments from individuals and private sector in this field. Being a member of the aforesaid committee Kuwait Municipality has formed a committee in July, 2011 to review the present construction codes and introduce a new code for GBs. Other aspects of GBs will be handled by Working Groups formed by the National Committee to undertake the task of setting and implementing action plans and programmes with specific time schedules to establish the GB culture and technology in the country.

(3). Among the EC programmes set by EQUATE Petrochemicals and implemented under the supervision of KEPA is the “Green Carbon Project”: About 700-900 T/day of CO2 are vented to atmosphere from two new Ethylene Glycol Plants (EG1 & EG2).

Being the first of its kind in Kuwait, the project started in 2010 and aims at: (•) Minimize Green House Gas Emissions.

(•) Develop and encourage local innovative industrial business opportunities (•) Support the economy by creating added-value for downstream industries in Kuwait.

(•) Provide green carbon Company with 450 1/day of CO2 for downstream industries.

KT: Can global warming and drastic climate changes be reversed by taking the right measures towards environment protection?

Al-Mudhaf: Before answering this important question, I would

KT: What steps can individuals take to reduce their carbon footprints?

Al-Mudhaf: Every individual can make changes at a personal level by limiting our carbon footprint by doing things differently

By Staff Reporter

A

nswers to questions raised by Kuwait Times to Environment Public Authority General Manager Saleh Al-Mudhaf. (Part II)

each day and these can be done by the following ways: •Saving Energy: •Change your light bulbs. Replace incandescent bulbs with energy efficient compact fluorescent bulbs (CFL). You will use only 30% of the energy and still get just as much light.

•Look for the Energy Star logo. The symbol designates appliances that are energy-efficient. If you purchase only those that are certified, you may pay more initially for these items. Over time, however, you’ll save on energy bills while helping the environment.

•Save energy by carpooling, taking public transportation, riding a bike, or walking. Another way to reduce your carbon emissions is to combine errands when you do drive.

•Cars & Renewable Fuels. Highly fuel efficient cars, hybrids, and vehicles that use cleaner alternative fuels help reduce greenhouse gases emissions.

•Unplug appliances. Many electronics and small appliances merely go on “stand-by” when switched off. This means they could still be using energy. Take a moment to unplug these energy-stealers when you are not using them.

•Re-Use and repair. Don’t just toss items out if they can be fixed, and keep them out of the trash and landfills. Use and re-use your own canvas grocery bags and avoid the plastic disposables.

•Use the recycle bin. Keeping unnecessary items out of the landfill and allowing them to be re-used as raw materials is very earth-friendly. Make sure to recycle toxic items like motor oil properly and safely according to the rules in your area.

•Use Renewable Energy. Solar energy can be used to heat homes, buildings, water, and to make electricity. Today, more than 200,000 houses in the United States take advantage of the sun’s energy.

•Be Smart with Power Management. Unplug your appliances when not in use. Your battery charger uses energy while plugged into the wall even when you’re not using it to charge your phone, laptop. http://gatorl496. hostgator.com/~robwoods/carbontracker.com/simple-steps-reduce/ •Saving Water •Turn off the tap while cleaning your teeth, shaving or washing your face. This can help to save 9 litres a minute.

•Having a short shower rather than a bath could save up to 400 liters per week.

•Listen for dripping faucets and running toilets. Fixing a leak can save 300 gallons a month or more. Report leaks or water waste to maintenance personnel.

•Have maintenance personnel regularly check your facilities for leaks, drips and other water waste.

•Shut oft water to unused areas of your facility to eliminate waste from leaks or unmonitored use.

•Scrape dishes rather then rinse them before washing.

When you are washing your hands, don’t let the water run

while you lather.

•Wash your fruits and vegetables in a pan of water instead of running water from the tap.

•Collect the water you use for rinsing fruits and vegetables, then reuse it to water houseplants.

•Upgrade older toilets with water efficient models.

•When cleaning out fish tanks, give the nutrient-rich water to your plants.

•Don’t use running water to thaw food. Defrost food in the refrigerator for water efficiency and food safety.

•When doing laundry, match the water level to the size of the load.

•Teach your children to turn off faucets tightly after each use.

•Bathe your young children together.

•When you give your pet fresh water, don’t throw the old water down the drain. Use it to water your trees or shrubs.

•If you accidentally drop ice cubes when filling your glass from the freezer, don’t throw them in the sink, drop them in a house plant instead.

KT: Does EPA co-ordinate with international environment groups?

Al-Mudhaf: KEPA coordinates with the international environment organizations through reviewing, ratifying and implement-

ing international agreements related to environmental affairs, holding international meetings for confronting environmental problems resulting from pollution, and exchanging information, gaining experience, acquiring skills and opening scopes of cooperation in the environmental domain between institutions, officials and scientists in this respect. The following are international environmental organizations, agencies and NGO’s group to which State of Kuwait is a member.

•Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nation (FAO) •Global Environment Facility (GEF) •Global Environment Monitory System (GEMS) •International Maritime Organization (IMO) •International Association of Water pollution Research and Control (ICAIR) •International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) •Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) •Intergovernmental Oceanic Commission (IOC) •United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) •United Nations Development Program (UNDP) •United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) •United Nations Institute for Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) •United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) •World Health Organization (WHO) •World Trade Organization (WTO) •World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

(Concluded)

Middle East companies don’t use social media effectively

KUWAIT: Kuwait Touristic Company recently organized a program on ‘Fire Fighting and Rescue’. Around 20 people participated in the training at the recreation city. The program was organized in conjunction with Al-Raed security institute for private training. The lecturers were Ashraf Abdullah and Abdullateef AlMayeef. The training program was aimed at educating people about fire and how to deal with it.

KUWAIT: According to Bayt.com’s latest poll, “Corporate Usage of Social Media in the Middle East”, the majority of respondents (46.8%) believe that social media is not being used effectively by the region’s companies. Eight out of every ten respondents (81.6%) claim that the potential for social media to damage a company’s reputation is one of the biggest challenges to overcome, suggesting that proper education in the medium is essential for success.

Aside from the risk of reputation damage, the top three perceived challenges to social media are difficulty in monetizing online presence (11.3%), getting the tone of message correct (11.3%), and keeping up with feedback (10.5%). Other challenges cited were the complexity of measuring return on investment and problems with keeping up-to-date with the ever-changing tools and technologies. In fact, a majority (20.7%) stated that they believe all of these factors are challenging.

However, it is worth noting that 12% of respondents were not aware of the challenges for corporate social media involvement. It is also noteworthy that despite reservations, social media usage is considered to be ‘common’ in the region, by four out of ten (42.8%) poll takers. Half (51.1%) of poll takers said that their company uses the medium. “When asked what they consider to be most important factor in a successful corporate social media page, more than a quarter of respondents said that they want content that is ‘informative and educational’.

Companies looking to implement a successful social media strategy should bear this in mind when launching a new page,” said Lama Ataya, CMO, Bayt.com. “Social media is a dynamic force that is being manifested today in both the personal and professional realms. Bayt.com provides essential statistics and tools to assist employers and job seekers in building the most suc-

cessful online profile in order to boost their recruitment and personal or corporate brand potential.” Other highlydesired features are that a social media page should be ‘fun and interesting’ (17.8%); provide customer service and feedback (14.9%); promptly answer all comments and queries (13.2%) and that it should be updated frequently (11.7%). In terms of the latter, almost a third (29.3%) of respondents said that their company updates their social media pages once a day.

Social media is viewed as a means of boosting brand exposure, communicating and interacting with customers, promoting new initiatives, recruiting staff and maintaining an online presence. According to 47.5% of the Bayt.com poll takers, social media activity has been largely successful in driving traffic to their company’s website, with a further 38.2% claiming that they have been successful in converting fans into customers.

Along those lines, four out of ten (43.3%) respondents believe that their company’s social media strategy is ‘excellent’, and half say that their company sounds ‘friendly’ in its online interactions.

More companies handle their social media internally than those who outsource (39.1% versus 35.6%), with most (35.9%) assigning the job to a single individual. A third (31.6%) of those who responded to the poll did not know who was responsible for their company’s social media accounts.

Companies with social media presence predominantly appear to involve all of their employees to some degree in their online applications: a collective 62.3% state that their colleagues are either ‘moderately’ or ‘extremely involved’. Roughly nine out of ten (86.1%) would participate in their company’s social media activities, if given the chance. Almost half of the respondents (47.6%) currently follow a Middle

East corporate social media presence, and six out of ten (60.2%) believe that there will be a dramatic increase in the corporate usage of social media within a year.

Despite the high interest employees have in social media, guidelines for its usage are only provided by 40.2% of companies, as opposed to the 45.1% that do not issue any.

Thought aligns with fact in terms of the most popular social networks for companies to use: 72.1% believe that Facebook is the most commonly used, while a majority of 65.5% confirms that it is the network of choice of their company. In terms of popularity, other sites used are Google+ (10.7%), LinkedIn (9.7%), Twitter (3.4%) and YouTube (2.8%). MySpace and Tumblr are used by 0.3% each. A combination of the aforementioned networks is used by 4.2%, while 3.1% claim to use other sites.

Bayt.com, the Middle East’s #1 jobsite, currently has a Facebook fan page with an excess of 72,000 fans. It also enables its community of approximately 8 million active and passive jobseekers to identify which of their Facebook friends work for companies they are targeting and to thereby benefit from tapping into their Facebook friends’ employer networks via references, referrals and information gathering.

Bayt.com’s newly revamped platform also allows jobseekers to import CVs from LinkedIn to ease the whole job search process and unify it in all its dimensions for the jobseeker on Bayt.com. Members are also able to track job search progress using stateof-the-art CV tracking and other measurement and analysis and comparison tools.

Data for the Bayt.com Corporate Usage of Social Media in the Middle East poll was collected online from February 27 - May 13 2012, with 15,758 respondents covering more than 12 countries in the MENA region.

MONDAY, JUNE 4, 2012

Victims’ families grieve after plane slams into bus in Ghana Page 10

Panetta wants more US access to Vietnam harbor Page 12

CAIRO: An elderly Egyptian protester holds a sign calling for justice for the sake of Egypt as other demonstrators sleep in Cairo’s landmark Tahrir Square yesterday. Hundreds of demonstrators are occupying Tahrir Square after a court sentenced ousted president Hosni Mubarak and his interior minister Habib Al-Adly to life in prison but acquitted six security chiefs in the deaths of protesters last year. —AFP

Prosecutor to appeal Mubarak verdict amid protests Egyptians occupy Cairo’s Tahrir Square CAIRO: Egypt’s state prosecutor said yesterday he would appeal sentences handed down in Hosni Mubarak’s trial as hundreds of Egyptians occupied Cairo’s Tahrir Square yesterday after a night of rage. A judge sentenced Mubarak, 84, and his interior minister Habib al-Adly to life in prison on Saturday for the killings of protesters in last year’s uprising but also exonerated six police commanders.

Mubarak-the only autocrat toppled in the Arab Spring to be put in the dock-could have been sent to the gallows as demanded by the prosecution. He was also cleared of graft charges. Along with the six police chiefs acquitted, Mubarak’s sons Alaa and Gamal had corruption charges against them dropped on a technicality, prompting protesters to take to the streets of Cairo, Alexandria and other Egyptian cities. The state prosecutor’s office said he had ordered “the start of the appeals procedure” against sentences in the trial, but did not clarify whether all the verdicts or just the acquittals would be appealed.

The prosecution had asked for the death sentence against the ousted president and his security aides, but has been the target of criticism over its preparation for the case. Mubarak’s defence has also said it would appeal. Both the toppled dictator’s defence team and lawyers representing his victims said the life sentence verdict could easily be appealed, triggering fears among protesters that Mubarak could walk free.

Around 20,000 people took to Cairo’s iconic Tahrir Square on Saturday after the verdicts were issued. Some slept in tents or in the open overnight at the vast intersection, epicentre of the 18-day revolt that forced Mubarak to resign on February 11 last year. “We intend to stay today and possibly tomorrow. We expect a lot more people to come during the day,” said Omar Abdelkader, a young protester in Tahrir yesterday. “Many people had the feeling while listening to the verdict that we were back in the days of the old regime,” said another, student Feda Essam. The demonstrators erected a memorial depicting a miniature cemetery of gravestones and sand in tribute to the “martyrs” of the revolution. “Martyrs, we will not abandon you to the conspiracies of the old regime. In the name of your blood, there will be a new revolution,” read one banner. Saturday’s verdict came just two weeks before a presidential election run-off that will pit Mubarak-era premier Ahmed Shafiq against the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Mursi in a highly polarised race.

Yesterday, Shafiq tried to establish his democratic credentials and said his Brotherhood rival would bring back the “dark ages.” The ex-air force commander said Egypt under his leadership would respect human rights. “No one will be detained for their opinion... Security services will be committed to the law and to human rights standards,” Shafiq told a news conference. “I represent a secular state... the Brotherhood represents a sectarian state.” Shafiq said he would strive for a “modern, civil, fair state” while the Brotherhood will “take it to the dark ages.”

Leftist politician Hamdeen Sabbahi and moderate Islamist politician Abdel Moneim Abul Fotouh, who came third and fourth respectively in the first round of elections, were meeting yesterday to try to consolidate their positions ahead of the run-off, sources told AFP. Earlier, Shafiq offices were attacked in two provincial towns, a security services official said.

On Saturday after the verdicts, the Brotherhood’s Mursi said the revolution must continue. “All of us, my brothers, must realise in this period that the continuation of the revolution, and the revolutionaries’ staying put in their positions in the squares, is the only guarantee to achieve the goals,” he told reporters before joining the crowds in Tahrir Square for around 15 minutes.

A tearful Mubarak, who enjoyed near absolute power for three decades, was flown by helicopter to Tora prison on Cairo’s outskirts after the verdict but then refused to leave the aircraft.

A security official said Mubarak “suffered from a surprise health crisis” but was finally convinced to return to his cell. Chants of “Void, void” and “The people want the judiciary purged” erupted after the sentencing.—AFP

MONDAY, JUNE 4, 2012

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

High-speed train opponents seek to derail Morocco project RABAT: Seven months after work officially began on the Arab world’s first high-speed railway, opponents of the Moroccan project are building up steam, claiming the cash should be spent to help the poor.

The 350-kilometre (215-mile) connection between Casablanca and Tangiers, via the capital Rabat, will slash journey times between the north African country’s economic hubs from nearly six hours to just over two hours, with trains zooming along at up to 320 kilometres per hour (200 mph).

Moroccan leaders have heralded the rail link as a key step in modernising the country after last year’s Arab Spring uprisings ushered in a time of major political change across the region. But with a price tag of 25 billion dirhams (2.3 billion euros, $2.8 billion), an enormous sum in a country where more than half the population of 33 million lives in poverty, opponents are working to derail the project.

“It’s not a priority for Morocco,” said Omar Balafrej, a member of the “Stop TGV” anti-train collective. The group gets its name from the French abbreviation for

high-speed trains, and the TGV initials are used primarily by the French national rail operator SNCF. “Twenty-five billion dirhams? That’s the equivalent of 25,000 rural schools, 16,000 libraries, 10,000 media libraries and 25 university hospital centres,” Balafrej said. The French firm Alstom has signed a 400-million-euro ($500 million) contract to deliver 14 TGVs that would go into service in Morocco in December 2015.

Detractors say the project unfairly favors French companies and in September, France’s then-president Nicolas Sarkozy attended a groundbreaking ceremony alongside Morocco’s King Mohammed VI. The plan is to eventually extend the high-speed line to Marrakesh and Agadir, officials have said.

Money well spent? Morocco is determined to modernise its infrastructure and the country’s economy is doing well by global standards, recording an impressive five-percent growth on average in recent years. But rail opponents remind Moroccans that the country remains in 130th place out of the 187 coun-

tries measured by the United Nations’ international development index, and that many regions are not serviced by any trains, let alone high-speed ones.

Officials have promised ticket prices will remain the same as today-about 12 euros ($15) for a standard fare. A public debate between opponents and the Moroccan rail office, the ONCF, was cut short a few weeks ago when activists handed out fliers accusing the project of waste, corruption and theft.

“Insults are not the best way to discuss this,” ONCF said. Rail officials say the line between Tangier and Casablanca is already at capacity, and the country had to choose between doubling traditional lines or building the new TGV line.

“A high-speed line will cost thirty percent more, but the socio-economic benefits are so much better,” rail director Mohamed Rabie Khlie said, noting “opportunities for growth and wealth creation” and improved rail safety. Officials say the state is not subsidising construction of the rail link, with France and Arabian Gulf countries loaning 60 percent of the pro-

ject’s costs. Opponents are skeptical about the Alstom contract, and have cited a lack of transparency in negotiations, as well as pointing to an overall bias for the French. Moroccan rail officials deny any “presents” to its former colonial master and note that no more than a third of the contracts associated with the project will go to French firms. France is Morocco’s top trading partner, absorbing 25 percent of its exports.

On May 15, the February 20 Movement, which is demanding sweeping political reforms in Morocco, called on new French President Francois Hollande to terminate the project, saying it was unfair and elitist.

But with contracts awarded and work under way, no one is expecting the project to be shelved. By 2035, Morocco hopes to have built a total of 1,500 kilometres (930 miles) of rail lines and to have added to its motorway network. Africa boasts one other highspeed link-South Africa’s $3.8-billion (three-million euro) Gautrain, which has run at more modest speeds of 160 kph (100 mph) between Johannesburg and the capital Pretoria since early August.— AFP

Palestinians threaten to re-launch hunger strike Israel blamed for reneging on deal

JARUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, center, arrives for a weekly cabinet meeting at his Jerusalem office yesterday.—AP

Netanyahu weighs options on disputed settler homes JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sought yesterday a way to implement a Supreme Court ruling to remove five settler buildings erected on private Palestinian land without alienating his political supporters.

Netanyahu’s right-wing government has until July 1 to carry out the court’s decision but it faces an earlier deadline, Wednesday, when ultranationalist legislators plan to submit a bill to legalise the dwellings retroactively, a law he opposes.

About 30 families live in the five three-storey stone apartment buildings in the Ulpana neighborhood of the Beit El settlement in the occupied West Bank.

Government officials said yesterday Netanyahu had proposed a plan that would avoid demolishing the homes.

Engineers would instead cut through their foundations and move them to another part of the settlement where no land ownership claim is pending in court.

He also plans to build 10 homes in Beit El for each of the five apartment buildings that is moved, the officials said, in an apparent attempt to appease the Jewish families and their supporters.

Palestinians fear Israeli settlements, built on land Israel captured in a 1967 war, will deny them a viable state. The U.N. World Court considers the settlements illegal but Israel, citing historical and Biblical links to the territory, disputes this. Before making a final decision on his plan, Netanyahu has asked Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein to advise whether it would hold up to court challenges, the officials said. The prospect of forcing settlers from their homes has turned into a political minefield for Netanyahu, who heads the right-wing Likud party and has long banked on the support of settlers and their backers.

But Netanyahu would also likely face a public outcry should he be seen as defying the Supreme Court, which many Israelis regard as an important independent watchdog over the government. “The idea that the government will clash with the Supreme Court has been dropped,” Cabinet minister Dan Meridor said on Army Radio, referring to Netanyahu’s opposition to the bid in parliament to circumvent the Ulpana ruling with a new law. — Reuters

ISTANBUL: Thousands of Turkish women stage a protest against Turkish Prime Minister at Kadikoy in Istanbul yesterday. Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on May 25 he considered abortion as “murder.” “I am a prime minister who is against Caesarean births. I consider abortion as murder,” Erdogan was quoted as saying by the Anatolia news agency. —AFP

Turkish women protest plans to curb abortion ANKARA: Hundreds of abortion rights demonstrators yesterday staged the largest protest yet against plans by Turkey’s Islamicrooted government to curb abortion, which critics say will amount to a virtual ban.

Women carrying banners that read “my body, my choice” and shouting anti-government slogans gathered in Istanbul’s Kadikoy district. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called abortion “murder” and his government is reportedly working on legislation to ban abortion after four weeks from conception, except for in emergencies.

It is now legal in Turkey up to 10 weeks from conception.

Erdogan has long urged Turkish families to have at least three children to keep up the country’s population growth rate, but the government’s plans to curb abortion stoked concerns over whether Erdogan is

intent on pushing a stronger Islamist agenda. Erdogan banned alcoholic beverages at city-run coffee shops when he was Istanbul’s mayor in the mid-1990s. His government also tried to criminalize adultery after coming to power in late 2002 but had to step back under pressure from the EU. Some analysts say Erdogan is pursuing a delicate strategy of beefing up Turkey’s regional power with a large population while trying to balance the country’s demographics in the face of high birth rate among the country’s Kurds, a source of concern for Turkey since it is engaged in a bitter fight against Kurdish rebels who want autonomy in the largely Kurdish southeast. “They say it is my body, my choice. Feminists say this,” Erdogan said Saturday during a rally in the country’s southeast. “No one has the right to abort a fetus in a body.” — AP

RAMALLAH: Palestinian prisoners in Israel are threatening to re-launch a hunger strike, a Palestinian official said yesterday, blaming Israel for reneging on a deal that ended a recent one. “There are still provocations in the prisons, and the prisoners are threatening to resume the strike if the situation remains as it is,” Palestinian prisoners minister Issa Qaraqaa said at a press conference in Ramallah.

Some 1,550 Palestinians imprisoned in Israel ended a hunger strike on May 14 in exchange for a package of measures which would allow visits from relatives in Gaza, and the transfer of detainees out of solitary confinement. Israel also said it would not extend administrative detention orders, unless new evidence emerged. In return, prisoner leaders committed to not engage in militant activity inside jail and to refrain from future hunger strikes.

Administrative detention is a procedure that allows suspects to be held without charge for

renewable periods of up to six months. But Qaraqaa said Israel was not keeping its end of the deal. “Israel has begun to violate the deal it signed with the prisoners, and within ten days after announcing the end of the strike, Israel renewed administrative detention orders for approximately 30 prisoners,” Qaraqaa charged. “Israel wants to punish the prisoners for striking with these renewed orders,” he said.

Qaraqaa also said he doubted Israel would allow the Gaza visits it had committed to. “So far, we don’t know if Israel will even allow families of prisoners from Gaza to visit their imprisoned relatives,” he said. An Israeli defence official who wished to remain unnamed rejected Qaraqaa’s claims. “As of the end of last week, three administrative detention orders were renewed,” the official told AFP. Regarding the visits from Gaza, the official said that Israel was indeed working toward enabling visits, but it was a process that “would

take some time” as it “involves many different bodies.”

Qaraqaa also addressed the issue of two prisoners, Mahmud Sarsak and Akram Rikhawi, who have been on extended hunger strikes. He said they “were on the verge of a coma and have a low heart rate.” Sarsak, who comes from Gaza and is demanding to be recognised as a prisoner of war, began refusing food on March 23, and went 53 days without eating before a short break on May 14 when the deal was signed.

He restarted his strike a day later. Rikhawi is demanding that the prison authority hand over his medical file prior to him appearing before a prison release committee to expedite his release. Israel Prison Service spokeswoman Sivan Weizman said that the two were under medical supervision in the infirmary in Ramle prison near Tel Aviv, and if the need arose, would be transferred to a civilian hospital for further care. — AFP

Lebanon’s north, a refugee enclave of fear WADI KHALED: “We used to hear about the exile of the Palestinians. Now, we’re just like them,” sighed Farhat Mustafa Al-Kurdi who fears Syrian refugees will become forgotten victims of his homeland’s conflict. Most of his fellow refugees in Wadi Khaled, just inside northern Lebanon, fled the neighbouring flashpoint province of Homs in central Syria.

They say they are “harassed” by men working for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, accused of abducting Syrians and Lebanese as far inside Lebanon as Tripoli, the country’s largest northern city. In the courtyard of a school rehabilitated by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Al-Rama village, two kilometres (1.2 miles) from the border, children played together, oblivious to the distressed look of their parents.

“I pace in the courtyard of the school as if in prison. It’s worse than a prison,” said Farhat, a man of 39 with a frizzy beard who fled his village of Tall Kalakh at the outbreak of Syria’s antiregime revolt last year. The refugees’ exile drags on in this school, and subsistence, already scarce, has been reduced to a trickle. “In the past, we received assistance from NGOs every month. For two months, we have received almost nothing.

Wadi Khaled has become a forgotten place,” 27year-old Ahmad said.

“We have become like animals, we just eat to survive,” he said. “Better to die than to live like this.” Ahmad, an electrician, said he is able to “earn between 5,000 and 6,000 Lebanese pounds (about four dollars) for small jobs.” But staple foods are scarce: “Chicken? Meat? You’re dreaming!” ‘To live under the bombs is better’- Manal, a 33-year-old mother of three, agreed: “There was a lot more aid before. Today, we eat once a day.

“Sometimes I tell myself that to live in Tall Kalakh under the bombs is better.” In April, the UNHCR expressed concern about lack of funds to meet the needs of 61,000 Syrian refugees in the region, including more than 22,000 living in Lebanon, particularly in already poor Wadi Khaled.

TRIPOLI: Lebanese army soldiers walk past a car damaged during fighting in the northern port city of Tripoli, Lebanon yesterday. — AP “We continue to help refugees, but it is true that security incidents in recent weeks have slowed the process,” admitted Dana Sleiman, UNHRC spokeswoman in Lebanon. Apart from lack of funds, danger has become palpable at the porous border, with frequent gunfire from Syrian troops and a spate of kidnappings blamed on “henchmen of Bashar.” Clashes between pro- and anti-Syrian regime gunmen on Saturday killed 10 people in Tripoli, Lebanese security and medical officials said.

Northern Lebanon was already rocked in May by deadly clashes between pro- and anti-Assad residents of the port city and the killing of a Sunni sheikh by Lebanese army gunfire, raising fears of a spillover of the unrest into Lebanon.

Iraq Shiite cleric appears to back PM over crisis BAGHDAD: A top Iraqi Shiite cleric has issued a ruling forbidding voting with secular individuals, an apparent statement of support for Iraq’s embattled premier who is facing threats of a no-confidence vote “It is haram (forbidden by Islam) for any part of Iraq’s ruling (authorities) to vote on the side of a secular person,” Grand Ayatollah Kadhim al-Hairi said in a written answer to a question from one of his followers about voting with secularists amid the current political crises in Iraq.

The secular, Sunni-backed Iraqiya bloc is seeking to convince Iraqi President Jalal Talabani to initiate a vote of no confidence in Shiite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. Significantly, Hairi, an Iraqi who is based in Iran’s holy city of Qom, is the main cleric followed by supporters of Moqtada al-Sadr, the head of a powerful parliamentary bloc who has criticised Maliki as a “dictator” hungry for acclaim and accused him of seeking to postpone or cancel elections.

Sadr, whose bloc is an important part of Maliki’s coalition government, has said that his MPs would back a vote of no confidence vote in Maliki if they were needed to secure a majority.

Iraq has been hit by a series of intertwined political crises that began in mid-December with accusations by Iraqiya that Maliki was concentrating power in his hands, and has escalated into calls to unseat him.

The crises have paralysed the country’s government, especially parliament, which has passed no significant legislation except for the budget, while other important measures such as a hydrocarbons law regulating the country’s oil sector have been delayed. — AFP

Syria’s opposition has accused Damascus of “increased attacks on Lebanese civilians and Syrian refugees” at the border, “kidnapping wounded in hospitals” and using “mercenaries of the regime to set up checkpoints” inside Lebanon.

Supporters of Damascus, meanwhile, accuse the pro-Western opposition in Beirut of turning Lebanon-which for three decades was dominated politically and militarily by Damascus-into a “platform” for the Syrian rebels. “There are supporters of the regime who come to interrogate us on what we do and tell us to leave”, Suheib, a Syrian activist, told AFP. “We were in Tripoli at first and they harassed us there too, so we left.” — AFP

UAE donates $136 million urgent food aid to Yemen DUBAI: The UAE yesterday announced food aid worth 500 million dirhams ($136 million) for Yemen where aid groups say around 44 percent of the population do not have enough to eat, state news agency WAM reported. President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al-Nahayan “has approved allocating 500 million dirhams to buy food and distribute it urgently to the brotherly Yemeni people,” WAM said.

The move is to “alleviate the suffering and ensure the availability of basic needs” to enable Yemenis to achieve “better security, stability and prosperity,” said the statement. The food items include “rice, sugar, cooking oil, baby milk, canned food and other basic items of daily use,” it said.

Last month, seven aid groups warned diplomats that Yemen was on the brink of a “catastrophic food crisis.”

At least 10 million people, some 44 percent of the population, do not get “enough food to eat”, they said, adding that one in three children

was “severely malnourished.” On May 21, the European Union unblocked an extra five million euros ($6.2 million) for Yemen to help fight mounting malnutrition in what it said was a “desperate” food crisis affecting almost half of the population.

The Commission has already mobilised 20 million euros ($24.9 million) in humanitarian aid for Yemen this year, directed at increasing and improving access to clean water, supporting feeding programs, developing cash-for-work schemes and providing cash grants for 200,000 people. Deadly anti-regime protests swept Yemen last year, finally forcing president Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down in February after 33 years in power.

The political crisis has left the country’s economy in tatters and aggravated the dire security situation, with Al-Qaeda militants launching a wave of attacks in the mostly lawless south since Saleh’s departure.

Yemen is the poorest country in the Arabian peninsula, with more than

MONDAY, JUNE 4, 2012

Thousands protest tuition hikes in Montreal MONTREAL: Thousands of people took to the streets of Montreal Saturday braving driving rain to protest planned tuition hikes after talks between students and the Quebec government broke down.

Students, along with grandparents, parents and their children, marched peacefully under a sea of colorful umbrellas, many of them wearing costumes and playing music with trumpets, foghorns and pans.

CLASSE, the largest and most militant of the main student groups, said some 10,000 people were marching by late afternoon. It had called for the biggest protest since the start of the tuition crisis in February. “It’s to continue to rally and show that we are still motivated even if summer is on its way,” CLASSE leader Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois told reporters before the start of the protest. A strong police presence, including dozens of vehicles, served to prevent any flareup in the protest, after previous clashes in recent weeks. About 700 people were arrested in Montreal and Quebec City in a single night late last month after an emergency law was passed to limit the protests.

“I just paid off a Can$15,000 ($14,400) student loan,” said Celine Larfeuille, 46.”I am here for my children, so that they don’t have to owe

as much. I am ready to protest every single day, every night, until the talks lead to an agreement.” Jacques Boisvert, 66, wearing a waterproof poncho and a pot on his head, explained that as a taxpayer, “investing in youth is like making an investment that will bring great returns to the community. The government we have right now is doing the opposite.”

A hairdresser who said he was against the student movement nonetheless expressed awe at the size of the gathering. “Quebecers have lost it, they have gone crazy,” said Richard, who did not want his last name disclosed. “My children go to school and I pay for it. This userpayer system works for me.” Standing on balconies above and near Richard’s salon, locals encouraged the protesters by banging on pots.

Students have rejected a government offer to reduce the tuition hike

by Can$35 ($34) per year, which would bring the total increase to Can$1,533 ($1,473) over seven years instead of Can$1,778 ($1,708).

CLASSE warned that the protest’s route would not be disclosed in advance to police, contrar y to requirements under the emergency law. “We want to keep pressure on the government with a protest that

goes against Special Law 78,” said Nadeau-Dubois, the group’s leader.

“We are very proud of it.”

Taking to Twitter, Montreal police called the protest “illegal,” saying it had not received the route. However, it added: “People can march if no crime is committed.” Special Law 78 requires organizers to give police at least eight hours advance warning of times and locations of protest marches, with fines imposed for failing to do so. The measure was passed on May 18 in an effort to quell the demonstrations, but so far it has only served to galvanize opposition to the government.

Quebec Education Minister Michelle Courchesne said earlier that the law had ensured “peaceful demonstrations. “There is a lull,” she told La Presse newspaper. “As long as there is no agreement with the students, it is necessary,” the minister said about the measure. This week’s discussions between Courchesne and student leaders were touted as a “last chance” to resolve the conflict before the start of summer festivals and other major tourist draws such as the Montreal Grand Prix. After four days of negotiations in Quebec City, Courchesne called off the talks on Thursday. No new meeting has been set. —AFP

Arizona authorities find 5 bodies in burned vehicle ARIZONA: Five bodies burned beyond recognition have been found inside the shell of a charred sport utility vehicle in the Arizona desert, and Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu said Saturday the case is likely connected to drug cartel violence. Only 70 miles from the US -Mexico border, Pinal County is concerned about the extent of the violence, Babeu said. “This is pretty significant,” he said of the latest homicide investigation. “Given all these indicators, you don’t have to be a homicide detective to add up all this information.”

Pinal County deputies were involved in more than 350 high-speed pursuits last year, and Babeu said most of those involved cartel members. There have been shootings, the bodies of murder victims have been left in the desert and just this week, several loads of drugs were confiscated, he said. “This happens far too often and usually our involvement is just a small percentage of what really goes on,” the sheriff said. “Is it concerning? Is it troubling? Yes it is.”

The latest case started around 4:30 a.m. in the Vekol Valley area when a white Ford Expedition was spotted by a Border Patrol agent. The vehicle disappeared despite an effort by federal and local authorities to track it down. Why the vehicle drew attention is unclear. At daybreak, an agent spotted tracks leading from Interstate 8 into the desert. The vehicle that left the tracks had apparently launched off the highway, going airborne for a short distance before landing in the desert. The tracks continued on for a couple of miles.

Agents could see the smoldering vehicle from a distance through binoculars. They approached with extinguishers. Inside, they found the bodies - one in the rear passenger seat and four lying in the back cargo compartment. The front seats were empty, Babeu said. The bodies were so badly burned that investigators could not immediately determine their gender or ethnicity. — AP

MONDAY, JUNE 4, 2012

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

Putin visits China to tighten key alliance MOSCOW: President Vladimir Putin visits China tomorrow on the first Asia trip of his new Kremlin mandate aiming to tighten an increasingly close alliance that is key for Russia’s diplomatic and economic strategy. Putin, who began a third term as president less than a month ago, has already made a lightning trip to Germany and France but will symbolically be visiting Beijing before the United States.

The sometimes troubled MoscowBeijing relationship has warmed during Putin’s 12 years of domination over Russia and the two governments are notably in lockstep in opposing outside intervention to solve the Syrian crisis.

“One can understand where the vector of Russian policy is turned” with the Beijing visit, commented Georgy Kunadze, a China expert at the Russian Academy of Sciences and a former diplomat.

Putin is likely to coordinate positions with President Hu Jintao on the vio-

lence in Syria and the Iranian nuclear crisis, with the West keenly aware both UN Security Council permanent members are prepared to wield their vetoes.

With Moscow set to host a third round of delicate talks on the Iranian standoff on June 18 and 19, Putin will also hold a closely-watched meeting in Beijing with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who will be attend a regional summit.

But economic issues are also set to figure prominently on the three-day trip, particularly the energy sector, as Russia searches for new markets while China seeks cheap natural resources.

Russian energy giant Gazprom over the last week held talks in China in an apparent bid to overcome continued disagreements over gas prices in a landmark contract that has been in its final stages since last summer.

The long-term deal envisages that Russia is to annually supply nearly 70 billion cubic metres of natural gas to

China over the next 30 years, under a framework agreement signed in late 2009. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich said this week that the sides have still not reached an agreement on price, and it is unlikely that a final deal will be signed during Putin’s visit. Meanwhile, Russian media reported this week that the two countries are also preparing to launch a joint aerospace project to develop a longrange passenger plane based on Russian know-how and Chinese investment that would challenge giants Airbus and Boeing.

The presidency of Dmitry Medvedev-who held the Kremlin from 2008 to May of this year while Putin served as prime minister-was marked by optimism about Russia’s strengthening relations with the United States. But Putin led observers to believe his foreign policy will be rooted elsewhere when he surprisingly cancelled a trip to the United States last month that was

to have been the first foreign visit of his new term. On Wednesday, Putin will participate in a Beijing summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, a security body that includes Russia’s former Soviet partners in Central Asia and a handful of observer states, including Iran. Putin’s attendance at the SCO summit-seen as a fledgling eastern counterpart to NATO-is also symbolic given that he was absent from the NATO summit in Chicago amid a row with the United States over missile defence. The Russian leader’s meeting with Ahmadinejad is expected to come on the sidelines of the SCO meeting, with his foreign policy aide saying the talks would let “Putin personally feel the tension around the Iranian issue and how it is perceived in Tehran.”

Putin is a frequent guest of Chinese leaders, last visiting Beijing as recently as October in his capacity as prime minister. It was his only foreign trip after he announced in September his

plan to run for president. A month after his visit, he was awarded China’s version of the Nobel prize for “keeping world peace”. Relations between the territorial giants, who share a border of 4,000 kilometres (2,500 miles), have improved since Putin first entered the Kremlin in 2000, especially after outstanding border issues were regulated in 2005.

While Russia’s economy pales in comparison with China’s growing economic might, Putin indicated in his preelection foreign policy manifesto that Moscow does not view its neighbour to the east as a threat. “Growth of China’s economy is not a threat,” he wrote, instead seeking “Chinese potential in developing Siberia and the Far East,” regions with a wealth of energy resources that are battling a population drain. Putin will be arriving in China from ex-Soviet Uzbekistan, where he is due today to meet President Islam Karimov. —AFP

Police in France hunt ‘Canadian Psycho’ in Paris Investigators search bars, hotels

ACCRA: People gather at the scene where a cargo plane lies on the ground after overshooting the runway and collided with a vehicle at the airport in Accra yesterday. —AFP

Victims’ families grieve after plane slams into bus in Ghana ACCRA: Grieving family members gathered at a morgue in Ghana’s capital Accra yesterday after a cargo plane overshot an airport runway and crashed into a passenger bus, killing at least 10 people. The four crew members from the Boeing 727 Allied Air cargo plane survived Saturday night’s accident, and Ghanaian President John Atta Mills visited at least two of them at the clinic where they were being treated. The two men were in hospital beds as the president arrived, one with visible bruises on his arm and face.”I pray that all of you have survived and wish you speedy recovery,” Mills said, but did not speak directly to reporters.

At a military hospital morgue where the bodies of victims had been taken, family members gathered to identify remains and spoke of their grief. “My life has been destroyed,” a teary-eyed Zenab Ayesha, the wife of one of the victims, told AFP. “He was my husband, and the breadwinner of the family is gone.” She said she heard from a friend that her husband was among the dead. “I was waiting for him to come back from work and he did not show up,” Ayesha said.

Fred Aneba, who was at the morgue to identify his 27-year-old brother, called his death “a disaster for my family.” “How will I communicate the death of my brother to our 80-year-old mother? I have lost my only brother,” he said. The government meanwhile ordered the creation of a committee to investigate the crash, which saw the cargo plane barrel into a minibus in an area near the airport in the capital. The flight operated by Allied Air, a Nigerian-based firm, had left the Nigerian economic capital Lagos

before attempting to land in Accra. The crash left the minibus destroyed and the plane badly damaged, though its body remained largely intact, allowing the crew members to escape.

Ghanaian police yesterday sought to control hundreds of residents converging on the site of the crash to gape at the badly damaged bus as well as the plane’s wing and tail, which had broken off from the body. Sirens blared as the police tried to contain the chaos. “I have never seen anything like this in my life before,” John Asiedu, one of the onlookers, told AFP. Ghana’s Vice President John Dramani Mahama told reporters at the airport in the hours after the crash that a thorough investigation would be carried out.

“No early conclusions should be drawn,” he said before heading toward the scene of the accident. “We should allow investigations to arrive at the actual cause of the accident. But I can assure Ghanaians that the situation is under control.” A person who answered at a number listed for Allied Air in the Nigerian oil hub of Port Harcourt identified the company as Nigerian-owned but said only officials at the Lagos office could comment on the crash.

Repeated calls to the company’s other listed numbers have gone unanswered.

Tunji Oketunbi of Nigeria’s Accident Investigations Bureau described Allied Air as a small Nigerian cargo airline but declined to comment on the crash.

Ghana’s airport operator, Ghana Airports Company Limited, said operations had returned to normal after the crash and that flights were continuing as scheduled. — AFP

Spain king’s first trip after elephant hunt mishap MADRID: Spain’s king will fly to South America yesterday for his first major trip since falling and breaking a hip on an elephant hunt seven weeks ago. King Juan Carlos will arrive in Brazil and then go to Chile today. He will be accompanied by several business leaders increase trade ties with Spain and reinforce commercial links with Latin America. Spain often relies on the king as a high profile representative overseas, and the 74-yearold monarch will no doubt be eager to recover some of the respect he lost when it became known he had been on an elephant hunting safari as his country struggled with a deep financial crisis and crushing unemployment.

Many Spaniards were dumbfounded when news broke that the king had made a secret journey to hunt elephants in Botswana even though he is honorary president of the Spanish branch of the World Wildlife Fund. Such an opulent indulgence at a time when everyday Spaniards were braving a 24 percent unemployment rate and a shrinking economy, and fears the country could be the next after Greece, Ireland and Portugal to need a bailout caused stinging criticism of the monarch.

The Spanish public only learned of the safari when the king had to fly back to receive emergency medical attention for

his broken hip. Faced with the incredulity that was reflected in the media, Juan Carlos made an unprecedented act of royal contrition: he apologized. “I am very sorry. I made a mistake. It won’t happen again,” he said as he left hospital looking sheepish and trying to placate a rare wave of outrage against him. It was a poignant moment because the royal family had been under intense media scrutiny, for all the wrong reasons, and the embarrassment visible in the king’s face only added to its woes.

The king’s son-in-law, Inaki Urdangarin, is a suspect in a corruption case, accused of having used his position to embezzle several million euros in public contracts through a supposedly notfor-profit foundation he set up. Then, over Easter, the king’s 13-year-old grandson Felipe Juan Froilan shot himself in the foot with a shotgun, even though by law in Spain you must be 14 to handle a gun. This four-day trip to Latin America marks the king’s return to normal duty and follows his first public appearance after surgery as head of state when he reviewed troops at Spain’s annual armed forces day Saturday. “See if you could have withstood it,” he joked with the media about standing to attention for 45 minutes after recovering from complex hip replacement surgery. —AP

PARIS: French police are hunting the former gay porn star dubbed the Canadian Psycho, saying yesterday they are “certain” he has been or still is in Paris. “Investigators are certain” that Luka Rocco Magnotta “is or was in the Paris region and particularly in Paris since at least Friday,” a police source said, citing witnesses and material evidence, adding that they had no way of knowing whether the suspect was still in the French capital.

Magnotta, 29, is suspected of filming himself as he dismembered his boyfriend and mailing the body parts. French police have been carrying out “targeted searches” for Magnotta after Canadian investigators said the suspect boarded a France-bound plane on May 26 in Montreal. They have searched a bar and two hotels in a well-to-do northwestern district of the French capital, the police source said. A witness said he saw police on Friday visit the bar Le Petit Batignolles where they viewed security camera footage, showed a photo of the suspect to the manager and left with empty bottles of Coke. On Saturday

the manager denied any visit by police.

The daily Le Parisien reported yesterday that investigators had questioned the manager of a bar in the northern area of Batignolles who said Magnotta had a Coke there late Wednesday. “He was very nervous (and) he drank the Coke in one go. A man with an impressive physique came into the bar and started talking to him. They knew each other,” the manager said, adding that they left together. The daily also cited witness accounts that were “considered reliable” that the suspect was seen in two northern Paris suburbs.

Investigators have discounted many other alleged sightings of Magnotta. Canadian media reported that Magnotta has been to Paris before, publishing photos showing him posing in front of the Eiffel Tower and the Moulin Rouge.

The suspect has been dubbed Canadian Psycho by the press because a video circulating online and believed to be linked to him shows a man stab another man with an ice pick and dismember him while a song from

the film “American Psycho” plays in the background. Interpol on Thursday issued a Red Notice wanted-persons alert for Magnotta, also known as Eric Clinton Newman and Vladimir Romanov, to its 190 member countries after a video of the grisly killing surfaced online. The killing came to light when Canadian police said Tuesday that a human foot had been sent to the headquarters of Canada’s ruling Conservative Party.

A hand was later found in the mail at an Ottawa post office, and a torso was discovered in Montreal. Canadian police believe the remains belong to a man who was dating Magnotta-and that Magnotta is to blame. The victim, a student identified as Lin Jun, had been “in a relationship” with the porn star, according to Montreal police commander Ian Lafreniere. Lafreniere said Magnotta wears wigs and sometimes disguises himself as a woman. “We believe he could be anywhere at this point,” Lafreniere added, noting that Magnotta may have returned to Canada under another identity. — AFP

Suicide bomber kills 15 in Nigeria church YELWA: A suicide bomber drove a car full of explosives into a church in northern Nigeria yesterday, killing 15 people in the latest deadly attack on Christian worshippers, witnesses said. Security forces at a road block nearby said the bomber forced his car through the checkpoint and drove into the church in Yelwa, on the outskirts of the city of Bauchi. A Reuters reporter at the scene counted 12 bodies being pulled from the building. “I had just left after the morning service and was out of the church when I heard a loud explosion. I rushed back and there were dozens of people lying in pools of blood,” said Aliku Jon, a mechanic, adding that at least six people died instantly. “Many were injured including two police officers.”

It was not clear who was responsible for the attack, although churches have been targeted this year by militant Islamist group Boko Haram - which has increasingly used suicide bombers. “I was just in the area when I heard a huge blast. The sound was so loud, my ears are still ringing,” said Samuel Etudu, who was outside the church when the explosion happened. Boko Haram, which says it is fighting to reinstate an ancient Islamic caliphate in northern Nigeria that would impose stricter sharia law, has been blamed for hundreds of killings in bomb or gun attacks over the past two years.

It has become the number one security threat in Nigeria, Africa’s top oil producer, and has linked up with other Islamist groups in the region such as AlQaeda’s North African wing. However its sphere of influence is far from oil-producing facilities in the south of the country. The sect had been less active in recent weeks, as a security crackdown in the north led to the deaths and arrests of several commanders.

Gunmen killed at least 15 people and wounded many more on April 29 in an attack on a university theatre being used by Christian worshippers in Kano, northern Nigeria’s biggest city.

Such attacks on Christians seem aimed at igniting sectarian strife in a country of 160 million split about evenly between Muslims and Christians. The US Justice Department is pressing the US State Department to label Boko Haram a “foreign terrorist organization”, a move the Nigerian government does not support because it thinks it would do little to resolve the conflict. Underscoring the growing threat Islamists pose to Western interests, a German man held hostage in northern Nigeria by a group linked to Al-Qaeda was killed on Thursday during a raid by Nigerian forces. —Agencies

BAUCHI: People gather around a car used by a suicide bomber following an explosion in church compound in Bauchi, Nigeria yesterday. —AP

BRESSO: Pope Benedict XVI waves to the crowd, in Bresso, near Milan, Italy yesterday. The pope greeted the faithful in Bresso after his arrival Friday afternoon for the seventh World Encounter of Families, a welcome pastoral respite from an embarrassing and damaging leaks scandal at the Vatican that has engulfed the pontiff’s personal butler. —AP

Vatileaks latest in long line of pope scandals ROME: Power-hungry cardinals, spies and a suspicious butler: “Vatileaks” is just the latest scandal to grip an institution dogged down the centuries by damning tales of greed, corruption and betrayal. From clerical sex abuse scandals to accusations of money-laundering and ties with the mafia over the years, critics do not have to indulge in Dan Brown “Da Vinci Code” theories to accuse the Church of slipping from its moral code.

While rumors of wild sex parties may nowadays be more easily associated with former Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi, the tiny Vatican state in the heart of Rome was once a hotbed of lust and depravity. 10th century pope John XII, appointed aged just 18, is said to have indulged his teenage sex drive by throwing exotic orgies, sparking outraged religious observers to describe the Lateran palace, the papal home, as a whore house.

Benedict IX, accused by his enemies of being a rapist and a murderous “demon from hell,” reportedly whiled away his time in homosexual tr ysts before selling his papacy, trying to take it back again by force and being unceremoniously excommunicated. Alexander VI, from the immensely powerful and nepotistic Borgia family, threw a famous banquet in Rome in 1501 at which 50 courtesans and cardinals reportedly won prizes for crawling around naked to pick up scattered chestnuts.

Some popes were elected as Italy’s elite jostled for power, while others glee-

fully used the papacy for personal-and sometime bizarre-vendettas. Ninth century Pope Stephen VI has gone down in history for digging up his predecessor, propping his corpse up on a throne and putting him on trial for becoming pope illegally-before finding him guilty and tossing him into the Tiber.

Tolerance for bad behavior did not extend to Pope Joan, who legend has it disguised herself as a man in the Middle Ages but was caught out when she gave birth, leading to a now-defunct tradition of checking under future popes’ robes.

While tales of prostitutes and poisoned chalices have subsided over the last few centuries, the Church has been rocked instead in recent years by a clerical abuse scandal which has revealed cases of paedophilia in parishes worldwide.

Thousands of victims have come forward to confront their abusers and accuse the Church of engaging in a systematic cover-up by moving suspected priests on to other parishes and endangering other children rather than reporting them. The Holy See has also been hit hard by accusations of mafia ties, fraud and money-laundering within the Vatican bank, known as the Institute for Religious Works (IOR).

In 1982 the IOR was caught up in one of Italy ’s biggest fraud cases when Milan’s Banco Ambrosiano-of which it was the main shareholder-collapsed.

Banco Ambrosiano’s chairman Roberto Calvi, known as “God’s Banker” because of his ties with the Vatican, was found hanging from a London bridge. —AFP

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MONDAY, JUNE 4, 2012

international

Afghanistan: Aid workers saved after death threat KABUL: NATO and Afghan forces launched a daring operation to rescue two female foreign aid workers and their two Afghan colleagues after learning the Taliban planned to kill one of the hostages, an intelligence official said yesterday. The troops carried out the successful mission before dawn Saturday, swooping in on helicopters to pluck the aid workers from a cave in a mountainous area of northern Badakhshan province. They killed the eight militants holding them captive as well, said Afghan intelligence

spokesman Shafiqullah Tahiri.

The militants hoped killing one of the hostages would pressure negotiators to accept their demands of a $1 million ransom and the release of five of their colleagues imprisoned in Kabul, said Tahiri. The insurgents initially asked for at least $4 million before reducing their demand, he said. Helen Johnston, 28, from Britain, and Moragwa Oirere, 26, from Kenya, and their two Afghan colleagues were kidnapped on May 22 while traveling on horseback in Badakhshan. The four

work for Medair, a humanitarian nongovernmental organization based near Lausanne, Switzerland.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said Saturday that he approved the operation after becoming increasingly concerned about the safety of the hostages. He said militants should know that Britain does not pay ransoms or trade prisoners, and anyone who kidnaps British citizens “can expect a swift and brutal end.” Troops were able to launch the rescue operation after receiving pre-

cise information from Afghan intelligence agents about the hostages’ location in Shahri Buzurg district, said Tahiri. The kidnappers were planning to move the hostages to another remote, mountainous location in neighboring Tajikistan, he said.

The militants were armed with heavy machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and AK-47 assault rifles, but were overwhelmed by British troops operating alongside other NATO and Afghan forces. The hostages were safely rescued, and none of the NATO or

Afghan forces were harmed, said the coalition. Past rescue attempts in Afghanistan have not always gone so well. In 2009, Sultan Munadi, an Afghan translator kidnapped alongside New York Times reporter Stephen Farrell, was killed in a hail of bullets during a rescue attempt by British commandos.

In 2010, the US Navy’s SEAL Team 6 tried to rescue Linda Norgrove, a Scottish aid worker, from her Taliban captors in Afghanistan. She was killed by a grenade thrown in haste by one of the American commandos. — AP

Panetta wants more US access to Vietnam harbor Panetta avoids talking about China CAM RANH BAY: From the flight deck of the USNS Richard E. Byrd, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta could look out across Vietnam’s Cam Ranh Bay towards the South China Sea. A day after laying out details of the Pentagon’s new focus on the Asia-Pacific region, Panetta used a visit to Vietnam to restate the United States’ intent to help allies in the region develop and enforce maritime rights in the sea, a waterway largely claimed by China. And he reflected on the significance of the harbor, which represents both a painful past for the American military, and a challenging but hopeful future.

“The new defense strategy that we have put in place for the United States represents a number of key elements that will be tested in the Asia-Pacific region,” Panetta told reporters gathered yesterday under a blazing sun on

is likely to irritate Chinese leaders who are unhappy with any US buildup in the region and view it as a possible threat. Panetta, in remarks Saturday to a defense conference in Singapore, rejected such claims. But US officials are clearly wary of China’s increased military buildup and expanding trade relations with other countries in the region.

“Access for United States naval ships into this facility is a key component of this relationship (with Vietnam) and we see a tremendous potential here for the future,” he said.

This is Panetta’s first visit to Vietnam, and his stop at the harbor made him the most senior US official to go to Cam Ranh Bay since the Vietnam War ended. Right now US warships do not go into the harbor, but other Navy ships, like the Byrd do. The Byrd is a cargo ship operated by the Navy ’s Military Sealift

CAM RANH BAY: US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta (R) speaks to USNS Richard E. Byrd Chief Mate Fred Cullen (L) while on a water taxi out to the ship docked at Vietnam’s Cam Ranh Bay on June 3, 2012.—AFP the deck of the cargo vessel. He said the US would “work with our partners like Vietnam to be able to use harbors like this as we move our ships from our ports on the West Coast towards our stations here in the Pacific.”

Panetta never mentioned China as he spoke to crew members on the Byrd and later to reporters. But with the South China Sea as a backdrop, he made it clear that the US will maintain a strong presence in the region and wants to help allies protect themselves and their maritime rights. His visit here, however,

Command and it has a largely civilian crew. It is used to move military supplies to US forces around the world. Navy warships go to other Vietnam ports, such as Danang.

While Panetta suggested the US may want to send more ships to Cam Ranh Bay in the future, he and other defense officials did not detail what requests he may make in meetings with Vietnamese leaders. During the Vietnam War the strategic deep water port was used as a base by the US. Yesterday, it served more as a symbol of America’s growing

News

in brief

Typhoon leaves 2 dead, 5 missing in Philippines MANILA: Disaster-response officials say the first typhoon to hit the Philippines this year has left two people dead, five missing and 16 others injured. Office of Civil Defense administrator Benito Ramos and the weather bureau say Typhoon Mawar was blowing away off the mountainous northern Philippines yesterday toward southern Japan with sustained winds of 120 kilometers (75 miles) per hour and gusts of up to 150 kph (93 mph). Ramos says two children drowned in a swollen river in western Palawan province, which was not directly hit by the typhoon but was lashed by heavy rains. He says five men, mostly fishermen, are missing and 16 people were injured in stormy weather. About 20 storms batter the country each year.

Japan arrests cult member TOKYO: One of the two remaining fugitive members of the doomsday cult behind the 1995 nerve gas attack on Tokyo subways was arrested yesterday, Japanese media reports said. Former senior Aum Shinrikyo cult member Naoko Kikuchi, 40, had been spotted in Sagamihara city, 30 kilometers (20 miles) southwest of Tokyo, and acknowledged who she was when approached by police, according to NHK TV and other media reports, citing investigative sources. She was wanted on charges of murder in the 1995 attack. Police declined to confirm the reports. Cult members, who had amassed an arsenal of chemical, biological and conventional weapons in anticipation of an apocalyptic showdown with the government, released the nerve gas sarin in Tokyo’s subways, killing 13 people and injuring more than 6,000. Nearly 200 members of the cult have been convicted in the gas attack and dozens of other crimes. Cult guru Shoko Asahara is still on death row. Makoto Hirata, suspected of involvement in a 1995 cult-related kidnapping-murder, surrendered to police on New Year’s Eve, stunning Japan. Ten days later, Akemi Saito, also a member of Aum Shinrikyo, who had lived with Hirata, gave herself up.

military relationship with Vietnam, underscoring Washington’s desire to build partnerships in the region in part to counter China’s escalating dominance.

And for Panetta, who was in the military during the Vietnam era but did not serve in country, it was an emotional opportunity. “For me personally this is a very moving moment,” he said, noting that on Memorial Day he was at the Vietnam memorial in Washington commemorating the 50th anniversary of the war.

“Today I stand on a US ship here in Cam Ranh Bayh Bay to recognize the 17th anniversary of the normalization of relations between the United States and Vietnam,” he said. The relationship between the two nations has come a long way, he said, “We have a complicated relationship but we’re not bound by that history.” The new US strategy for the AsiaPacific includes a broad plan to help countries learn to better defend themselves, and for that to happen “it is very important that we be able to protect key maritime rights for all nations in the South China Sea and elsewhere,” Panetta said from the deck of the ship.

China claims almost the entire South China Sea as its own, setting up conflicts with other nations in the region, including Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore and others who also have territorial claims there. Panetta flew to Vietnam from a major defense conference in Singapore, where he met with leaders from allies all across the region. There he issued a strong call for Asian nations to set up a code of conduct, including rules governing maritime rights and navigation in the South China Sea, and then develop a forum where disputes can be settled.

At the same time he detailed plans to boost US military presence in the region, including a modest increase in ships and more troops that would mainly rotate in and out. Defense officials said that by 2020 the US Navy would add about eight ships to the AsiaPacific region, and overall would have about 60 percent of the fleet assigned there.

Tensions between the US and China reverberate across the region, and are often focused on America’s support of the island of Taiwan, which China considers its own. Another key area of dispute is the South China Sea, which China claims almost entirely as its own. But Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei and the Philippines also have territorial claims there. In addition, more recently the US has been vocal in blaming China for cyberattacks that emanate from the country and steal critical data from US government agencies and private American companies. —AP

Hun Sen’s party poised to win Cambodia elections parties were vying for seats, but none has the means to compete with Hun Sen’s party, said Koul Panha, executive director of election monitoring group Comfrel. “The ruling party has used state property and civil servants to help campaign for the sake of its own party interests,” he said, adding that there have also been widespread reports of vote buying and intimidation to secure support.

King Norodom Sihamoni issued a statement ahead of the election urging voters not to bow to election-related intimidation. “I publicly call on compatriots, brothers and sisters, children, nieces and nephews not to fear oppression, intimidation or threats from any individual or political party,” the constitutional monarch said in a statement issued in March.

The country’s 9.2 million voters are eligible to choose councils to administer Cambodia’s 1,633 communes and urban sub-districts known as sangkats. In the 2007 commune elections, the Cambodian People’s Party won 1,592 commune chief out of 1,633 communes. It was followed by the main PHNOM PENH: Cambodian Prince Norodom opposition Sam Rainsy Ranariddh, head of his royalist Norodom Ranariddh Party with 28 communes Party, casts his ballot in local elections at Wat Than and royalist Funcinpec pagoda’s polling station in Phnom Penh, Cambodia Party, which won two communes. —AP yesterday.—AP PHNOM PENH: Prime Minister Hun Sen’s ruling par ty was expected to win Cambodia’s local elections yesterday in a vote that monitors say is tainted by vote buying and other irregularities. The elections for local governing councils across the country are viewed as the key indicator of public opinion ahead of general elections in 2013. Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party has ruled Cambodia for nearly three decades. It has strong rural support and overwhelmingly won both previous local elections in 2002 and 2007.

Preliminary results from yesterday’s vote were expected by today. Ten political

NEW DELHI: Indian yoga guru Baba Ramdev (2L) along with Anti-corruption activist Anna Hazare (2R) sit during their hunger strike at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi yesterday. —AFP

Anti-graft activists press Indian govt for action NEW DELHI: Two Indian anti-corruption campaigners drew thousands of cheering supporters to a protest yesterday to press the government to act against corruption and bring back hundreds of billions of dollars stashed overseas. Yoga celebrity Baba Ramdev, swaddled in his trademark saffron robes, said he and social activist Anna Hazare would hold more protests through August “to bring back black money stashed abroad.” The subjects of corruption and so-called black money have riled a public that is reeling from rapid inflation, slowing growth and widespread malnutrition affecting hundreds of millions of citizens. The protests, along with a string of high-profile scandals, have deeply embarrassed the government and sullied Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s squeakyclean image as an honest technocrat responsible for sparking India’s growth by liberalizing the economy in the 1990s. Instead, Singh has faced ever-louder opposition to the theory that capital gains by the country’s richest will trickle down to benefit all.

“All we need is a corruption-free India,” Ramdev told thousands of cheering supporters in Delhi park near Parliament, where he and Hazare also held a symbolic daylong fast.

Some supporters waved Indian flags, while others donned the same cotton white cap Hazare always wears. Ramdev also challenged the prime minister to review his team of ministers, saying “your personal honesty is not enough. You have to be politically honest, too. You have to keep your Cabinet honest.”

The parliamentary affairs minister criticized the attacks on the “most revered” prime minister’s office, and cautioned the activists against undermining anti-graft agencies set up “by our freedom-fighting forefathers.”

“They have full freedom to voice concern against corruption,” Harish Rawat said, according to Press Trust of India. “If they want to destroy the existing institutions, then the country will not accept it.” Ramdev and Hazare, who separately held several hunger strikes last year, have managed to focus national attention - and ire - against official corruption so entrenched that bribes are routine for most government services, from registering a marriage to getting a driver’s license or securing a child’s place in school.

Their demand for legislation to crack

down on government corruption led to a bill being debated now in Parliament. In recent weeks, they have called for an investigation into Singh and other officials over alleged revenue losses worth billions of dollars through the underpricing of coal assets.

Federal investigators said Friday that they were looking into the claims. But what the government can do to retrieve cash stashed abroad is unclear. There are no firm figures for how much has been sent overseas by those seeking to avoid taxes or hide ill-gotten gains, but estimates range into hundreds of billions of dollars over six decades.

The Washington-based Global Financial Integrity institute says $104 billion had been stashed overseas as of December, while another study by a former International Monetary Fund economist put the number at around $213 billion - worth at least $462 billion today based on estimates for conservative investment returns. That 2010 report, by economist Dev Kar, also noted the overseas flows increased after India opened its markets, with an average of $16 billion sent abroad each year from 2002-2006.

A government report last month, however, gave no total estimates, saying Swiss banks provide the only information on Indians holding cash abroad, with less than $2 billion in Swiss accounts in 2010.

Opposition lawmakers accused the government of hiding more in the report than it revealed. Meanwhile, the government has faced a slew of corruption allegations from the murky sale of cell-phone licenses to the hosting of the 2010 Commonwealth Games.

In March, it was hit by a leaked auditor’s report suggesting up to $210 billion in potential revenues were lost as coal assets were sold cheaply and without a competitive bidding process.

India’s Central Bureau of Investigation has opened a preliminary investigation, but estimated the potential losses over 2006-2009 at below $20 billion. Singh has said he will resign if there is any truth to the claims. Meanwhile, some of Hazare’s aides had objected to teaming up with Ramdev for the protests, as the yoga celebrity himself faces corruption charges. The black-bearded Ramdev, who advocates the death penalty for corrupt officials, insists he is innocent. —AP

Pakistan: US drone kills 10 suspected militants ISLAMABAD: An American drone strike in the frontier tribal areas of Pakistan killed 10 suspected militants yesterday, Pakistani officials said. It was sixth such strike in two weeks as the US pushes ahead with its drone campaign in the face of Pakistani demands to stop. The continued attacks emphasize the importance the US government puts on the drone campaign, which it considers to be a vital tool in the war against Al-Qaeda and the Taleban. Two Pakistani intelligence officials say four missiles were fired at targets in the village of Mana Raghzai in South Waziristan near the border with Afghanistan yesterday morning.

At the time of the attack, suspected militants were gathered to offer condolences to the brother of a militant commander killed during another American unmanned drone attack on Saturday. The brother was one of those who died in the yesterday morning strike. The Pakistani officials said two of the dead were foreigners, and the rest were Pakistani. The American drone campaign has been a source of deep frustration and tension between the US and Pakistan.

Under President Barack Obama, the US stepped up its drone campaign in the border areas as a way to combat Al-Qaeda and Taleban fighters who were using Pakistan as a base for

attacks against American and NATO forces in Afghanistan. However, the number of drone attacks has eased in recent years. Secretly, many Pakistani military commanders are believed to support the drone campaign. But among the Pakistani public, where the US is viewed with mistrust, the drone strikes are considered an affront to the nation’s sovereignty.

The Pakistani government and parliament have repeatedly asked the US to stop the drone strikes. The ongoing attacks are also complicating efforts for the US and Pakistan to come to an agreement over reopening the supply routes to NATO and American forces in Afghanistan. American airstrikes inadvertently killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in November, prompting Islamabad to block US and NATO supply lines running throught its territory.

Pakistan has demanded an apology over the raid and an end to drone strikes as a precursor to reopening the supply lines. But the US has shown no intention of ending the attacks.

Also yesterday, gunmen killed four Shiite minority Muslims, a police officer and a bystander in a busy market of southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta, said police officer Abdul Wahid. He said police were investigating who could be behind the attack, but that it had a sectarian motive. —AP

MONDAY, JUNE 4, 2012

NEWS Assad likens bloody crackdown to surgery Continued from Page 1 condemnation since Syrian troops unleashed a relentless crackdown on protesters last year, a massacre last week in the central region of Houla has brought fresh urgency to solving the crisis.

The opposition and the government have exchanged accusations over the Houla killings, each blaming the other for the house -tohouse killings of more than 100 people, many of them small children. UN investigators have said there are strong suspicions that proregime gunmen are responsible for at least some of the killings. Assad denied his forces had anything to do with Houla. “Not even monsters would carry out (the crimes) that we have seen, especially the Houla massacre. ... There are no Arabic or even human words to describe it,” he said in his first public comments about the mass killing.

Assad did acknowledge the toll the crisis has taken on the country, suggesting all the blood that has been spilled is necessary to root out the forces working to drive him from power. “Today we are defending a cause and a country,” he said.

“We do not do this because we like blood. A battle has been forced on us, and the result is this bloodshed that we are seeing.”

Members of the Syrian opposition brushed off his comments as meaningless. “It is a desperate and silly speech that does not merit a response,” said Adib Shishakly, a Saudi-based member of Syria’s main opposition group, the Syrian National Council. “He didn’t offer anything to the Syrian people during the 70 minutes he spoke.”

Shishakly, the grandson of a former president of Syria, described Assad’s statements on the Houla massacre as “lies to justify the killings because

of the immense international pressure on his regime”.

US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton yesterday pressed Russia to join international efforts for a political transition in Syria that would see Assad driven from power, and suggested greater flexibility could come from a previous recalcitrant Moscow. America’s top diplomat told reporters in Sweden that she made clear in a telephone conversation this weekend with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov that Moscow must do its part to help Syria turn the page after four decades under the Assad family control. “My message to the foreign minister was very simple and straightforward,” Clinton said. “We all have to intensify our efforts to achieve a political transition and Russia has to be at the table helping that to occur.”

Although Assad’s words reflected many of the same general points of his previous speeches - blaming terrorists and extremists, vowing to protect national security - his comments on Houla were widely anticipated. “If we don’t feel the pain that squeezes our hearts, as I felt it, for the cruel scenes - especially the children - then we are not human beings,” Assad said.

Assad, 46, who inherited power from his father in 2000, is still firmly in control after more than a year of warfare that has torn at the country’s fabric and threatened to undermine stability in the Middle East. A ceasefire plan brokered by international envoy Kofi Annan is violated by both sides ever y day, but Western leaders continue to pin their hopes on diplomatic pressure, with the US and others unwilling to get deeply involved in another Arab nation in turmoil - particularly one as unpredictable as Syria.

The rebel Free Syrian Army is

determined to bring down the regime by force of arms, targeting military checkpoints and other government sites. A UN observer team with nearly 300 members has done little to quell the bloodshed. AlQaeda-style suicide bombings have become increasingly common in Syria, and Western officials say there is little doubt that Islamist extremists, some associated with the terror network, have made inroads in Syria as instability has spread.

Fears also have risen that the violence could spread and provoke a regional conflagration. Syria’s regional ties make its conflict among the most explosive of the Arab Spring. The regime has alliances with power ful forces including Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Shiite powerhouse Iran. Already, clashes have broken out between pro- and anti-Syrian groups in northern Lebanon, with at least eight people killed late Friday and early Saturday, Lebanese security officials said.

In yesterday’s speech, Assad said his opponents have ignored his moves toward reform, including a referendum on a new constitution and recent parliamentary elections.

He suggested this meant that the call for democracy was not the driving force of the revolt. “We will not be lenient. We will be forgiving only for those who renounce terrorism,” he said. Assad has acknowledged there are genuine calls for reform, although the opposition says he has offered only cosmetic changes that do little to change a culture where any whisper of dissent could lead to arrest and torture. The president said the doors of Damascus were open for dialogue with the opposition - a key component of Annan’s peace plan - as long as the parties have no foreign agendas or involvement with terrorism. — AP

MP Adasani files to grill social affairs..

Continued from Page 1 Assembly, which also can override the government’s rejection by re-passing the same laws with a two-thirds majority. Opposition MP Musallam Al-Barrak said that the government should not reject the two laws because all the Cabinet ministers who were present during the voting on the two bills voted for the laws.

Regarding the grillings against Rujaib, Adasani said he will provide a large number of documents to prove the allegations against the minister. Both Adasani and Saifi said the two grillings against Rujaib were different and thus they will refuse any attempt to merge them and have one debate. The two grillings are expected to be debated on June 19. They will be discussed separately with Saifi’s grilling coming first.

In the grilling request, Adasani alleges financial, administrative and medical violations that took place at the social affairs ministry’s orphanage. He accused officials at the home of teaching the orphans “immoral sexual behaviours” and that the children were allowed to watch pornographic films. He cited a number of incidents to prove his point. The grilling alleges that the minister is responsible for the presence of more than 500,000 expatriate workers who are not needed by the market and

who have been recruited on paper or by illegal companies. It claims that there are 28,000 such illegal companies that facilitate the entry of expat workers against large sums of money, and also insists that the minister has done nothing to prevent such harmful violations.

The grilling alleges that a large number of violations have taken place in the sports sector which falls under the ministry of social affairs and labour and that the minister has failed to take appropriate actions. It alleges that Kuwait has been banned from raising its flag at the Olympic Games and the minister has failed to take any measure to redeem the country. The grilling says that a large number of violations have taken place at the country’s main stadium in Ardiya - the Jaber Stadium - and so far the ministry has not taken the necessary actions against those involved in the violations.

Adasani said in the grilling that the minister has failed to implement a number of court verdicts, which is a serious violation under the Kuwaiti law, besides failing to strictly apply the national manpower support law. The grilling holds the minister responsible for a number of violations in the cooperative societies sector which include selling commodities at a very high price, thus contributing to the price hike in the country, and selling commodities unfit for human consumption.

TEHRAN: Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei waves to the crowd before delivering a speech during the 23rd anniversary of the death of the late founder of the Islamic Republic Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini at his mausoleum in a suburb of Tehran yesterday. — AFP

Khamenei warns Israel of ‘thunderous’ blow TEHRAN: Any attack by Israel on Iran will blow back on the Jewish state “like thunder”, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said yesterday. Khamenei also said that the international community’s suspicion that Iran was seeking nuclear weapons is based on a “lie” and he insisted that sanctions imposed on his country were ineffective and only strengthened its resolve. His speech, broadcast on state television to mark the 1989 death of his predecessor and founder of the Islamic republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, contained no sign Iran was prepared to make any concessions on its disputed nuclear program.

Instead, it was infused with defiance and Khamenei’s customary contempt for Iran’s arch-foes Israel and the United States. If the Israelis “make any misstep or wrong action, it will fall on their heads like thunder”, Khamenei said. The Jewish state, he added, was feeling “vulnerable” and “terrified” after losing deposed Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak as an ally. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters in Stockholm the threats against Israel were “nothing new”, insisting she would judge Tehran by its actions at upcoming nuclear talks in Russia.

“We look forward to what the Iranians actually bring to the table in Moscow,” she said. “We want to see a diplomatic resolution. We now have an opportunity to achieve it, and we hope it is an opportunity that’s not lost, for everyone’s sake,” she said.

Allegations that Iran was trying to develop atomic bombs were false, Khamenei said yesterday. “International political circles and media talk about the danger of a nuclear Iran, that a nuclear Iran is dangerous. I say that they lie. They are deceiving,” Khamenei said. “What they are afraid of - and should be afraid of - is not a nuclear but an Islamic Iran.” He added: “They invoke the term ‘nuclear

weapons’ based on a lie. They magnify and highlight the issue in their propaganda based on a lie. Their goal is to divert minds and public opinion from the (economic) events that are happening in the US and Europe.”

Western economic sanctions imposed to pressure Iran to curb its nuclear program were having no effect, Khamenei insisted. Their only impact, he said, was “deepening hatred and animosity of the West in the hearts of the Iranian people”. Khamenei called the stance by the United States and its Western allies “crazy”. “The Iranian people have proved they can progress without the United States, and while being an enemy of the United States,” he said.

Western nations, the United States at the fore, accuse Iran of wanting to develop the capability to make nuclear weapons, something Khamenei has repeatedly denied.

The supreme leader has called atomic arms “a great sin”.

Talks between the Islamic republic and the so-called P5+1 group of nations the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China, plus Germany - were revived this year and are to go to a crucial next round in Moscow on June 18-19.

But the United States and its ally Israel - the sole, if undeclared, nuclear weapons state in the Middle East have threatened military strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities if diplomacy fails. Khamenei’s speech was being closely watched by P5+1 officials for signs of what positions the Iranian delegation might take into the Moscow negotiations. The supreme leader has the final word on any decision on Iran’s nuclear activities. At one point in his speech, Khamenei declared it “forbidden to stop on the path to progress, in the political sphere and in the sphere of science and technology”. That carried the implication that Iran had no intention on scaling back its nuclear development.—AFP

Zawahiri recalls Laden generosity Continued from Page 1 spanned the globe. “He spent all his money on jihad,” said Zawahiri, adding bin Laden had given $50,000 to help finance bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed more than 200 people in 1998. At the time, he had no more than $55,000 to his name. Zawahiri chuckled occasionally as he recounted his memories of bin Laden, whom he said had urged his fellow mujahideen, or “holy warriors”, to shun electricity in preparation for the hardships of life as on the run.

“Luxury is the enemy of jihad and if

the mujahideen were brought up to live in asceticism, they would tolerate the burden of jihad,” Zawahiri quoted bin Laden as saying.

Zawahiri said bin Laden was also generous to his bodyguards, who were devoted to him. Once in Afghanistan, he came under shelling, but the bodyguards took bin Laden to a wall and formed a human shield around him. Despite his austere way of life, bin Laden was a generous host and once bought a whole herd of sheep to feed his frequent visitors in Afghanistan, said Zawahiri. “He was known for his generosity with guests. He would

slaughter livestock for them and give them tasty food.”

Zawahiri was bin Laden’s lieutenant and the brains behind much of Al-Qaeda’s strategy for many years. In the first video in the series, posted on jihadist websites in November, Zawahiri said he wanted to show bin Laden’s “human side”.

He described a sensitive man who cried when his friends lost family members, remained close to his children despite the hard life of an international jihadist, and fondly remembered - by name - the 19 men who carried out the deadliest terrorist attack ever on US soil. — Agencies

Queen sails in 1,000-boat flotilla Continued from Page 1 dress designed by Angela Kelly, was ferried to the barge on the launch of the Royal Yacht Britannia, the ship she dearly loved which was decommissioned in 1997.

Waiting for the queen on the barge were senior royals including Prince William and his wife Catherine, who wore a vivid red dress by Alexander McQueen, the same designer who created her wedding gown.

Spectators lining the banks of the Thames roared when the royal barge came into sight. “The atmosphere was brilliant, everyone seemed in a good mood. The queen’s boat was beautiful, really colourful, and Kate looked lovely in red,” said Barbara Barke, a pensioner from Essex, eastern England.

Behind the queen’s barge was massed a flotilla of speedboats, firefighting tugs and historic vessels, including Dunkirk “little ships” that evacuated British forces from continental Europe in World War II. The armada was led by the barge carrying the bells, then Gloriana, which was rowed by quadruple Olympic gold medallist Steve Redgrave alongside injured servicemen.

The procession of boats stretched as far as the eye could see. “It’s glorious. It’s a momentous occasion. It makes you proud to be a Brit,” said Neil Munn, who works in advertising and watched the pageant with his wife and four daughters. “We’re here to salute the queen after 60 years’ hard work.”

The celebrations come as the royal family enjoys its

highest support for decades. That is especially true for the queen, who is only the second British monarch to celebrate a diamond jubilee, after queen Victoria in 1897. Several hundred anti-monarchist protesters were booed and had their chants drowned out with renditions of “God Save The Queen” as they staged a demonstration. The members of the campaign group Republic waved placards declaring “Citizens, not subjects”, “We want a vote, not a boat” and “Don’t jubilee’ve it”.

But their numbers were dwarfed by the hundreds of thousands who turned out to see the show. Some diehard royal fans camped out overnight along the Thames and braved the rain which fell for much of the night to secure a good vantage point. Nicola Holder, a retired community worker from Devon in southwest England, had put up with “miserable” weather to spend the night on Westminster Bridge. “I’ve never seen anything like this, and I’ve just got so much respect for the queen,” she told AFP. “I can’t think of any other human being who’s set an example like she has. I think she’s been a very wise lady as a nation we owe her a huge debt.”

The river pageant was the highpoint of four days of national celebrations, which began on Saturday when the queen attended the Epsom Derby horse race, where she was greeted by flag-waving crowds. Today, a concert takes place in the shadow of Buckingham Palace featuring Beatles star Paul McCartney and other top names, before the festivities culminate in the pomp and splendour of a ceremonial parade tomorrow. — Agencies

153 feared dead in Lagos plane crash Continued from Page 1

Pakistanis jump into a canal to beat the heat in Lahore yesterday. Intense heat has gripped parts of Pakistan, pushing temperatures to 48 degrees Celsius. — AP

Tony Usidamen told AFP. “We lost communication with the aircraft. We are going to issue an official statement.” Nigeria has a spotty aviation record, though Dana has been considered to be a relatively safe domestic airline. It began flights in Nov 2008 and had been operating

up to 27 daily flights using a fleet of MD-83 aircraft, according to information on its website. Its aircraft make daily flights between Abuja, Calabar, Lagos, Port Harcourt and Uyo. This latest incident came after another plane crash on Saturday night in the capital of the nearby West African nation of Ghana, which saw a cargo plane overshoot a run-

way and hit a passenger bus, killing at least 10 people. The Allied Air cargo plane had departed from Lagos and was to land in Accra. Lagos, the largest city in Africa’s most populous nation, is home to an estimated 15 million people. Built around a lagoon on the Atlantic coast, it is thought to be the largest city in Africa. — AFP

14

MONDAY, JUNE 4, 2012

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Issues

The new face of Muslim American leadership

By Hussein Rashid ccording to a recently released study about American religious membership, Islam is one of the fastest growing religions in the United States. What many Americans may not realise is that as this group grows its religious leadership is also rapidly evolving.

When it comes to Jews and Christians, the congregational leader - the rabbi or priest - serves multiple roles. They are leaders of religious life, serving as congregational organisers and worship leaders. But unlike rabbis and priests in the United States, imams don’t tend to serve in pastoral care capacities such as visiting the sick and the elderly, counselling, and leading programs for youth.

Muslim American religious leadership is mainly trained in the United States, focusing on religious scholarship, or in traditional institutions overseas neither of which emphasise pastoral care. Nor are imams trained in reaching out to media, and mosques do not generally serve as community centres in the United States in the same way that churches and synagogues do. But now the nature of religious leadership in the Muslim American community is changing.

Imams are taking on wide-ranging roles involving pastoral care, and more work with youth.

Why is this happening? Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that more imams are Americanborn. While there are no concrete statistics yet, several experts on Islam in America have noted this trend.

But the key reason is that greater attention is being directed towards the needs of congregants, and almost two-thirds of America’s Muslims are born in the United States. Many of them view the pastoral role as an integral part of religious leadership. Muslim American young people expect engaged, hands-on clergy -and clergy, in turn, are answering the call.

Religious leaders must be able to speak in the language and culture of the people they represent. In America, that means tending to one of the most diverse Muslim populations in the world, especially as distinctions linked to ethnicity or sects within Islam become less and less important for the Muslim American community. New York is a microcosm of some of these positive changes. Khalid Latif and Khalil Abdur-Rashid, chaplains of New York University and Columbia University respectively, are creating open spaces where all Muslims are welcome. Sunnis and Shiites pray side-by-side, with the rainbow of different races present together.

The university setting also allows them to do community programming. For instance, many universities now have Ramadan “fast-a-thons”, in which students of all backgrounds are encouraged to donate the cost of one meal to charity. In many respects, Latif and Abdur-Rashid represent the future of what a Muslim American leadership will look like: open, community focused and trained to fulfil a wide variety of roles.

More importantly, they work with other individuals and institutions. While in the past Muslims have often been underrepresented in local community programs, this is also shifting. More imams are learning how to actively engage with the communities they live in. For example, in addition to serving the New York University community, Latif is also a chaplain with the New York City Police Department.

But encouraging imams to take on a wider communal role is only part of the story. What is needed and what we are seeing more and more - is a variety of actors working together. Religious figures, academics, activists and organisers are collectively functioning as the emerging leadership of the Muslim American community. By acknowledging the diffuse nature of the community’s leadership, it benefits everyone; they can do what they do best, and share the work with other individuals. At the same time, Muslim American imams are also embracing diversity within their own roles and changing the face of Islam in America.

A

NOTE: Hussein Rashid is a professor at Hofstra University and Associate Editor at Religion Dispatches.

—CGNews

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

Hollande to tighten grip in election

By Brian Love resident Francois Hollande’s Socialists are not surfing towards a landslide victory in parliamentary elections this month, yet a lesser triumph should still permit France’s first leftwing leader in 17 years to rule effectively. The stakes are high in the contest taking place on June 10 and 17, as the 57-year-old social democrat can only hope to implement his tax-and-spend plans if the left takes control of the lower house National Assembly, as polls predict.

But even a mix of hard leftists in a leftwing majority should not upset Hollande’s chances of passing laws to enforce deficitcutting and ratifying a European budget responsibility pact, given the opposition right would struggle to oppose the measures. The Socialist Party has no guarantee of winning outright control of the lower house and may end up depending for a majority on the support of the Greens, or the more radical leftwingers and communists of the Left Front.

That would not hamstring Hollande as long as the Socialists win enough seats to limit the leverage of the Left Front, given the Greens should prove a loyal parliamentary partner. Analysts see this as a plausible scenario. While the prospect of hardliners winning greater influence may alarm some in the financial markets, the Socialists mastered such a partnership with aplomb when last in

P

power, and even kicked off the privatisation of Air France under the tenure of a communist transport minister, Jean-Claude Gayssot.

That was part of a wave of privatisations launched under a left-wing coalition the Socialists led between 1997 and 2002, under the conservative presidency of Jacques Chirac, with the Greens and Communists as junior partners. “It’s hard to think of anything as poisonous that they’d be asked to swallow under Francois Hollande,” said Paul Bacot, professor at the Institute of Political Studies in Lyon. A week from the opening round of the election, the only near-certainty is that Hollande, itching to start work in earnest, will not be plunged into a paralysing “co-habitation” with the UMP party of his conservative predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy. All polls show the UMP set to lose control after 10 years in charge. On the positive side for the conservatives, the result is unlikely to be a rout, even if political scientists see it putting the UMP at risk of a breakup due to internal power struggles and mounting pressure from the far-right National Front.

Christophe Borgel, one of the Socialists’ chief election strategists, hopes his party will replicate the voter shift that led to Hollande unseating Sarkozy on May 6 with 51.6 percent of the vote, largely due to frustration over Sarkozy’s style and his failure to bring down unemployment. Based on the number of constituencies that backed Hollande, that

would give the left around 333 of the 577 seats, he says, comfortably above the 289 seats that make a majority. “The higher the number, the higher is the share taken by the Socialists,” said Guillaume Bacheley, an election spokesman for the party. In line with party policy, he refuses to say anything that could alienate the Socialists from the other left-wingers whose cooperation may be needed in the years ahead.

A BVA poll published on Friday showed the Socialists taking 33 percent of the vote versus 32 percent for the UMP, with the Greens and Left Front taking respectively 4 and 9 percent for a grand total of 47 percent on the left. BVA’s Gael Sliman estimates the Socialist Party is in a slightly stronger position than when it last took power in parliament in 1997, arguing its projected performance has strengthened as election day nears while that of all other groups has stagnated or retreated from previous surveys.

If the Socialists land 289 or more seats, Hollande and his government will be able to proceed unfettered with a program that mixes targeted spending with a commitment to balance the public finances of Europe’s second-largest economy by 2017. If they fall short by a small margin, the first port of call will be the Greens. The two parties have already agreed an election pact under which the Greens, who have two ministers in the interim government Hollande named in mid-May, have Socialist backing in 60 con-

stituencies, of which 20 or so are considered winnable. Should that not prove sufficient, the Socialists would be left counting on the backing of the Left Front coalition, which stands far to the left of Hollande, to the point where its leader, firebrand former presidential candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon, says he would refuse any role in government. The Left Front would likely back the Socialists when they go to parliament in the weeks ahead to repeal a last-minute law by Sarkozy for an October rise in VAT sales tax and to seek higher taxes on the wealthy and on companies. Where the Socialists and the hardliners are most at odds is over relations with the rest of Europe and Hollande’s commitment to steadily reduce the public deficit over his five-year term.

Hollande is under pressure from his eurozone partners to pass a “super” law committing the government to steadily reduce the deficit and also to ratify the fiscal pact agreed by most EU leaders earlier this year. That legislation will likely be opposed in parliament by hard leftists, but will in all probability be assured safe passage as centrists and conservatives are unlikely to vote against it.

Sarkozy’s government and the UMP pilloried the Socialists for months over Hollande’s refusal to back the writing of a budget balance rule into the French constitution. That means the conservatives are unlikely, says Bacot, to trip Hollande up on a bill that does much the same thing. — Reuters

After gory incidents, ‘zombie’ talk grows

By Tamara Lush irst came Miami: the case of a naked man eating most of another man’s face. Then Texas: a mother accused of killing her newborn, eating part of his brain and biting off three of his toes. Then Maryland, a college student telling police he killed a man, then ate his heart and part of his brain. It was different in New Jersey, where a man stabbed himself 50 times and threw bits of his own intestines at police. They pepper-sprayed him, but he was not easily subdued. He was, people started saying, acting like a zombie. And the whole discussion just kept growing, becoming a topic that the Internet couldn’t seem to stop talking about.

The actual incidents are horrifying - and, if how people are talking about them is any indication, fascinating. In an America where zombie imagery is used to peddle everything from tools and weapons to garden gnomes, they all but beg the comparison. Violence, we’re used to. Cannibalism and people who should fall down but don’t? That feels like something else entirely. So many strange things have made headlines in recent days that The Daily Beast assembled a Google Map tracking “instances that may be the precursor to a zombie apocalypse.” And the federal agency that tracks diseases weighed in as well, insisting it had no evidence that any zombie-linked health crisis was unfolding. The cases themselves are anything but funny. Each involved real people either suspected of committing unspeakable acts or having those acts visited upon them for reasons that have yet to be figured out. Maybe it’s nothing new, either; people do horrible things to each other on a daily basis. But what, then, made search terms like “zombie apocalypse” trend day after day last week in multiple corners of the Internet, fueled by discussions and postings that were often framed as humor?

“They’ve heard of these zombie movies, and they make a joke about it,” says Lou Manza, a psychology professor at Lebanon Valley College in Pennsylvania, who learned about the whole thing at the breakfast table Friday morning when his 18-year-old son quipped that a “zombie apocalypse” was imminent.

Symbolic of both infection and evil, zombies

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are terrifying in a way that other horror-movie iconography isn’t, says Elizabeth Bird, an anthropologist at the University of South Florida. Zombies, after all, look like us. But they aren’t. They are some baser form of us - slowly rotting and shambling along, intent on “surviving” and creating more of their kind, but with no emotional core, no conscience, no limits.

“Vampires have kind of a romantic appeal, but zombies are doomed,” Bird says. “Zombies can never really become human again. There’s no going back. That resonates in today’s world, with people feeling like we’re moving toward an ending,” she says. “Ultimately they are much more of a depressing figure.”

The “moving toward an ending” part is especially potent. For some, the news stories fuel a lurking fear that, ultimately, humanity is doomed. Speculation varies. It could be a virus that escapes from some secret government lab, or one that mutates on its own. Or maybe it’ll be the result of a deliberate combination and weaponization of pathogens, parasites and disease. It will, many believe, be something we’ve created - and therefore brought upon our-

selves. Zombies represent America’s fears of bioterrorism, a fear that strengthened after the 9/11 attacks, says Patrick Hamilton, an English professor at Misericordia University in Dallas, Pennsylvania, who studies how we process comic-book narratives.

Economic anxiety around the planet doesn’t help matters, either, with Greece, Italy and Spain edging closer to crisis every day.

Consider some of the terms that those fears produce: zombie banks, zombie economies, zombie governments. When people are unsettled about things beyond their control - be it the loss of a job, the high cost of housing or the depletion of a retirement account - they look to metaphors like the zombie. “They’re mindless drones following basic needs to eat,” Hamilton says. “Those economic issues speak to our own lack of control.”

They’re also effective messengers. The Centers for Disease Control got in on the zombie action last year, using the “apocalypse” as the teaser for its emergency preparedness blog. It worked, attracting younger people who might not otherwise have read the agency’s

In this Oct 10, 2011 file photo, a sign promoting zombie preparedness displays in a hardware store in Omaha, Nebraska. – AP

guidance on planning evacuation routes and storing water and food. On Friday, a different message emerged. Chatter had become so rampant that CDC spokesman David Daigle sent an email to the Huffington Post, answering questions about the possibility of the undead walking among us. “CDC does not know of a virus or condition that would reanimate the dead,” he wrote, adding: “(or one that would present zombie-like symptoms.)”

Zombies have been around in our culture at least since Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” was published in 1818, though they really took off after George Romero’s nightmarish, black-andwhite classic “Night of the Living Dead” hit the screen in 1968. In the past several years, they have become both wildly popular and big business. Last fall, the financial website 24/7 Wall Street estimated that zombies pumped $5 billion into the US economy. “And if you think the financial tab has been high so far, by the end of 2012 the tab is going to be far larger,” the October report read.

It goes far beyond comic books, costumes and conventions. An Ace Hardware store in Nebraska features a “Zombie Preparedness Center” that includes bolts and fasteners for broken bones, glue and caulk for peeling skin, and deodorizers to freshen up decaying flesh.

“Don’t be scared,” its website says. “Be prepared.” On uncrate.com, you can find everything you need to survive the apocalypse zombie-driven or otherwise - in a single “bugout bag.” The recommended components range from a Mossberg pump-action shotgun and a Cold Kukri machete to a titanium spork for spearing all the canned goods you’ll end up eating once all the fresh produce has vanished.

For $175 on Amazon, you can purchase a Gnombie, a gored-out zombie garden gnome.

Maybe it’s that we joke about the things we fear. Laughter makes them manageable. That’s why a comedy like “Zombieland,” with Woody Harrelson blasting away the undead on a roller coaster and Jesse Eisenberg stressing the importance of seatbelts is easier to watch than, say, the painful desperation and palpable apocalyptic fear of “28 Days Later” and “28 Weeks Later”. The most compelling zombie stories, after all, are not about the undead. They’re about the living.—AP

MONDAY, JUNE 4, 2012

Dodgers may not be in awe, but Vinny is LOS ANGELES: Up in the booth behind home plate, where Vin Scully has called games for a half-century now, the sound of his voice echoed through cavernous Dodger Stadium.

Game time was still a half-hour away, but the taped greeting welcoming fans was a comforting reminder that, despite the turmoil of recent years, all was still well at Chavez Ravine.

On the field below, Tommy Lasorda was chatting away, while pinch hitter extraordinaire Manny Mota walked past the broadcast booth. As I sat with Scully listening to him tell stories from the Roy Campanella days, former manager Joe Torre popped his head into the booth for a quick hello. Say what you will about former owner Frank McCourt — and Dodger fans said quite a bit, most of it unprintable — he knew something about making sure the team celebrated its links to the past.

It wouldn’t be a good night for the Dodgers, who were deep into their longest losing streak of the season. The lineup resembled something the Albuquerque Isotopes might trot out, with a career minor leaguer patrolling center field, a .154 hitter at first base, and a journeyman past his prime at third. Hardly the kind of personnel you would expect from the best team in baseball, but this was the best the injury-riddled Dodgers had.

The night before, superstar Matt Kemp went down in just his second game back from a hamstring injury, and the bad news was it will be at least a month before he comes back.

You can only get by on smoke and mirrors for so long, and things were catching up with

Don Mattingly’s team even as it held onto a sizeable lead in the National League West.

Mattingly was as upbeat as ever in his office before the game with Milwaukee, but even his constant juggling of the lineup couldn’t hide the holes exposed by the loss of so many key players.

“I called Mattingly when I read the lineup,” Scully said, chuckling at the thought. “I asked if he had a pocketful of miracles.”

There would be no miracles as the Brewers finished off a four-game sweep. Nothing like the weeks before, when players even the most diehard fans had never heard of were taking turns being heroes, and the Dodgers were winning games they had no business winning.

It was after one of those games, when the Dodgers erased a five-run deficit in the seventh inning against Arizona and Ivan De Jesus got the first double of his career to bring home the winning run in the ninth, that Scully branded them a “wonder team” that in some ways reminded him of the 1959 team that brought the first World Series title to Los Angeles.

“I only used that once,” Scully said. “What I meant was it’s either wonderful or you wonder how much longer it can keep on happening.”

When Scully speaks, though, Dodger fans listen. They’ve been doing it for 63 years now, hanging on to every velvety word, whether from a meaningless game in late September or a perfect game pitched by Sandy Koufax.

His words are as much a part of Dodger tra-

dition as the No. 32 jersey worn by Koufax and the extra-large uniform worn by Lasorda.

They’re a bridge from the days the Dodgers were Brooklyn’s Bums to today, when they’re a $2 billion franchise with Magic Johnson at the titular helm.

The one thing that hasn’t changed is the man in the colorful coat and tie in the booth.

At the age of 84, he still does nine innings, and he does it by himself. There’s no color man to help out, just his notes, his knowledge and his many memories.

Memories like when he repeatedly called out the time on the clock in the late innings when Koufax pitched his perfect game against the Cubs in 1965, still perhaps the most dramatic sports announcing ever. He let the crowd do the talking when Henry Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s home run mark, and uttered a line that he freely admits came out of nowhere when Kirk Gibson hit his game-winning home run in the 1988 World Series. “In a year that has been so improbable, the impossible has happened,” he said.

The wonder line won’t be remembered when the great Scully lines are tallied, though that’s partly because there are so many of them. This year’s version of the Dodgers may also not live up to the wonder tag as they employ a badly battered lineup with Kemp out.

What is certain is that a night in August at Dodger Stadium will be special because 50,000 lucky fans will be holding Vin Scully bobbleheads, talking about how their parents and grandparents held transistor radios in the

stands because being at a game wasn’t the same without listening to Vinny describe it.

The Dodgers expect so much demand for the bobbleheads that fans have to buy at least a 10-game ticket package to get in that night.

The man himself shows no signs of slowing down, other than limiting himself to home games and occasional road trips in the west.

He still weaves his stories between pitches in a conversational tone that makes it feel as if he’s in your living room, still keeps you entertained even if the game is no longer entertaining.

After thousands of games and seeing some of the great baseball moments of all time, he still gets excited when someone makes a great play or a team makes a great comeback. He loves the Dodgers, but the only thing he roots for his good play by both teams.

And when he makes a rare mistake, he admits it on air. On the drive home afterward, he’s harder on himself than anyone listening or watching on TV. “I get in the car and start thinking, ‘I wish I said this, why didn’t I say that? How could I have messed up a name?’” Scully said. “What do you do? It’s like skywriting. You can’t get it back.”

The analogy, as they usually do when uttered by Scully, fits perfectly. I would have liked to hear more, but by now it was just a few minutes before the game and time to get to work. Scully excused himself, then settled into his familiar seat in the corner of the booth, leaning toward the microphone to deliver a greeting Dodger fans can recite along with him. “Hi everybody, and a very pleasant

LOS ANGELES: In this April 15, 2012 photo, veteran Los Angeles Dodgers broadcaster Vin Scully poses in the press box, his first game appearance since illness forced him to miss the first home games of the season. — AP

evening to you, wherever you may be.”

By the end of the night it had become increasingly clear this may not be a wonder team after all. Too many holes in the lineup, too many marginal players, too many puzzles for Mattingly to solve. Dodger fans may just have to be satisfied with having a wonder in the booth.—AP

MONDAY, JUNE 4, 2012

sp orts Sex scandal rocks Indian junior wrestling team

England rest Anderson LONDON: England will rest fast bowler James Anderson for the third and final test against West Indies starting at Edgbaston on Thursday. Anderson, who received treatment to a thigh niggle during the second test at Trent Bridge, where England clinched the series and he took six wickets, was the only omission when selectors named a 12-man squad yesterday. “It has been decided missing the final clash will give the 29-year-old an opportunity to overcome several minor injuries,” the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) said in a statement. England, the world’s top-ranked test team, have an unassailable 2-0 lead in the threetest series after winning the second test by nine wickets.

England have a busy schedule ahead, including one-dayers against West Indies and Australia and tests against South Africa to come and selector Geoff Miller said managing Anderson’s workload was in the best interests of team and player. Anderson, England’s cricketer of the year for 2011-12, had earlier told the Mail on Sunday newspaper that he wanted to play regardless.

“It would be extremely disappointing for me to miss out,” he said. “It would be different if I felt fatigued or was struggling with an injury.

“But I believe I am fit to play, and while I am fit to play I want to play in every England game I can.”—Reuters

NEW DELHI: The male coach of India’s junior women’s wrestling team has been suspended after four of his athletes accused him of sexual harassment, reports said yesterday.

The allegations were made in a letter sent to India’s sports minister by the unidentified wrestlers, who said the coach misbehaved and tried to enter one of the women’s rooms during a training camp, the Times of India reported.

“It’s a very serious and sensitive matter. We are looking into the details of the complaint,” Desh Deepak Verma, director general of the Sports Authority of India, was quoted as saying by the newspaper.

The coach had been temporar-

Kuyt signs for Fenerbahce

ily suspended while the inquiry continued, he added. Women’s wrestling has been growing in stature in India after it was included in the Commonwealth Games for the first time when the country hosted the event in 2010.

In April, Geeta Phogat became the first Indian woman wrestler ever to qualify for the Olympics.

The allegations come two years after the coach of the Indian women’s hockey team resigned after a player accused him of sexual misconduct.

MK Kaushik, a former Olympic gold-winning player with the men’s side, denied any wrongdoing and said the charges were a “big-time conspiracy” by players who had failed to find a place in the national team. —AFP

ANKARA: Dutch international forward Dirk Kuyt ended a six year spell with English Premier League side Liverpool yesterday after he agreed to move to Turkish giants Fenerbahce according to media reports.

The 31-year-old - capped over 80 times and a member of the Dutch side beaten in the 2010 World Cup final - reportedly signed a three year contract with the Turkish league runners-up for a fee of 1-million euros.

Kuyt only won one trophy while at Liverpool, last season’s League Cup although he also played in an FA Cup final and a Champions League final.

Fenerbahce, one of the giant Istanbul teams, officially declared the transfer to the Turkish stock exchange, said the private NTV television.

“Kuyt wants to play for Fenerbahce... We signed a three-year contract,” Ali Yildirim, board member of Fenerbahce, was quoted as saying by the Anatolia news agency.

“We had been working for this transfer for months... He is a very important player, a big win for Fenerbahce,” he added. Yildirim declined to comment on the transfer fee, saying that would be announced later.

Kuyt is expected to come to Turkey late June, said Yildirim. Fenerbahce finished second in the Turkish league after Galatasaray and qualified for next season’s Champions League. —AFP

Mariners roll over White Sox CHICAGO: Ichiro Suzuki homered twice, John Jaso hit a tiebreaking double in the 12th inning and the Seattle Mariners ended Chicago’s nine-game winning streak by beating the White Sox 10-8 Saturday.

Jesus Montero led off the 10th with a double against Addison Reed (0-1). One out later, Jaso drove in pinch-runner Munenori Kawasaki. Chone Figgins followed with an RBI single.

Tom Wilhelmsen (2-1) pitched three scoreless innings, allowing one hit, for the victory. Hisashi Iwakuma earned his second save by pitching the 12th, retiring Adam Dunn on a grounder with a runner on second to end it.

Michael Saunders homered and had four of Seattle’s 15 hits.

Chicago’s Dayan Viciedo tied the game with a two-out solo homer in the eighth off Stephen Pryor - the eighth home run of the game, four by each team.

Red Sox 7, Blue Jays 4 At Toronto, Felix Doubront won for the fifth time in six starts, Nick Punto homered and Boston beat the Blue Jays.

Punto fell a triple shy of the cycle and drove in two runs to lead Boston to its 10th win in 14 games.

Daniel Nava also had two RBIs as the Red Sox (28-25) moved a season-high three games above .500.

Doubront (6-2) allowed three runs, two earned, and seven hits in 6 1-3 innings. Jose Bautista and Jeff Mathis each hit solo home runs for the Blue Jays, who have lost seven of 10. Kyle Drabek (4-6) allowed

five runs, four earned, and six hits in 6 2-3 innings. He walked four and struck out four.

Athletics 9, Royals 3 At Kansas City, the struggling

(3-6) allowed six runs in 4 2-3 innings, the sixth time he’s failed to get past the fifth this season. The Royals committed three errors and were also hurt by a wild pitch and a passed ball.

CHICAGO: Seattle Mariners’ John Jaso hits a one-run double against the Chicago White Sox during the 12th inning of a baseball game. —AP Athletics took advantage of some bumbling Kansas City defense to end a nine-game losing streak with a victory over the Royals.

Brandon McCarthy (4-3) came off the disabled list to throw six innings, Jemile Weeks reached base four times and Josh Reddick had a two-run triple during a four-run fifth for Oakland.

The A’s nine runs surpassed their total from the previous six games combined. Luke Hochevar

Orioles 2, Rays 1 St. Petersburg, Florida, Brian Matusz gave up two hits in 7 1-3 innings and the Orioles ended a sixgame losing streak by holding off the Rays.

Matusz (5-5) didn’t give up a hit until the fifth inning. He struck out seven and walked three. Reliever Pedro Strop got Ben Zobrist to ground into a bases-loaded double play in the eighth. Jim Johnson pitched the ninth for his

MLB results/standings Boston 7, Toronto 4; Oakland 9, Kansas City 3; Washington 2, Atlanta 0; Miami 5, Philadelphia 4; Baltimore 2, Tampa Bay 1; NY Mets 5, St Louis 0; La Dodgers 6, Colorado 2; Seattle 10, Chicago White Sox 8 (12 innings); Milwaukee 5, Pittsburgh 1; Cincinnati 12, Houston 9; Minnesota 7, Cleveland 4; Detroit 4, NY Yankees 3; Arizona 4, San Diego 2; San Francisco 2, Chicago Cubs 1; LA Angels 3, Texas 2.

Tampa Bay Baltimore NY Yankees Boston Toronto

American League Eastern Division W L PCT 30 23 .566 30 23 .566 28 24 .538 28 25 .528 27 26 .509

Central Division Chicago White Sox 30 23 .566 Cleveland 28 24 .538 Detroit 25 28 .472 Kansas City 22 29 .431 Minnesota 19 33 .365

Texas LA Angels Seattle Oakland

Western Division 31 22 .585 28 26 .519 24 31 .436 23 30 .434

GB 1.5 2 3

1.5 5 7 10.5

3.5 8 8

Washington NY Mets Miami Atlanta Philadelphia

National League Eastern Division 30 21 .588 30 23 .566 30 23 .566 28 25 .528 28 26 .519

1 1 3 3.5

Cincinnati St Louis Pittsburgh Milwaukee Houston Chicago Cubs

Central Division 30 22 .577 27 26 .509 26 26 .500 24 29 .453 22 31 .415 18 34 .346

3.5 4 6.5 8.5 12

LA Dodgers San Francisco Arizona Colorado San Diego

Western Division 33 20 .623 29 24 .547 24 29 .453 22 30 .423 18 36 .333

4 9 10.5 15.5

17th save, completing the combined two-hitter.

Baltimore broke a 1-all tie in the seventh. Mark Reynolds, who had doubled, scored with two outs when third baseman Drew Sutton made a wild throw to first on Robert Andino’s grounder.

Endy Chavez, mired in a 3-for-35 slide, put the Orioles ahead 1-0 in the third with a home run off Jeremy Hellickson (4-2).

Twins 7, Indians 4 At Cleveland, Joe Mauer broke out of a slump with three hits and three RBIs, including a two-run homer, to lead Minnesota over the Indians.

Mauer entered the game in an 0for-10 slide, but had an RBI single in Minnesota’s four-run first inning. He also singled in the second and hit a two-run homer in the seventh off Tony Sipp.

Trevor Plouffe’s one-out homer in the sixth off Josh Tomlin (2-3) broke a 4-all tie. Brian Duensing (1-2) pitched two scoreless innings as the Twins won for the fourth time in five games. The Indians have lost six of eight.

Tigers 4, Yankees 3 At Detroit, Miguel Cabrera hit two prodigious homers and Omir Santos’ sacrifice fly in the ninth inning gave Detroit a wild 4-3 victory over the New York Yankees.

Detroit overcame a blown save

by Jose Valverde (3-1) and an awful night of defense from Santos, a third-string catcher pressed into duty because of injuries. Santos made two errors and allowed five stolen bases - but his fly to right off Boone Logan with the bases loaded in the ninth was deep enough to score Brennan Boesch. David Phelps (1-2) took the loss. Valverde hit two batters with pitches and walked two in the ninth, allowing New York to tie it after Cabrera’s homer onto a camera platform gave Detroit a 3-2 lead.

Angels 3, Rangers 2 At Anaheim, California, C.J. Wilson pitched six scoreless innings against his former teammates, Alberto Callaspo singled home the go-ahead run in the seventh and the surging Los Angeles Angels beat Texas to pull within 31/2 games of the AL West-leading Rangers.

Bobby Cassevah (1-0) got two outs for the victory, the Angels’ 10th in 11 games. Ernesto Friere, the fifth Angels pitcher, worked 1 1-3 innings for his fourth save in as many chances after the Rangers scored an unearned run in the eighth against Scott Downs. Friere ended it by striking out Josh Hamilton with the bases loaded after an 11-pitch walk to Ian Kinsler and a throwing error by Gold Glove shortstop Erick Aybar on a routine grounder by Elvis Andrus kept the inning alive. —AP

Kings march past Devils in OT NEWARK: Jeff Carter scored at 13:42 in overtime and the Los Angeles Kings moved within two wins of their first NHL title with a 2-1 victory over the New Jersey Devils in Game 2 of the Stanley Cup finals Saturday night.

Jonathan Quick made 32 saves and Drew Doughty scored on a magnificent end-to-end rush as the Kings won their 10th straight road game this postseason, and their 12th in a row over the last two seasons. Both are NHL records. The Kings are now 14-2 in the postseason. New Jersey had won eight of 10 games in beating the Flyers and Rangers in the last two rounds in the Eastern Conference. Now the Devils head to Los Angeles for Game 3 at the Staples Center on Monday night.

This marked the first time in 61 years that Games 1 and 2 of the Stanley Cup finals were decided in overtime.

The last occasion was the epic 1951 Stanley Cup matchup, where all five games between the Toronto

Maple Leafs and Montreal Canadiens went to extra time. The Maple Leafs captured the Cup. Carter ended this one with a great individual effort after the Kings outshot New Jersey 11-3 in OT, and only Martin Brodeur kept the Devils in the game.

Carter, one of a handful of former Philadelphia Flyers playing for the Kings, corralled a rebound from behind the net, preventing the Devils from grabbing a much-needed line change. He rolled around into the slot, from Brodeur’s righthand side, and let a wrist shot off that beat the standout goaltender along the ice on his stick side with Dustin Penner in front of the net as a screen, left unguarded.

It was Carter’s fifth of the postseason and it gave the Kings another big advantage in a series. The eighth-seeded Kings opened 3-0 leads in each of the first three rounds in the Western Conference. —AP

SAN FRANCISCO: Giants’ Matt Cain (18) slides to break up a double play as Chicago Cubs shortstop Starlin Castro prepares his throw to first base in the seventh inning of a baseball game. —AP

Cain pitches Giants past Cubs SAN FRANCISCO: Matt Cain pitched into the ninth inning on the way to winning his fifth straight start and the San Francisco Giants beat the Chicago Cubs 21 on Saturday.

Aubrey Huff drew a bases-loaded walk to tie the game at 1 in the sixth, then San Francisco went ahead on an RBI fielder’s choice by Joaquin Arias on which Huff broke up a would-be double play. Huff produced his first RBI since April 16 and just his fifth this season after he spent a stint on the disabled list with anxiety disorder and is no longer a regular.

David DeJesus homered but it wasn’t enough to help the Cubs avoid their ninth straight road loss. It is Chicago’s longest slide away from Wrigley Field since also dropping nine in a row from Aug. 25 to Sept. 10, 2006.

Matt Garza (2-4) struck out six and walked one in six innings, allowing two runs on five hits but lost his third straight start.

Mets 5, Cardinals 0 At New York, RA Dickey followed up Johan Santana’s no-hitter by shutting out St. Louis, David Wright homered and the Mets beat the Cardinals.

Dickey (8-1) gave up seven hits, struck out nine and walked none in his third career shutout - first this season. The Mets scored three runs in the second, on a mishandled grounder and two run-scoring groundouts to win for the sixth time in eight games.

Carlos Beltran had a clean double against Dickey in the second inning - a day after he hit a shot down the line that looked fair but was ruled foul against Santana. The Cardinals have lost four straight and seven of nine.

Marlins 5, Phillies 4 At Philadelphia, Hanley Ramirez hit two homers and drove in three runs to help the Marlins beat the Phillies. Ricky Nolasco (6-3) allowed four runs on eight hits in seven-plus innings to improve to 61 in seven career starts at Philadelphia for the Marlins. Miami has won four of its last five and denied Cole Hamels (8-2) his ninth victory.

Jose Reyes had an RBI double to extend his hitting streak to 13 games.

Hunter Pence homered for the second straight game for the Phillies, who lost for just the third time in 10 games.

Nationals 2, Braves 0 At Washington, Stephen Strasburg pitched four-hit ball for seven sharp innings and Jesus Flores homered, leading the Nationals over the Braves.

Strasburg (6-1) completed seven shutout innings for the first time in his major league career. He opened the game with a flourish, striking out the first four Braves batters.

Strasburg struck out nine, walked none and threw 90 pitches. Twice he gave up singles and then induced double-play grounders.

Sean Burnett allowed two singles in a scoreless eighth and Tyler Clippard pitched a perfect ninth for his fourth save in fifth chances. Brandon Beachy (5-4) allowed just three hits in 6 1-3 innings.

NEWARK: Los Angeles Kings’ Rob Scuderi (left) and New Jersey Devils’ Alexei Ponikarovsky, of Ukraine, collide behind the goal during the second period of Game 2 of the NHL hockey Stanley Cup finals. —AP

Dodgers 6, Rockies 2 At Denver, Aaron Harang pitched six strong innings, Bobby Abreu homered for the first time this year and the Dodgers

ended a season-worst five-game losing streak with a win over the Rockies.

Andre Ethier and Elian Herrera had two hits and two RBIs each and James Loney also had two hits for the Dodgers.

Michael Cuddyer and Wilin Rosario had RBI doubles and DJ LeMahieu had two hits for the Rockies, who had their fivegame win streak ended.

A day after the Rockies roughed up Los Angeles pitchers for 13 runs on 15 hits, Harang (4-3) held Colorado’s suddenly potent offense to one run on four hits. Juan Nicasio (2-3) took the loss and left the game in the second inning after straining his left knee.

D’backs 4, Padres 2 At San Diego, Daniel Hudson pitched eight strong innings and Paul Goldschmidt homered, leading the Diamondbacks to a win over the Padres.

The Diamondbacks, who have scored two runs or less in three of their last four games, got an assist from San Diego reliever Joe Thatcher (0-1), who balked in the go-ahead run in the seventh inning.

Hudson (2-1), making his second start since coming off the disabled list, allowed two runs on five hits while striking out five and walking one. Hudson also had a sacrifice fly.

Goldschmidt extended his career-best hitting streak to 11 games with a solo homer in the fifth inning into the second deck in left field that tied the score 2-all.

JJ Putz got three outs for his 12th save.

Brewers 5, Pirates 1 At Milwaukee, Brooks Conrad ended his 0-for-27 slump to start the season, hitting a homer and driving in three runs to lead the Brewers past the Pirates.

Shawn Marcum (4-3) pitched seven strong innings for Milwaukee, giving up five hits while striking out eight without a walk.

Pirates starter Erik Bedard (3-6) lasted just 3 2-3 innings. He allowed five hits, five runs and three walks in his shortest outing of the season other than a May 9 game against Washington that he left in the second because of back spasms.

Cody Ransom had a two-run single for Milwaukee and Rickie Weeks - hitting just .158 coming in - reached base all four times with two hits and two walks.

Reds 12, Astros 9 At Houston, Drew Stubbs homered and drove in four runs, Brandon Phillips added three RBIs and Cincinnati outlasted Houston to hand the Astros their eighth straight defeat.

Joey Votto went 4 for 4 with a home run and a walk. Todd Frazier and Ryan Ludwick also connected for the Reds, who set a season high for runs. Brandon Phillips doubled in the go-ahead run in the sixth inning and added two RBIs in the eighth.

The Reds were up 8-2 after hitting three homers off starter Wandy Rodriguez in the first two innings.

Houston closed the gap with a three-run third and went on top by adding four in the fourth.

Ludwick’s solo homer tied it in the fifth. Sam LeCure (1-1) worked two scoreless innings for the win and Aroldis Chapman got his fifth save. Fernando Rodriguez (1-6) allowed two hits and a run in the sixth for the loss. —AP

MONDAY, JUNE 4, 2012

S P ORT S

Dixon on pole at Detroit GP

DOVER; Driver Brad Sweet (38) and Danica Patrick, middle, crash along the front straightaway during the NASCAR Nationwide Series auto race. — AP

Martin ahead at Dover DOVER: Mark Martin turned a lap of 158.297 mph (254.74 kph) to win the NASCAR pole at Dover International Speedway on Saturday. The 53-year-old Martin has 54 career poles, including three this season in 10 races while racing a limited schedule for Michael Waltrip Racing. He’s looking for his first win in the Dover 400 on Sunday since 2009.

Martin took the last qualifying lap of the day in the No. 55 Toyota and knocked off Jimmie Johnson from the top spot.

Johnson went 158.263 mph (254.69 kph) and starts second.

“I feel like a lucky guy to be strapping in that 55,” Martin said. Waltrip was among the first to greet Martin after the winning lap. “I’m so proud of you. That’s amazing,” Waltrip told him.

Martin has turned into a driver-forhire over the latter stages of a career that has seen him do it all except win a Cup championship. He spent the past three seasons with Hendrick Motorsports, but changed teams in the offseason, joining Waltrip for a partial season. Martin is slated to run 24 of 36 races this season while sharing seat time with Waltrip. He has four top-10 finishes over his first nine races and was third at Texas. “They’re learning about me, I’m learning about them, and we’re having a blast,” Martin said.

Johnson has yet to win a pole this season. Ryan Newman, Clint Bowyer and

Kenseth round out the top five. Points leader Greg Biffle starts seventh.

Johnson, who won the All-Star race in Charlotte, wants to keep Hendrick Motorsports’ recent of run of strong finishes going at Dover. Johnson and teammate Kasey Kahne won the last two NASCAR races. Teammates Jeff Gordon starts 14th and Dale Earnhardt Jr. is 17th.

“We don’t want to let the boss down,” Johnson said of Rick Hendrick. “We want to get all four in the Chase.” Martin has five poles to go with his five wins on the 1-mile (1,600-meter) concrete track at Dover. Martin is as physically fit and dedicated to healthy eating and clean living as any other driver in the garage. His lifestyle has played as much a critical part of extending a NASCAR career that dates to 1981. “I’m going to have to look into his dietary intake and start eating what he does before qualifying, because it’s been working,” Newman said. “He’s always been an awesome qualifier.”

Martin, who turned 53 in January, won his first NASCAR race at Dover in 1987 on the second-tier circuit now known as the Nationwide Series. When the green flag drops on Sunday, Martin will officially make his 840th career start. He has 40 career wins, but none since he won five times for Hendrick in 2009. “He’s tried to retire a few times, but just can’t do it,” a smiling Johnson said. “ That fire still burns in him.” — AP

Al-Juhaini holding Kuwait’s flag after being honored for winning second place.

Double triumph for Kuwait in Wakeboarding in Lebanon KUWAIT: Kuwait’s Wakeboarding team, of the Kuwaiti Sea Sports Club (KSSC) achieved a double victory by winning the first and second places in the Orient Wakeboarding Championship recently held in Lebanon under the auspices of the International Waterski & Wakeboarding Federation (IWWF) where over 50 male and females from Egypt, Oman, Kuwait and Lebanon took part.

The first place in the women’s competition was won by Jenny AlFailakawi while Bader Al-Juhaini won the second place in the men’s category.

Jenny Al-Failakawi

DETROIT: New Zealander Scott Dixon has won his first pole of the year on Saturday for the Belle Isle Grand Prix and snapped Penske Racing’s streak of having the fastest car in IndyCar qualifying this season. Dixon hopes the favorable position - thanks to clocking a track record of 1 minute, 10.3162 seconds will help him end a five-race winless skid this year. It certainly should help the two-time series champion’s chances to win the 28th race of his career on a slick and tight 2-mile (3.2-kilometer) course not known for much maneuvering. The past two races on Belle Isle, in 2008 and 2007, had just nine lead changes combined when Justin Wilson of England and Tony Kanaan of Brazil won.

“It’s one of the toughest tracks we come to as far as passing,” Dixon said after earning his 18th career pole. “It’s definitely a handful to get around here. “It’s a fun track, but man it’s crazy out there. Penske’s Will Power, the IndyCar points leader, will start late yesterday’s race alongside Dixon in the front row, Alex Tagliani of Canada will begin a seasonbest third with Simon Pagenaud of France fourth and EJ Viso of Venezuela fifth.

Dixon gave Chip Ganassi Racing its first pole this year and hopes to give the team its second straight win. It will be tough for Dario Franchitti to do it.

The Indianapolis 500 champion and Ganassi driver will start 15th in the 25-car field. He blamed Ed Carpenter’s sputtering car and questionable tactics for getting in his way and slowing him down in qualifying.

“When a faster car does come up, get the hell out of the road,” Franchitti said. “At some point, when we’re in that position we can return the favor.” Franchitti, though, acknowledged it might be difficult to get payback by winning a race that doesn’t lend itself to passing. “It’s tough,” the Scot said. “There’s going to be a lot of aggression from everyone back there.”

Franchitti started his last race 16th and fin-

DETROIT: IndyCar driver Scott Dixon takes turn one during practice on Belle Isle. — AP

ished in front, winning his third signature race in open-wheel racing after making an Indianapolis 500-record 35th lead change.

Dixon finished second to Franchitti for the sixth time in his career last Sunday and was a runner-up for the third time in five races this season. He led 44 laps at the Indy 500 and exchanged leads with Franchitti 10 times during the last 60 laps.

Penske won the first four IndyCar races with Chevrolet engines before IndyCar gave Honda-powered teams, such as Ganassi’s, a boost that paid off for Franchitti in one of Ganassi’s cars at the Indy 500. “I think I got his attention last week,” Ganassi said. “We still have to race.”

Penske is hoping the series’ owners can stick together after he said they were unified during an hour-long gathering prior to a meeting with IndyCar CEO Randy Bernard on Saturday. “Everyone in there is good,” Penske said before taking off on a scooter - just minutes before Bernard walked in the Panther

Racing hospitality tent to address the group.

Bernard, the leader of a series that seems to be building momentum off a thrilling Indy 500, confirmed speculation on his Twitter account that a team owner is trying to get him fired. Bernard doesn’t regret publicly fueling the discord, adding he has been an advocate for the owners during his two-plus years in charge. He was pleased with his talk with owners that lasted almost 40 minutes.

“We had a very productive meeting,” he said.

“It was excellent.”

Power hopes IndyCar leadership, team owners and drivers can figure out a way to avoid stunting success that has been building since two American open-wheel series became one in 2008 after division drained the interest in the sport.

“We’re growing in terms of fans at the track, sponsorships, competition at the track and car count,” Power said. “If you think about where we are compared to five years ago, it’s a massive difference - night and day.” — AP

Levin leads as Woods falters DUBLIN: Spencer Levin defied difficult windy conditions to post a three-under par 69 on Saturday to take the third-round lead of the USPGA Tour’s $6.2 million Memorial tournament.

Levin, seeking a first tour victory, had a 54hole total of eight-under par 208, one shot in front of overnight leader Rory Sabbatini, who posted a one-under par 71 for 209.

Rickie Fowler carded a three-under 69 to rise to third on 211, with 14-time major champion Tiger Woods alone in fourth after a oneover 73 for 212.

Woods got off to a solid start, with two birdies on the front nine at Muirfield Village.

But Woods struggled coming in, making the last of his four bogeys at the par-four 18th.

“I got a little tired at the end, but so be it,” Woods said. “I had my opportunities to move up that board and I didn’t do it. “I’m still in the ballgame,” added Woods, a four-time Memorial winner. “I need to grind it out and obviously post a good number.”

Japan’s Ryo Ishikawa carded a 71 to lead a trio on 213 that also included Sweden’s Henrik Stenson (71) and Jonathan Byrd (72).

Ishikawa used a local caddie and nabbed four birdies on the back nine, including three in a row from the 12th, to climb up the leaderboard.

Veteran Vijay Singh of Fiji had the other 69 and was in a group at 214. Levin chipped in for an eagle at the par-five fifth and for a birdie, as he posted one of just three rounds in the 60s in the blustery weather. His round put him in position to challenge again for his first tour title.

He had a six-shot lead after three rounds in Phoenix earlier this year but carded a finalround 75 to finish third behind winner Kyle Stanley. Levin said late yesterday’s round will show just what he took away from his Phoenix experience. “People have been asking me that question, and I don’t know yet,” Levin said. “I’ll be able to answer that tomorrow.” Levin got his round going early, draining a 35-foot birdie putt at the second hole. He holed out from behind the green for eagle at the fifth, and holed out again for a birdie at the 10th, where his second shot was short.

Levin slipped back a bit with two bogeys coming in, leaving himself with a slim lead and a wealth of well-known names within striking distance. His nearest six rivals have either major titles, US PGA Tour titles or Presidents Cup experience to their credit.

“Four shots is definitely manageable around this golf course, considering the conditions and what they’re going to be tomorrow,” Woods said. “A lot of guys are still in this ballgame. It’ll be an exciting day tomorrow.” — AFP

McLaren GT celebrates ‘winning’ week, highlighted by MP4-12C GT3 racing car’s famous first victory MANAMA: The McLaren MP4-12C is now a winner on track as well as on the road with McLaren GT customer team Hexis Racing claiming a first victory for the MP4-12C GT3 last weekend at the Circuito de Navarra in Spain. A dominant performance by reigning FIA GT1 World Champions, Hexis Racing, in qualifying and the championship race places the French team in second position of the European based series after three rounds.

McLaren GT was launched as a new brand within the McLaren Group early in 2011, and has supplied 25 12C GT3’s for racing in Europe to 13 customer teams, each of whom are working closely with the McLaren GT engineers to develop their new race cars throughout the competitive 2012 season.

Each team has the opportunity to test the vehicle set-up using the same simulator programme used by McLaren Racing and Formula 1 World Champions Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button.

McLaren is looking closely at extending availability of the GT3 race car to customer teams around the world from 2013 and its first win for the 12C GT3 came as McLaren GT also announced plans to establish a dedicated engineering and vehicle assembly facility close to the McLaren Technology Centre (MTC) in Woking, Southern England. The move comes after the stunning 12C GT3 made its racing debut as part of an intensive 2011 development programme. Being within close proximity to McLaren Racing and

McLaren Automotive presents the McLaren GT team with an enhanced opportunity to share resources and technology, and exchange ideas with the design and engineering specialists working in the other McLaren Group brands.

The McLaren GT home will now be based in the premises occupied by McLaren Racing between 1987 and 2004. During this period, McLaren Racing’s Formula 1 team won a total of five Constructors’, and six Drivers’ Formula 1 World Championships.

McLaren Automotive Regional Director, Middle East & Africa, Mark Harrison said: “Success in motor racing is vital for McLaren as it cascades technology and engineering solutions through to the road car business which gives the 12C performance to outperform all its competitors and a unique racing DNA” Fans of McLaren GT will now also have the chance to order the official team kit. New for the 2012 season is the McLaren GT Collection - a stylish range of clothing and accessories finished in black with subtle grey and striking McLaren Orange detailing, as worn and used by the McLaren GT racing team. The range comprises durable and versatile leisurewear including polo shirts and waterproof jackets, as well as other accessories to appeal to all motorsport fans.

The McLaren GT Collection is available through McLaren Automotive dealers in the Middle East or through the official McLaren shop — www.mclarenshop.com

Stacy takes commanding lead GALLOWAY: Stacy Lewis carded a second-straight six-under par 65 on Saturday to seize a six-shot lead going into the final round of the LPGA ShopRite Classic.

Lewis, who shared the overnight lead with Japan’s Mika Miyazato, had eight birdies to off-set a double-bogey six at the sixth hole. Her 36-hole total of 12-under par 130 matched the tournament record set by Amy Benz in 1996 and matched by Denise Killeen in 2004.

Lewis had a comfortable cushion in the 54-hole event over Sweden’s Anna Nordqvist, who posted a four-under 67 for 136. Nordqvist’s six birdies included three in a row from the 11th.

Paula Creamer and So Yeon Ryu, the last two

winners of the US women’s Open, were in a group on 137. Ryu carded a 67 on the Bay Course at the Seaview resort, while Creamer posted a 70. They were joined at five-under by Australian Katherine Hull, who posted a 66 and Spain’s Azahara Munoz, who carded a 68.

World number one Yani Tseng was in a quartet of players on 138. The Taiwanese star, winner of the three tournaments already this season, carded a 67 and was tied with South Korea’s Hee-Won Han (67), Colombia’s Mariajo Uribe (71) and Miyazato, who slipped back with a two-over 73.

Tseng teed off on 10 and made a move with four straight birdies around the turn, starting at 18 and continuing at the first, second and third holes. Her

charge stalled with bogeys at four and seven, but she capped her round with a birdie on the par-five ninth. Lewis, who led going into the final round en route to a victory in April in Mobile, Alabama, said this time around she purposely avoided checking the leaderboards. The golfer said she felt she played more cautiously from in front in Alabama.

“I took so much from Mobile,” Lewis said. “I had a couple-shot lead, but then I think at the turn, I had a five-shot lead and I made the mistake of playing safe, and not really staying into my game and what I was doing. I was worrying about what other people were doing, watching the leaderboard. “So today, out there, I made the turn and had a twoshot lead and kind of told myself let’s see how big

we can get this.”

Lewis, who birdied three of the first five holes, came unstuck at the sixth, where she drove into the brush and finished with a three-putt double-bogey.

She responded with five more birdies, including one at the par-five finishing hole. “I probably should have hit a three-wood off the tee,” Lewis said of the sixth.

“I was worried about my driver going through the fairway, so I kind of laid off the driver and hit it into the brush, chipped out and then had an ugly three-putt. But from then on, my caddie told me, ‘when you hit a bad shot, we’ve got to slow down, you’ve got to get back to what you’re doing.’ And I did that the rest of the way.” — AFP

18

MONDAY, JUNE 4, 2012

sp orts

Thunder power past Spurs

IPOH: New Zealand players celebrate with their trophy after defeating Argentina to win the Sultan Azlan Shah Cup men’s field hockey tournament. —AFP

NZ beat Argentina for Azlan Shah Cup IPOH: New Zealand beat Argentina 1-0 in a tough and thrilling final clash in the Sultan Azlan Shah Cup men’s hockey tournament yesterday that bodes well for the Black Sticks in the London Olympics.

It is their maiden win in the Sultan Azlan Shah Cup and the team will surely head to London with bigger expectations. A clinical penalty corner execution in the 18th minute by veteran Andy Hayward was enough to stop 2008 champions Argentina from regaining the cup.

New Zealand maintained their dominance with a solid defence and impressive attack in the tournament, losing only once to South Korea one-nil.

But modest Black Sticks coach Shane McLeod played down the importance of the win as far as the Olympics were concerned. “Sure, it is great to have won our first Sultan Azlan Shah Cup. It is no mean feat considering the opposition we have had to face. But we still have a fair bit of work to do before the Games start in July,” he said.

“This has been a good tournament for us and playing five other Olympic-bound teams is a bonus as we now know a lot more about these teams.”

The tournament in the Malaysian northern city of Ipoh is an important preOlympic warm-up for London qualifiers Argentina, Britain, India, South Korea and Pakistan.

New Zealand are ranked seventh in the world and the Black Sticks last won an Olympic gold in Montreal in 1976 and

had only ever made it to the third place in the annual Sultan Azlan Shah Cup despite participation in the tournament that goes back two decades.

Argentina failed to capitalise despite numerous chances. It was heartbreak for the South Americans who dominated the proceedings but just could not find their scoring touch.

Both teams were rather apprehensive in the opening minutes as Argentina opted to let New Zealand attack and relied on fast counter attacks.

New Zealand were awarded a penalty corner in the first-half and the 26 yearold Hayward stepped up to send a low flick past a despairing dive by Argentine keeper Juan Manuel Vivaldi. Argentina were later awarded two penalty corners but they failed to convert.

Meanwhile in the match to decide the bronze medal, India came from a goal down to defeat Britain 3-1. Ashley Jackson opened the scoring in the 35th minute as his penalty corner flick sailed into the goal.

But India were undeterred as they created several chances. And they were duly rewarded as Shivendra Singh fired home in the 43rd minute to level the score.

Sandeep Singh converted a penalty corner while Tushar Khandker sealed the third spot with a goal for India. South Korea finished in fifth place after defeating host Malaysia 3-2.

Asian giants Pakistan finished rock bottom. Hosts Malaysia are the only team at the tournament not going to the Olympics. —AFP

Lorenzo turns up heat on Stoner with victory BARCELONA: Spain’s Jorge Lorenzo extended his lead in the overall standings yesterday as he won his second successive race, the Catalunya MotoGP. The Yamaha-riding 2010 world champion came home clear of compatriot Dani Pedrosa on a Honda while Andrea Dovizioso, on a Yamaha, edged world champion Casey Stoner for third. Lorenzo, 25, was winning his third race of the season and 20th MotoGP, having taken the opener in Qatar and then added the French race last time and holds a 20 point lead over Stoner heading into the British MotoGp in a fortnight.

“It was a very tough race, very complicated,” said Lorenzo, who stopped off halfway through his victory lap and let off a bizarre puffball-type explosion out of a pot of paint.

“Dani and Ben (Spies) were so close and it would have been very easy to hit them and crash. “However, later I just waited for Dani to make a mistake and he duly coughed one up.”

Pedrosa was disappointed at missing out on victory, which would have been his first of the campaign. “I had some issues at the end of the race,” said the 26-year-old.

“I wanted to give Lorenzo a real tussle but in the end he was just too fast. I am disappointed because I really wanted to win this race.” Dovizioso for his part was ecstatic for taking his first podium spot for Yamaha and having largely been out-performed by teammare Cal Crutchlow this season.

“The end was really difficult, I had absolutely no grip,” said the 26-yearold Italian. “I am really happy with the result. The bike was as fast as the lead-

ing riders ones and all we need is a bit of fine-tuning to compete with them regularly.” Pedrosa got a terrific start bursting past those in front of him on the grid including Crutchlow and the two riders on the front row, Lorenzo and Stoner. Pedrosa was closely followed by Ben Spies on a Yamaha as Lorenzo dropped back to third and Stoner in fifth. Spies looked to have rediscovered some of his great form from last year as he pressured Pedrosa going into a corner on the second lap and the American duly passed the Spaniard but disaster struck as he went too wide and slid into the gravel.

It will have done nothing to advance the American’s case with Yamaha where he has come under increasing pressure after a series of poor results this campaign.

Pedrosa carried on in front until Lorenzo swooped with 19 laps remaining to pass him and unlike his Yamaha team-mate did not make an error on taking the lead - Stoner along with his Honda team-mate had been the only riders to opt for hard tyres but unlike Pedrosa he was struggling and was trailing in fourth. Stoner was two seconds adrift of the front three Dovizioso was in third - with 17 laps remaining but making no inroads into their lead. Pedrosa and Lorenzo were having a thrilling battle up front with the lead changing hands on several occasions, the former moving back into the lead with 14 laps to go. Lorenzo had a wobbly moment going into the following lap as going wide into the first corner his bike slid and the Spaniard was at pains to correct it and get going again, but having lost valuable time on his compatriot. —AFP

SPAIN: MotoGP rider Dani Pedrosa from Spain (right) steers his bike during the first lap followed by Ben Spies (second right) and Jorge Lorenzo (third right) during the Spanish Motorcycling MotoGP Grand Prix. —AP

OKLAHOMA CITY: Kevin Durant scored 18 of his 36 points in a scintillating final 7 minutes, Serge Ibaka added a career-high 26 points and the Oklahoma City Thunder evened the Western Conference finals at two games apiece by beating the San Antonio Spurs 109-103 Saturday night.

After seeing his team’s 15-point lead dwindle to four, Durant took over midway through the fourth quarter by scoring all 16 of the Thunder’s points during a span of just over 5 minutes to keep the Spurs at bay.

With All-Star teammate Russell Westbrook limited to seven points, Durant did almost all of the damage late to send the series back to San Antonio all square for Game 5 today.

The three -time scoring champion hit three straight jumpers, the last one coming after he bumped into Tony Parker in the lane to draw a foul and set up a three-point play.

Then he attacked the rim for his next three baskets, getting to the line again when he was fouled on a layup off of James Harden’s alley-oop.

Durant hit another jumper after coming off a Westbrook screen for the last basket in his personal run - and the Spurs were still within strik ing distance. Rook ie K awhi Leonard bracketed a pair of 3-pointers around that Durant jumper, and the Spurs were only down 102-96 with 1:24 left.

The Spurs succeeded in getting the ball out of Durant’s hands on the next possession, only for him to provide the assist on Harden’s 3-pointer from the left wing that bumped the lead to nine. Durant hit two free throws in the final minute to help close it out. Oklahoma City is trying to become the 15th team in NBA history to overcome an 0-2

deficit in a seven-game series, and the eighth to do it since 2004. The Thunder avoided an even trickier task by winning.

Only eight teams have ever overcome a 31 hole, and only two had done it while need-

ing two wins on the road - the 1995 Rockets and 1968 Celtics. Tim Duncan had 21 points for San Antonio, which had won 20 in a row before losing Game 3. Leonard added 17 points and nine rebounds. —AP

OKLAHOMA CITY: Thunder guard Russell Westbrook (0) shoots as San Antonio Spurs forward Boris Diaw (33), of France, and center Tim Duncan (21) defend during the first half of Game 4 in the NBA basketball Western Conference finals. — AP

Australia’s Durbridge wins Dauphine prologue GRENOBLE: Australia’s Luke Durbridge, riding for Orica-GreenEdge, edged Britain’s triple Olympic champion Bradley Wiggins to win the 5.7 kilometre Dauphine Libre prologue around here yesterday.

The 21-year-old junior world time trial champion and national time trial champion crossed the line one second up on Wiggins in the race against the clock in what is a key tune-up race for next month’s Tour de France.

“I wasn’t expecting this, I was more looking at finishing in the first five,” said Durbridge, who thus took his maiden win on the World Tour.

“It all went well, I was able to ride quick and finish quick. It was the right choice to set off among the first riders. We’d seen the weather forecast and we were worried about the rain which was at risk of falling in the afternoon.”

Defending champion Wiggins, who has been in fine form this season winning the Paris-Nice and Tour of Romandie stage races,

said he was satisfied with his opening result.

“I am happy enough to finish second, but it is all about the whole week and not just this prologue,” he said. “I could not have asked for more than what I did today.

“It is always the same thing in prologues.

When there is more than three hours between the first starters and the last ones, the conditions can vary.

“I am where I want to be. We are now approaching the Tour de France. We are less than four weeks away from the start of the race and there is not much training left to do.

“Now it’s really down to race time.”

Behind the front two Astana’s Andriy Grivko took third at 3sec, with Spain’s Carlos Barredo fourth and Germany’s world time trial champion Tony Martin fifth, five seconds behind. Further back came Australia’s Tour de France titleholder Cadel Evans in ninth at six seconds.

With Wiggins showing superb form this season ahead of a renewed assault on the

Tour de France yellow jersey-he crashed out on stage seven last year-this week’s race should also reveal how Evans is shaping up less than a month before the race start.

Evans has had a lacklustre season so far, but Evans’ sporting director at BMC John Lelangue says the Australian-a four-time runner-up at the Dauphine has major ambitions this week.

“Cadel made a very good come back to competition, he only lost time on the specialists and he is very well ranked among the favorites,” said Lelangue, who believes the fight for the overall will really take place during the time trial Thursday.

“He will have to stay safe during the coming stages and after this prologue, we have nice perspectives for the overall.” Today’s first stage is a 187 kilometre run from Seyssins to Saint-Vallier.

The race, which features several mountain stages, finishes Sunday with a 124.5 km ride from Morzine to Chatel. —AFP

Pakistan level T20 series HAMBANTOTA: Shahid Afridi’s superb all-round per formance helped Pakistan post an easy 23run victory over Sri Lanka in the second and final Twenty20 international and level the series 1-1.

Hosts Sri Lanka were shot out for 99 as they collapsed, their lowest T20 total against Pakistan, after restricting the tourists to 122-6 in Hambantota.

Man-of-the-match Afridi was the star of Pakistan’s victory in a low-scoring match, hammering a 33-ball 52 not out and then grabbing two wickets for 17 runs in his four disciplined overs.

Afridi, who becomes the first player to appear in 50 T20 internationals, hit one six and five fours in his fourth half-century.

Pacemen Mohammad Sami and Yasir Arafat also impressed as they took three wickets apiece to keep pressure on Sri Lanka, who rested skipper Mahela Jayawardene and fast bowler Lasith Malinga. Middleorder batsman Chamara Kapugedera top-scored with 19 in a dismal Sri Lankan batting display.

Sri Lanka, who won the opening match by 37 runs on Friday, were 76-4 at one stage before losing their last six wickets for 23 runs.

Pakistan were earlier struggling at 41-4 before Afridi steadied the innings with a 68-run stand for the fifth wicket with Shoaib Malik, who hit three successive fours off legspinner Kaushal Lokuarachchi in his 26-ball 27.

Lokuarachchi bagged two of the first four wickets as Pakistan struggled, removing skipper Mohammad Hafeez (24) and Umar Akmal (five) in his four-over spell.

Paceman Nuwan Kulasekera was the most impressive bowler, finishing with 2-13 off four tight overs.

Sri Lanka brought in Isuru Udana and Kapugedera in place of Jayawardene and Malinga, while all-rounder Angelo Mathews led the side.

Pakistan made one change, replacing Umar Gul with Arafat. Sri Lanka and Pakistan will now play a five-match one-day series, starting in Pallekele on Thursday. —AFP

HAMBANTOTA: Pakistani bowler Shahid Afridi (third right) celebrates the dismissal of Sri Lankan batsman Dinesh Chandimal (left) during the second Twenty20 cricket match. —AP

SCOREBOARD HAMBANTOTA: Complete scoreboard of the second and final Twenty20 international between Sri Lanka and Pakistan in Hambantota yesterday: Pakistan: M’ Hafeez c Thirimanne b Lokuarachchi 24 Ahmed Shehzad lbw b Kulasekera 6 Khalid Latif run out 1 Umar Akmal lbw b Lokuarachchi 5 Shoaib Malik c Dilshan b Perera 27 Shahid Afridi not out 52 Yasir Arafat c Dilshan b Kulasekera 2 Sohail Tanvir not out 0 Extras (b2, lb1, w2) 5 Total (for six wickets; 20 overs) 122 Fall of wickets: 1-11 (Shehzad), 2-18 (Latif ), 3-29 (Akmal), 4-41 (Hafeez), 5-109 (Malik), 6-119 (Arafat).

Bowling: Kulasekera 4-1-13-2 (w1), Mathews 2-0-90, Perera 4-0-31-1, Udana 4-1-18-0, Lokuarachchi 4-0-31-2 (w1), Senanayake 2-0-17-0.

Sri Lanka: K. Sangakkara c Malik b Arafat T. Dilshan b Afridi

8 18

N. Kulasekera c Malik b Arafat 0 C. Kapugedera b Afridi 19 D. Chandimal b Tanvir 12 L. Thirimanne c Ansar b Sami 18 A. Mathews c Afridi b Arafat 11 T. Perera b Sami 0 K. Lokuarachchi st Ansar b Ajmal 0 S. Senanayake c Tanvir b Sami 1 I. Udana not out 1 Extras (lb2, w9) 11 Total (for all out; 19.2 overs) 99 Fall of wickets: 1-19 (Sangakkara), 2-19 (Kulasekera), 3-39 (Dilshan), 4-62 (Kapugedera), 5-76 (Chandimal), 6-85 (Thirimanne), 7-90 (Perera), 8-91 (Lokuarachchi), 994 (Senanayake), 10-99 (Mathews).

Bowling: Tanvir 4-0-15-1 (w1), Arafat 3.2-0-18-3 (w2), Sami 3-0-16-3 (w6), Afridi 4-0-17-2, Ajmal 40-20-1, Hafeez 1-0-11-0.

Result: Pakistan win by 23 runs

19

MONDAY, JUNE 4, 2012

SPORTS

Poland win tune-up leading to Euro 2012 Turkey upset Portugal, Argentina thrash Ecuador

TOKYO: Japan’s Shinji Okazaki (right) fights for the ball with Oman’s Mohammed Al-Musalami during their soccer match for the World Cup Asia qualifying. —AP

Jordan hold Iraq, Japan defeat Oman 2014 World Cup qualifiers AMMAN: Jordan held Iraq to a 1-1 draw in the final round of 2014 World Cup qualifiers in the Middle East yesterday.

Nashat Akram opened the scoring for Iraq in the 14th minute with a solo effort from outside the penalty area in the Group B match. But then Jordan’s Ahmad Hayel Ibrahim took advantage of some poor goalkeeping to draw his team level in the 43rd minute.

Neither team could find the winner in the second half, though Jordan substitute Thaer Bawab missed an easy chance in front of the net in the 86th minute.

The top two teams from each group next June will advance to the World Cup, while the two third-place teams play off for a further spot.

In Singapore, Asian champions Japan cruised to a 3-0 win over Oman yesterday as Uzbekistan were left to rue an apparent goal which was unseen by officials-underlining the growing case for goal-line technology. Strikes by CSKA Moscow star Keisuke Honda, Ryoichi Maeda and Shinji Okazaki meant Japan were never troubled by lowly Oman as they made a winning start to the final round of Asian qualifying for Brazil 2014.

But there was drama in Tashkent as Japanese referee Yuichi Nishimura missed what seemed a clear-cut goal for Uzbekistan, who then watched in disbelief as visitors Iran snatched a 1-0 win in the dying seconds. Half-an-hour into the second half, Odil Ahmedov’s close-range shot from a goal-mouth melee crossed the line before being blocked by Iranian defender Seyed Hosseini, who also may have used his hand, TV replays indicated.

But the incident went unnoticed by Nishimura and his assistants. The latest in

a long line of similar cases comes after world body FIFA tested goal-line technology at England’s friendly against Belgium on Saturday. And the match finished cruelly for Uzbekistan, who have never reached a World Cup finals, when Iran’s Mohammad Khalatbari raced onto a through ball in the 94th minute and scored the winner in virtually the last kick of the game. There were no such problems for Japan, who didn’t look back after influential midfielder Honda, back in the international fold after injury, scored the opener on 12 minutes.

Two-time J-League top-scorer Maeda scored via the left upright in the 51st minute, and he had another shot blocked three minutes later only for Stuttgart forward Okazaki to collect the rebound and make it 3-0. “We were a bit tense at the beginning, but I wanted to win. I’m glad that we won,” said Honda.

“I scored the goal as I planned to do. I think we relaxed with that goal.”

Japan dominated throughout the 90 minutes, with Oman limited to a single shot on target through midfielder Fawzi Doorbeen at the end of the first half, and never able to create another clear scoring chance. A total of 10 Asian countries are split into two groups of five for the continent’s fourth qualifying round, with the group winners and runners-up earning places in Brazil, and the third-placed teams going into play-offs.

“It was our first game, so it was important to get off to a good start,” said Japan’s Italian coach Alberto Zaccheroni.

“I think we can play well in the next two games. We were able to concentrate because of the support of so many people at the stadium.”—AFP

LONDON: England won for the second straight time under Roy Hodgson on Saturday, while European Championship cohost Poland and the Netherlands enjoyed romps in their tune-ups. Lionel Messi also had a nice showing for Argentina in World Cup qualifying.

Danny Welbeck scored his first international goal in the 36th minute to give England a 1-0 victory over Belgium at Wembley that was far from convincing. The English will enter Euro 2012 with a perfect record since Hodgson became coach, having beaten Norway by the same score last weekend. Poland swept aside lowly Andorra 4-0 in Warsaw after three first-half goals in its last pre-Euro exhibition. Denmark beat Australia 2-0 at home.

Croatia, however, settled for a 1-1 draw at Norway after Tarik Elyounoussi evened the score in injury time for the hosts. Eduardo da Silva gave Croatia the lead in the 79th minute.

The Netherlands routed Northern Ireland 6-0 behind two goals each from Robin van Persie and Ibrahim Afellay. Turkey upset Portugal 3-1 in Lisbon a week before the Portuguese start the Euros against Germany.

Portugal is winless in its last three matches and for the second time in a week was jeered by its home fans.

Argentina scored three goals in nine minutes to overpower Ecuador 4-0 and move atop the South American qualifying standings. Sergio Aguero opening the scoring in the 23rd and Gonzalo Higuain doubled the advantage in the 30th, taking a through pass from Messi. The Barcelona star scored two minutes later.

England’s victory may prove costly because both starting central defenders had to leave the game. Gary Cahill was pushed into goalkeeper Joe Hart in the second half and needed an X-ray on his jaw. Chelsea teammate John Terry left in the second half because of a hamstring problem.

“Cahill is slightly more of a concern because it’s a jaw injury,” Hodgson said. “I am hoping the scan doesn’t show a fracture and it will be a bruise. That’s wouldn’t rule him out of the tournament.”

Welbeck converted the team’s first good scoring chance and a solid defensive effort prevented the visitors from converting their

BUENOS AIRES: Argentina’s Lionel Messi fights for the ball with Ecuador’s Jairo Campos during a World Cup 2014 qualifying soccer game. —AP edge in possession into dangerous opportunities. In Warsaw, Poland led 3-0 by halftime after Ludovic Obraniak scored in the 13th minute before Robert Lewandowski and Jakub Blaszczykowski struck in a two-minute span just before the break. Marcin Wasilewski made it 4-0 in the 77th. Poland will open Euro 2012 against Greece in Group A, which also includes the Czech Republic and Russia.

In Copenhagen, Daniel Agger made a penalty kick for Denmark in the 31st and Andreas Bjelland scored the second from a corner kick in the 66th. Australia failed to convert several chances.

Uche spares Nigerian blushes with late winner

Hodgson’s woes mount as Cahill ruled out of Euro LONDON: England defender Gary Cahill has been ruled out of Euro 2012 with a double fracture of the jaw, the Football Association (FA) announced yesterday.

The 26-year-old, who won the FA Cup and Champions League with Chelsea last season, suffered the injury when he was shoved in the back by Belgium’s Dries Mertens during the first half of a 1-0 international friendly win at Wembley on Saturday and, as a result, collided with England goalkeeper Joe Hart.

He was sent for X-rays and now has become the third player to drop out of England manager Roy Hodgson’s squad this week after midfielders Gareth Barry and Frank Lampard’s hopes of playing in Poland and Ukraine were dashed by injury.

Liverpool’s Martin Kelly was called up yesterday as a replacement, with Hodgson having already omitted veteran Manchester United centre-back Rio Ferdinand from his original squad.

An FA statement issued yesterday said: “Gary Cahill has been withdrawn from England’s Euro 2012 squad following the injury he suffered in the match against Belgium.

“The Chelsea defender has two fractures of his jaw, one either side. The England medical team have been in close contact overnight with Cahill’s club doctors, who will treat him moving forward.

“Liverpool defender Martin Kelly will be called into the squad-subject to agreement from UEFA’s medical team.

“Kelly trained with the England players last week and was part of the group that travelled to Norway (where England won 1-0 in Oslo to give Hodgson a win in his first game as England boss).”

Some good news on the injury front did arrive on Sunday when John Terry, Cahill’s Chelsea and England central defensive colleague, was passed fit after suffering a hamstring problem against Belgium. “John Terry has been scanned this morning and given the all-clear,” the FA said. “He will be re-assessed on Tuesday when the team regroup.”

Hodgson immediately feared the

worst regarding Cahill’s injury, saying after the match: “The referee gave him (Mertens) a yellow card, which he deserved.

“Unfortunately for us, the consequences might be a lot more than a yellow card because a fracture is a distinct possibility.” Now Hodgson has been proved right and he heads to his first major tournament as England manager minus several players from his original squad, with third-choice goalkeeper John Ruddy’s finger injury on the second day of training starting a run of fitness problems.

Saturday’s match was England’s last before they begin their Euro 2012 Group D campaign against France in Donetsk on June 11 — a game in which Cahill looked likely to start alongside clubmate Terry.

But now the Chelsea captain, if fit, could be partnered by either Everton’s Phil Jagielka or Manchester City’s Joleon Lescott.

Manchester United’s Phil Jones is the only other recognised defender in the squad, although he could be needed to bolster midfield in the absence of Lampard and Barry.

Kelly, who made his England debut off the bench against Norway, is another option, although the full-back is a novice at international level.

Hodgson insisted he had left 81-cap Ferdinand out of his original squad for “purely” footballing reasons and not because Terry is facing a July court case on allegations he racially abused Ferdinand’s younger brother, Anton, during Chelsea’s Premier League clash with QPR last October; accusations the Chelsea skipper denies.

Rio Ferdinand, a regular with Manchester United as they just failed to defend their Premier League title last season, reacted to his ongoing England exile by asking his Twitter followers: “What reasons?????!!!”

As well as Terry, England also have concerns over Danny Welbeck, who scored against Belgium, Steven Gerrard and Scott Parker.—AFP

“They were tired. They have had a tough week because they have been training all week long,” Denmark coach Morten Olsen said. “It is important for us that we have a win at this moment.”

In World Cup qualifying in South America, Jose Rondon’s header in the 84th minute gave surprising Venezuela a 1-1 draw with host Uruguay. Diego Forlan scored in the 39th minute for Uruguay.

Uruguay is unbeaten in 16 matches and rated the best team in South America.

Venezuela is the only country from South America yet to play in a World Cup.—AP

WARSAW: Greece national soccer team players arrive at Hotel Jachrance, Poland. —AP

First teams arrive in Poland for Euro 2012 WARSAW: The Czech Republic and Greece yesterday became the first teams competing in Euro 2012 to arrive in Poland, a UEFA official said, with the opening matches in the tournament less than a week away.

Both teams have been drawn with tournament co-hosts Poland and Russia in Group A, with the first matches on Friday. Poland take on Euro 2004 champions Greece in the opener in the capital Warsaw, while Russia play the Czech Republic in the southwestern city of Wroclaw.

A UEFA official told AFP that the Czech Republic arrived in Wroclaw from Prague in a specially-chartered high-speed train, with the locomotive pulling the squad decked out in the red, white and blue livery of the team colors.

“I don’t even remember the last time I caught a train,” defender Theodor Gebre Selassie was quoted as saying on UEFA.com before boarding the service that took them over the border. “It could be when I was small and went to visit my grandfather. It’s certainly more convenient than going by bus. I hope a lot of our fans will follow the same tracks to come and support us for a few days.

The Czech team had a scare last week after reports suggested there were traces of the potentially-deadly

Legionella bacteria at their training camp hotel but Polish health inspectors later declared the venue safe.

Fernando Santos’ Greece, surprise winners of the tournament eight years ago in Portugal, also jetted in on Sunday and will be based near Warsaw. They beat Armenia 1-0 in a friendly in Austria last week.

Dick Advocaat’s Russia, fresh from a 3-0 warm-up win over Italy in Zurich on Friday, were due to arrive in Warsaw late yesterday.

Their central Warsaw hotel, Le Meridien Bristol, has been at the centre of a diplomatic spat because of concerns about a scheduled rally on June 10 by Poland’s Moscow-critical opposition.

Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski even stepped in last month, saying he had no problem with the Russians staying at the fivestar hotel after sports minister Joanna Mucha had suggested they move.

The Russian football federation and Advocaat refused, dismissing the concerns as a media exaggeration.

Poland, who beat Andorra 4-0 in a warm-up game on Saturday, meanwhile held a public training session at Polonia Warsaw’s ground yesterday in front of several thousand goodnatured fans, an AFP reporter at the scene said.—AFP

JOHANNESBURG: Nigeria huffed and puffed before finally blowing down Namibia to snatch a 1-0 home victory in a 2014 World Cup qualifier yesterday.

On a day when goals were scarce around the continent-seven games produced just nineSpain-based Ikechukwu Uche spared the Super Eagles’ blushes by scoring 10 minutes from time.

John Utaka, who helped Montpellier win the French Ligue 1 title last month, constantly threatened the Brave Warriors and had a goal disallowed before being replaced on the hour mark by Ahmed Musa.

Henry Uche and Kalu Uche also came off the bench as coach Stephen Keshi became increasingly anxious to get his Group F campaign off to a winning start in south-east city Calabar.

Keshi, who replaced Samson Siasia last year after Nigeria failed to qualify for the 2012 Africa Cup of Nations, did not call up England Premier League trio John Obi Mikel, Peter Odemwingie and Taye Taiwo. He also had to do without the most capped Nigerian footballer, centre-back Joseph Yobo, because of an injury that will also rule the Turkey-based star out of a match in Malawi next weekend.

Namibia coach Bernard Kaanjuka, whose team lie 23 places below Nigeria in the FIFA African ranking, was true to his word after stressing in pre-match interviews that the Warriors “were not going to roll over for anyone”.

After displaying admirable defensive qualities against Nigeria, the team from the vast, thinly populated southern Africa country will have to show more adventure when Kenya play in Windhoek next Saturday. A 16th-minute Razack Omotoyossi goal gave Benin a 1-0 home victory over 2012 Cup of Nations bronze medallists Mali in Group H and a win in his first competitive outing with the Squirrels for French coach Manuel Amoros.

Striker Emmanuel Okwi salvaged a 1-1 draw for Uganda in Group J with a goal three minutes from time in Angola after Djalma Campos had given the Black Antelopes an early lead.

The clash of Togo and Libya in Lome also finished 1-1, with an early goal for the Sparrowhawks from France-based striker Kalen Damessi cancelled by veteran Ahmed Al Zwei 15 minutes into the opening half of the Group I game.

Niger and Gabon fought a goalless draw in Niamey-as did top seeds Burkina Faso and Congo Brazzaville in Ouagadougou 24 hours earlier in the other Group E match.

There will be another 20 qualifiers around Africa next weekend, with Saturday fixtures between Zambia and Ghana in Ndola and Morocco and Ivory Coast in Marrakech topping the bill.—AFP

Pakistan level T20 series

MONDAY, JUNE 4, 2012

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Jordan hold Iraq, Japan defeat Oman

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Hodgson’s woes mount as Cahill ruled out of Euro

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PARIS: Novak Djokovic of Serbia returns against Andreas Seppi of Italy at the French Open tennis tournament in Roland Garros stadium. —AP

Djokovic, Federer escape booby traps PARIS: Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer stayed on course for a mouthwatering French Open semi-final showdown yesterday, but only after they survived fourth round scares at a chilly Roland Garros.

Djokovic staged an epic recovery to defeat Italy’s Andreas Seppi 4-6, 6-7 (5/7), 6-3, 7-5, 6-3 while Federer, the champion in 2009, dropped the first set against Belgian lucky loser David Goffin, the world number 109, before claiming a 5-7, 7-5, 6-2, 6-4 win.

World number one Djokovic, bidding to become just the third man to hold all four majors at the same time, and first since 1969, struggled in the cold conditions on Philippe Chatrier court against a player he’d beaten seven times in seven meetings.

“I played very badly, but I won thanks to my fighting spirit,” said Djokovic, after a 25th successive Grand Slam match win took him into the Paris quarter-finals for the sixth time.

“He was the better player for the first two sets and I was fortunate to come through. But even at two sets down I still believed I could do it and

that’s about the only positive I can take.

It was one of those days when nothing worked.”

A lacklustre Djokovic committed 77 unforced errors to 22nd-seeded Seppi’s 81 before pulling through after four hours and 18 minutes.

He will next face either French fifth seed Jo-Wilfried Tsonga or Switzerland’s Stanislas Wawrinka, the 18th seed, for a place in the semi-finals.

Tsonga was leading 6-4, 7-6 (8/6), 36, 3-6, 4-2 when their match was suspended until Monday because of fading light. The 25-year-old Djokovic has never got beyond the semi-finals in Paris and his discomfort on the testing red clay courts was starkly illustrated last year when a 43-match winning run was ended by Federer.

For the first two sets yesterday, he was heading for the biggest shock since Rafael Nadal had his perfect 31match, four-title stretch smashed by Robin Soderling at the same stage in 2009.

But the top seed regrouped as Seppi, who had also played five-set matches in the second and third

rounds, wilted. Victory represented the Serb’s third win from two sets to love down after pulling off similar Houdini acts against Federer in the US Open semi-final last year and Wimbledon second round against Guillermo Garcia Lopez in 2005.

“I didn’t have a good start in the third and fourth sets. That’s the only thing I could have done better,” said Seppi, who was playing in his first Grand Slam last 16 match at the 29th attempt.

Federer, the record 16-time Grand Sam title winner, booked his place in a 32nd consecutive quarter-final at the majors, but he had been just two points from going down two sets to love down in the ninth game of the second set.

Contesting his 50th successive Grand Slam tournament, the third seed will take on either Argentine ninth seed Juan Martin Del Potro or Tomas Berdych, the seventh-seeded Czech.

Their match was halted due to darkness with Del Potro leading 7-6 (8/6), 16, 6-3.

“I didn’t know much about Goffin

beforehand, but I know him a lot better now,” said Federer, who was two points away from going down two sets to love against the Belgian, who used to plaster his bedroom wall with posters of the great Swiss.

The 21-year-old Goffin was the first lucky loser - an alternate on standby after being beaten in qualifying - to reach the last 16 of a major since countryman Dick Norman at Wimbledon in 1995.

“I came out of the qualifiers and I played my best tennis in my first three matches. Then playing Roger was the cherry on the cake,” said Goffin.

The men’s fourth round will be completed today when six-time champion Nadal, who celebrated his 26th birthday yesterday, meets Argentina’s Juan Monaco. Serb eighth seed Janko Tipsarevic tackles in-form Spanish 12th seed Nicolas Almagro.

Fourth seeded Briton Andy Murray faces French 17th seed Richard Gasquet with David Ferrer, the sixth seed, taking on 20th seed Marcel Granollers in an all-Spanish contest.—AFP

Mexicans blank Brazil ARLINGTON: Manchester United striker Javier Hernandez and Tottenham Hotspur playmaker Gio Dos Santos scored to give Mexico a 2-0 victory over Brazil in an international football friendly yesterday.

Dos Santos opened the scoring in the 21st minute and Hernandez converted from the penalty spot in the 32nd minute to give the Mexicans victory before 84,519 spectators at the home stadium of American football’s Dallas Cowboys.

Five-time World Cup champions Brazil are testing younger talent ahead of next month’s

start of the London Olympics while Mexico will begin qualifying matches on Friday for the 2014 World Cup that the Brazilians will host.

Brazil, with playmakers Neymar and Hulk in a starting role, were coming off a 4-1 rout of the United States last Wednesday.

The Mexicans were coming off a 2-1 victory over Boznia-Herzegovina on a Hernandez goal in the third minute of stoppage time. Mexico will open their 2014 World Cup qualifying campaign against Guyana in Mexico City on Friday.—AFP

Cibulkova upsets Azarenka PARIS: Dominika Cibulkova of Slovakia downed top seed Victoria Azarenka of Belarus to pull off a major upset in fourth round action at the French Open yesterday. The 15th seed won 6-2, 7-6 (7/4) to set up a quarter-final match with US Open champion Samantha Stosur of Australia who defeated US teenager Sloane Stephens of the United States 7-5, 64. Azarenka won the Australian Open in January and had been expected to coast past Cibulkova having beaten her seven times out of eight previously.

But the little Slovakian, who reached the semifinals in 2009, handled the cold, windy conditions on the Suzanne Lenglen court far better than the tall Belarusian.

After losing the first set, Azarenka appeared to be getting back on track as she broke to lead 2-0 in the second, but 23-year-old Cibulkova dug deep to run off four games in a row.

Azarenka levelled at 4-4, with the set then going to a tie-break which a pumped-up Cibulkova led from the start to pull off a stunning win.

“I am getting more mature and more tough mentally,” said Cibulkova, explaining that she had learned from the experience of losing to Azarenka in Miami earlier this year when leading a set and 5-2. “I managed to go through these emotions. She was 6-5 up, and I said, hey, come on, you have to play your game again and just make it.

“And for the tiebreak I’m very, very proud of myself that I was still going for my shots, and I just made it because she would never give me the match.

Azarenka said: “It wasn’t satisfying at all, not satisfying being out there playing like that. I do not know what to find positive in that. No excuses, just a bad

performance.” Earlier Sara Errani of Italy and Angelique Kerber of Germany both reached the quarter-finals at Roland Garros for the first time with straight sets wins.

PARIS: Angelique Kerber of Germany celebrates winning her fourth round match against Petra Martic of Croatia at the French Open.—AP

Errani, seeded 21, defeated Svetlana Kuznetsova of Russia 6-0, 7-5, while 10th seed Kerber ousted Petra Martic of Croatia 6-3, 7-5.

The pair will meet in the last eight in a top half of the draw which had also contained Azarenka. Errani has been the form player on clay this year winning tournaments in Acapulco, Barcelona and Budapest.

She also reached the Australian Open quarter-finals in January on hard courts.

The win over 2009 French Open champion Kuznetsova followed her three sets win over 2008 winner and 13th seed Ana Ivanovic in the previous round. “Now I have to keep my feet on the ground,” Errani said in a post on her website after the Kuznetsova match. “I won two good matches, but now I have to be just as good at staying focused and charged. I am very happy, but most of all I’m curious to find out to what level I can get. I honestly do not even know myself.”

Kerber, a semi-finalist at the US Open last year, was always on top of Martic, ranked 50th in the world although she had to dig deep after the Croatian started to make a better fight of it in the second set. The left-handed Kerber finally secured her quarter-final place on her third match point with a forehand winner on a poor return by the Croatian, who suffered nine double faults on her way to elimination. Asked what was the reason behind her sudden charge up the world rankings in the last 12 months Kerber replied: “After the US Open I started to believe in myself more and I started to do more practice and fitness things. “I know that I can beat the top players and now I am one of them. I think that nobody wants to play against me right now.”—AFP

ARLINGTON: Mexico’s Severo Meza (left) and Brazil’s Damiao Leandro (9) compete for control of the ball in the first half of an international friendly soccer match.—AP

Qatar win 1-0 over Lebanon BEIRUT: Sebastian Soria made the most of a horrible defensive blunder as Qatar beat Lebanon 1-0 in their World Cup qualifying match at the Sports City Stadium here yesterday.

The Uruguay-born hitman easily intercepted an inexplicable back pass by Lebanon defender Ramez Dayoub to fire Qatar into the lead in the 64th minute and give Paulo Autuori’s side three valuable points in their Group A fixture in the Lebanese capital.

Dayoub had acres of space to work the ball, but instead tried to pass it to goalkeeper Ziad al-Samad from outside the penalty area only for Soria to race ahead and find the net with ease.

Al-Samad, who was caught by surprise at Dayoub’s move, until then had produced a stirring display to deny Qatar at least two clear

goals in the first half, including one off a powerful shot by Soria. Qatar produced more scoring opportunities but a mixture of poor finishing and goalkeeper al-Samad’s heroics prevented them from winning the match by a bigger margin.

As early as the sixth minute Soria was a tad late in reaching the ball, which al-Samad cleared from well inside the penalty area.

Lebanon, who were without their inspirational captain Rada Antar and striker Mahmoud El Ali, however had their chances.

They had a golden opportunity to score in the 25th minute when the Qatar defence was caught napping but Abbas Ahmed Atwi’s shot from 20 yards hit the post and Hassan Maatouk, who was lurking nearby, failed to capitalise on the rebound.—AFP

Spain calls for a new euro fiscal authority Page 24

Employers waiting and watching before hiring Page 25

MONDAY, JUNE 4, 2012

Pakistan ‘heading for crisis without reforms’

Asia struggles to ward off impact of European crisis Page 22

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ALLAHABAD: Candidates who have arrived to take an Indian railway recruitment examination, sleep at night at the railway station in Allahabad, India yesterday. About 130,000 candidates are appearing for the exam at numerous centers spread across the city. — AP

India’s growth - build in incompetence discount Economic crises escalates; Brutal week for rupee NEW DELHI: It had been another brutal day for the rupee on the foreign exchanges as India’s economic crisis escalated and, travelling home from a visit to Myanmar last week, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh summoned journalists on his plane for a briefing.

The one statement he had prepared for the media that night, however, concerned allegations of corruption leveled against him and his cabinet ministers - not the economy.

Quizzed on the Indian currency’s precipitous slide to record lows, Singh blamed the global economic slowdown and the euro zone’s emergency, and he voiced hope that the G20 would sort these troubles out at a summit in Mexico later this month. Two days later, when gross domestic product (GDP) data showed India’s growth rate had plunged to its lowest level in nine years, Singh’s finance minister likewise pointed a finger at “weak global sentiments”, as well as the central bank for its tight monetary policy.

But as warning lights flash on India’s economic dashboard - with manufacturing output and consumer demand now fading as well as corporate investment, fiscal and trade deficits ballooning and inflation stubbornly high - few buy the line that it’s somehow not the government’s fault. “There is so much

denial, but almost all of the problems in India are self-inflicted,” said Rajeev Malik, senior economist at CLSA Singapore. “The Indian situation is ... an outcome of policy incoherence, a government that’s asleep.”

Economists say New Delhi’s policy inertia and the absence of significant reforms to sustain growth have now turned India’s slowdown from a cyclical one to something that is structural or systemic. The country is now stuck with lower growth than its potential: not the “Hindu rate of growth” of about 3.5 percent that dogged the state-stifled economy before big-bang reforms two decades ago, but a 21st-century version of that, which Malik calls “growth with a government-incompetence discount”.

THE PROBLEMS NOT IN GREECE To be fair, the external environment does partly explain the faltering growth. However, all of Asia’s emerging markets have been buffeted by chill winds from the United States and Europe, and yet India has fared worse than others, losing its ranking as the region’s second-fastest growing economy. Last week’s news that GDP grew by 5.3 percent in the first three months of this year, a stunning tumble from 9.2 percent in the same quarter of 2011,

put India fourth among Asian emerging-market economies behind China, the Philippines and Indonesia. For JP Morgan Chase’s India chief economist, Jahangir Aziz, what the government needs to do is “begin by admitting that the problem lies not in Greece, but at home”.

That doesn’t look likely anytime soon: one day after the GDP data, the cabinet met to agree on removing restrictions on the export of skimmed milk powder and broke up without discussing the country ’s economic predicament. Western nations might look with envy at a growth rate of more than 5 percent, but not at India’s inflation rate of over 7 percent, a current account gap now at its widest since 1980 and a fiscal deficit that has been allowed to swell to 5.9 percent of GDP thanks to a raft of crippling subsidies.

The rash of macroeconomic imbalances has raised the spectre of India’s balance of payments crisis in 1991, when the central bank was forced to airlift tons of gold to Europe as collateral for a loan to avert a sovereign default. Singh, then finance minister, rammed through deep-seated reforms that pulled India back from the brink and set it on the road for a streak of growth that came close to double digits before the global

financial meltdown of 2008.

A repeat of the full-blown crisis 21 years ago would be hard to imagine now, not least because India’s stock of foreign reserves is comfortable. But confidence is evaporating fast. “Goodbye 2020, Hello 1991,” the Economic Times newspaper moaned in a front page headline after the weak growth data, referring to India’s goal of becoming a developed country by the end of this decade and rubbing shoulders with China.

SETTLING FOR SUB-PAR GROWTH The trouble is that since it won a second term in 2009 the government led by Singh’s Congress party has taken no major policy initiatives to further the liberalization he pioneered. Instead, an outcry over corruption and peevish coalition allies that block unpopular reform have frozen the government into inaction. All this at a time when it needs to be slashing subsidies for fuel, fertilizer and food to fix the country’s fiscal credibility and tackling regulatory uncertainty and the high cost of doing business to halt a slowdown in investment. Samiran Chakraborty, chief economist at Standard Chartered in Mumbai, said one signal that the decline has become more structural than cyclical is that consumption - a

driving force behind the growth spurt of recent years - has lost momentum.

“Both investment and consumption seem to be getting impacted now. Both engines are now not functioning,” he said, explaining that persistently high inflation has eaten into real wages, negative business sentiment has spread to consumers and a post-boom stagnation of asset prices has hit consumption. “I don’t think the economy has spontaneous power to revive on its own,” Chakraborty said.

“It’s contingent on the policymakers.” The government last week announced austerity measures that included some curbs on state spending, but belt-tightening in response to debt troubles will only drive growth lower.

A more concrete step to jump-start activity was Singh’s announcement of a plan to fasttrack delayed infrastructure projects in a country where more than 200 large state-funded road, port and oil pipeline projects are behind schedule. But, according to an HSBC research note, what India most needs to get back on a higher growth trajectory in the medium term is deep supply-side reforms. “With policy paralysis not likely to ease anytime soon, however, India may have to settle for sub-par growth and elevated inflation over the next couple of years,” it said.—Reuters

US haunted by the ‘decline of empire’ WASHINGTON: In the annals of history, new powers have challenged the old on blood-soaked battlefields, in chandelier-decked negotiating rooms and through the brandishing of ahead-of-thecurve technology. And then there’s Muscatine, Iowa, a quiet town on the Mississippi River once home to Mark Twain. When Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping visited Muscatine in February, he was seizing on his connection to the town forged during a study excursion 27 years earlier to stage a made-for-television US trip.

While his tone was friendly, the visit may eventually be remembered as a historical marker-Xi is expected to become China’s top leader next year and, sometime during his presidency, his country is forecast to surpass the United States as the world’s largest economy. Behind the ubiquitous red-whiteand-blue flags that proudly dot the American landscape, a passionate debate is under way on whether the United States has already seen its best days.

The United States is saddled with historic debt after a decade of war and the Great Recession yet leaders are rarely able to agree on much other than that the political system is dysfunctional.

Unemployment rates in recent years have been at their worst in three decades and income inequality is by some accounts at modern highs. For a tangible case study in the theory of decline, one need

only fly from an aging US airport to one of Asia’s glittering new air hubs.

And yet students from around the world flock to US universities. Few objective observers can argue that the country that invented the airplane, the Internet and “The Simpsons” is short of innovation and creativity. And that is to say nothing of the staggering gap in military spending between the United States and every other country. ‘Sole, indispensable power-Talk of US decline is hardly newthe Vietnam War and Japan’s meteoric economic rise were also both, to some eyes, the beginning of the end of the American moment. And yet the question is shaping out to be a defining national debate in this election year.

Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee to seek the White House, has relentlessly attacked President Barack Obama for what he charges is a focus on managing decline instead of asserting the “exceptionalism” of the United States. In the early days of the Obama administration, some aides-while careful not to assert that the United States was in decline-said they were studying the lessons of previous global transitions, such as the US eclipse of Britain as the top power a century ago, in hopes of avoiding conflict with China. That tone has changed. In Januar y, Obama said that his commitment to working with other nations had restored “a sense of

America as the sole, indispensable power.”

In a recent speech, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton offered a robust defense of an active US role in the world and assured that 2012 “is not 1912”, when friction between a declining Britain and a rising Germany set the stage for global conflict. Decline has also become a favorite theme for prominent US scholars. In new books, Robert Kagan of the Brookings Institution and former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski both argue that US decline is exaggerated and that the world is far better off with a strong United States.

Yet whatever the reality, the very perception of US decline has effects. In a widely read recent essay, Wang Jisi, one of China’s top experts on the United States, said that Chinese policymakers are convinced of US decline and increasingly see US actions-even longstanding policies such as urging more respect for human rights and selling weapons to Taiwan-as signs of a diminished power trying to keep down a rising China. China seen from Iowa-Which brings us back to Iowa. Despite all of the historic talk of China’s rise and America’s fall, the people of Muscatine expressed views that are arguably more nuanced than those of many politicians. Numerous people in the town of 23,000 said that they had visited China, either for work or study, and the local high school offers instruction in Mandarin.—AFP

GOLDEN VALLEY: President Barack Obama greets supporters after speaking about jobs for veterans at Honeywell Automation and Control Solutions Global Headquarters in Golden Valley, Minn. — AP

MONDAY, JUNE 4, 2012

BUSINESS

Dima Capital seals UK property deal KUWAIT: Dimah Capital Investment has announced its first acquisition of an income-generating real estate in Britain for $ 46 million pounds sterling, with attractive returns, invested in the area of students’ accommodation.

Commenting on the signing of this deal, Sameer Al Gharaballi the Vice Chairman and Managing Director of Dimah Capital Investment said, “We are pleased to announce our first real estate deal in Britain through which Dimah Capital acquired the students’ village of Parham Road in Canterbury, consisting of 16 buildings of student housing with an accommodation capacity of 800 beds.”

Al Gharaballi added, “This transaction will provide investors with an average net

cash return of 8.2% per annum, to be paid monthly, and the net internal return rate will reach 13.3% during the 3-year holding period.” Al Gharaballi noted, “The acquisition of this portfolio is a very good deal, as the acquired real estate is generating income in Britain with good growing returns.

This opportunity was provided to Dimah Capital exclusively from outside the market by a local owner who had worked on developing this property during the past eight years, and the majority of these properties are residential with a 100 percent occupancy rates since they were built eight years ago.”

Both Dimah Capital Investment and 90 North Real Estate Co, Ltd., working in the

real estate sector compatible with the shareholders and investors.” The students’ Islamic law, and having a great experience accommodation sector in the UK is one of in students’ accommodation sector, will the fastest growing sectors in terms of be the investment advisers for this deal, rental value, and the average annual growth of rents in this sector according to Al Gharaballi. reached five percent during He further explained, “This the past five years. In particuacquisition is part of a welllar, the Canterbury region, advised plan to expand and which is located in the diversify the real estate province of Kent, is an area investment portfolio of densely populated with stuDimah Capital through the dents. The presence of five purchase of real estate propuniversities in this area led to erties generating fixed and an increasingly growing stable returns and having a number of students, which low risk rate, in line with the led in turn to a growing current developments in the demand for student accominternational markets, and to meet the aspirations of the Sameer Al Gharaballi modation compared to what

Asia struggles to ward off impact of European crisis Asians feel the heat as overseas markets deteriorate SHANGHAI: Weak manufacturing activity in China and dismal growth data from India have underscored Asia’s vulnerability to the European turmoil and sparked fresh calls for government intervention.

Asia was long considered a global bright spot, even a haven from Europe’s deepening crisis and the weak US recovery. But the continent is starting to feel the heat as overseas markets deteriorate. World Trade Organization chief Pascal Lamy said on Thursday that the region was increasingly “interconnected with the rest of the planet and I don’t think this relative immunity will be forever”. “I would expect, given what is happening in other parts of the world economy, this region to be more affected than it has been so far,” he said.

Lamy’s fears were borne out within hours as the disappointing data stoked calls for China’s and India’s governments to kick-star t their economies to escape hard landings, which could worsen the already fragile global outlook.

“China’s economic slowdown is more severe than expected. Export orders are continuing to fall, which is definitely related to Europe’s debt crisis,” said Liao Qun, chief economist for Citic Bank International in Hong Kong. “Uncertainty in Europe is high. China needs to move faster and more aggressively to speed up loosening of its monetary and fiscal policies.”

China’s official purchasing managers’ index

(PMI) for manufacturing indicated a sharperthan-expected slowdown in May, while separate PMI data released by British bank HSBC showed a contraction for the same month.

China has already cut bank reserve requirements three times since December as exports-a key engine of growth-have stumbled, causing economic growth to weaken to its slowest pace in three years for the first quarter. There are signs that Beijing is ramping up spending with infrastructure projects, but officials and state media have ruled out a massive stimulus plan like a four-trillion-yuan ($635-billion) spending spree in 2008.

Meanwhile, India’s economy grew at a nineyear low of 5.3 percent in the first quarter, data showed Thursday, as the global downturn hit the emerging market giant. The unexpectedly grim figure was well below analysts’ forecasts for 6.1 percent growth and coincided with China’s bleak data, dimming hopes that emerging countries will power the global economy back to health.

HSBC’s chief India economist Leif Eskesen said India’s weakening economy was like a “gasping elephant”. “The slowdown in growth has proven deeper than expected,” he said.

India’s other indicators are a source of worry: the rupee is at historic lows against the dollar, annual inflation remains high at around 7.0 percent, and the current account and public deficits

are large. That makes it difficult for policymakers to respond to slowing growth, since the bulging public deficit gives little scope for added government spending and high inflation makes cutting interest rates difficult.

Elsewhere, South Korea’s exports-an indicator for the region-declined year-on-year for a third straight month in May as the euro-zone turbulence and China’s slowdown took their toll on the economy, figures showed Friday.

S o u t h K o re a’s s h i p m e n t s to t h e U n i te d States dropped 16.5 percent and those to the European Union fell 16.4 percent. A PMI reading for resources giant Australia fell deep into negative territory while Taiwan’s HSBC PMI fell to 50.5 from 51.2, barely staying above the contraction level of 50.

Asian stocks have taken a further hit, following a miserable May in which most regional markets gave up almost all the gains they had made since the start of 2012 as Europe’s debt crisis came back into sharp focus. Companies are also yanking massive initial public offers, citing the weak market conditions.

London-based jeweler Graff Diamonds said Thursday it had decided to delay its $1.0 billion offer in Hong Kong. Another glamorous business, Formula One, is waiting for “the most opportune” time to launch its $2.5 billion IPO in Singapore after turbulence returned to financial markets, a source said on Friday. — AFP

Eurobonds ‘a way’ of alleviating crisis ATHENS: Italy’s Prime Minister Mario Monti believes eurobonds, a contested tool proposed as a way of alleviating the euro-zone crisis, will eventually become reality, he told a Greek newspaper yesterday. “I believe we will have eurobonds is some form or other, because our (European) union is getting closer,” Monti told To Vima, warning however they were not a “licence to spend” or an alternative to cutting debt.

In the same newspaper, however, German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle reiterated Berlin’s opposition, saying eurobonds would “increase debt and reduce competitiveness.” Underwritten by all euro-

zone countries, eurobonds would allow troubled members such as Greece to raise funds at much less painful interest rates than if they borrowed on their own. Backers include new French President Francois Hollande. But German Chancellor Angela Merkel is opposed, seeing a risk that eurobonds would reduce the incentive to balance budgets and cut debt, while also pushing Germany’s own borrowing costs higher.

Interest rates on two-year German bonds on Friday went negative for the first time as investors worried about financial turmoil sought a safe haven for their cash-

effectively meaning they have to pay Berlin to lend it money. Monti said meanwhile that he was “certain” Greece would not leave the eurozone even after June 17 elections that investors fear will result in just such a scenario, potentially spelling turmoil for Monti’s own country, Spain and others. He stressed however that Athens had to “continue and intensify its work to create a strong economy,” a reference to the austerity cuts Greece has promised in return for bailouts from the European Union and International Monetary Fund.

A previous election in early May saw parties opposed to more cuts

win a majority of the vote, but forming a coalition proved impossible, meaning Greeks will return to polling stations again in two weeks.

If Greece reneges on its commitments the flow of funds will cease and the country will quickly become insolvent and will have to leave the euro-zone, an event with potentially calamitous consequences, and not just in Greece.

Westerwelle for his part said that he wants Greece to remain in the currency union and expressed confidence that voters would “take the right decisions,” while adding that the terms of the bailouts “must be respected.” — AFP

is currently available. Canterbury is located in a green belt area, which has strict laws limiting the construction process, which reduces the chance of construction of other competing student housing facilities.

It is worth mentioning here that the students’ accommodation facility that was acquired is fully leased through contracts with three universities in different specialties, in addition to a limited direct contact with students. It is therefore hard to find a vacancy in the students’ residence. There are also constantly growing waiting lists in each of the three universities, and in case of vacancy, the leasing is made directly by the university to a new student. The average length of leases is 12 years.

EU Policy shift KUWAIT: “Countries that are at the further. Huge relief to consumers in core of the EU system and which the West. Remember the austerity have had the huge merit of instilling measures plus big rise to oil; energy the culture of stability to the EU in and commodity prices have acted as the first place, most notably a huge tax on consumers in the Germany should really reflect West. I always believe that economdeeply but quickly”. This is what ics is about good housekeeping and Mario Monti the Italian prime minis- then it balances itself in the long ter said yesterday at the European end. May be now we are seeing the Union conference. His speech would global economies balancing out again, away from comhave been normal if he modity and oil producdid not single out ers back to consumers.

Germany by name. As This is good news for we were saying in the everyone. last few weeks someIf it was not for the thing has to crack. strong growth in China, A couple of weeks Arab springs, Geopolitical ago investors were tensions and some other hoping that the newly reasons then oil and elected socialist French commodity prices should president will be the not have gone up over one who put pressure the last 6 months. But on Angela Merkel, but Hayder Tawfik balancing always happens in now it seems that Italians has joined the Greek, Spanish and the the end. Gasoline prices have fallen French in asking for a little bit of about 14% just in May in US. This Mercy. Remarkably the French presi- will have huge impact on condent has taken the back seat. Even sumers spending. This has been Barak Obama who is facing re-elec- reflected in the strong showings of tion soon has joined the club. On retails sales already and I think will Wednesday, he telephoned the top carry on further in the coming four leaders in Europe to get their months. More importantly, we will see a bigger impact for European act together and sort out the mess.

To call it a policy shift for sure. consumers. Also, the correction in Germany has no excuse anymore. As commodity prices will be helpful for I said before there is no German mir- commodity consumers. It will modacle when it comes to their econo- erate inflation in some part of the my. It has benefited tremendously world where it has seen price presfrom the huge export boom against sure such in Asia and notably in it main competitors the poor India and should clear the way for Japanese and the Americans. Since easier monetary policies.

The question for global investors the introduction of the Euro, it has kept its value well below the is how they should position themJapanese Yen and the US$. The selves to take advantages of policy recent devaluation of the Euro shift and correction in commodities? against the Yen and $ must be great My answer is very simple. The marnews to German exporters added to ket has a good track record of anticithis the recent big correction in oil pation and future trend changes. I and commodity prices. May be think the sectors which have been Angela Merkel excuse about infla- leading the way in the last few tion will no longer be valid and she months will carry on doing so for will give in. May be at the end it will the rest of the year. We at Dimah not be a Greek tragedy but a Capital believe that investors should concentrate on the following secGerman surrender.

Commodity prices and oil have tors: Technology, Consumer discrestarted the long overdue correction. tionary and non-discretionary and This was way overdue but the cata- other sectors which will benefit lyst has been the slowdown in China immediately from falling unemployand the refusal by the Chinese gov- ment such as human resources and ernment to stimulate the economy employment related businesses.

EXCHANGE RATES Commercial Bank of Kuwait US Dollar/KD GB Pound/KD Euro Swiss francs Canadian Dollar Australian DLR Indian rupees Sri Lanka Rupee UAE dirhams Bahraini dinars Jordanian dinar Saudi riyals Omani riyals Philippine peso Egyptian pounds

.2730000 .4270000 .3460000 .2880000 .2690000 .2690000 .0040000 .0020000 .0759860 .7403120 .3840000 .0710000 .7257430 .0040000 .0430000

CUSTOMER TRANSFER RATES US Dollar/KD .2799000 GB Pound/KD .4299960 Euro .3480420 Swiss francs .2897370 Canadian dollars .2689410 Danish Kroner .0468370 Swedish Kroner .0386110 Australian dlr .2716290 Hong Kong dlr .0360670 Singapore dlr .2165400 Japanese yen .0035880 Indian Rs/KD .0000000 Sri Lanka rupee .0000000 Pakistan rupee .0000000 Bangladesh taka .0000000 UAE dirhams .0762360 Bahraini dinars .7427360 Jordanian dinar .0000000 Saudi Riyal/KD .0746600 Omani riyals .7272960 Philippine Peso .0000000

.2835000 .4400000 .3540000 .2970000 .2770000 .2780000 .0070000 .0035000 .0767500 .7477520 .4020000 .0770000 .7330370 .0072000 .0500000 .2820000 .4332230 .3506530 .2919100 .2709580 .0471880 .0389010 .2736670 .0363380 .2181650 .0036150 .0051050 .0021660 .0030190 .0034580 .0768080 .7483080 .3988680 .0752200 .7327530 .0065350

Kuwait Bahrain Intl Exchange Co. Currency

Rate per 1000 (Tran)

US Dollar Pak Rupees Indian Rupees Sri Lankan Rupees Bangladesh Taka Philippines Peso UAE Dirhams Saudi Riyals Bahraini Dinars Egyptian Pounds Pound Sterling Indonesian Rupiah

281.500 2.999 5.050 2.125 3.439 6.515 76.745 75.225 748.400 46.572 440.990 2.950

Yemeni Riyal Euro Canadian Dollars Nepali rupee

1.550 354.200 279.000 3.190

UAE Dirhams Qatari Riyals Saudi Riyals Jordanian Dinar Egyptian Pound Sri Lankan Rupees Indian Rupees Pakistani Rupees Bangladesh Taka Philippines Pesso Cyprus pound Japanese Yen Thai Bhat Syrian Pound Nepalese Rupees Malaysian Ringgit

Al Mulla Exchange Currency

Transfer Rate (Per 1000)

US Dollar Euro Pound Sterling Canadian Dollar Japanese Yen Indian Rupee Egyptian Pound Sri Lankan Rupee Bangladesh Taka Philippines Peso Pakistan Rupee Bahraini Dinar UAE Dirham Saudi Riyal

281.050 351.350 433.050 272.150 3.655 5.032 46.495 2.126 3.425 6.470 3.002 747.450 76.500 75.000

COUNTRY

SELL DRAFT SELL CASH

Australian Dollar Canadian Dollar Swiss Franc Euro US Dollar Sterling Pound Japanese Yen Bangladesh Taka Indian Rupee Sri Lankan Rupee Nepali Rupee Pakistani Rupee UAE Dirhams Bahraini Dinar Egyptian Pound Jordanian Dinar Omani Riyal Qatari Riyal Saudi Riyal

275.12 274.05 293.54 350.21 280.95 433.47 3.67 3.437 5.034 2.119.

3.158 3.011 76.56 748.08 46.50 400.26 731.20 77.58 75.13

288.00 279.50 296.50 355.00 281.50 441.00 3.65 3.550 5.330 400 3.850 3.200 77.00 745.00 47.85 396.00 730.00 77.55 75.25

Dollarco Exchange Co. Ltd Selling Rate

US Dollar Canadian Dollar Sterling Pound Euro Swiss Frank Bahrain Dinar

281.300 276.795 436.320 349.055 290.575 744.730

COUNTRY Australian dollar Bahraini dinar Bangladeshi taka Canadian dollar Cyprus pound Czek koruna Danish krone Deutsche Mark Egyptian pound Euro Cash Hongkong dollar Indian rupees Indonesia Iranian tuman Iraqi dinar Japanese yen Jordanian dinar Lebanese pound Malaysian ringgit Morocco dirham Nepalese Rupees New Zealand dollar Nigeria Norwegian krone Omani Riyal Pakistani rupees Philippine peso Qatari riyal Saudi riyal Singapore dollar South Africa Sri Lankan rupees Sterling pound Swedish krona Swiss franc Syrian pound

SELL CASH 275.400 747.700 3.670 273.800 552.200 45.800 47.900 167.800 48.170 353.000 36.900 5.250 0.032 0.161 0.239 3.700 398.430 0.190 92.520 44.000 4.320 215.500 1.821 47.100 730.300 3.150 6.630 77.770 75.070 218.940 36.310 2.678 435.300 39.600 294.300 4.300

9.280 198.263 76.660 281.500 1.350

9.080 76.560 281.100

GOLD 1,712.680

10 Tola Sterling Pound US Dollar

TRAVELLER’S CHEQUE 433.300 281.100

Al-Muzaini Exchange Co.

Bahrain Exchange Company

UAE Exchange Centre WLL

Rate for Transfer

Thai bhat Tunisian dollar UAE dirham U.S. dollars Yemeni Riyal

76.565 77.215 74.975 395.975 46.510 2.124 4.991 3.018 3.440 6.450 690.030 4.565 8.905 5.925 3.259 89.245

SELL DRAFT 273.900 747.700 3.433 272.300

Japanese Yen Indian Rupees Pakistani Rupees Srilankan Rupees Nepali Rupees Singapore Dollar Hongkong Dollar Bangladesh Taka Philippine Peso Thai Baht Malaysian Ringgit

3.553 5.072 3.053 2.141 3.173 220.090 36.173 3.425 6.439 8.876 89.338 GCC COUNTRIES 74.883 77.158 729.380 745.850 76.464

218.900 46.943 351.500 36.750 5.040 0.031

Saudi Riyal Qatari Riyal Omani Riyal Bahraini Dinar UAE Dirham

398.390 0.169 92.520

ARAB COUNTRIES Egyptian Pound - Cash 48.250 Egyptian Pound - Transfer 46.466 Yemen Riyal/for 1000 1.309 Tunisian Dinar 176.65 Jordanian Dinar 396.190 Lebanese Lira/for 1000 1.884 Syrian Lier 4.899 Morocco Dirham 32.64

3.180 214.000 730.120 3.027 6.470 77.340 75.070 218.940 36.310 2.138 433.300 292.800 4.300

EUROPEAN & AMERICAN COUNTRIES US Dollar Transfer 280.700 Euro 354.52 Sterling Pound 441.820 Canadian dollar 274.79 Turkish lire 152.400 Swiss Franc 295.01 US Dollar Buying 279.500 20 Gram 10 Gram 5 Gram

GOLD 293.000 148.000 75.250

MONDAY, JUNE 4, 2012

BUSINESS

Japan bets on overseas ‘Japantowns’ to boost economy TOKYO: Japan is hoping to cash in on its rich culture by recreating fashionable districts of Tokyo in foreign cities, determined that enclaves of vibrant shops, cafes and restaurants can find new markets abroad. For decades, exports have been the driving force behind the world’s third largest economy with brands like Toyota and Sony becoming household names around the globe. But a key plank in the government’s “Cool Japan” strategy, which launched last year, is to transplant Tokyo’s trendy districts overseas, taking the shops to the customers instead of bringing the customers to the shops.

It could see quirky areas like shopping district Harajuku pop up in cities around the world, boosting Japan’s brand overseas and helping to reverse the nation’s flagging fortunes. Harajuku is known for a subculture in which young women dress up in a style known as Lolita fashion, looking not unlike Little Bo Peep. The area and its fashion has inspired pop diva Lady Gaga. In October, more than a dozen Japanese apparel companies opened a mini-commercial hub called Harajuku Street Style in Singapore, the kind of venture that Cool Japan advocates are hoping to replicate many times over.

Japan’s cultural exports are already valued at 4.6 trillion yen ($58 billion) a year, according to government figures. Pop acts like hugely popular girl group AKB48 make up a sizeable chunk of this figure, while manga and anime do their share with a significant, but falling, contribution. The cutesy Hello Kitty, a moon-faced cartoon cat, is present in more than 100 countries around the world, its maker says. But the government wants to more-thandouble the amount Japanese pop culture makes for the country’s economy, and is eyeing 11 trillion yen by 2020.

The idea is to pair up property developers who are keen to buy real estate abroad with several small businesses eager to expand overseas, creating Japanese enclaves where the country’s trendy design and sometimes quirky culture work as selling points. “It’s hard for small businesses to go into overseas markets on their own, but they have enormous potential to sell in foreign markets,” a trade ministry official said. Last month, the government held a business matchmaking fair, where dark-suited salarymen from the nation’s major real-estate developers mingled alongside the owners of a nail-art

shop and red-lanterned “izakaya”Japanese-style bars offering grilled meat and beer. “I think this event is very meaningful,” said 28year-old Maiko Fukushima, who runs a bar featuring young women singing popular anime songs in Tokyo’s Akihabara district. “We have many fans abroad who monitor our activities via the Internet, but small businesses don’t have the capital to go overseas by ourselves.” Yuichiro Suzuki, 37, president of “maid cafe” operator Neo Delight said he planned to start selling the concept in a major Asian city such as Hong Kong or Bangkok later this year. But although image-themed restaurants and other establishments are hugely popular in Japan, their allure abroad remains to be seen. Nobutoshi Yamanouchi, a lawyer specializing in mergers and acquisitions with legal firm Jones Day said the strategy hinged on being able to export “Japaneseness”.

But, he cautioned, projects needed to be handled by a manager with vision. “It won’t be so simple to sell an image of an entire town. Such a project will need someone to orchestrate and design the image of a town, for example Harajuku,” he said. The “Cool Japan” campaign comes at a time other

nations are also trying to cash in on aspects of their culture or history to boost investment or trade. The GREAT Britain campaign is particularly visible with advertising campaigns in a number of world cities that coincide with London’s hosting of the Olympic Games and Queen Elizabeth’s diamond jubilee. For Japan, it is less about grand themes than cultural particularities.

Akiko Shinoda, director of Japan Fashion Week, said Japanese attention to quality and detail, especially on the fashion front, is a key selling point. “(Japanese are) raised in an environment where everything is high-quality manga, anime, games and other toys. The Japanese in general are known for craftsmanship,” she said. “Because people in trendy fashion streets such as Harajuku, Shibuya, Ginza and Daikanyama are highly sensitive to fashion, Japanese designers inspired by them turn out excellent products.” Izakaya manager Koichi Fukami said he was hoping that the country’s cuisine would help spread the uniquely Japanese pubs around the world. “Japanese cuisine’s power is great,” he said at the fair. “Chinatowns are everywhere in the world.

Let’s make Japantowns.” — AFP

Pakistan ‘heading for crisis without reforms’ Mismanagement, overgenerous subsidies stifle economy

SEOUL: Photo shows a woman walking in the lobby of the headquarters of POSCO in Seoul. The world’s third largest steeelmaker Posco will donate millions of dollars to support South Koreans forced to work in Japan during colonial rule, decades after it was set up through Japanese reparations. — AFP

South Korean firms tapped for compensation over Japan rule SEOUL: The world’s third-largest steelmaker Posco will donate millions of dollars to support South Koreans forced to work in Japan during colonial rule, decades after it was set up through Japanese reparations.

Other South Korean firms that also benefited from the reparations are being encouraged to follow suit, as victims of imperial Japan’s forced labor schemes or their descendants keep pressing for compensation.

Japan’s brutal rule over Korea from 1910 to 1945 is still a source of resentment among older generations. But its 1965 reparations package of $800 million in grants and cheap loans, along with US aid, funded the “Miracle on the Han”, which transformed South Korea’s economy.

Authoritarian president Park Chung-Hee ploughed the compensation into modernizing the economy and infrastructure of a country left in ruins by the 1950-53 Korean War. A self-sufficient, integrated steel mill was Park’s priority. His government poured $118 million into building the initial plant, which began production in 1972 with an annual capacity of one million tons. Little was left over to compensate conscript laborers, estimated by the Seoul government to have numbered 780,000 and mostly forced overseas during World War II. It was not until 1975 that Seoul passed a law to compensate them. The reparations scheme was poorly publicized and only 8,500 applied. The government started paying 300,000 won (now $255) for each victim but many applicants turned it down as too small.

Under new legislation in 2008, compensation was raised to 20 million won but victims were still dissatisfied. Their feelings of resentment against Tokyo and Seoul spread to Posco and other Korean corporations. Posco in 2009 and 2010 won lawsuits filed by forced laborers or their descendants. They sought compensation because the steelmaker had benefited from the Japanese reparations. The courts ruled Posco was not legally liable but said it

would be “desirable” for the giant firm to support forced labourers or their families.

Posco’s board decided in March to donate 10 billion won to a state fund soon to be launched to compensate victims.

A company spokeswoman said the decision, reported in local media last week, was not an admission of liability but a goodwill gesture. She said the firm, which was privatized in 2000, had long repaid all start-up costs. The government will launch the fund in a few months and start paying compensation next year, said Lee Jae-Chul, spokesman for a committee in charge of the project. In addition to Posco’s donation, Seoul plans to allocate 12.5 billion won from next year’s state budget. The committee will also seek “donations” from the nine other then-state corporations which benefited back in the 1960s.

One of those, Korea Expressway Corporation, has promised “positively” to consider the request. Others, including Korea Railroad and Korea Electric Power Corp, want more details, according to Lee. Lee said that 226,584 Koreans claimed they or their ancestors had been mobilized as workers or soldiers by Japan. Despite the subsequent controversy, historians say the reparations were well spent. “But for the money from Japan, Posco would not have existed,” professor Park Young-Goo, at the Busan University of Foreign Studies said.

“No country in the world at that time was prepared to lend money to South Korea to build an integrated steel plant and highways.” In another twist, Seoul’s Supreme Court ruled on May 24 that Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Nippon Steel should compensate nine conscripted Korean workers or their families. Japan insists individual claims were settled under the 1965 deal, which saw the two countries restore diplomatic relations. But the court ruled that the state and individuals were separate and the treaty did not affect individuals’ rights to damages. It sent the cases back to lower courts for a new hearing and a calculation of the amount of compensation. — AFP

Japan’s probe highlights culture of insider trading TOKYO: A probe into insider trading has thrust the spotlight on the cosy world of Japanese share dealing, with US investment banking giant JPMorgan now ensnared in the snowballing investigation.

Criminal convictions for trading on inside information are few and far between in Japan. For those who are caught, the token punishments are hardly a deterrent-recent fines have come in at around $1,500. That’s a far cry from the West, where multi-million-dollar financial penalties or even jail time are the norm.

Wall Street hedge fund manager Raj Rajaratnam is now serving an 11-year prison term, the longest ever imposed for insider trading by a US court. But in a market where personal relationships are cultivated and nurtured over years, a tip that allows a friend or client to pounce on an upcoming share issue is seen as par for the course in Japan, dealers say. “Japan should

punish those who leak confidential information,” said Etsuro Kuronuma, a law professor at Tokyo’s prestigious Waseda University. “Even if a brokerage sets internal rules, you cannot supervise your employees all the time... (Leaks) violate the trust of share issuers.” The investigation by securities regulators has sparked renewed pressure to crack down on lax regulations, amid concerns about Japan’s flagging reputation for corporate governance. Its image has been dented by a string of financial scandals such as a cover-up of about $1.7 billion in investment losses at camera and medical equipment maker Olympus.

On Tuesday, Japan’s Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission recommended that Asuka Asset Management be fined for short-selling Nippon Sheet Glass shares after illegally obtaining information ahead of a stock sale that JPMorgan was underwriting. —AFP

ISLAMABAD: Minuscule tax revenues, mismanagement and overgenerous subsidies mean Pakistan is heading for a new financial crisis, say diplomats and analysts, with this week’s budget unlikely to offer any respite.

The budget deficit stood at 6.6 percent of GDP last year, according to the central bank, the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), which warned that government borrowing was crowding out the private sector from access to credit.

That reduces the prospects for economic growth in a country that is on the front line of the war against Al-Qaeda and where more than 5,000 people have been killed in bomb and gun attacks by Islamist insurgents since 2007. External forecasts for the current fiscal year see the budget deficit rising to about seven percent of GDP, while economists warn the government is running out of ways to fund it-and reluctant to embrace reform with polls looming.

Some see little alternative to a major financial crisis or a return to the IMF, which bailed out Pakistan with an $11.3 billion loan package in 2008 that stopped last November after Islamabad rejected strict reform demands. “I think it’s possible they could have a real financial crisis by the middle of this year or the fall. I don’t think it’s a question of if, but when they go back to the IMF,” one Western diplomat said. Pakistan’s tax revenues are among the lowest in the world at just 9.8 percent of GDP in fiscal 2010-2011, says the Asian Development Bank, and less than two percent of the population pays tax on their income.

On top of this, the government shells out huge sums on electricity subsidies-about 1.5 percent of GDP in 2010-11, according to the IMF-for a sector so blighted by mismanagement that most of the country suffers crippling power cuts. Pakistan has also missed out on payments from the United States for its efforts to fight militancy under the Coalition Support Fund (CSF). This brought around $8.8 billion into Pakistan’s coffers between 2002 and 2011, including $1.5 billion in 2009-10, but Islamabad stopped claiming the money as ties with Washington collapsed in the wake of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden last

CHAMAN: Men ride horse-carts along a road after crossing the border from Afghanistan to Pakistan, at the border town of Chaman. — AP

year. “There’s not really any money coming in, and that being the case, the government is financing itself by borrowing from the local banks and the local banks aren’t seeing deposits coming in to keep up,” said Liz Martins, an economist with HSBC. The pressure on finance houses “means they have very limited money to lend to the private sector,” she said.

“There’s no money coming from the IMF, no money coming from the bond markets, and international investors are very cautious.”

Islamabad borrowed 365 billion rupees ($4 billion) from the banking system both private banks and the SBP-in the first half of the current financial year, the central bank said in its second quarter economic report.

With inflation already running at around 11 percent, the alternative of printing money to pay debts opens the way to the nightmare of hyperinflation. The IMF says Pakistan needs to raise tax revenues substantially to reduce the deficit sustainably, but with an election due

within months analysts do not expect Finance Minister Abdul Hafeez Shaikh to follow its advice in his budget on Friday. “I don’t think the government is able to bear the terms that come with going back to the IMF,” said Sartaj Aziz, former finance minister and vice chancellor of Beaconhouse National University.

The situation was already serious, he warned. “The total expansion of currency is higher than ever, so it is already reaching dangerous levels. It has to be arrested by drastic remedial measures,” he said. Officials from the finance ministry were repeatedly contacted by AFP, but declined to comment on how they planned to finance the deficit. In Pakistan, once a general election is called, an interim government takes power for three months while campaigning is under way and Aziz said he thought this would give the government a way to duck difficult budget decisions. “I think the government will be happy to wait until the election is called and hand the problem over to the caretaker government,” he said. — AFP

New Philippine ‘maturity’ reaping rewards: Analysts MANILA: The Philippines passed a crucial stresstest with the orderly sacking of its top judge, confirming a growing political maturity that is helping drive an economic revival, analysts say. The Philippine economy has for decades been one of Asia’s biggest underachievers, bedeviled by coups, corruption and political chaos that scared off investors who instead pumped billions of dollars into neighboring nations. That is changing, amid a belief that President Benigno Aquino’s heavy focus during his first two years in office on fighting graft and improving standards of governance is starting to pay off. “This whole commitment of this administration to fight corruption has reverberated and increased confidence,” said Peter Perfecto, head of the Makati Business Club, one of the nation’s most influential business groups.

One of the biggest wins for Aquino came in the last week when the Senate found the Supreme Court’s chief justice, Renato Corona, guilty of hiding more than $4 million in bank deposits and ordered him to be removed from office. It was the first time a chief justice had been sacked and, remarkably for a country so used to political turmoil, passed with barely a whimper of a street protest and the military remaining respectfully silent. “It was indeed an achievement to have the process completed without extra-constitutional efforts,” said Steven Rood, country representative of the Asia Foundation, a US-based group that promotes governance in the region.

When a bloodless “people power” revolt ended Ferdinand Marcos’ 20-year rule and revived democracy in 1986, it also convinced Filipinos that extra-legal shortcuts were the most effective way to resolve major political crises. Corazon Aquino, the incumbent leader’s late mother, stared down military rebels and multiple coup attempts during her six years in office after replacing Marcos. In 2001, military-backed street protests ousted thenpresident Joseph Estrada after his Senate impeachment trial for corruption broke down.

This led to the ascension of Gloria Arroyo, who survived three military rebellions but ended her near-decade in power in 2010 with a reputation for being corrupt. She has since been charged with vote-rigging. She denies accusations of corruption. Benigno Aquino has been able to maintain political stability because people and institutions largely believe his anti-graft campaign is delivering results. “The current administration was elected on a platform that anti-corruption is the best economic strategy, and they continue to pur-

MANILA: Philippine construction workers go about their duties at a Manila high-rise building project in Manila yesterday. The Philippines passed a crucial stress-test with the orderly sacking of its top judge, confirming a growing political maturity that is helping drive an economic revival, analysts say. — AFP

sue that policy direction,” the Asia Foundation’s Rood said.

Other significant developments in Aquino’s drive include overhauling the budget disbursement system, reviewing Arroyo-era government contracts and naming an ex-Supreme Court justice as chief anti-corruption prosecutor. He also named reformist bureau chiefs at the country’s main revenue -collection agencies, which have been aggressively filing cases against alleged big-time tax evaders and smugglers. Crisanto Frianeza, secretary-general of the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry, praised Aquino’s efforts to cut red tape, a key obstacle that breeds corruption. “Local governments are instituting a system that makes it easier to register a business. It still needs a lot of work, but compared to before, we already have a good system,” Frianeza said.

Analysts say that, amid all the reforms, it is no coincidence that foreign direct investments jumped 153.7 percent annually to $850 million in the first two months of this year.

The economy also grew 6.4 percent in the first quarter, topping all forecasts and one of the bestperforming in Asia, while stock prices have hit record highs, up 14 percent this year. Major creditrating agencies have made six positive actions on the Philippines since Aquino came to office.

The latest, Moody’s upgrade on the Philippine outlook to positive from stable, came on the same day that the Senate sacked Corona. Nevertheless, economists and analysts acknowledge that huge challenges remain. Debt is still two rungs below investment grade and the World Bank’s International Finance Corp rates the Philippines 136th globally among 183 economies in terms of ease of doing business. Most crucially, even Aquino admits that the war on graft will take many years to win. Corruption watchdog Transparency International ranked the Philippines the 129th most corrupt country out of 183 in 2011, slightly up from 134th the previous year. — AFP

24

MONDAY, JUNE 4, 2012

business

ECB may cut rates as Euro-zone crisis deepens

ISSY-LES-MOULINEAUX: An aerial picture taken from the city of Issy-lesMoulineaux shows a building of the French construction group Bouygues, and in the background the city of Paris with the Eiffel Tower. — AFP

Spain rescue package could reach 150-450 billion euros MADRID: If Spain cries out for a financial rescue, analysts say the price could be 150450 billion euros ($186-560 billion) or, in the most worrying case, simply “unknown territory”. Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s conservative government refuses even to countenance a bailout. But markets are remorseless. Ten-year government bond yields, or interest, pierced 6.7 percent this week. When compared with German debt, the extra rate charged on Spanish bonds hit 5.48 percentage points Friday, a euroera record. Latest figures showed a net 97 billion euros ($121 billion) of investors’ money fled Spain in the first three months of the year-the highest on record. In such an environment, how can Madrid finance a banking rescue-stricken lender Bankia alone is seeking a total of 23.5 billion eurosand pay for the state’s new expenses and existing debts?

“Against this background, it now appears all but inevitable that Spain will require a considerable bailout package to support its banks, if not the wider economy,” said a report by London-based Capital Economics. The task is daunting: Spain’s economy is the fourth-biggest in the eurozone and accounts for 12 percent of the region’s output-twice that of heavilyindebted Ireland, Portugal and Greece combined. David Mackie, chief economist for Europe at JP Morgan, said Spain wanted the European Central Bank to buy its sovereign debt and for European rescue mechanisms to intervene directly in its banks.

“Spain looks to have gotten to the point where it cannot bear the burden alone,” he

said. European officials say Madrid would have to negotiate a formal rescue, however, even if the money only goes to the banks.

Whatever the format, the price could be high considering Spain’s size. A bailout of Ireland cost 85 billion euros, one for Portugal was 78 billion euros and Greece, so far, 292 billion euros. Spain’s financing needs this year are estimated at 86 billion euros, of which half has already been raised. In addition, Spanish regions have debt financing costs of 36 billion euros, to which must be added 15-16 billion euros in deficit financing, according to Spanish media.

Banks, heavily exposed to the collapsed property sector, could need 60 billion euros, according to the International Institute of Finance. But a bailout would have to tide Spain over for several years. A report for clients by HSBC calculated that over three years the costs would be 450 billion euros, of which 100 billion euros would go towards the banks. It says, however, that such a scenario is unlikely because no-one wants to see Spain being thrown an international rescue line as it would signal that the euro crisis had reached an entirely new level. JP Morgan tips a bill of 350 billion euros, including 75 billion euros to cover the financial sector up to 2014. Edward Hugh, economist in Barcelona, was more pessimistic about the state of the banks.

“Some sort of attempt to rescue Spain is likely and it is likely to come in July,” he said, after the June 17 Greek election and once the 500-billion-euro European Stability Mechanism is operational. —AFP

HUAIBEI: A Chinese woman works at a cotton thread factory in Huaibei, in eastern China’s Anhui province. Weak manufacturing activity in China and dismal economic growth data from India have underscored Asia’s vulnerability to the European turmoil and sparked fresh calls for government intervention.— AFP

FRANKFURT: The European Central Bank may cut interest rates again soon as the euro-zone debt crisis deepens, but it will continue to insist that it is up to governments to find a lasting solution, analysts say. ECB watchers predict the central bank-which will hold its regular policy-setting meeting this week on Wednesday instead of Thursday owing to a public holiday-will not alter borrowing costs just yet this month. But it could act in July as deepening fears about Greece and possible contagion to other countries push the 17 countries that share the euro back into recession, the analysts predicted.

“The further escalation of the euro-zone crisis has intensified the pressure on the ECB to take further remedial action,” said Capital Economics’ chief European economist Jonathan Loynes. “But while president (Mario) Draghi may hold open the prospect of further support of the region’s banks after the meeting on June 6, he is likely to insist again that it is up to national policymakers to address their broader economic and fiscal problems,” Loynes said. The ECB has never hesitated to act from the very beginning of the crisis.

It quickly reversed last year’s rate hikes to bring euro-zone borrowing costs back down to an all-time low of 1.0 percent and embarked on a hotly contested program of indirectly buying up the bonds of debt-mired countries. Most recently, in two so-called long-term refinancing operations (LTROs) in

December and February, it pumped more than 1.0 trillion euros ($1.25 trillion) into the banking system to avert a dangerous credit squeeze in the euro area.

Nevertheless, ECB officials have all along insisted that such measures cannot cure the root cause of the crisis-profligate spending by governments. “Can the ECB fill the vacuum of lack of action by national governments on fiscal growth? The answer is no,” Draghi said again during a hearing at the European parliament last week. The ECB argues that its overriding priority, even in times of crisis, is to keep a lid on inflation in the single currency area. The latest data indicate that price pressures are indeed under control-area-wide inflation slowed to 2.4 percent in May from 2.6 percent in April and in Germany, the bloc’s biggest economy, inflation slowed to 1.9 percent, its lowest level in 17 months.

Further up the inflation pipeline, too, the money supply expanded by just 2.5 percent in April, a sharp slowdown compared with the previous month, despite the huge amounts of liquidity pumped into the system via the ECB’s anti-crisis measures. “With the inflation threat receding, the ECB has more scope to stimulate the economy,” argued Berenberg Bank chief economist Holger Schmieding. The ECB will also publish its latest quarterly staff projections on inflation and economic growth on Wednesday.

They are likely to be revised downwards,

“leaving the door open for further policy accommodation,” said Newedge Strategy analyst Annalisa Piazza. She saw a “60-percent chance” that the ECB would trim its rates by a quarter of a percentage point to 0.75 percent as early as this month. Nevertheless, “the timing of a rate cut is highly uncertain,” the analyst cautioned. While the “weaker fundamentals and increasing stress in financial markets fully justify a quarter-point cut this week, the ECB might decide a later cut is the best tactical option” as borrowing costs are already at record lows and the full effects of the anti-crisis measures have yet to unfold, she argued.

Berenberg Bank’s Schmieding, too, saw a “good case” for a quarter-point rate cut.

But the bank would probably wait until July by which time the outcome of the Greek parliamentary elections on June 17 will be known, the economist argued. Greece is heading to the polls for a second time in six weeks after an inconclusive vote on May 6.

And with the radical leftist Syriza party, chief opponent of a massive EU-IMF bailout accord, tipped to win this time, the election could lead to Greece quitting the single currency.

Commerzbank economist Michael Schubert also predicted the ECB would hold rates steady again this week, “not least because it wants to maintain the pressure on politicians.”

Nevertheless, ECB chief Draghi would “leave the door wide open for further action,” Schubert said.— AFP

Spain calls for a new euro fiscal authority Pressure mounts for policy action MADRID: Spain, the latest combat zone in Europe’s long-running debt wars, urged the euro zone to set up a new fiscal authority to manage the bloc’s finances and send a clear signal to markets that the single currency project is irreversible. Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said the authority would also go a long way to alleviating Spain’s woes which, along with the prospect of a Greek euro exit, have threatened to derail the single currency project.

It is not the first time a European leader has proposed creating such an authority but the problems and the size of Spain - a country deemed too big to fail - have prompted EU policymakers to hurriedly consider measures such as creating a fiscal and banking union ahead of a EU summit on June 28-29. Germany, the paymaster of the euro zone, and others insist such a move can only happen as part of a drive to much closer fiscal union and relinquishing of national sovereignty. Overspending in the regions and troubles with a banking sector badly hit by a property crash four years ago have sent Spain’s borrowing costs to record highs and pushed the country closer to seeking an international bailout.

The risk premium investors demand to hold Spanish 10-year debt rather than German bonds rose to its highest since the launch of the euro 548 basis points - on Friday. The Spanish government, which has hiked taxes, slashed spending, cut social benefits and bailed out troubled banks, argues that there is little else it can do and the European Union should now act to ease the country’s liquidity concerns. In private, senior Spanish officials have said this could be done by using European money to recapitalize directly ailing banks or through a direct intervention of the European Central Bank on the bond market. They have also said the euro zone should quickly move towards a fiscal union to complete its 13-year monetary union but Rajoy went a step further by making a formal offer. “The European Union needs to reinforce its architecture,” Rajoy said at an event in Sitges, in the north-eastern province of Catalonia. “This entails moving towards more integration, transferring more sovereignty, especially in the fiscal field.

“And this means a compromise to create a new

European fiscal authority which would guide the fiscal policy in the euro zone, harmonize the fiscal policy of member states and enable a centralized control of (public) finances,” he added.

NO TABOOS He also said the authority would be in charge of managing European debts and should be constituted by countries of the euro zone meeting strict conditions. Earlier this week, ECB President Mario Draghi said EU leaders should break away from the incremental approach that has failed to get ahead of the euro zone debt crisis for more than two years and quickly clarify their vision for the future of the currency.

Adding to growing pressure for dramatic policy action at this month EU leaders’ summit, he warned that the ECB could not fill the policy vacuum. Establishing a new authority could require a change in the EU treaties, a usually lengthy and politically painful process which requires ratification in all 27 member states of the bloc. A spokesman for Olli Rehn, the EU commissioner in charge of economic and monetary affairs, s aid draft legislation designed to step up financial discipline in the euro zone, would create such a fiscal authority by granting new powers to the EU’s executive.

“This would grant enhanced powers to the European Commission on fiscal surveillance, including allowing the sanctioning of countries,” said Amadeu Altafaj. “Even before a budget is drafted and reaches the national parliament, the Commission could ask for a revision of the budgetary plans if it considers this would not allow a country to meet its fiscal commitments, and thereby could endanger financial stability.”

Germany has said further integration in Europe was required, including additional controls on national public finances, and was ready to consider revising the treaties if needed.

A day after Berlin supported giving Spain an extra year to cut its deficit down to the 3 percent of GDP threshold, Chancellor Angela Merkel said it should be possible for countries that violate fiscal rules to be sued in the European Court of Justice. The idea is already part of a new “fiscal compact” signed by 25 EU states and which is due to come into force next year. Several coun-

tries, including France, Austria and Finland, have already signaled they are not willing to give up their parliaments’ budgetary powers.

BANKING UNION Merkel also praised higher German wage deals and signaled flexibility on a financial transaction tax, in a sign she is open to new measures to boost growth in Europe. The comments, at a conference of her Christian Democrats (CDU) in Berlin, show that she is ready to heed calls for Germany to do more for growth but wants other euro states to accept giving up sovereignty over their budgets in exchange. “You can’t ask for euro bonds, but then not be prepared to take the next step towards closer integration,” she said.

In an interview with Greek newspaper Vima, Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti said while he believed common bonds in the 17-nation euro zone would become a reality they should not become a “licence to spend and burden others.”

With the debt crisis now centered on Spain’s teetering banking sector, talks are also under way on creating a banking union in the euro zone based on centralized supervision, a European deposit scheme and a central fund that would cope with failed lenders. Germany’s finance ministry said on Friday it was willing to consider this option in a mid-term perspective.

NOT ON THE EVE OF APOCALYPSE Rajoy backed the idea on Saturday and said that the government would explain before the end of June how it would recapitalise Spain’s banking sector, which is currently being reviewed by independent auditors. Spain has picked the “Big Four” accounting firms KPMG, PwC, Deloitte and Ernst & Young to carry out a full, individual audit of its ailing banks, a source with knowledge of the decision told Reuters on Saturday. Moving away from pessimistic speeches in recent weeks, Rajoy said Spain would weather the financial storm by stepping up efforts to rein in public finances and by implementing structural reforms at national and European level. “We’re not walking on a bed of roses but we’re also not on the eve of the apocalypse,” he said.— Reuters

US new farm bill would end direct payments to farmers WASHINGTON: A program that puts billions of dollars in the pockets of farmers whether or not they plant a crop may disappear with hardly a protest from farm groups and the politicians who look out for their interests. The Senate is expected to begin debate this week on a five-year farm and food aid bill that would save $9.3 billion by ending direct payments to farmers and replacing them with subsidized insurance programs for when the weather turns bad or prices go south.

The details are still to be worked out. But there’s rare agreement that fixed annual subsidies of $5 billion a year for farmers are no longer feasible in this age of tight budgets and when farmers in general are enjoying record prosperity. About 80 percent of the bill’s half-trillion-dollar cost over the next five years represents nutrition programs, primarily food stamps now going to some 46 million people. About $100 billion would be devoted to crop subsidies and other farm programs.

The Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee last month

approved a bill that would save $23 billion over the next decade by ending direct payments and consolidating other programs. The bill would strengthen the subsidized crop insurance program and create a program to compensate farmers for smaller, or “shallow,” revenue losses, based on a five-year average, for acres actually planted. Getting a bill to the president’s desk will be a challenge. Most of the bill’s spending is on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps, at an annual cost now of about $75 billion. The Republican-led House is looking for greater cuts to this program than the Democratic Senate will accept.

The House also is more sympathetic to Southern rice and peanut farmers who say that shallow loss program hurts them. They want to keep some form of target price subsidy. The current farm bill expires at the end of September. But the Senate bill, and presumably the yet-to-bewritten House counterpart, “makes clear that the era of direct payments is over,” said Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, who heads

the Senate committee. She said the Senate bill “represents the most significant reform in American agriculture policy in decades.”

The White House, which also is pushing for the end of direct payments, says more than 50 percent of the subsidies go to farmers making more than $100,000 in income. Direct payments are only one of several ways the government ensures that farmers are protected from falling prices or weather disasters. The Congressional Research Service estimates that under current law, the government will spend $5.7 billion a year on commodity programs, including direct payments, along with $1.5 billion a year on disaster aid and $9 billion a year to subsidize crop insurance. The Agriculture Department says that in 2011 the government paid farmers about $10.6 billion, including about $3.6 billion for conservation programs, some 10 percent of the farm sector’s record-high net cash income of $108.7 billion.

According to the Environmental Working Group, in the 1995-2010 period, the top 10 percent of pay-

ment recipients received an average $30,751 a year while the bottom 80 percent got $587 a year.

Direct payments were initially supposed to be a “market transition” device after the 1996 farm bill eliminated other price supports. But those payments became entrenched when farm prices dropped in the next few years and farmers went through a rough period. Farmers are now willing to give up direct payments because of their increasing reliance on crop insurance. Insured acres have risen from 45 million in 1981 to 265 million in 2011, to the point where 83 percent of the nation’s farmed acreage is covered by governmentsubsidized insurance programs.

The government chips in for an average 62 percent of the farmer’s premiums, which supporters insist is different from a direct subsidy because the premiums go into a risk pool to pay for future losses. The proposed shallow risk program would cap annual payments at $100,000 for a married couple and restricts it to farmers with adjusted gross incomes of less than $750,000. — AP

GRAND ISLAND: Combines harvest a field during a corn harvesting demonstration at the Husker Harvest Days fair, in Grand Island, Neb. A program that puts billions of dollars in the pockets of farmers whether or not they plant a crop may disappear with hardly a protest from farm groups and the politicians who look out for their interests. — AP

26

MONDAY, JUNE 4, 2012

BUSINESS

US Jobs Report Sparks Uncertainty NBK WEEKLY REPORT KUWAIT: The US Dollar opened the week on a strong footing against most of its counterparts and continued to gain dramatically as concerns over global growth and risks emerging from the Euro zone debt crisis prompted risk aversion in the market.

Additionally, the greenback continued its momentum as economic data from the Euro area and the UK disappointed the market.

However, on Friday, the greenback lost steam due to disappointing figures from the labor market, adding concerns over the US economy and fuelling the possibility of further easing from the FED. The Euro opened at 1.2574 and reached a high of 1.2624 due to thin trading at the beginning of the week. Worries over Spain’s banking sector combined with talks of a Greek exit added more pressure on the single currency. The Euro dropped to a low of 1.2286 on Friday amid a disappointing US job report. The Euro then closed the week at 1.2337. The Sterling Pound followed suit with its European counterpart, opening the week at 1.5690 and reaching a high of 1.5717 in early trading sessions. The Sterling continued to lose momentum gradually following the deterioration in sentiment in the market. On Friday, the currency reached a low of 1.5265 amid figures that showed that the manufacturing sector is contracting at a faster-than-expected pace and closed the week at 1.5361.

The Japanese Yen was the sole gainer against the US Dollar last week. It started the week at 79.54 and continued to gain gradually towards Friday. The USDJPY dropped dramatically after the release of the US job data to reach a low of 77.65. The JPY contin-

ued to trade in a volatile manner and closed the week at 78.04. The Australian Dollar lost its footing against the greenback amid figures that showed that the Chinese manufacturing sector is growing at a slower than expected rate. The Aussie reached a low of 0.9579 but quickly recouped some of its losses and closed at 0.9711.

On the commodities side, US crude oil dropped more than 9% last week, reaching the lowest point since the beginning of the year at $82.56 a barrel, after a weak US jobs report, and the EU region’s jobless rate reaching a record high, signaling a deeper recession across the region. Oil closed the week at $83.23. Gold rose 2.5% to break above $1,600 for the first time since May 10 on Friday, after weaker-than-expected US payrolls data fuelled expectations that the Federal Reserve could unleash another round of monetary easing to boost growth.

US MANUFACTURING The US manufacturing index grew at a slower pace in May, as factories slowed production in response to a weakening global economy. This signals that manufacturing in the US, which has been rising for the past 34 months, may be starting to cool down. The Institute for Supply Management’s manufacturing index dropped to 53.5 last month, falling short of market expectation of 54.0, after reaching a 10-month high in April. A reading greater than 50 indicates growth.

US ECONOMY - SLOWER PACE The US economy grew at a slower-thananticipated rate in the first quarter amid smaller gains in inventories and a drop in

government spending. The Gross Domestic Product showed that the economy expanded at a 1.9% annual rate in the first three months of 2012, lower than the 2.2% in the last quarter of 2011. The report showed smaller salary increases and a slowdown in corporate profits growth rate. The report also showed that consumer spending kept the economy growing emphasizing on the need to add more jobs to sustain expansion in the economy.

SLOWDOWN IN HOUSING SECTOR Pending home sales dropped by the most in a year indicating that the recovery in the housing market remains uneven. The Index dropped by 5.5% from an upwardly revised 3.8% gain in the previous month. In parallel, the S&P Case/Shiller House price Index showed that prices in 20-Large US cities dropped by an annual rate of 2.6%, slightly better than the expected drop by 2.7%.

US JOB REPORT Employers in the US in May added the fewest number of jobs in a year and the jobless rate unexpectedly increased as people are returning to the labor force, a sign that the labor market recovery is slowing down.

Payrolls climbed 69,000, less than expectations, after a revised 77,000 rise in April.

Additionally, initial jobless claims increased by 10,000 to 383,000 from the previous week’s upwardly revised figure of 373,000.

Economists expected that claims would fall to 369,000.

ITALIAN AND SPANISH YIELDS RISE European majors and risk markets plum-

meted on Wednesday as Spanish 10-year yield jumped to a record high of 6.7%. The spread with German bunds also reached a new record high of 5.36%. Moreover, expectations that Spain will eventually need regional help to bailout its banks fuelled worries over the Spanish banking sector. In parallel, Italy’s borrowing costs rose to the highest in two weeks, as concerns over the spread of the debt crisis surged. The country’s cost on the 10-year debt rose to 6.03% from the previous 5.84% in April. Both Spanish and Italian yields are edging closer levels that forced Greece, Ireland, and Portugal to ask for external aid.

MANUFACTURING AT 3-YEAR LOW Euro-zone manufacturing rose slightly in May, but still hovering around three year lows. The Purchasing Managers index (PMI) showed that manufacturing activity has contracted for 10 straight months, indicating that the downturn in the sector that started in the peripherals is starting to spread among central members France and Germany. The Manufacturing PMI rose to 45.1 from 45.0 in May. HIGHER UNEMPLOYMENT RATE Euro-zone unemployment is at the highest level on record, signaling that the economy continues to weaken. The jobless rate in the 17-nation Euro area came at 11% for April matching March’s upwardly revised figure. This marks the highest level since the data series started in 1995.

UK- MANUFACTURING DISAPPOINTS UK manufacturing contracted at a faster

pace than estimated in May as the economic slowdown in the Euro zone restrained demand for British goods, increasing the risk of a longer recession. The unexpected drop will also fuel a debate over the possibility of further quantitative easing from the Bank of England, after central bankers hinted that they might not extend their asset purchases later this month given a number of stronger economic data. The Manufacturing PMI dropped to 45.9 in May from 50.5 and lower than the expected drop to 49.7.

HOUSE PRICES UK house prices rose in May for the first time in three months as a lack of supply supported values. House prices climbed 0.3% from April higher than the anticipated rise of 0.1% and the previous 0.3% decline in March. A separate release showed that consumer confidence rose in May for the first time in four months as British citizens became more optimistic about the economy. The Gfk Consumer Confidence Index rose to -29 from the previous -31.

ASIA PACIFIC Chinese Manufacturing PMI Fuels Concerns in the Markets China’s manufacturing sector slow down combined with the European debt crisis fuelled concerns over global growth. The manufacturing PMI fell to 50.4 in May from 53.3 previously. The figure indicates that the slowdown in the country will be worse than anticipated and increases the possibility of more action from Wen Jiabao to sustain expansion after he promised to stabilize growth.

Al Sayer Spare Parts congratulates ‘Celebrate Fabulous Offers’ winners KUWAIT: Mohamad Naser Al Sayer & Sons Automotive Co held an electronic draw of its promotion campaign “Celebrate Fabulous

Offers” in Toyota Al Sayer Spare Parts Showroom in Shuwaikh Canada Dry at 6.00 pm, on the 23rd May 2012, attended by representa-

tives from the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. Abdul Aziz Ishkenani, and Oommen Philip Assistant Manager, Marketing and

Pricing from Al Sayer Parts. The winner of the 1st prize a Toyota ZELAS 2011 was Ejas Hussain Shahid.

The Toyota genuine parts promotion “Celebrate Fabulous Offers” started from the 20th of February until the 20th May 2012, which enable the customers a chance to enter the draw for every KD5/spent at any Toyota Al Sayer Spare parts or Service outlets, entitling them to win many fabulous prizesLED/LCD screens and Canon Cameras. The main reasons behind the remarkable success of these promotions over a period of time were “Quality of our Genuine spare parts and Prompt Service”. Al Sayer congratulates all the winners.

The TEMPUR Cloud mattress collection Mattresses with a softer feel

KIA fans ‘Test Drive to Win’ at UEFA-Flavored KIA Road Show KUWAIT: KIA fans and members of the public had the opportunity to test drive KIA’s award-winning models & the chance to win valuable prizes at the KIA Road Show held at the Marina Crescent on Friday, April 27th. UEFA Euro-themed giveaways, music, games and family entertainment further added to the atmosphere to create an unforgettable event. “The KIA Road Show is one of the biggest public automotive events of the year,” said Medhat Khalil, KIA Kuwait Brand Manager. “It is part of our commitment to impact the lives of our customers in a positive way. There is no better place to discover KIA’s innovative personality.”

The event on Friday witnessed large crowd participation & unprecedented enthusiasm from KIA Fans. It reflects KIA’s growing commitment to strengthen its bond with the community in addition to the rapid growth in the popularity of KIA amongst the population of Kuwait. KIA highly-trained sales representatives were present as usual to answer questions, attend to visitors’ needs & guide guests through a great test drive experience. This year, the excitement was carried even further with the upcoming KIA-sponsored UEFA Euro 2012 Championship. Exciting prizes such as LCD TVs with one-year Al Jazeera Sport subscriptions were given out to lucky winners.

The KIA Road Show occurs 2 to 3 times a year, and is an opportunity for KIA to promote its new genera-

tion of cars, which are easily identified by their distinctive tiger nose grille and dazzling new designs. Up to ten models were displayed, and are praised as the vehicles that are totally changing the reputation & perception of Korean-made cars through design, performance &

features and 5-star safety.

Other popular choices were the Cadenza luxury sedan (2011 Wheels Magazine ‘Best Family Saloon of the Year’), the Sorento midsize SUV (Consumer Guide Automotive ‘Best Buys’), Optima (Best of 2011 Award), Mohave KIA’s large SUV (2009 Best-

tions again with the upcoming launch of the much-anticipated flagship luxury sedan, codenamed ‘KH’ (‘K9’ in Korea). The KH will come full with elegance and latest technology, and make it to future KIA Road Shows following its Kuwait launch in Fall 2012. KIA

KUWAIT: A recent survey, across 12 European countries, found that owners of a TEMPUR mattress are so satisfied with their purchase that they are telling others. 85% of TEMPUR mattress owners surveyed have recommended their mattress to someone else and, on average, they recommend it to more than 7 people. Now, with the launch of the brand new Cloud mattress collection, you’re even more likely to hear about the comfort and support of TEMPUR products.

The TEMPUR Cloud mattress collection combines the unique TEMPUR material with a newly developed, softer, comfort layer. This comfort layer is made of a specially developed TEMPUR ES (Extra Soft) material that works in harmony with the support layer to deliver the comfort, support and durability that you expect from TEMPUR but with a softer feel. The Cloud collection is available in three stylish designs of increasing softness, so that you can choose the look and feel that suits you best.

When you lie down on a TEMPUR mattress it conforms to the shape of your body

- soft where you want it and firm where you need it. A TEMPUR mattress will let your body find its most comfortable position and support it there for your best night’s sleep. Body weight is perfectly absorbed and redistributed to relieve pressure points.

This can help decrease the need to toss and turn during the night. It also absorbs motion energy so that partners are less disturbed by each other’s movements and can therefore enjoy a better night’s sleep.

The look and feel of the TEMPUR Cloud mattress is complemented with a matching pillow and adjustable bed base. The Cloud Pillow is also made with TEMPUR ES material and has a dual sided cover to suit customer preference. The base, made in an attractive silver and grey design, is made with flexible plates that can be individually twisted with ease to adjust the firmness for optimal comfort. The Cloud collection completes the mattress range from TEMPUR. Whether you like a firmer feel (TEMPUR Original), traditional feel ( TEMPUR Sensation) or a softer feel (TEMPUR Cloud), you can find a mattress that’s right for you.

Burgan Bank announces Yawmi account winners technology. One of the stars of the event was the all new KIA Rio sporty compact. The Rio is the winner of the prestigious 2012 “red dot Design Award” and “Best Design Award” by the German Design Council. Following its launch in February, the Rio makes a bold attempt to lead the B-segment (small sedan segment) by offering a strong exterior personality, savvy

in-class SUV $25,000-$35,000 Winter Vehicle Awards), Sportage, the wonderfully designed small SUV (iF Design Award), Carnival, Kuwait’s beloved family minivan (2010 Edmunds.com “Top Recommended” Vehicles), SOUL, the youthful crossover (2009 Red dot Design Award), the compact Cerato sedan and Carens multipurpose vehicle.

KIA is aiming to exceed expecta-

Motors is represented in Kuwait by National Agencies Group, a subsidiar y of Abdulaziz Al-Ali AlMutawa Group of Companies, and KIA’s certified partner in the local market since 1997.

CBK announces Najma winners KUWAIT: Commercial Bank of Kuwait held the Al Najma Account draw on 3rd June 2012. The draw was held under the supervision of the Ministry of Commerce & Industry represented

by AbdulAziz Ashkanani. The winners of the Al Najma Daily Draw are:- Nasser Abbas Mohammed Ahmad- KD7000; Anees Mohammed Al-Saraheen- KD7000; Swaid Saud Swaid Al-Ajmi - KD7000; Ali Hassan Ali Bin Abdullah Bin Hussain - KD7000; Naser Abdulaziz Mohammed Al-Salem - KD7000.

The Commercial Bank of Kuwait announces the biggest daily draw in Kuwait with the launch of the new Najma account. Customers of the bank can now enjoy a KD7,000 daily prize which is the highest in the country and another 4 mega prizes during the year worth KD100,000 each on different occasions: The National Day, Eid Al Fitr, Eid Al Adha and on the 19th of June which is the date of the bank’s establishment.

With a minimum balance of KD500, cus-

tomers will be eligible for the daily draw provided that the money is in the account one week prior to the daily draw or 2 months prior to the mega draw. In addition, for each KD25 a customer can get one chance for winning instead of KD50. Commercial Bank of Kuwait takes this opportunity to congratulate all lucky winners and also extends appreciation to the Ministry of Commerce and Industry for their effective supervision of the draws which were conducted in an orderly and organized manner.

KUWAIT: Burgan Bank announced yesterday the names of the five lucky winners of its Yawmi account draw, each taking home a prize of KD 5,000.

Winner’s names will also be announced through Marina FM on a daily basis during their prime shows. The lucky winners for the five daily draws took home a cash-prize of KD 5000 each, and they are: HADIYA THAIF ALLA SHAREEA AL THAIFARI; SOHEILA FARAMRAZ TIRZAN; IBRAHIM SARDAR JASSEM MOHAMMED ALBLOUSHI; SADEEQA MANDANY ISMAEEL ALI and FARAH YOUSIF MOHAMMAD AL-SARRAF. The newly re -launched Yawmi Account is better, easier and faster than any day before. With its new and enhanced features, the Yawmi Account has become more convenient, easier, and faster for customers to benefit from. Now, customers will be eligible to enter the draw after 48 hours only from opening the account. Customers are also required to deposit KD100 or equivalent only to enter the daily draw, and the coupon value to enter the

draw stands at KD10. The newly designed Yawmi account has been launched to provide a highly innovative offering along with a higher frequency and incentive of winning for everyone. Today, the Yawmi account is a well understood product, where its popularity can be seen from the number of increasing account holders.

Burgan Bank encourages everyone to open a Yawmi account and/or increase their deposit to maximize their chances to becoming a daily winner. The more customers deposit, the higher the chances they receive of winning the draw. Opening a Yawmi account is simple, customers are urged to visit their nearest Burgan Bank branch and receive all the details, or simply call the bank’s Call Center at 1804080 where customer service representatives will be delighted to assist with any questions on the Yawmi account or any of the bank’s products and ser vices, or log on to Burgan Bank’s www.burgan.com for further information.

MONDAY, JUNE 4, 2012

technology

Windows 8 to dominate Taiwan computer show Thousands gather for Asia’s leading IT fair

LOS ANGELES: In this June 7, 2011 photo a gamer plays video games during the Electronic Entertainment Expo or E3 in Los Angeles, California. —AFP

At E3, Nintendo under ‘Wii’ bit of pressure LOS ANGELES: Nintendo Co Ltd has more to prove than ever when it takes the wraps off its highly anticipated “Wii U” gaming console at next week’s “E3,” the $78.5 billion videogame industry’s most important yearly trade show.

Gamers and Wall Street analysts alike will be closely watching for the next salvos from Nintendo, Sony Corp and Microsoft Corp - the “big three” of console manufacturers who have been at war for the past decade. The main story line at the Electronic Entertainment Expo or E3, to be held in Los Angeles from June 5 to 7, is to what extent Nintendo’s new version of the Wii console might help the Japanese company’s battle to reclaim its crown in an industry that is struggling to grow.

Nintendo’s back is against the wall, said Jesse Divnich, consultant and analyst at research firm EEDAR. The Asian gaming company - whose long-held position as the videogame industry leader has been usurped in recent years by Microsoft’s Xbox - is pinning its hopes on the new touchscreen-enabled device to breathe new life into both hardware and software gaming sales. The original iteration of the motion-gaming console sent shock waves through the industry six years ago, but since then Nintendo has been fighting a strong challenge from upstart casual gaming companies hitching a ride on Apple Inc’s iPad. More than 45,000 analysts, retailers, investors and reporters are expected to attend E3, and they are hoping that Nintendo - creator of the “Super Mario” franchise - will disclose the price and other details of the Wii U. Analyst Divnich said Nintendo would be wise to focus on showcasing its legacy titles that have pop culture recognition - such as “Super Mario,” “Donkey Kong” and “Zelda” - on its new console. “They should really play it safe and give us a reason to get excited over the Wii U,” he said.In 2011, Nintendo launched the 3DS handheld device to disappointing initial sales in part because at first it lacked new versions of its top games.

Low expectations Last year, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata’s pitch for a prototype Wii U fell flat, sending the company’s shares tumbling. He will have to make amends this year by identifying who is the device’s target audience - core gamers who like to play shooter games, or the casual audience that bowled in their living rooms and swung virtual golf clubs when the Wii was introduced in 2006. Investors are expecting to be disappointed by the Wii U, said Mizuho Securities analyst Takeshi Koyama. Nintendo shares are trading just over 9,000 yen ($115.35), lows not seen since November 2003.

The market has begun to accept the possibility that “the situation is going to get worse after this year’s E3,” Koyama said in Tokyo.

Macquarie analysts disagreed, however, saying it will take a couple of years to show clearly whether the Wii U is a success or failure. And with $14 billion in cash, much of it made from the boon supplied by the original Wii, Nintendo has plenty of runway to gamble.

While the Wii U controller resembles a tablet and contains a screen that can also display games on TV screens, it faces tough competi-

tion from Apple’s iPad, whose processing speeds get faster with each iteration, making it more attractive to both hardcore and casual gamers.

“They need to communicate how it’s relevant in the tablet world,” said Joe Minton, president of DDM, a videogame industry consultancy and talent agency. To convince the masses to open their wallets, Minton said Nintendo must produce an “aha moment,” similar to when consumers first saw how the Wii could be used for types of game play that could not be found anywhere else. The Wii eventually sold 95 million units, making it one of the most successful videogame products in history.

The road ahead Nintendo’s new console is being welcomed by a sluggish industry in desperate need of a boost. Microsoft’s Xbox 360 is seven years old and Sony’s PlayStation is only a year younger, and both companies are expected to show off how their older devices can be used at home to watch movies, TV and music at this year’s conference rather than introduce new hardware. “As an investor, the introduction of new hardware grows the user base, and that’s kind of exciting,” said Ted Pollak, portfolio manager of the videogame-focused EE Fund.

Talk about the so-called next generation of consoles, even without prototypes, will be abundant in hallways and hotel lobbies during E3. Analysts expect Microsoft and Sony to release new consoles in the next two years, which means they need to strike deals with videogame developers now. Before their new consoles appear, however, publishers such as Activision Blizzard and Electronic Arts are tasked with drumming up interest in new games for the old consoles. Both companies will be touting online extensions for their biggest games as they try to squeeze more money from gamers, who now pay monthly fees to play on the Internet instead of just making a one-time $60 purchase on a game disc.

As the industry changes, so do the attendees at E3. Gree Inc, the Japanese developer with an online games network, will be taking up prime real estate on the show floor while Zynga Inc, which went public in December, is making its first official appearance at the show.

Zynga’s shares are trading at 40 percent below their offer price since the FarmVille creator went public. In meeting rooms adorned with posters of its games, the company will plug the Zynga platform, a fledgling game service it rolled out that it hopes will reduce its dependence on Facebook Inc. “We don’t have a big flashy show presence it’s all business. We are focused on finding and signing partners to publish on our platform,” said Rob Dyer, head of partner publishing at Zynga. But for the old guard at E3, flashier may be better since it is becoming harder and pricier to produce hit games that players are willing to buy. “E3 is about showing why the videogame industry is still relevant and why it’s still worth it for consumers to spend a premium price point of $60 on games,” EEDAR’s Divnich said. — Reuters

TAIPEI: Microsoft’s much-anticipated Windows 8 operating system is set to take pride of place as tens of thousands of people head to Asia’s leading IT fair opening in Taiwan today. The fiveday Computex, an annual tech extravaganza in Taipei now in its 32nd year, will provide one of the most comprehensive glimpses yet of the next version of the world’s dominant software.

“It’s only a few months before the official release of Microsoft’s Windows 8 software,” said Chang Li, deputy secretar y general of the Taipei Computer Association, which co-sponsors Computex. “So this year’s Computex will offer a great occasion to have a look at some of the hardware applications from Taiwan companies.”

Windows 8 is touted as Microsoft’s longawaited riposte to the rise of Apple and mobile devices powered by Google’s Android operating system. There is no official release date but reports have predicted an October launch.

Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer says that Windows 8 will support a wider range of devices including touch- and stylus-based smartphones and tablet PCs, as well as desktops and laptops. Computex will reflect this with dozens of exhibitors displaying notebooks and tablets running Windows 8, according to organ-

izers. South Korea’s Samsung along with Taiwanese computer makers Acer and Asus will reportedly launch new tablets and notebooks running on the new Microsoft platform. “The theme of this year’s Computex is clear. Visitors can expect a broad range of products related to Windows 8,” said Joanne Chien, a senior analyst at a research centre attached to Taipei-based trade publication DigiTimes. The latest bout of global economic jitters have not affected the trade show with more than 1,800 exhibitors registering 5,400 booths, up two percent from a year ago.

The organizers estimate that the IT fair will draw 36,000 foreign buyers who may place bulk orders worth up to $28 billion. Computer makers hope that fresh momentum will come from the so-called “ultrabook”, a higher-end product that aims to be smaller and lighter than traditional notebooks without reducing performance or battery life. Ultrabooks made their debut at Computex 2011, but the relatively high price around $1,000 apiece-has hampered the sector’s growth.

“If the prices go down a bit, ultrabook is likely to attract lots of users,” said David Liu, also from the Taipei Computer Association. And

Internet address system upgrade likely to be smooth WASHINGTON: The Internet is set for a major upgrade in the coming week. But if all goes well, users won’t even know it’s happening. The switch occurs at 0001 GMT Wednesday, when the Internet system shifts to a new standard that allows for trillions of “IP” numbers or addresses, up from the current four billion. Known as the World IPv6 launch to geeks, the move will see Web operators and others switch permanently to the new system from the existing standard, IPv4. A test of the system was held last year.

The new standard was needed because the number of IP addresses under the old system has been exhausted.

The full transition will take several years, and old IPv4 devices and networks should continue to function as before. “Most users shouldn’t notice anything,” said Leo Vegoda, a “numbers resources” manager for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which manages the Internet address system. “If ordinary Internet users need to know stuff, then the technology isn’t right.” But Vegoda said there may be some “irritations” for users, as those using equipment on the old standard connect to computers and networks on the new standard.

Each piece of hardware-including home computers, tablets and mobile devices-has a unique IP address to connect to the Web. With about seven billion people on the planet, the IPv4 protocol doesn’t allow for everyone to have a gadget with its own online address. The situation has been equated to not having enough telephone numbers for every user. Cisco is projecting that by 2016, there will be nearly 18.9 billion network connections, or nearly 2.5 connections for each person on earth, compared with 10.3 billion in 2011.

If there are not enough addresses, neighbors will have to start sharing IP addresses, which can slow things down. But with the IPv4 and IPv6 systems coexisting, the connections need to find a compatible “path,” which sometimes may be longer than usual, said Vegoda. If there are not enough paths available, someone connecting to a Web page from the United States might have to be routed across the Atlantic and then back again, a phenomenon known as “tromboning.”

This can slow down connections in some cases, but Vegoda said he expected “relatively light” problems.

Johannes Ullrich of the SANS Technology Institute said that in some cases, “you may see some degradation in speed and reliability” by remaining on IPv4. But he said that over time, the move will mean a smoother-running Internet.

“Don’t consider IPv6 a threat. Use it as an opportunity,” he said in a blog post. “There are a lot of neat things you can do in IPv6 to secure your network better. But get on it and learn about it now.” Over time, home users may have to get new modems or routers to be compatible with the new standards, but major Internet providers are prepared for the switchover. “We maintain our commitment to the goal of a seamless transition to IPv6,” said Jason Livingood, a vice president for Internet systems at Comcast, one of the largest US providers. “— AFP

Cyber strikes a ‘civilized’ option SINGAPORE: Pre-emptive cyber strikes against perceived national security threats are a “civilized option” to neutralize potential attacks, Britain’s armed forces minister said yesterday. Nick Harvey made the comment at the Shangri-La Dialogue security summit in Singapore in relation to reports that the US had launched cyber attacks to cripple Iran’s nuclear program.

“I don’t know about the specifics and I’m not going to comment on them,” Harvey said at the two-day meeting ending yesterday. “But what I would say is that if a government has arrived at the conclusion that it needs, out of its sense of national interest or national security, to deliver an effect against an adversary... arguably this is quite a civilized option.”

A Russian computer firm said last week it had discovered a new computer virus with unprecedented destructive potential that chiefly targets Iran and could be used as a cyberweapon by the West and Israel. Kaspersky Lab

said its experts discovered the virus-known as Flame-during an investigation prompted by the International Telecommunication Union. Iran appears to have been

there is still room for the humble laptop even as tablets take off, experts at the association said, because users still need a portable workhorse in addition to an entertainment device such as the iPad. Analysts predicted that ultrabook sales will pick up during the Christmas season, aided by the release of Windows 8 and the advent of “cloud computing”, which requires smaller hard drives as users store more of their data online.

Apple, a pioneer of the cloud approach, does not take part in trade fairs like Computex or the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, preferring to organize its own high-octane events to showcase new products. In contrast, Samsung is pulling out the stops at Computex with its IT products arrayed over some 30 booths. In line with China’s new economic might, IT companies from the mainland such as telecoms equipment maker Huawei will play a bigger role at Computex than ever before. A total of 312 Chinese exhibitors will use 617 booths to showcase their products, compared with 252 firms taking 527 booths a year ago, according to the organizers. “It’s not clear how many orders they may get from the show, but at least they can use the platform to boost their exposure to possible clients,” Chien said.— AFP

the main target of the attack and the announcement came just a month after the Islamic Republic said it halted the spread of a datadeleting virus targeting computer

SINGAPORE: Britain’s Armed Forces Minister Nick Harvey speaks during plenary session at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) 11th Asia Security Summit in Singapore yesterday. The IISS is being attended by defence officials from around the world. —AFP

servers in its oil sector. The New York Times reported Friday that Obama accelerated cyberattacks on Iran’s nuclear program using the Stuxnet virus, and expanded the assault even after the virus accidentally made its way onto the Internet in 2010.

Britain’s stance was supported

by Canadian Defence Minister Peter Gordon MacKay, who likened a pre-emptive cyber strike to an “insurance policy”, warning of the need to be prepared.

Malaysian Defence Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi said a cyber arms race was already under way.

He urged members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to pool their resources to tackle increasingly complex cyber attacks which could paralyze a country’s IT systems. “What remains disturbing is that cyber warfare need not to be waged by state-run organizations but could be conducted by nonstate entities or even individuals with intent to cause disruptions to the affairs of the state,” he added.—AFP

IMAM KHOMEINI PORT: In this Wednesday, Sept. 28, 2011 photo, a part of the Maroun Petrochemical plant is seen, at the Imam Khomeini port, southwestern Iran. Technicians battling a complex computer virus took the ultimate firewall measures shutting off all Internet links to Iran’s oil ministry and the terminal that carries nearly all the country’s crude exports. —AP

In world of cyberwar, risks of boomerangs a reality WASHINGTON: The Obama administration is warning American businesses about an unusually potent computer virus that infected Iran’s oil industry even as suspicions persist that the United States is responsible for secretly creating and unleashing cyberweapons against foreign countries. The government’s dual roles of alerting US companies about these threats and producing powerful software weapons and eavesdropping tools underscore the risks of an unintended, online boomerang.

Unlike a bullet or missile fired at an enemy, a cyberweapon that spreads across the Internet may circle back accidentally to infect computers it was never supposed to target.

It’s one of the unusual challenges facing the programmers who build such weapons, and presidents who must decide when to launch them.

The Homeland Security Department’s warning about the new virus, known as “Flame,” assured US companies that no infections had been discovered so far inside the US It described Flame as an espionage tool that was sophisticated in design, using encryption and other techniques to help break into computers and move through corporate or private networks. The virus can eavesdrop on data traffic, take screenshots and record audio and keystrokes. The department said the origin is a mystery. The White House has declined to discuss the virus.

But suspicions about the US government’s role in the use of cyberweapons were heightened by a report in Friday’s New York Times. Based on anonymous sources, it said President Barack Obama secretly had ordered the use of another sophisticated cyberweapon, known as Stuxnet, to attack the computer systems that run Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facilities. The order was an extension of a sabotage program that the Times said began during the Bush administration. Private security researchers long have suspected that the US and Israeli governments were responsible for Stuxnet. But the newspaper’s detailed description of conversations in the Oval Office among Obama, the vice president and the CIA director about the US government’s responsibility for Stuxnet is the most direct evidence of this to date. US officials rarely discuss the use of cyberweapons outside of classified settings.

Stuxnet is believed to have been released as early as 2009. It was discovered in June 2010 by a Belarusian antivirus researcher analyzing a customer’s infected computer in Iran. It targeted electronic program controllers built by Siemens AG of Germany that were installed in Iran. The US government also circulated warnings to American businesses about Stuxnet after it was detected.

The White House said Friday it would not discuss whether the US was responsible for the Stuxnet attacks on Iran. “I’m not able to comment on any of the specifics or details,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said.

“That information is classified for a reason, and it is kept secret. It is intended not to be publicized because publicizing it would pose a threat to our national security.”

Cyberweapons are uncharted territory because the US laws are ambiguous about their use, and questions about their effectiveness and reliability are mostly unresolved.

Attackers online can disguise their origins or even impersonate an innocent bystander organization, making it difficult to identify actual targets when responding to attacks.

Viruses and malicious software, known as malware, rely on vulnerabilities in commercial software and hardware products. But it is hard to design a single payload that always will succeed because the target may have fixed a software vulnerability or placed computers behind a firewall.

On the Internet, where being connected is a virtue, an attack intended for one target can spread unexpectedly. Whether a cyberweapon can boomerang depends on its state of the art, according to computer security experts. On that point, there are deep divisions over Flame. Russian digital security provider Kaspersky Lab, which first identified the virus, said Flame’s complexity and functionality “exceed those of all other cybermenaces known to date.” There is no doubt, the company said, that a government sponsored the research that developed it. Yet Flame’s author remains unknown because there is no information in the code of the virus that would link it to a particular country.

Other experts said it wasn’t as fearsome.

Much of the code used to build the virus is old and available on the Internet, said Becky Bace, chief strategist at the Center for Forensics, Information Technology and Security at the University of South Alabama.

Flame could have been developed by a small team of smart people who are motivated and have financial backing, she said, making it just as likely a criminal enterprise or a group working as surrogates could have been responsible.

“Here’s the wake-up call as far as cyber is concerned: You don’t have to be a nationstate to have what it would take to put together a threat of this particular level of sophistication,” said Bace, who spent 12 years at the National Security Agency working on intrusion detection and network security.

“There’s no secret sauce here.” Stuxnet was far more complex. Still, Stuxnet could not have worked without detailed intelligence about Iran’s nuclear program that was obtained through conventional spycraft, said Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at F-Secure, a digital security company in Helsinki, Finland. The countries with the motivation and the means to gather that data are the United States and Israel, he said.

“This is at the level of complexity that very few organizations in the world would even attempt,” said Hypponen, who has studied Stuxnet and Flame. —AP

H E A LT H & S C I E NC E

MONDAY, JUNE 4, 2012

‘Smart bomb’ drug attacks breast cancer A major step forward

CHICAGO: This undated file image provided in 2007 by the Duke University Department of Medicine shows a right breast MRI from a 55year-old woman with extreme breast density. The superimposed arrow points to a 2 cm rapidly enhancing lesion which was later confirmed by biopsy to be invasive breast cancer. Doctors have successfully dropped the first “smart bomb” on breast cancer, using a drug to deliver a toxic payload to tumor cells while leaving healthy ones alone, doctors plan to report later yesterday. — AP

Warming gas levels hit ‘troubling milestone’ WASHINGTON: The world’s air has reached what scientists call a troubling new milestone for carbon dioxide, the main global warming pollutant.

Monitoring stations across the Arctic this spring are measuring more than 400 parts per million of the heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere. The number isn’t quite a surprise, because it’s been rising at an accelerating pace. Years ago, it passed the 350 ppm mark that many scientists say is the highest safe level for carbon dioxide. It now stands globally at 395. So far, only the Arctic has reached that 400 level, but the rest of the world will follow soon. “The fact that it’s 400 is significant,” said Jim Butler, global monitoring director at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Earth System Research Lab in Boulder, Colo.

“It’s just a reminder to everybody that we haven’t fixed this and we’re still in trouble.”

Carbon dioxide is the chief greenhouse gas and most of it lasts about 100 years in the air, but some of it stays in the atmosphere for thousands of years. Some carbon dioxide is natural, mainly from decomposing dead plants and animals. Before the Industrial Age, levels were around 275 parts per million.

For more than 60 years, readings have been in the 300s, except in urban areas, where levels are skewed. The burning of fossil fuels, such as coal for electricity and oil for gasoline, has caused the overwhelming bulk of the man-made increase in carbon in the air, scientists say.

It’s been at least 800,000 years - probably more - since Earth saw carbon dioxide levels in the 400s, Butler and other climate scientists said.

Readings are coming in at 400 and higher all over the Arctic. They’ve been recorded in Alaska, Greenland, Norway, Iceland and even Mongolia. But levels change with the seasons and will drop a bit in the summer, when plants suck up carbon dioxide, NOAA scientists said. So the yearly average for those northern stations likely will be lower and so will the global number.

Globally, the average carbon dioxide level is about 395 parts per million but will pass the 400 mark within a few years, scientists said.

The Arctic is the leading indicator in global warming, both in carbon dioxide in the air and effects, said Pieter Tans, a senior NOAA scientist. “This is the first time the

entire Arctic is that high,” he said.

Tans called reaching the 400 number “depressing,” and Butler said it was “a troubling milestone.” “It’s an important threshold,” said Carnegie Institution ecologist Chris Field, a scientist who helps lead the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “It is an indication that we’re in a different world.” Ronald Prinn, an atmospheric sciences professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said 400 is more a psychological milestone than a scientific one. We think in hundreds, and “we’re poking our heads above 400,” he said. Tans said the readings show how much the Earth’s atmosphere and its climate are being affected by humans. Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels hit a record high of 34.8 billion tons in 2011, up 3.2 percent, the International Energy Agency announced last week.

The agency said it’s becoming unlikely that the world can achieve the European goal of limiting global warming to just 2 degrees based on increasing pollution and greenhouse gas levels.

“The news today, that some stations have measured concentrations above 400 ppm in the atmosphere, is further evidence that the world’s political leaders - with a few honorable exceptions - are failing catastrophically to address the climate crisis,” former Vice President Al Gore, the highestprofile campaigner against global warming, said in an email. “History will not understand or forgive them.”

But political dynamics in the United States mean there’s no possibility of significant restrictions on man-made greenhouse gases no matter what the levels are in the air, said Jerry Taylor, a senior fellow of the libertarian Cato Institute.

“These milestones are always worth noting,” said economist Myron Ebell at the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute.

“As carbon dioxide levels have continued to increase, global temperatures flattened out, contrary to the models” used by climate scientists and the United Nations.

He contends temperatures have not risen since 1998, which was unusually hot.

Temperature records contradict that claim. Both 2005 and 2010 were warmer than 1998, and the entire decade of 2000 to 2009 was the warmest on record, according to NOAA. — AP

US denies name change for disputed sweetener WASHINGTON: US regulators have denied a request to change the name of high-fructose corn syrup to merely “corn sugar,” in a highprofile dispute between two industries. The effort to change the name comes amid controversy over the sweetener, which is at the epicenter of a dispute over a possible link to obesity. The Food and Drug Administration said in a ruling that the corn industry failed to back up its request for the name change. FDA food safety chief Michael Landa said the change would imply “a solid, dried, and crystallized sweetener obtained from corn.”

Landa said there is already a solid corn sweetener, called dextrose, and that the liquid corn sweetener contains some ingredients that might adversely affect people “with hereditary fructose intolerance or fructose malabsorption.” The regulatory battle between Big Sugar and Big Corn coincides with a public relations battle. The FDA affects food labeling but does not prevent advertisements describing “corn sugar,” at least according to the corn industry. “The FDA’s ruling represents a victory for American consumers,” said Dan Callister, an attorney for the sugar industry.

“It reaffirms what most consumer advocates, health experts and policy officials have been saying all along: only sugar is sugar.

HFCS is not sugar. The next step is for the federal court to end the (the corn industry’s) misleading propaganda campaign.” But the Corn Refiners Association said the FDA made its decision on “technical grounds” and did not

rule on the issue of whether high fructose corn syrup is nutritionally the same as other sugars. “The fact remains-which FDA did not challenge-that the vast majority of American consumers are confused about HFCS,” said corn association president Audrae Erickson.

“Consumers have the right to know what is in their foods and beverages in simple, clear language that enables them to make wellinformed dietary decisions.” The two sides have offered contradictory scientific studies.

A 2008 report by the American Medical Association which concludes that it is “unlikely” that high-fructose corn syrup contributes more to obesity or other conditions than sucrose. But a 2011 study cited by the sugar industry from the journal Metabolism concludes the fructose corn syrup leads to “significantly different acute metabolic effects” than plain sugar.

Some have linked the obesity epidemic to consumption of processed foods and soft drinks which use corn syrup in place of costlier cane or beet sugar. The corn industry petitioned the FDA for permission to use the term “corn sugar” instead of high fructose corn syrup. But in the meantime it has launched television and print ads hoping to gain public support, on free speech grounds. The campaign cites experts saying there is no difference between various sugars in terms of metabolism, calories or other nutritional values. “Whether it’s corn sugar or cane sugar, your body can’t tell the difference. Sugar is sugar,” one ad says.— AFP

CHICAGO: Doctors have successfully dropped the first “smart bomb” on breast cancer, using a drug to deliver a toxic payload to tumor cells while leaving healthy ones alone. In a key test involving nearly 1,000 women with ver y advanced disease, the experimental treatment extended by several months the time women lived without their cancer getting worse, doctors reported yesterday at a cancer conference in Chicago.

More importantly, the treatment seems likely to improve survival; it will take more time to know for sure. After two years, 65 percent of women who received it were still alive versus 47 percent of those in a comparison group given two standard cancer drugs.

That margin fell just short of the very strict criteria researchers set for stopping the study and declaring the new treatment a winner, and they hope the benefit becomes more clear with time. In fact, so many women on the new treatment are still alive that researchers cannot yet determine average survival for the group.

“The absolute difference is greater than one year in how long these people live,” said the study’s leader, Dr. Kimberly Blackwell of Duke University. “This is a major step forward.”

A warning to hopeful patients: the drug is still experimental, so not available yet. Its backers hope it can reach the market within a year.

The treatment builds on Herceptin, the first gene-targeted therapy for breast cancer. It is used for about 20 percent of patients whose tumors overproduce a certain protein.

Researchers combined Herceptin with a

chemotherapy so toxic that it can’t be given by itself, plus a chemical to keep the two linked until they reach a cancer cell where the poison can be released to kill it.

This double weapon, called T-DM1, is the “smart bomb,” although it’s actually not all that smart - Herceptin isn’t a homing device, just a substance that binds to breast cancer cells once it encounters them.

Doctors tested T-DM1 in 991 women with widely spread breast cancer that was getting worse despite treatment with chemotherapy and ordinary Herceptin. They were given either T-DM1 infusions every three weeks or infusions of Xeloda plus daily Tykerb pills - the only other treatments approved for such cases.

The median time until cancer got worse was nearly 10 months in the women given T-DM1 versus just over 6 months for the others. That is about the same magnitude of benefit initially seen with Herceptin, which later proved to improve overall survival, too, Blackwell said.

T-DM1 caused fewer side effects than the other drugs did. Some women on T-DM1 had signs of liver damage and low levels of factors that help blood clot, but most did not have the usual problems of chemotherapy.

“People don’t lose their hair, they don’t throw up. They don’t need nausea medicines, they don’t need transfusions,” said Blackwell, who has consulted in the past for Genentech, the study’s sponsor.

“The data are pretty compelling,” said Dr. Michael Link, a pediatric cancer specialist at Stanford University who is president of the

American Society of Clinical Oncology, the group hosting the Chicago conference where the results were being presented.

“It’s sort of a smart bomb kind of therapy, a poison delivered to the tumor ... and not a lot of other collateral damage to other organs,” he said.

Dr. Louis Weiner, director of Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, said the results strongly suggest T-DM1 improves survival. It delivers more drug directly to tumors with less side effects, “a clear advance,” he said.

Denise Davis, 51, a customer service representative at a propane company, was diagnosed three years ago with breast cancer that had spread to her liver and bones. Since February of last year, the Lynchburg, Va., woman has made the two-hour trip to Duke in Durham, N.C., every three weeks to get infusions of T-DM1.

“I call it ‘Herceptin-plus,’” she said. Scans every six weeks show “everything is still shrinking or stable,” she said. “Right now, I’m feeling pretty good about it. The only way I’d feel a little better is if it took care of everything, but I’ll take what I can get.”

Genentech, par t of the Swiss company Roche, plans to seek approval later this year to sell the drug in Europe and the United States.

Another company, ImmunoGen Inc., made the technology combining the drugs.

Genentech says the price of T-DM1 has not been determined. Herceptin costs more than $4,000 a month plus whatever doctors charge to infuse it. Herceptin’s U.S. patent doesn’t expire until 2019.— AFP

Peru needs glacier loss monitoring: dire UN warning LIMA: Peru needs a permanent monitoring system to gauge Andean mountain glacier shrinkage caused by global warming, and its effect on people who depend on the ice for water, UN experts warned.

“We have spoken with Peruvian government institutions, and there is no sufficient monitoring system to tell us the current trend in glacier shrinkage, and its consequences,” said Anil Mishra, a UNESCO specialist in hydrological systems.

Mishra took part last week in a conference called “Impact of Glacier Retreat in the Andes” with Thomas Shaaf, of Germany, who leads the UNESCO biodiversity science department. It aimed to deliver policy recommendations to regional governments.

“We are in Peru to work with scientists from the region, with their specialists, to identify and understand the process of glacier shrinkage,” Mishra added.

Experts say the monitoring system should include scientists, high-tech equipment and hydrologists to identify the degree of ice melting, the degree to which rivers fed by them are losing water supplies; and which down-mountain areas will be affected by the loss of water supplies and how much.

“In the Andes, runoff from glaciated basins is an important element of the regional water budget, and is essential to the integrity of mountain ecosystems,” UNESCO said in a statement on the gathering last week.

A 2009 World Bank report said that in the last 35 years, Peru’s glaciers have shrunk by 22 percent, leading to a 12 percent loss in the amount of fresh water reaching the coast, home to most of the desert country’s citizens who depend on the water supplies downstream.

And the local Glacier Science Office has reported that the glaciers in the Cordillera Blanca in northern Peru, the highest tropical

mountain chain in the world, have shrunk by 30 percent in the past 40 years due to climate change.

“The scientific community and governments have got to understand what the consequences will be for river systems when the glaciers no longer exist,” Mishra warned.

Shaaf added that with the passing years there is less snow falling on the high mountains even

as the ice is shrinking “and so less water is going into river systems, even if the population has not felt it yet.

Many scientists believe that with climate change, rain cycles will speed up and rains will be heavier in tropical and already wet areas but that dry and semiarid areas will see less and less precipitation.

Peru’s population is almost 30 million. — AFP

KABUL: Afghan technicians study patient samples under a microscope in a laboratory at The French Medical Institute for Children in Kabul on May 8, 2012.

According to a 2012 report by Save the Children, improved healthcare and the rise of females attending school have made Afghanistan climb up from its position as the worst place on earth to be a mother. — AFP

Myanmar’s healthcare system on life support YANGON: Starved of funds and medicine during decades of military rule, doctors at a clinic in Yangon offer their usual advice to one of Myanmar’s newest HIV patientscome back when you’re sicker. In a country with one of Southeast Asia’s biggest armies but a healthcare system in tatters, scarce antiretroviral drugs are given only to those with the advanced form of the illness. “If I don’t get the treatment, I’m worried the disease will get worse,” a 47-yearold farmer told AFP at the clinic run by charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) after she was diagnosed with the virus. During almost half a century of military rule which officially ended last year, Myanmar’s junta generously funneled cash to the armed forces but presided over one of the world’s lowest outlays on public health.

Non-governmental organizations and patients using their own money have scrambled to plug the gap, but with limited success given the scale of demand from the estimated 60 million population.

“Patients are upset, it is difficult to tell them... but we cannot refer them anywhere, the government doesn’t have it (medicine) either,” said Soe Yadanar, one of four doctors at the clinic in a poor Yangon neighborhood, which has more than 2,000 registered patients. “We tell them they can come back later. But they know the situation in Myanmar,” she added.

MSF says only a third of the 120,000 people living with HIV in Myanmar who under World Health Organization (WHO) standards should receive antiretrovirals

are being treated. The shortage of medicine extends to other serious illnesses including tuberculosis and malaria. The country has a relatively high number of doctors but lacks medicines and wider support systems to treat patients, said MSF head of mission Peter Paul de Groote.

“There are quite a lot of trained doctors but you can have many doctors-if you don’t have the drugs, the paramedicals, the nurses, you still don’t get anywhere,” he explains. And while the state press frequently burnishes the government ’s image as a provider for its people, with pictures of brand-new hospitals, the reality is markedly different. “I visited a lot of township level hospitals and I’m always struck by the fact that there are a lot of staff but very few patients,” says Mike Toole, a public health expert and adviser to the 3MDG Fund, a consortium of international donors to Myanmar. “Patients just don’t go there because they don’t get good quality services, there is a lack of equipment, a lack of basic medical supplies, of drugs.” Figures from the WHO show Myanmar spent just $12 per capita (or two percent of GDP) on health in 2009, of which only one dollar came from the government, with the remainder cobbled together by NGOs and patients.

That miserly outlay was matched only by the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a nation ravaged by war and political instability. In an effort to address the funding crisis, reformist President Thein Sein, whose nominally-civilian government took over from the junta in March

2011, has quadrupled the health budget for 2012-2013. “It is a good start, but it is coming from a very low base,” says Toole.

“It will need massive investment... with comparable investment by the government and donors, it would probably take at least 20 years, and possibly 30, to catch up with Thailand.” Donor nations are being urged to take advantage of Myanmar’s reforms, and some eased sanctions, to inject cash into its ailing public health services. But there are fears the reverberations of the global economic crisis may mean donors are reluctant to reach for their wallets. Whatever the amount offered, NGOs want Myanmar to completely rethink its health system. Under the junta NGOs were banned from public hospitals and in effect ran a parallel health service, but now they are calling for closer cooperation with the government to extend the reach of healthcare. “We need to start thinking about a long-term health system where we can all work together,” argues de Groote.

In the meantime, many among Myanmar’s impoverished population will continue to rely on foreign NGOs for help.

Mying Maung Maung, a 37-year-old carpenter, says he had to turn to MSF when he needed treatment for tuberculosis and HIV. After several years of antiretroviral treatment, the father-of-four stopped responding to the medicine, in part because he did not stick to the strict timetable of taking his dose. “I don’t have a watch, I had to find clocks... but they always have a different time,” he said.—AFP

MONDAY, JUNE 4, 2012

H E A LT H & S C I E NC E

Venus, the planet of broken dreams PARIS: When Venus this week eclipses Earth, an event that will not occur again for more than a century, millions of skygazers may have romantic thoughts about our closest neighbor and its twilight beauty.

But the truth is that Venus is a hell that would have surpassed even the imagination of Dante, and it has caused more grief and disappointment than any other planet in the Solar System.

Early science fiction figured Venus to be a twin to Earth, a balmy, watery home from home that was a plum target for colonisation. So when the Space Age dawned, it was only natural that the second rock from the Sun would be the first planet for humans to explore.

For a decade, the Soviet Union and the United States battered Venus with probes.

They dispatched 21 unmanned missions, nearly all of them struck by failures at launch or in the final approach, before in 1970 the Soviet scout Venera 7 made the first successful landing.

The snatch of data it sent back left everyone stunned. If Venus was ever Earth’s sister, it was of the sick and twisted kind.

It hosts an atmosphere of carbon dioxide with a pressure 90 times that on Earth and a surface cooked to 457 degrees Celsius (855 degrees Fahrenheit).

“Any astronaut unlucky to land there would be simultaneously crushed, roasted, choked and dissolved,” Britain’s Royal Astronomical Society notes.

Those watching the Transit of Venus next week should spare a thought for Guillaume le Gentil de la Galaisiere, whose life-portrayed in a play by Canadian author Maureen Hunter that has since been turned into an opera-was cursed by the planet named after love.

Le Gentil became swept up in the 18thcentury frenzy for the Transit of Venus, which occurs when Venus swings in front of the Sun, appearing through the telescope lens as an enigmatic spot.

Next Tuesday evening, skywatchers in North and Central America will enjoy the start of the 2012 Transit, which will end on Wednesday, more than six and a half hours later, visible from Europe, the Middle East

and South Asia. The next time a Transit happens will be in December 2117.

As a Transit of Venus loomed in 1761, Britain and France-at war at the time-jousted for the glory of using the celestial alignment to resolve the greatest puzzle of the day: how far is Earth from the Sun? By figuring this out, the size and the scale of the Solar System could at last be determined.

How this could be done was proposed in 1716 by the great astronomer Edmund Halley, more famous today for the comet that bears his name.

The point was to measure very accurately, and from different locations on the Earth, the time it took Venus to cross the Sun. Using triangulation, this would give the distance between Earth and Venus, and thereafter the gap between Venus and the Sun, using an equation on orbital mechanics drawn up by the German mathematician Johannes Kepler.

Hundreds of expeditions were dispatched around the world.

Among them was Le Gentil, who set out to observe the 1761 transit from Pondicherry, a French territory in southeastern India.

By the time Le Gentil arrived, Pondicherry had been seized by the British and his ship could not land. The French astronomer observed the transit from his vessel out at sea, but could not time it accurately because he had only a pendulum clock, which was affected by the ship’s rolling.

Knowing that the next transit was only eight years away, le Gentil decided to stay in Asia, exploring the coast of Madagascar as he whiled away the time.

As the 1769 event loomed, Le Gentil tried to record the transit from the Philippines, only to be rebuffed by the Spanish colonial authorities.

Eventually he decided to go back to Pondicherry, which by this time had returned to French ownership.

Le Gentil built a small observatory to house his precious gear and rubbed his hands expectantly as week after week the skies remained dazzlingly clear.—AFP

Paralyzed rats run again: Could method help humans?

WASHINGTON: Paralyzed rats learned to walk, run and spring deftly over obstacles after they were put on a physical training regimen that included electrical and chemical stimulation of their broken spinal columns and a “robotic postural interface,” a new study reveals. The study, published Thursday in Science, suggests that for humans with spinal cord injury, the trick to regaining lost movement may lie not in regeneration of the severed spinal cord, but in inducing the brain and spinal cord to forge wholly new paths toward each other. The Swiss authors liken that process to the way that infants, their nervous systems incomplete and learning by experience, sync up their brains and limbs so they can progressively crawl, stand, walk and play. All told, 250,000 Americans live with spinal cord injury, and just over half 52 percent - are paraplegic. Each year, 11,000 new injuries occur - overwhelming in young males.

In this study, coaxing that neural reinvention along took four key components: a soup of neurotransmitters - serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine - injected into the epidural space; a set of electrodes supplying a continuous flow of electrical energy near the site of the break in the spinal cord; a rehabilitation rig that supports the unsteady participant and initially forces movement of the legs; and a training course that is as realworld as possible.

After five to six weeks of training on uneven and irregular terrain, all 10 rats used in the study regained the capacity to walk voluntarily “and even to sprint up a staircase,” says study co-author Gregoire Courtine, a research scientist in spinal cord repair at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Switzerland. “It was pretty exciting,” he said in an interview Thursday. The experiment brought together many disparate threads of rehabilitation research and was several years in the making. Its

10 rats were paralyzed in a way that mimics many spinal cord injuries that result in paralysis of the lower limbs: The spinal cord is partially severed at two separate but neighboring sites, leaving intact tissue but interrupting the passage of messages from the brain to the legs.

About a week later, training began for 30 minutes a day. First, the neurotransmitter cocktail was introduced into the area of injury, reawakening neurons long dormant. Five to 10 minutes later, researchers sent a steady current of electricity through the chemically-excited neurons that control leg movement. At first, the rats responded with involuntary movement of the legs. But prodded across challenging obstacles by a supportive robotic prosthetic, the rats’ movements became increasingly intentional. Two to three weeks into the training, “the first, effortful voluntary steps emerged.” The regimen brought about changes at the site of the injury that were equally striking: In the rats trained “overground,” as opposed to those that got training only on a treadmill, surviving neurons below the site of the injury began to sprout long tentacles axons reaching out in the darkness across the space where the spinal cord had been severed. From the brain’s motor cortex, down through the brainstem and the descending neural pathways, axonal projections reached southward in search of new connections.

Prodded by their hard practice and by rewards like Swiss chocolate, the injured rats grew “de novo brainstem and intraspinal relays” that would find each other across the neural wasteland caused by injury.

With five to six weeks of hard work, chemical support and electrical stimulation to the area, the rats built a “detour circuit” around the impassable roadblock of spinal cord rupture.

“Voluntary control over sophisticated locomotor movements” was com-

pletely restored, the study authors wrote.

“This is not an intervention that will cure spinal cord injury; we need to be realistic here,” Courtine said in an interview. For people with complete or near-complete severing of the spinal cord, the study authors wrote, “undoubtedly, neuroregeneration will be essential.” That may be a job for stem-cell therapies years away from reality. But this “more immediate approach,” they added, “might capital-

ize on the remarkable capacity of spared neuronal systems to reorganize” themselves in response to rehabilitation. Courtine, who conducted much of his preliminary research in the lab of University of California, Los Angeles, neurophysiologist Victor Edgerton, said he hopes to initiate Phase 2 trials with human subjects within a couple of years. “What is exciting here is that it’s a different approach, and the results are unprecedented,” Courtine said.—MCT

30

MONDAY, JUNE 4, 2012

WHAT’S ON

Carmel achieves 100 percent glory nce again Carmel School has unfurled its prestigious pennant at the pinnacle of Mount Glory.

Carmel School has reached the zenith with an outstanding performance by students of Class XII in the CBSE Board Examination for the academic year 2011-2012. With a 100 percent result, they have crossed all boundaries which goes to prove that brilliance and hard work pays in the long run.

As our lips moved in a fervent prayer of gratitude, blessings were showered upon us with a fantastic 95.6 percent by our meticulous brainchild Mustafa Abbas who is the Kuwait topper in Physics with 99 percent and candid, confident Caralyza Edwin with 94.8 percent achieved a perfect 100 in Computer Science. The soft spoken genius Noah Jacob and an unwavering Richie John secured 94.4 percent aggregate.

The Commerce Stream also accomplished excellent grades in bountiful. Our systematic Smriti Ganapathi scored 94.2 percent, our very own accounting genius Sahil Advani with 92.8 percent and the indomitable hard worker Nihal Jabeen with 91.6 percent (she has achieved this feat without any tuition).

The students who secured more than 90 percent aggregate are : Charles George (93.6 percent), Shawn Fernandes (93.6 percent), Meenakshi R (93.4 percent), Suzanne Pothen (93.4 percent), Chris John (93.2 percent), Susan Abraham (93.2 percent), Tanaya Choudhury (93.2 percent), Jimmica Thakur (92 percent), Divya G (91.8 percent), Mamidi Lekha (91.2 percent), Fraser Gomes (90.8 percent), Ivy Sebastian (90.6 percent) and Fiona Mascarenhas (90.4 percent).

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SUBJECT WISE TOPPERS WHO SECURED 90 percent AND ABOVE ENGLISH CORE Devika, Dwayne, Ihab, Ivy, Fiona, Sasha, Suzanne-95 marks; Caralyza, Rebecca-94 marks; Clarissa, Isra, Meenakshi-93 marks; Ferdous-92 marks; Iona, Hatim, Kareshma, Raheen-91 marks; Kethzi, Mariyam, Natalie, Rashmi, Vishal-90 marks.

MATHS Charles, Divya G,Susan-98 marks; Meenakshi, Noah, Shawn-97 marks; Tanaya-96 marks; Caralyza, Fiona, Fraser, Ivy, Lekha, Mustafa A, Mustafa R, Richie, Smriti, Suzanne-95 marks; Jimmica, Chris-92 marks; Nihal-91 marks; Ferdous-90 marks.

PHYSICS Mustafa A- 99 marks; Richie-96 marks; Charles, Divya G, Noah, Shawn - 95 marks; Chris, Jimmica, Susan-94 marks; Tanaya-91 marks.

CHEMISTRY Caralyza, Richie-98 marks; Meenakshi, Mustafa A-96 marks; Charles, Chris, Ivy, Kethzi, Lekha, Nikita, Shawn, Tanaya-95 marks; Divya G, Fraser-94 marks; Akash, Susan-93 marks; Noah - 92 marks; Suzanne, Tehniyat - 91 marks.

BIOLOGY Divya G, Fraser, Meenakshi, Annette - 95 marks; Manojj - 94 marks; Abdul Kader -93, Zainab - 90 marks.

ECONOMICS Sahil A, Smriti, Nihal, Ihab - 95 marks; Fatema S, Sharol - 93 marks; Kareshma - 90 marks.

BUSINESS STUDIES Smriti-98 marks; Nihal-97 marks: Jessen-96 marks, Sahil A, Sukhdeep, Karen, Ferdous, Fiona - 95 marks; Divya J, Mohammed R- 94 marks; Mustafa R, Tanya- 93 marks, Mariyam, Neshay - 92 marks; Dwayne - 90 marks.

ACCOUNTANCY Smriti - 95 marks; Divya J - 94 marks: Sahil A - 93 marks.

COMPUTER SCIENCE Caralyza - 100 marks; Mustafa A, Noah, Richie - 99 marks; Chris, Shawn - 98 marks; Kethzy, Susan, Suzanne, Charles - 97 marks; Jimmica, Lekha, Tanaya 96 marks; Gunika, Lance - 95 marks; Fawwaz - 91 marks; Rahul - 90 marks.

INFORMATICS PRACTICES Sahil A - 96 marks; Jessen - 94 marks; Kareshma - 93 marks; Ihab, Tanya, Viola - 91 marks; Annette, Hina - 90 marks.

Our students have performed par excellence with 51 out of the 97 achieving distinctions in their aggregate total. Subject wise distinctions are: English83/97; Maths-27/61;Phy-24/51; Chem-32/51; Bio15/22;Eco-20/46;Business Stud-24/46;Accounts15/46;Info-32/36. This is indeed a certificate of excellence like no other. Carmel School, yet again, stands by its motto- EXCELSIOR!

FAIPS-DPS maintains its lead in senior secondary results of 2012 Tops in Kuwait with 98% aggregate n 28-May-2012, the students of FAIPS again fulfilled their vow of remaining on top of the result rung, third time in a row, by attaining the highest aggregate of 98% in the All India Senior Secondary Examination which were held in March earlier this year.

An extraordinary feat indeed!

FAIPS proudly felicitates its high achievers: ● Kuwait topper: Ashray Jain, conscientious all rounder with his eyes set on the stars - 98% aggregate ● Kuwait topper in Commerce stream with Math: Stuti Jain, a dedicated and focused for whom sky is the limit - 96.4% aggregate ● Highest Average Aggregate: 83.34% ● Out of Top 6 positions, FAIPS’ students bag 5 Subject toppers in: English - 95% Ashray Jain, Gadha Krishna, Juanna Jinson Kolenchery, Abhinav Roy Burman, Paavni Anand, Amritayan Naiya, Nupur Kale, Balamurugan Murali, Reshma Sudhir Nair, Geetika Suresh, Sreemoyi Debroy, Jonna Naga Laxmi Raga Dhruthi, Kaustubh Arvind Mishra Mathematics - 100% Abhinav Roy Burman, Nitin Vijayvargiya Physics - 99% Ashray Jain, Anirudh Ashok Biology - 99%Akshaj Kuchibhotla Computer Sc - 100 Ashray Jain ● Highest Average in Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biology ● Highest Percentage of students obtaining A1 grade in Physics, Chemistry and Biology ● Highest Percentage of students obtaining A grade (either A1 or A2) in Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Computer Science

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Open House for Indian citizens

Greetings

pen House for Indian citizens by the ambassador which is being held every alternate Wednesday has been found useful by the Indian community and the embassy. It will now be held on every Wednesday from June 2012 between 1500 hrs and 1600 hrs. in the embassy. During the month of June, 2012 the dates for the open house fall on 6th, 13th, 20th, and 27th of the month. In case Wednesday is an embassy holiday, the meeting will be held on the next working day.

To ensure timely action/follow-up by the embassy, it is requested that, wherever possible, Indian citizens should exhaust the existing channels of interaction/grievance redressal and bring their problems/issues in writing with supporting documents. It may be mentioned that embassy of Indiaís Consular Wing is providing daily service of Open House to Indian citizens on all workings days from 1000 hrs to 1100 hrs and from 1430 hrs to 1530 hrs by the Consular Officer in the Meeting Room of the Consular Hall.

For any unaddressed issues, Second Secretary (Consular) could be contacted. Furthermore, the head of the Consular Wing is also available to redress grievances. Similarly, a labour wing Help Desk functions from 0830 hrs to 1300 hrs and 1400 hrs to 1630 hrs in the Labour Hall to address the labour related issues. There is also a 24x7 Help Line (Tel No. 25674163) to assist labourers in distress. For any unaddressed issues, the concerned attaches in the labour section and the head of the labour wing could be contacted.

Wishing Faiza a very happy birthday.

Best wishes from father Anwar Basha, mother Sajida, brother Mohd Parvez and Aslam, Tabasum, Ashraf, Ayan Haji and Dada, Dadi, Nana and Nani uncles aunties and near and dear ones in Kuwait and India.

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31

MONDAY, JUNE 4, 2012

WHAT’S ON

Embassy Information

AUK holds graduation ceremony he Graduation Ceremony of the Class of 2012 at the American University of Kuwait (AUK) took place at Kuwait International Fairgrounds (KIF) at 10 am on Thursday, May 31. The ceremony commenced with the Kuwaiti national anthem and a recitation of the Holy Quran. Graduates then began to march towards the stage waving to their friends and families as they took their seats. AUK President Dr Winfred Thompson then welcomed students, and their families to the ceremony along with several board members and numerous dignitaries and diplomats.

In his opening remarks, Thompson spoke of the role AUK plays in contributing to Kuwaiti society saying, “The University presents itself to you as an important institution in Kuwaiti society, fulfilling a special role of providing a liberal arts education to a

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new generation of Kuwaitis and expatriate residents.” He went on to congratulate the students and their parents on this great achievement as well as AUK faculty and staff for their contributions to the educational process.

The President then introduced the keynote speaker, Sheikha AlZain Al-Sabah. Al-Sabah is the producer of several award-winning news stories and feature films; as well as a prominent voice of social corporate responsibility and value-based leadership. As Chairperson and Managing Director of Eagle Vision Media Group, she is actively rallying to transform the local visual storytelling community into a quality-based internationally recognizable industry. Job creation and training are central to her mission, and she utilizes her experience in media to build viable platforms on which to support and nurture Kuwait’s cre-

ative community.

In her speech Al-Sabah drew on her experience and the life lessons. She stressed that each graduate should “dream big, and start small” because life is still full of unexplored opportunities. In her opinion, one can be creative in any field regardless of his/her educational degree. Al-Sabah encouraged graduates to be courageous enough to “reassess their plans” and follow their “heart & intuition”. Finally, she advised graduates to stick to people who can “challenge and inspire” them and back them up during their future journeys.

Vice President of Administrative and Student Affairs Dr Carol Ross-Scott then introduced the Class of 2012 Valedictorians, Amineh Eida, Rasha Abdelhadi and Nada Bedir.

Amineh gave the valedictorian speech on behalf of the others, after a University Committee was

convened to decide among the three. Amineh rose to the podium to deliver her speech, which was both inspiring and motivational. She emphasized the importance of chasing one’s dreams through hard work and dedication saying, “Believe in your dreams! Fulfill your dreams and create even more dreams!

What got us here today was one of those dreams and what will get us somewhere in the future maybe a similar dream.” Amineh concluded her speech by thanking all the parents, guardians and AUK faculty and staff members that have helped the graduates throughout their journey.

Amineh Eida is graduating with a BBA degree in Accounting and has earned a cumulative grade point average of 4.0 Summa Cum Laude (with the greatest honor).

Acting Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences Dr.

Nizar Hamzeh recommended the conferral of degrees for the graduates of the College of Arts & Sciences, while Dean of the College of Business and Economy recommended the conferral of degrees for the graduates of the College of Business and Economy, to President Thompson who then conferred upon the 435 graduates their respective degrees. Graduates were then presented with their bachelor’s degree diploma by President Thompson, Dr Doug Munro and Dr Nizar Hamzeh, and in keeping with the academic tradition, the graduates were asked to move their tassels from right to left, thereby marking their official graduation from AUK. The ceremony also included the traditional cutting of the Class of 2012 cake, and professional photography was provided for all graduates and their families and friends.

EMBASSY OF BRAZIL The Embassy of Brazil requests all Brazilian citizens in Kuwait to proceed to the website www.brazil.org.kw (Contact Us Form / Fale Conosco) in order to register or update contact information. The Embassy encourages all citizens to do so, including the ones who have already registered in person at the Embassy. The registration process helps the Brazilian Government to contact and assist Brazilians living abroad in case of any emergency.

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EMBASSY OF CANADA The Embassy of Canada is located at Villa 24, Al-Mutawakel St., Block 4 in Da’aiyah.

Please visit our website at www.Kuwait.gc.ca. The Embassy of Canada is open from 07:30 to 15:30 Sunday through Thursday. The reception is closed from 12:30 to 01:00 pm for lunch break. Consular Services for Canadian Citizens are provided from 09:00 until 12:00 on Sunday through Wednesday. The Canadian Embassy in Abu Dhabi provides visa and immigration services to residents of Kuwait. Individuals who are interested in visiting, working or immigrating to Canada are invited to visit the website of the Canadian Embassy to the UAE at www.uae.gc.ca.

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EMBASSY OF CYPRUS The Embassy of the Republic of Cyprus would like to inform the public that from today (3rd June 2012), the Consulate section located at the premises of the Embassy will start issuing Visas. Address: SalwaBlock 3, Al-Mutanabbi Street Building No. 35, Tel : (965)25620350, Fax: (965)25620470, Email : info@cyprus-embassy.org.kw Working hours 9:00am till 12:00pm everyday except Friday & Saturday Hence, The Honorary Consulate of Cyprus in Kuwait city will stop issuing Visas from the same date.

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EMBASSY OF FRANCE For the first round of voting for the French parliamentary elections, the French Embassy in Kuwait will be closed today (Sunday, June 3, 2012).

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EMBASSY OF KOREA The Embassy of the Republic of Korea wishes to inform that it has moved to Mishref. New Address: Embassy of the Republic of Korea Mishref, Block 7A, Diplomatic Area 2, Plot 6 The Embassy also wishes to inform that it will be opened to the public on the following office hours: Saturday to Thursday Morning: 8:00 am to 12:30 pm Lunch Break: 12:30 pm to 1:00 pm Afternoon: 1:00 pm to 3:30 pm

Bouncing off the walls at Nike store Bedaa

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EMBASSY OF KENYA ike Kuwait has finally opened its flagship store along the prestigious Bedaa strip. The Nike Store in Bedaa is the only retail outlet in this prominent location, surrounded by jam-packed, bubbly cafes and restaurants bustling with activity. The busy strip observed the exciting launch of the store on Thursday, May 24th 2012, with football freestylers and jaw-dropping parkour traceurs bouncing

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off walls and challenging gravity. The event was witnessed by Isabella Cascarano, the Senior Commercial Officer at the US Embassy in Kuwait, representatives from Nike International, as well as local sports celebrities and famous personalities.

The Nike Store in Bedaa is the fifth and largest Nike Store in Kuwait, and is the running and football destination in the

country. The ground floor carries both men and women’s running and sportswear collection, while the top floor holds the football and action sports categories.

The Nike Store concept creates a destination for each sport, such that each store is a focused entity for the categories it carries. Nike Souq Sharq carries the running gear and sportswear collection. For basketball gear visit the Airport branch, and

for the football and kids collection, visit the branch at Discovery Mall. Nike in 360 Mall is a comprehensive store enjoying a selection from all categories. The Frequent Buyer program is offered at all Nike Stores across Kuwait. Once you’ve bought 5 pairs of shoes, you get the 6th pair at 50 percent off the average price. The Nike Store is one of the many brands held by Ali Abdulwahab Sons & Co.

GIS secures 100% result ulf Indian School raked in a rich harvest in the AISSC examination of March 2012. GIS kept up the unique tradition of securing 100 percent pass once again, recording an average of over 80 percent aggregate score. All the 43 students of the Science Stream scored above 60 percent with 26 of them scoring above 80 percent. In the commerce stream, out of the 21 students, 10 of them were credited with distinction.

We proudly acknowledge the young achievers.

In Science Stream, Manas Gupte & Vijayalakshmi Naganadhan led the winning streak by scoring an enviable 95 percent aggregate each. Manas’s scores are English - 91, Maths - 96, Physics - 98, Chemistry - 95, Computer Science - 95. His high scores came as no surprise, with his intelligence and competitive spirit no less could be expected.

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The soft spoken and consistent Vijayalakshmi has proved once again that systematic work is the key to success. She scored English - 95, Maths - 96, Physics 95, Chemistry - 95 and Biology - 94.

Following a close second is Betsy Tesy Mathew a diligent and interactive student with a mature outlook who scored 93.6 percent aggregate with the following marks: English - 95, Maths - 88, Physics 95, Chemistry - 95, Biology - 95. Gincy Santhosh with her single minded effort has secured 92.4 percent and stood third in the list. Her marks are English - 86, Physics - 93, Chemistry - 93, Informatics Practices - 95, Biology - 95.

Excelling in the Commerce Group, Aishwarya Venkatachalam stood first with an aggregate of 94.6 percent. Her scores are English - 94, in Accountancy 95, Economics - 95, Business Studies - 97 and Mathematics - 92. Jeena Erinjeri, a

focused and goal oriented student scored an aggregate of 90.4 percent and stood second. Her scores are English 93, Economics - 85, Business Studies 93, Accountancy - 94 and Informatics Practices - 87. Mohammed Hussain Fakhruddin, a systematic worker, secured the third position with 89.4 percent. His individual scores are English 92, Economics - 77, Business Studeis 95, Accountancy - 80, Informatics Practices - 93.

Subject-wise toppers 12 of our bright stars secured the country’s highest in English (95) thus making the English department proud.

They are: Vijayalakshmi Naganadhan, Betsy Tesy Mathew, Hasanur Rahman, J Anusir. Shabnoor Ansari, Habi Ummer, Jincy Johnson George, Sushmitha Ramakrishnan, Bilby Mary Babu,

Mohammed Shamim Karim, Zahabiya Akil Husain, Mamta Datwani. Informatics Practices - Needu Mary - 98 percent highest in Kuwait.

Mathematics - 99- Shilpa Dinesh Kumar; Physics -98 -Manas Gupte; Chemistry - 95 - Manas Gupte, Vijayalakshmi Naganadhan, Betsy Tesy Mathew, Alan James; Computer Science 99- Alan James; Biology - 95 -Betsy Tesy Mathew, Gincy Santhosh, Sruthi K Suresh, J Anusri, Richa Sara Koshy; Economics -95 - Aishwarya Venkatachalam; Business Studies - 97 - Aishwarya Venkatachalam; Accountancy -95 - Aishwarya Venkatachalam GIS family is delighted with the excellent results. As one of the leading educational institutions in Kuwait, GIS has always maintained an impeccable record in Board results.

Congratulations to all!

The Embassy of the Republic of Kenya wishes to request all Kenyans resident in or training through Kuwait to register with the Embassy.

We are updating our database. This information is necessary in order to facilitate quick assistance and advise in times of emergency. Kindly visit in person or register through our website www.kenyaembkuwait.com. The Embassy is located in: Surra Area Block 6 - Street 9 - Villa 3 Tel: 25353362 - 25353314; Fax: 25353316.

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EMBASSY OF MEXICO The Embassy of Mexico is pleased to inform that it is located in CLIFFS Complex, Villa 6, Salmiya, block 9, Baghdad street, Jadda Lane 7. The working hours for consular issues are from 9:00 to 12:00 Sunday through Thursday. The reception is closed from 14:00 to 15:00 hours for lunch break. The Embassy of Mexico kindly requests all Mexicans citizens in Kuwait to proceed to the e-mail: embkuwait@sre.gob.mx in order to register or update contact information. Other consultations or/and appointments could be done by telephone or fax: (+965) 2573 1952 ■■■■■■■

EMBASSY OF MYANMAR Embassy of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar would like to inform the general public that the Embassy has moved its office to new location at Villa 35, Road 203, Block 2, AlSalaam Area in South Surra. The Embassy wishes to advice Myanmar citizens and travellers to Myanmar to contact Myanmar Embassy at its new location.

Tel. 25240736, 25240290, Fax: 25240749, email:myankuwait11@gmai1.com ■■■■■■■

EMBASSY OF NEPAL The Embassy of Nepal has moved to a new location in Jabriya, Block 8, St. 13, House No. 514, effective from 15th April, 2012. Till the new telephone connections are installed, the Embassy may be contacted by email: info@nepembku.org ■■■■■■■

EMBASSY OF NIGERIA The Nigerian embassy has its new office in Mishref. Block 3, Street 7, House 4. For enquires please call 25379541. Fax25387719. Email- nigeriakuwait@yahoo.com or nigeriankuwait@yahoo.co.uk ■■■■■■■

EMBASSY OF THAILAND The Royal Thai Embassy in Kuwait, wishes to invite the Kuwaiti companies that deal business with Thai companies or those agencies of Thai commercial companies to visit the Embassy’s Commercial Office to register their relevant information to be part of the embassy’s business and trade database. The Royal Thai Embassy is located in Jabriya, Block 6, Street 8, Villa No. 1, Telephone No. 25317530 -25317531, Ext: 14.

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EMBASSY OF UKRAINE We’d like to inform you that in response to the increasing number of our citizens who work in the state and the need for 24-hour operational telephone in case of emergency the Embassy of Ukraine in the State of Kuwait has opened “hotline telephone number” - (+ 965) 972-79-206.

MONDAY, JUNE 4, 2012

TV PROGRAMS

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Untamed & Uncut Living With Wolves Wildwives Of Savannah Lane I Was Bitten Baboons With Bill Bailey Great Ocean Adventures Dogs 101 Shamwari: A Wild Life Growing Up...

Dick ‘n’ Dom Go Wild Breed All About It Your Very First Puppy Wildest Africa Animal Precinct Animal Cops South Africa Pet Passport Pet Passport Bondi Vet Wildlife SOS International Wildest Africa Shamwari: A Wild Life Dick ‘n’ Dom Go Wild Wild Animal Orphans Natural Born Hunters Dogs 101 Must Love Cats Wildlife SOS International Bondi Vet Escape To Chimp Eden Animal Battlegrounds Wildest Africa Great Animal Escapes Ned Bruha: Skunk Whisperer Animal Cops Houston

MasterChef Australia DIY SOS Saturday Kitchen 2007/08 MasterChef Australia Bargain Hunt Antiques Roadshow Come Dine With Me 10 Years Younger Gok’s Clothes Roadshow Fantasy Homes Down Under Bargain Hunt Antiques Roadshow The Boss Is Coming To Dinner Come Dine With Me Celebrity MasterChef Rick Stein’s French Odyssey Antiques Roadshow Gok’s Clothes Roadshow Bargain Hunt Antiques Roadshow

Duck Dodgers The Perils Of Penelope Pitstop Tom & Jerry Kids A Pup Named Scooby-Doo The Jetsons Puppy In My Pocket Popeye Tom & Jerry Looney Tunes Scooby Doo Where Are You! Droopy: Master Detective Wacky Races The Flintstones A Pup Named Scooby-Doo Popeye Classics Dexters Laboratory Bananas In Pyjamas Baby Looney Tunes Gerald McBoing Boing Ha Ha Hairies Pink Panther And Pals The Garfield Show Dastardly And Muttley A Pup Named Scooby-Doo Scooby Doo Where Are You! The Flintstones Duck Dodgers Tom & Jerry Kids Droopy: Master Detective Wacky Races Jelly Jamm Baby Looney Tunes Ha Ha Hairies The Garfield Show Scooby Doo Where Are You!

14:10 14:35 15:25 15:50 16:40 17:30 18:10 19:00 19:15 19:40 19:55 20:20 20:35 20:55 21:20 21:45 22:10 22:35 23:00 23:20 23:45

Dastardly And Muttley Looney Tunes Puppy In My Pocket Pink Panther And Pals Tom & Jerry The Garfield Show Dexter’s Laboratory Jelly Jamm Baby Looney Tunes Ha Ha Hairies Gerald McBoing Boing Bananas In Pyjamas Pink Panther And Pals Tom & Jerry Looney Tunes Scooby Doo Where Are You! Droopy: Master Detective The Flintstones Wacky Races Dastardly And Muttley New Yogi Bear Show

00:30 Bakugan: New Vestroia 01:20 Powerpuff Girls 02:10 Courage The Cowardly Dog 03:00 The Amazing World Of Gumball 03:25 Ben 10 03:50 Adventure Time 04:15 Powerpuff Girls 04:40 Generator Rex 05:05 Ben 10: Ultimate Alien 05:55 Angelo Rules 06:00 Casper’s Scare School 06:25 Eliot Kid 07:00 The Amazing World Of Gumball 07:25 Adventure Time 07:40 Regular Show 08:05 Grim Adventures Of...

08:55 Courage The Cowardly Dog 09:45 Ben 10: Ultimate Alien 10:35 Powerpuff Girls 11:25 Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated 12:15 Ed, Edd n Eddy 13:05 Ben 10: Alien Force 13:30 Bakugan: Gundalian Invaders 13:55 Camp Lazlo 14:45 Powerpuff Girls 15:35 Angelo Rules 16:25 The Marvelous Misadventures...

16:50 Grim Adventures Of...

17:15 The Amazing World Of Gumball 17:40 Adventure Time 18:05 Regular Show 18:30 Ben 10 18:55 Bakugan: Mechtanium Surge 19:20 Hero 108 19:45 Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated 20:10 Courage The Cowardly Dog 21:00 Ben 10: Alien Force 21:25 The Powerpuff Girls 21:50 Cow And Chicken 22:00 Codename: Kids Next Door

00:00 00:30 01:00 03:00 03:30 04:00 05:00 06:00 06:30 07:00 07:30 08:00 10:00 10:30 11:00 12:00 12:30 13:00 14:00 15:00 16:00 17:00 18:00 19:00 19:30 20:00 21:00

News Special World Sport World Report Backstory Talk Asia Fareed Zakaria Gps CNN Newsroom News Special The Royals World Sport Inside Africa World Report World Sport The Royals World Business Today Backstory African Voices World One Fareed Zakaria Gps News Stream World Business Today International Desk Global Exchange World Sport African Voices International Desk Quest Means Business

22:00 Amanpour 22:30 CNN Newscenter 23:00 Connect The World With Becky Anderson

00:40 Gold Divers 07:00 Chop Shop: London Garage 07:50 Mythbusters 08:45 Ultimate Survival 09:40 Border Security - Series 6 Specials 10:05 Auction Hunters 10:30 How It’s Made 10:55 How It’s Made 11:25 Gold Rush 12:20 Gold Divers 13:15 Alone In The Wild 14:10 Border Security - Series 6 Specials 14:35 Auction Hunters 15:05 Ultimate Survival 16:00 Chop Shop 16:55 Wheeler Dealers On The Road 17:20 Gold Rush 18:15 Mythbusters 19:10 How It’s Made 19:40 How It’s Made 20:05 Border Security 20:35 Dealers 21:30 Hillbilly Handfishin’ 22:25 When Fish Attack 23:20 River Monsters: Special

00:35 Last Flight Of The Space Shuttle 01:25 Invisible Worlds 02:15 The Tech Show 02:40 Through The Wormhole With Morgan Freeman 07:00 Prophets Of Science Fiction 07:50 Head Rush 07:53 Bang Goes The Theory 08:20 Weird Connections 08:50 Sport Science 09:40 Prototype This 10:30 The Gadget Show 11:20 Ultimate Power Builders 12:10 Nextworld 13:00 The Future Of...

13:50 Mission Critical 14:45 Prototype This 15:35 The Gadget Show 16:00 Head Rush 16:03 Bang Goes The Theory 16:30 Sci-Fi Science 17:00 Sci-Trek 17:50 Sport Science 18:40 How The Universe Works 19:30 Brave New World 20:20 Mega World 21:10 The Gadget Show 22:00 Brave New World 22:50 Mega World 23:40 Sport Science

00:10 01:00 01:50 02:40 03:30 04:20 05:10 06:00 06:15 06:40 07:05 07:30 07:55 08:20 08:45 09:10 09:20 09:35 09:45 10:00 10:25 10:50 11:15 11:40 12:05 12:30 12:55

Replacements Fairly Odd Parents A Kind Of Magic Stitch Replacements Fairly Odd Parents A Kind Of Magic Fish Hooks Recess So Random Wizards Of Waverly Place Good Luck Charlie Shake It Up Phineas And Ferb Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Jake & The Neverland Pirates Handy Manny The Hive Mouk Recess So Random Hannah Montana Fish Hooks Jake & Blake Sonny With A Chance Wizards Of Waverly Place Phineas And Ferb

THE WARRIORʼS WAY ON OSN ACTION HD

13:05 13:20 13:45 14:10 14:35 15:00 16:40 17:00 18:35 19:00 19:30 20:15 20:40 21:05 21:25 21:50 22:40 22:55 23:45

Phineas And Ferb Recess Jessie A.N.T. Farm Good Luck Charlie Suite Life On Deck A.N.T. Farm Cadet Kelly Jessie A.N.T. Farm Good Luck Charlie So Random Suite Life On Deck Jonas Shake It Up Good Luck Charlie Phineas And Ferb Wizards Of Waverly Place Kim Possible

00:25 Kendra 00:55 Style Star 01:25 E!es 02:20 E! Investigates 04:10 Sexiest 05:05 Then And Now 06:00 50 Cutest Child Stars: All Grown Up 07:50 Behind The Scenes 08:20 E! News 09:15 Kourtney & Kim Take New York 10:15 THS 12:05 Kendra 13:05 Dirty Soap 14:05 Keeping Up With The Kardashians 15:00 Style Star 15:30 THS 16:25 Behind The Scenes 16:55 Giuliana & Bill 17:55 Kourtney & Kim Take New York 18:55 THS 19:55 Khloe And Lamar 20:55 Keeping Up With The Kardashians

00:05 Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives 00:30 Reza, Spice Prince Of India 00:55 Restaurant: Impossible 01:45 Guy’s Big Bite - Special 02:10 Grill It! With Bobby Flay 02:35 Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives 03:25 Meat & Potatoes 03:50 Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives 04:15 Outrageous Food 04:40 Unwrapped 05:05 Unique Sweets 05:30 Chopped 06:10 Barefoot Contessa 06:35 Gourmet Farmer 07:00 Food Network Challenge 07:50 Reza, Spice Prince Of India 08:15 Barefoot Contessa - Back To Basics 08:40 Luke Nguyen’s Vietnam 09:05 Gourmet Farmer 09:30 Lidia’s Italy 09:55 Extra Virgin 10:20 Everyday Italian 10:45 Unwrapped 11:10 United Tastes Of America 11:35 Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives 12:00 Food Network Challenge 12:50 Grill It! With Bobby Flay 13:15 Cooking For Real 13:40 Barefoot Contessa - Back To Basics 14:05 Healthy Appetite With Ellie Krieger 14:30 Unwrapped 14:55 30 Minute Meals 15:20 Extra Virgin 15:45 Chopped 16:35 Cooking For Real 17:00 Barefoot Contessa - Back To Basics 17:25 Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives 17:50 Grill It! With Bobby Flay 18:15 United Tastes Of America 18:40 Reza, Spice Prince Of India 19:05 Mexican Made Easy 19:30 Food Network Challenge 20:20 Iron Chef America 21:10 Reza, Spice Prince Of India 21:35 Gourmet Farmer 22:00 Andy Bates Street Feasts 22:50 Gourmet Farmer 23:15 Gourmet Farmer 23:40 Grill It! With Bobby Flay

00:30 00:55 01:20 02:05 02:55 03:45 04:10 04:30 Jones 05:20 06:10 07:00 07:50 08:40 09:30 09:55 10:20 Jones 11:10 12:00 12:50 13:40 14:30 14:55 15:20 16:10 17:00 17:50 18:40 19:05 19:55 20:20 21:10 22:00 22:25 23:15 23:40

Stalked: Someone’s Watching I Was Murdered Behind Mansion Walls LA: City Of Demons Scorned: Crimes Of Passion Stalked: Someone’s Watching I Was Murdered True Crime With Aphrodite

Disappeared Street Patrol Murder Shift Mystery Diagnosis Real Emergency Calls Who On Earth Did I Marry?

On The Case With Paula Zahn Disappeared Forensic Detectives Murder Shift Real Emergency Calls Mystery Diagnosis Who On Earth Did I Marry?

On The Case With Paula Zahn Disappeared I Married A Mobster Scorned: Crimes Of Passion Deadly Women: Face To Face Dr G: Medical Examiner

00:00 01:00 02:00 03:00 04:00 05:00 06:00 06:30 07:00 08:00

Market Values Around The World For Free Departures Banged Up Abroad Adventure Wanted Nomads Market Values Market Values Around The World For Free Departures

Mystery Diagnosis Disappeared Forensic Detectives Murder Shift Mystery Diagnosis Real Emergency Calls Who On Earth Did I Marry?

True Crime With Aphrodite

09:00 10:00 11:00 12:00 13:00 14:00 15:00 16:00 17:00 18:00 19:00 20:00 21:00 22:00 23:00

Banged Up Abroad Adventure Wanted Nomads Market Values Around The World For Free Departures Banged Up Abroad Adventure Wanted Into The Drink Market Values Deadliest Journeys Don’t Tell My Mother Banged Up Abroad Treks In A Wild World Endurance Travelle

00:00 The Thaw-PG15 02:00 30 Days Of Night: Dark Days-18 04:00 Alien-PG15 06:00 Ticking Clock-PG15 07:45 The Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course-PG15 09:15 The Postman-PG15 12:15 The Warrior’s Way-PG15 14:00 The Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course-PG15 16:00 Men In Black-PG15 18:00 The Warrior’s Way-PG15 20:00 The Resident-18 22:00 Get Rich Or Die Tryin’-18

01:00 Calvin Marshall-PG15 03:00 Coyote County Loser-PG15 05:00 Home-PG15 07:00 Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs.

Evil-PG 09:00 Calvin Marshall-PG15 11:00 Ice Dreams-PG15 13:00 Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star-PG15 15:00 Certified Copy-PG15 17:00 The Cry Of The Owl-PG15 18:45 Tron: Legacy-PG15 21:00 Kings Ransom-PG15 23:00 Red Riding Hood-PG15

00:00 Napoleon Dynamite 00:30 The Daily Show With Jon Stewart 01:00 The Colbert Report 02:30 The Big C 03:00 The Simpsons 03:30 Last Man Standing 05:30 Seinfeld 06:00 Dharma And Greg 06:30 10 Items Or Less 07:00 Late Night With Jimmy Fallon 08:30 The Simpsons 09:00 Seinfeld 09:30 Two And A Half Men 10:00 Friends With Benefits 10:30 10 Items Or Less 12:00 Dharma And Greg 13:00 Seinfeld 13:30 10 Items Or Less 14:00 Last Man Standing 14:30 Friends With Benefits 15:00 Two And A Half Men 15:30 The Daily Show With Jon Stewart 16:00 The Colbert Report 16:30 Seinfeld 17:00 Late Night With Jimmy Fallon 18:00 The Simpsons 18:30 Raising Hope 19:00 Traffic Light 19:30 Friends With Benefits 20:00 Community 20:30 King Of The Hill 21:00 The Daily Show Global Edition 21:30 The Colbert Report Global Edition 22:00 Louie 22:30 Bored To Death 23:00 The Big C 23:30 Community

00:00 01:00 02:00 03:00 04:00 05:00 06:00 07:00 08:00 08:30 10:00 11:00 12:00 13:00 14:00 16:00 18:00 18:30 19:00 20:00 21:00 22:00 23:00

Bones Burn Notice Top Gear (US) Covert Affairs Rescue Me The View Good Morning America The Practice Emmerdale Coronation Street The Martha Stewart Show The View Bones Covert Affairs Live Good Morning America The Practice Emmerdale Coronation Street Suits Justified The Closer Game Of Thrones Rescue Me

00:00 01:00 02:00 03:00 04:00 05:00 06:00 07:00 07:30 08:00 09:00 10:00 11:00 12:00 12:30 13:00 14:00 15:00 16:00 16:30 17:00 18:00 19:00 20:00

Psych Top Gear (US) Burn Notice Bones Covert Affairs Eureka Psych Emmerdale Coronation Street Charlie’s Angels Top Gear (US) Bones Burn Notice Emmerdale Coronation Street The Ellen DeGeneres Show Charlie’s Angels Psych Emmerdale Coronation Street The Ellen DeGeneres Show Charlie’s Angels Suits Justified

01:15 D.E.B.S-18 03:00 Alien-PG15 05:00 Dark Moon Rising-PG15 07:15 The Librarian: The Curse Of Judas Chalice-PG15 09:00 What Lies Beneath-PG15 11:15 Triassic Attack-PG15 13:00 Altitude-PG15 14:45 What Lies Beneath-PG15

RED RIDING HOOD ON OSN CINEMA 17:00 The Hunt For Red October 19:15 The Hit List-18 21:00 Dorothy Mills-18 23:00 Reykjavik: Whale Watching Massacre-18

01:00 The Clearing-18 03:00 Talhotblond-18 05:00 Best Laid Plans-18 07:00 Divorces!-PG15 09:00 The Social Network-PG15 11:00 My Enemy’s Enemy-PG15 12:30 A Simple Twist Of Fate-PG15 14:30 The Social Network-PG15 16:30 Les Miserables 25th Anniversary-PG15 19:30 Arlington Road-PG15 21:30 Elizabethtown-PG15 23:30 Body Of Evidence-R

01:00 Unknown-PG15 03:00 Hitch-PG15 05:00 At Risk-PG15 07:00 Celine: Through The Eyes Of The World-PG15 09:00 The Chaperone-PG15 11:00 Date Night-PG15 13:00 On Strike For Christmas-PG15 15:00 Love And Mary-PG15 17:00 The Chaperone-PG15 19:00 Burlesque-PG15 21:00 Kings Ransom-PG15 23:00 Red Riding Hood-PG15

00:00 Alex & Alexis-FAM 02:00 Christopher Columbus-PG 04:00 The Adventures Of Don Quixote-FAM 06:00 Hop-PG 08:00 The Enchanted Mountain-PG 10:00 Shrek Forever After-FAM 12:00 The Little Engine That Could 14:00 Hop-PG 16:00 Christmas In New York-PG 18:00 Shrek Forever After-FAM 20:00 The Borrowers-PG 22:00 The Little Engine That Could

00:00 Super Rugby 02:00 America’s Cup Highlights 02:30 PGA European Tour 07:00 NRL Premiership 09:00 NRL Premiership 11:00 Trans World Sport 12:00 Live NRL Premiership 14:00 Volvo Ocean Race Highlights 15:45 Live IRB Junior World Championship 22:00 Live Super League

01:30 UFC The Ultimate Fighter 04:30 International Rugby Union 06:30 Futbol Mundial 07:00 Trans World Sport 08:00 PGA European Tour 12:30 Super Rugby 14:30 Trans World Sport 15:45 Live IRB Junior World Championship 22:00 NRL Premiership

01:00 AFL Premiership 03:30 Stockholm Marathon 06:00 World Cup of Pool 07:00 Golfing World 08:00 AFL Premiership 10:30 IronMan 11:30 IronMan 12:30 IronMan 13:00 Golfing World 14:00 Stockholm Marathon 16:30 Futbol Mundial 17:00 Trans World Sport 19:00 Super Rugby Highlights 20:00 PGA European Tour Highlights 21:00 Top 14 Highlights 21:30 AFL Premiership Highlights 22:30 Trans World Sport 23:30 IRB Junior World Championship 2012

01:00 04:00 07:00 08:00 09:00 12:00 14:00 15:00 17:00 17:30 18:00 19:00 20:00 Finale 23:00

Prizefighter UFC Unleashed WWE Bottom Line WWE Experience Prizefighter V8 Supercars Highlights WWE Experience WWE SmackDown Mobil 1 The Grid V8 Supercars Extra V8 Supercars Highlights AFL Premiership Highlights UFC The Ultimate Fighter UFC Unleashed

00:00 World War II: Lost Films 01:00 Churchill’s Spy School 03:00 World War II: Lost Films 04:00 The Universe 05:00 Ancient Aliens 06:00 Decoded 07:00 Pawn Stars 08:00 Ancient Aliens 09:00 Tales Of The Gun 10:00 Pawn Stars 11:00 Ax Men 12:00 Churchill’s Spy School 14:00 Tales Of The Gun 15:00 Ancient Aliens 16:00 Churchill’s Spy School 18:00 Tales Of The Gun 19:00 Ancient Aliens 20:00 Pawn Stars 20:30 Pawn Stars 21:00 Ax Men 22:00 IRT: Deadliest Roads ‚Äì The Andes 23:00 Pawn Stars 23:30 Storage Wars

00:00 01:00 01:25 01:55 02:50 03:20 04:15 05:10 06:05 07:00 09:00 09:25 09:55 10:50 11:50 12:50 13:15 13:45 14:45 15:40 16:35 18:25 20:20 22:10 23:05

Wicked Fit Fashion Classics Open House Videofashion Daily Videofashion News How Do I Look?

Whose Wedding Is It Anyway?

Married Away Clean House Videofashion News Open House Fashion Classics How Do I Look?

Whose Wedding Is It Anyway?

Clean House Dress My Nest Mel B: It’s A Scary World Bridalplasty How Do I Look?

Kimora: Life In The Fab Lane Big Rich Texas The Amandas Kimora: Life In The Fab Lane The Amandas Fashion Police

00:00 01:00 01:25 01:55 02:50 03:20 04:15 05:10 06:05 07:00 08:00 09:00 09:25 09:55 10:50 11:50 12:50 13:15 13:45 14:45 15:40 16:35 18:25 20:20 22:10 23:05

Wicked Fit Fashion Classics Open House Videofashion Daily Videofashion News How Do I Look?

Whose Wedding Is It Anyway?

Married Away Clean House Videofashion News Videofashion Daily Open House Fashion Classics How Do I Look?

Whose Wedding Is It Anyway?

Clean House Dress My Nest Mel B: It’s A Scary World Bridalplasty How Do I Look?

Kimora: Life In The Fab Lane Big Rich Texas The Amandas Kimora: Life In The Fab Lane The Amandas Fashion Police

01:20 Heart Of Darkness 03:05 How The West Was Won-PG 05:35 Vengeance Valley-PG 07:00 The Hill-PG 09:05 Flipper’s New Adventure-FAM 10:40 Grand Prix-PG 13:25 How The West Was Won-PG 15:55 The Prize-PG 18:05 They Died With Their Boots On-FAM 20:20 Seven Brides For Seven Brothers-FAM 22:00 Coma 23:55 The Fearless Vampire Killers

00:15 Little Einsteins 00:40 Jungle Junction 01:10 Little Einsteins 01:30 Special Agent Oso 02:00 Lazytown 02:25 Little Einsteins 02:50 Jungle Junction 03:20 Little Einsteins 03:40 Special Agent Oso 04:10 Lazytown 04:35 Little Einsteins 05:00 Jungle Junction 05:30 Little Einsteins 05:50 Special Agent Oso 06:15 Jungle Junction 06:45 Handy Manny 07:00 Special Agent Oso 07:15 Lazytown 07:45 Mickey Mouse Clubhouse 08:10 The Hive 08:20 Handy Manny 08:35 Jake & The Neverland Pirates 08:50 The Little Mermaid 09:15 Mini Adventures Of Winnie The Pooh 09:20 Mouk 09:35 Mini Adventures Of Winnie The Pooh 09:40 The Hive 09:50 Mini Adventures Of Winnie The Pooh 09:55 The Hive 10:05 Jake & The Neverland Pirates 10:20 Lazytown 10:45 Art Attack 11:10 Imagination Movers 11:35 Lazytown 12:00 The Hive 12:10 Handy Manny 12:25 Jungle Junction 12:40 Imagination Movers 13:05 The Hive 13:15 Special Agent Oso 13:30 Lazytown 13:55 Mickey Mouse Clubhouse 14:20 The Hive 14:30 Handy Manny 14:45 Jake & The Neverland Pirates 15:00 Mouk 15:15 The Hive 15:25 Handy Manny 15:40 Jake & The Neverland Pirates 15:55 Imagination Movers 16:20 Lazytown 16:45 Art Attack 17:10 The Hive 17:20 Mini Adventures Of Winnie The Pooh 17:25 The Hive 17:35 Mini Adventures Of Winnie The Pooh 17:40 Mouk 17:55 Jake & The Neverland Pirates 18:10 Little Einsteins 18:35 The Little Mermaid 19:00 Mini Adventures Of Winnie The Pooh 19:05 Mickey Mouse Clubhouse 19:25 101 Dalmatians 19:40 Mouk 19:50 Jake & The Neverland Pirates 20:05 The Hive 20:15 Mini Adventures Of Winnie The Pooh 20:20 The Hive 20:30 Mini Adventures Of Winnie The Pooh 20:35 A Poem Is...

20:40 Animated Stories 20:45 Mouk 21:00 Mickey Mouse Clubhouse 21:25 Jake & The Neverland Pirates 21:40 Special Agent Oso 21:55 Little Einsteins 22:20 Timmy Time

Classifieds MONDAY, JUNE 4, 2012

SITUATION VACANT A lady maid is needed to work for two days a week, Thursday and Saturday for a single American/Arabic man in a house located in Salimya.

Contact: 66417504. (C 4032) 3-6-2012

MATRIMONIAL Marthoma parents of 30 year old son, born again, baptized CFA / CAIA / MBA employed in Kuwait, invite proposal from born again professionally qualified girls. Contact - Email: rajugracy7@hotmail.com (C 4031)

ACCOMMODATION Sharing accommodation available for single family from 1st July 2012 near United Indian School, Abbassiya. Semi furnished room and kitchen, non smokers may contract: 99760741.

(C 4030) 31-5-2012

SITUATION WANTED Auditing, Accounting, Financial Management, Business Development ser vices/ advice by an experienced Indian man available for part-time assignment.

Contact: 65802853. (C 4028) 28-52012

DIAL 161 FOR AIRPORT INFORMATION

Airlines JZR QTR JZR JZR ETH RJA GFA UAE ETD DHX FDB MSR QTR JZR KAC THY DHX FCX JZR KAC BAW JZR KAC FDB KAC KAC KAC UAE ABY KAC QTR FDB ETD BAB KAC GFA IRC MEA JZR MSR MSC JZR MSR KAC GFA FDB OMA KNE QTR SVA RJA KAC JZR KAC QTR SYR KAC ETD UAE GFA SVA UAL JZR JZR ABY QTR KAC KAC BAB KAC FDB MSC MSR KAC KAC KAC JAI KAC FDB MEA QTR GFA FDB RJA ALK JZR UAE ETD BBC ABY QTR DHX AIC GFA UAL JZR TAR DLH MSR KLM THY PIA

Flt 185 148 539 267 620 642 211 853 305 370 67 612 138 503 544 770 170 201 555 412 157 529 206 53 302 352 362 855 125 284 132 55 301 436 344 213 6521 404 165 618 401 561 610 672 219 57 645 472 140 500 640 788 257 546 134 341 118 303 857 215 510 982 177 777 127 144 542 786 438 104 63 405 620 618 673 742 572 774 61 402 146 221 59 80 229 135 859 307 43 129 136 372 975 217 981 239 327 636 614 411 772 239

Arrival Flights on Monday 4/6/2012 Route DUBAI DOHA CAIRO BEIRUT ADDIS ABABA AMMAN BAHRAIN DUBAI ABU DHABI BAHRAIN DUBAI CAIRO DOHA LUXOR CAIRO ISTANBUL BAHRAIN DUBAI ALEXANDRIA MANILA LONDON ASSIUT ISLAMABAD DUBAI MUMBAI COCHIN COLOMBO DUBAI SHARJAH DHAKA DOHA DUBAI ABU DHABI BAHRAIN CHENNAI BAHRAIN LAMERD BEIRUT DUBAI ALEXANDRIA ALEXANDRIA SOHAG CAIRO DUBAI BAHRAIN DUBAI MUSCAT JEDDAH DOHA JEDDAH AMMAN JEDDAH BEIRUT ALEXANDRIA DOHA DAMASCUS NEW YORK ABU DHABI DUBAI BAHRAIN RIYADH WASHINGTON DC DULLES DUBAI JEDDAH SHARJAH DOHA CAIRO JEDDAH BAHRAIN LONDON DUBAI SOHAG ASSIUT DOHA DUBAI DAMMAM MUMBAI RIYADH DUBAI BEIRUT DOHA BAHRAIN DUBAI AMMAN COLOMBO BAHRAIN DUBAI ABU DHABI DHAKA SHARJAH DOHA BAHRAIN CHENNAI BAHRAIN BAHRAIN AMMAN TUNIS FRANKFURT CAIRO AMSTERDAM ISTANBUL SIALKOT

Time 0:15 0:20 0:30 0:50 1:45 2:10 2:20 2:25 2:30 2:55 3:10 3:20 3:25 3:55 4:10 4:35 5:00 5:30 6:00 6:15 6:30 6:40 7:15 7:45 7:50 8:05 8:20 8:25 8:30 8:45 9:00 9:20 9:30 9:35 9:45 10:00 10:15 10:55 11:05 11:25 12:00 12:25 13:30 13:40 13:40 13:45 14:00 14:15 14:25 14:30 14:55 15:00 15:00 15:05 15:15 15:55 16:00 16:35 16:55 17:20 17:20 17:25 17:30 17:40 17:45 18:05 18:15 18:40 18:40 18:45 18:45 19:00 19:10 19:20 19:25 19:30 19:35 19:40 20:00 20:15 20:25 20:35 20:45 20:55 20:55 21:15 21:15 21:20 21:25 21:30 21:35 22:00 22:25 22:35 22:40 22:55 22:55 23:10 23:35 23:40 23:40 23:45

Airlines AIC UAL DLH MSR PIA THY ETH UAE FDB DHX ETD MSR QTR QTR JZR RJA JZR GFA THY KAC BAW FDB JZR ABY KAC KAC UAE QTR FDB ETD BAB GFA IRC KAC KAC MEA JZR MSR KAC MSC KAC JZR GFA FDB MSR OMA KAC KNE SVA KAC RJA QTR KAC KAC SYR ETD JZR QTR UAE GFA JZR ABY SVA UAL QTR FDB BAB MSC JZR MSR KAC JAI FDB KAC KAC MEA FDB KAC GFA JZR DHX RJA ALK ABY ETD UAE FCX QTR KAC KAC JZR DHX BBC QTR GFA KAC TAR

Flt 982 981 637 615 206 773 621 854 68 371 306 613 139 149 560 643 164 212 771 545 156 54 256 126 671 787 856 133 56 302 437 214 6522 541 165 405 776 619 103 406 785 176 220 58 611 646 673 473 501 617 641 135 773 741 342 304 238 141 858 216 134 128 511 982 145 64 439 402 184 621 283 571 62 331 351 403 60 543 222 502 171 80 230 120 308 860 102 137 301 205 554 373 44 147 218 411 328

Depature Flights on Monday 4/6/2012 Route AHMEDABAD WASHINGTON DC FRANKFURT CAIRO PESHAWAR ISTANBUL ADDIS ABABA DUBAI DUBAI BAHRAIN ABU DHABI CAIRO DOHA DOHA SOHAG AMMAN DUBAI BAHRAIN ISTANBUL ALEXANDRIA LONDON DUBAI BEIRUT SHARJAH DUBAI JEDDAH DUBAI DOHA DUBAI ABU DHABI BAHRAIN BAHRAIN LAMERD CAIRO ROME BEIRUT JEDDAH ASSIUT LONDON SOHAG JEDDAH DUBAI BAHRAIN DUBAI CAIRO MUSCAT DUBAI JEDDAH JEDDAH DOHA AMMAN DOHA RIYADH DAMMAM DAMASCUS ABU DHABI AMMAN DOHA DUBAI BAHRAIN BAHRAIN SHARJAH RIYADH BAHRAIN DOHA DUBAI BAHRAIN ALEXANDRIA DUBAI ALEXANDRIA DHAKA MUMBAI DUBAI TRIVANDRUM KOCHI BEIRUT DUBAI CAIRO BAHRAIN LUXOR BAHRAIN DUBAI COLOMBO SHARJAH ABU DHABI DUBAI BAHRAIN DOHA MUMBAI ISLAMABAD ALEXANDRIA BAHRAIN DHAKA DOHA BAHRAIN BANGKOK DUBAI

Time 0:05 0:25 0:30 0:35 1:10 2:15 2:45 3:45 3:50 3:55 4:05 4:20 4:50 5:40 6:00 6:50 6:55 7:05 7:10 8:10 8:25 8:25 9:00 9:05 9:20 9:35 9:40 10:00 10:05 10:15 10:25 10:45 11:15 11:30 11:45 11:55 12:15 12:25 12:30 13:00 13:10 13:20 14:25 14:25 14:30 15:00 15:05 15:15 15:45 15:45 15:50 16:15 16:25 16:30 16:55 17:20 17:30 17:45 18:05 18:20 18:20 18:25 18:35 18:40 19:05 19:25 19:30 20:00 20:05 20:10 20:15 20:35 20:40 20:50 21:05 21:15 21:25 21:30 21:35 21:45 21:50 21:55 21:55 22:10 22:20 22:25 22:30 22:35 22:40 22:45 23:00 23:00 23:05 23:10 23:30 23:40 23:45

Directorate General of Civil Aviation Home Page (www.kuwait-airport.com.kw)

THE PUBLIC AUTHORITY FOR CIVIL INFORMATION Automated enquiry about the Civil ID card is 1889988 ST TATE T OF K KUW WAIT A

Tel.: e 161

DIRECTORA ATE T GENERAL GENE OF CIVIL AV VIA AT TION METEOROLOGICAL DEP PARTMENT A DA AY Y: Sunday

Ext.: 2627 262 - 2630

Fax: 24348714 WWW.MET.GOV V.KW .

03/06/2012

Issue Time

07:00

Expected Weeather for the Next 24 Hours BY Y DA AY:

Dusty with fresh to strong north westerly wind, with speed of 30 - 60 km/h

BY Y NIGHT:

Dusty with moderate to fresh north westerly wind, with speed of 25 - 50 km/h

Windy i and dusty

WA ARNING ST TATION T

MAX. EXP P.

MIN. REC.

KUW WA AIT CITY

38 °C

30 °C

KUW WA AIT AIRPOR RT

40 °C

30 °C

NUW WA AISEEB

39 °C

29 °C

WAFRA A

40 °C

29 °C

SALMI

41 °C

24 °C

ABDAL LY

41 °C

28 °C

JAL ALIY YA AH

40 °C

27 °C

FA AILAKA

38 °C

28 °C

AHMADI POR RT

39 °C

31 °C

UMM AL-MARADEM

33 °C

30 °C

WARBA A A - BUBY YAN A

42 °C

28 °C

SFC. CHART

03/06/2012 0000 UTC

4 DA AY YS FORECAST Temperatures DA AY

DA ATE T

WEA ATHER T

MAX.

MIN.

Wind Direction

Wind Speed

Monday

04/06

dusty

42 °C

31 °C

NW

25 - 50 km/h

Tuesday

05/06

Wednesday e

06/06

dusty

43 °C

32 °C

NW

20 - 45 km/h

hot + raising dust

44 °C

32 °C

NW

20 - 45 km/h

Thursday

07/06

very hot + raising dust

47 °C

33 °C

NW

22 - 42 km/h

PRA RA AY YER TIMES Prayer timings Fajr

Fajr: 03:14 Sunrise Duhr: 11:46 Zuhr Asr: Asr15:21 Maghrib:Sunset 18:45 Isha20:16 Isha:

RECORDED YESTERDA AY AT KUW WA AIT AIRPORT 03:15

MAX. Temp.

40 °C

04:49

MIN. Temp.

31 °C

11:46

MAX. RH

19 %

15:20

MIN. RH

06 %

18:44

MAX. Wind

N 75 km/h

20:15

TOT TAL AL RAIINF FALL A L IN 24 HR.

All times are local time unless otherwise stated.

03/06/12 02:44 UTC

00 mm V1.00

T1.06

34

MONDAY, JUNE 4, 2012

stars CROSSWORD 695

STAR TRACK

CALVIN & HOBBES

Aries (March 21-April 19) You are forward moving and manage to spend a lot of time in the spotlight where a social gathering is meeting today. This could be in a performance or presentation of sorts. You are a born teacher and others find you easy to watch and to learn from today. You are very animated and it is easy for you to convey your ideas to others. Finances—purchases, investments and credit in particular—could stand some clear thinking. Getting in over your head where such things are concerned can happen before you discern it—keep an eye on the bottom line.

There is a love of the sea and a great desire to take some time off for a while. Travel may be possible before the end of this month. You could at least make plans for short excursions.

Taurus (April 20-May 20) You could find that you feel rebellious and independent regarding your current situation. Some sort of erratic behavior could bring you in opposition to a group or a young person. There is the possibility of new visions or of sudden insights into your self-image or into your ideals.

This is a time to reshape and renew your philosophy or religion, during which your imagination is at full tilt. There are breakthroughs in compassion and communion. You naturally gravitate toward positions of power. Others see in you a great practical ability and accept you as a leader or authority figure very easily.

This could be a very political time for you. It certainly is a time in which you can accomplish much for your community.

POOCH CAFE ACROSS 1. A state-chartered savings bank owned by its depositors and managed by a board of trustees.

4. Sole genus of the family Naiadaceae.

9. A Spanish river.

13. Relating to or characteristic of or occurring in the air.

14. A particular environment or walk of life.

15. A less than average tide occurring at the first and third quarters of the moon.

16. A plant hormone promoting elongation of stems and roots.

17. East Indian tree bearing a profusion of intense vermilion velvet-textured blooms and yielding a yellow dye.

18. A native or inhabitant of Denmark.

19. Primitive chlorophyll-containing mainly aquatic eukaryotic organisms lacking true stems and roots and leaves.

21. Relating to of containing or affecting blood.

23. A small cake leavened with yeast.

24. A condition (mostly in boys) characterized by behavioral and learning disorders.

25. A Chadic language spoken south of Lake Chad.

28. Common Indian weaverbird.

33. By bad luck.

35. A flat wing-shaped process or winglike part of an organism.

36. Submit or yield to another's wish or opinion.

38. An intensely radioactive metallic element that occurs in minute amounts in uranium ores.

41. The syllable naming the sixth (submediant) note of a major or minor scale in solmization.

42. Small creeping evergreen shrubs.

47. A sudden loss of consciousness resulting when the rupture or occlusion of a blood vessel leads to oxygen lack in the brain.

48. The father of your father or mother.

51. Affect with wonder.

55. A Tibetan or Mongolian priest of Lamaism.

56. (Babylonian) God of wisdom and agriculture and patron of scribes and schools.

59. An Arabic speaking person who lives in Arabia or North Africa.

60. Goddess of fertility.

61. (Jungian psychology) The inner self (not the external persona) that is in touch with the unconscious.

63. The United Nations agency concerned with international maritime activities.

64. Title for the former hereditary monarch of Iran.

65. An island of central Hawaii.

66. A local computer network for communication between computers.

DOWN 1. Type genus of the Majidae.

2. The granite-like rocks that form the outermost layer of the earth's crust.

3. (informal) Exceptionally good.

4. Greek mythology.

5. A constellation in the southern hemisphere near Telescopium and Norma.

6. A loose cloak with a hood.

7. (Irish) Mother of the ancient Irish gods.

8. A square dance figure.

9. Having come or been brought to a conclusion.

10. A signal transmitted along a narrow path.

11. (the feminine of raja) A Hindu princess or the wife of a raja.

12. An organization of countries formed in 1961 to agree on a common policy for the sale of petroleum.

20. Lower in esteem.

22. (Babylonian) God of storms and wind.

26. Type genus of the Alcidae comprising solely the razorbill.

27. Measuring instrument for indicating speed of rotation.

29. A river in north central Switzerland that runs northeast into the Rhine.

30. A member of the Siouan people formerly living in the Missouri river valley in NE Nebraska.

31. (Scottish) Bluish-black or gray-blue.

32. A Chadic language spoken south of Lake Chad.

34. A light strong brittle gray toxic bivalent metallic element.

37. No longer having or seeming to have or expecting to have life.

39. A drug combination found in some over-the-counter headache remedies (Aspirin and Phenacetin and Caffeine).

40. Small terrestrial lizard of warm regions of the Old World.

43. Any of various coarse shrubby plants of the genus Iva with small greenish flowers.

44. Grind together, of teeth.

45. Obvious and dull.

46. A city in southern Turkey on the Seyhan River.

49. Imprudently incurring risk.

50. Type genus of the Amiidae.

52. Fleshy and usually brightly colored cover of some seeds that develops from the ovule stalk and partially or entirely envelopes the seed.

53. The battle in 202 BC in which Scipio decisively defeated Hannibal at the end of the second Punic War. 54. Very dark black.

57. A container.

58. A benevolent aspect of Devi.

62. The branch of computer science that deal with writing computer programs that can solve problems creatively.

Gemini (May 21-June 20) Someone you are close to may be riding an emotional roller coaster and it is important to keep your perspective. Feelings of love and needs for security must be expressed and addressed; otherwise they can drive a wedge between people. Careful—you may not want to be too forceful in what you say and think. You are clear with your expression and your ability to relate to others what it is you are trying to say. You have a positive mental drive.

An insight about your support system, your mother or other females may be important. A student or young person opens up to you this afternoon. New ways of appreciating and loving may be possible this evening. You may discover something new and positive about a loved one.

Cancer (June 21-July 22) Fate sends opportunity your way if you listen to your instincts and give your natural sense of curiosity a free rein. Travel and education can help uncover some of the answers that will give you the power or advantage you seek. Allow yourself these experiences. Mass communications can be financially rewarding in some way—think about advertising, broadcasting, publishing, etc.

Something as simple as owning a computer and belonging to a network would be worthwhile. The way in which you respond to change and maintain your independence is a major focus. Change is possible with regard to relationships in which you have a significant emotional stake. A young person in the family has come to your attention—he or she wants more independence.

NON SEQUITUR

Leo (July 23-August 22) Mysterious or mystical information fires your imagination and there is a good chance that there is more imagination than knowledge. Keep an open mind and learn all you can, but do not take everything you hear for gospel. You are inclined to do things from outer necessity rather than for emotional or idealistic reasons. Your theories and mental activities may be fine, but you may lack heart or the time to let things ripen. Patience is the key word today as you may have the urge to rebel or break away. Your wish to be independent, to try new things, etc., comes at an inappropriate time and could cause real tensions at home—let it go. Your desires are strong and you will want to enjoy yourself this evening. Romance is possible.

ZITS

Virgo (August 23-September 22) Situations and people you thought you could rely on might not be so solid after all. Talk things over and look for the truth— what is really happening. You should be able to enhance your security. There is a feeling that things will work out right if left alone. This is a time of independence when you may try new and different things that do not necessarily go with your established ideals and image of yourself. You could rebel against sentimentality, too much dreaming about some pie-in-the-sky idea you had in the past. This is also a time during which you may be able to break through and move ahead with your ambitions and general life’s purpose. You could receive unexpected help from someone older or from authority figures.

Libra (September 23-October 22)

MOTHER GOOSE AND GRIMM

Scorpio (October 23-November 21) The best way for you to get ahead in this world is just to be you.

However, there are opportunities today to do a little networking.

You will accomplish much and perhaps be helping your place of business as well. You are lucky by nature, so others like to be with you. If you are not lecturing or guiding young people today, you will be with young people in a group or team effort. Your general outlook on life is attractive and people will seek you out to help them with their problems. You are a natural guide and counselor and will often find opportunities to help others. A major life event may mark the beginning of more independence.

Set aside some time to celebrate and enjoy yourself. A good book could be helpful along those lines.

Sagittarius (November 22-December 21) The way you come across to others today is very independent. Your spontaneity and unpredictability make you an interesting individual. This is a time when you can expect a little boost, some support or recognition from those around you. You may feel that you are in touch and in harmony with others. There is a lot of talk among friends regarding some agreed upon group goal. There may be problems with the date of reaching the goal. Changing the date may be helpful. There are many suggestions and much praise from and for each contributor to this conversation. Gain confirmation with the latest goal plan. Travel and education may play a part in your plans. Law and philosophy have much potential to influence your lifestyle.

Capricorn (December 22-January 19)

To

Yesterday’s Solution

Your physical vitality and psychological or spiritual goals are highly emphasized today. You may find a feeling of becoming weakened or saddened because some support system has been temporarily shut off.

Remember, all this is temporarily and a wonderful test for you to pull on your own strengths. If there is something in your life that works against your progress—you could weed through and eliminate or in some way control the problem. This is not a favorable time for establishing new life directions, but is a good time for new understandings. Your thoughts and your intentions are positive and upbeat and you help others to have a positive outlook. In fact, it pleases you to perform some special task for someone that is not able to do it alone.

You have great internal strength and tend to be independent, preferring to lean on yourself more than on those outside.

The ability to work with those older and younger than yourself is a real gift—this talent makes you a natural mediator or go-between. You may find opportunities to be self-motivating today—certainly no dependency here. You work well with others. This activity could include working in a trade day activity or a festival of sorts. You find family activities fun most of this afternoon. Being more involved with family projects is just the beginning of activities you will enjoy this summer.

You enjoy giving your support to loved ones. This satisfies a deep emotional need; clear communication is important.

Yesterday’s Solution Yester

Aquarius (January 20- February 18) You are very communicative, not just a little curious. You enjoy talking and writing. This could involve a story writing contest today. You could be most persuasive with others and articulate in speech and communication. The situation is a natural for self-expression. Study, research and investigations of all kinds appeal to you. If you are not traveling, you will be thinking about it soon. The best places to visit, where to stay and where to eat on your trip are topics of conversation over the fence with neighbors this afternoon.

Educational projects require much study and may involve travel. Fresh insight comes to you through broadcasting, publishing or advertising-a new perspective. You may decide to write the editor.

Pisces (February 19-March 20)

Word Sleuth Solution

This could be a frustrating day regarding duties for elderly family members. However, you can pull in some help and show much patience at this time. You are able to find yourself in others, in relationships, rather than alone—a mirror or clear pool. You can be peaceful, calm and undisturbed— regardless of what is going on around you today. You are a genius at bringing out the best in others and this is something in which you take great pride. An elderly couple or older people are grateful for your help. Ideas—philosophy and religion—are what make life stimulating. You will spend a great deal of time with animals and children this evening; you can rest later tonight. A loved one reciprocates your kindness. Enjoy a little walk under the stars.

MONDAY, JUNE 4, 2012

i n f o r m at i o n

112 GOVERNORATE

24812000

Amiri Hospital

22450005

Maternity Hospital

24843100

Mubarak Al-Kabir Hospital

25312700

Chest Hospital

24849400

Farwaniya Hospital

24892010

Adan Hospital

23940620

Ibn Sina Hospital

24840300

Al-Razi Hospital

24846000

Physiotherapy Hospital

24874330/9

Rabiya

4732263

Roudha

22517733

Adhaliya

22517144

Khaldiya

24848075

Keifan

24849807

Shamiya

24848913

Shuwaikh

24814507

Abdullah Salim

22549134

Al-Nuzha

22526804

Industrial Shuwaikh

24814764

Al-Khadissiya

22515088

Dasmah

22532265

Bneid Al-Ghar

22531908

Al-Shaab

22518752

Al-Kibla

22459381

Ayoun Al-Kibla

22451082

Al-Mirqab

22456536

Sharq

22465401

Salmiya

25746401

Jabriya

25316254

Maidan Hawally

25623444

Bayan

25388462

Mishref

25381200

W.Hawally

22630786

Sabah

24810221

Jahra

24770319

New Jahra

24575755

West Jahra

24772608

South Jahra

24775066

North Jahra

24775992

North Jleeb

24311795

Al-Ardhiya

24884079

Firdous

24892674

Al-Omariya

24719048

N.Kheitan

24710044

Fintas

3900322

ADDRESS

PHONE

Ahmadi

Sama Safwan Abu Halaifa Danat Al-Sultan

Fahaeel Makka St Abu Halaifa-Coastal Rd Mahboula Block 1, Coastal Rd

23915883 23715414 23726558

Jahra

Modern Jahra Madina Munawara

Jahra-Block 3 Lot 1 Jahra-Block 92

24575518 24566622

Capital

Ahlam Khaldiya Coop

Fahad Al-Salem St Khaldiya Coop

22436184 24833967

Farwaniya

New Shifa Ferdous Coop Modern Safwan

Farwaniya Block 40 Ferdous Coop Old Kheitan Block 11

24734000 24881201 24726638

Tariq Hana Ikhlas Hawally & Rawdha Ghadeer Kindy Ibn Al-Nafis Mishrif Coop Salwa Coop

Salmiya-Hamad Mubarak St Salmiya-Amman St Hawally-Beirut St Hawally & Rawdha Coop Jabriya-Block 1A Jabriya-Block 3B Salmiya-Hamad Mubarak St Mishrif Coop Salwa Coop

25726265 25647075 22625999 22564549 25340559 25326554 25721264 25380581 25628241

website: www.moi.gov.kw

Sabah Hospital

PHARMACY

Hawally

GOVERNMENT WEB SITES Kuwait Parliament www.majlesalommah.net

The Public Institution for Social Security www.pifss.gov.kw

Ministry of Interior www.moi.gov.kw

Public Authority of Industry www.pai.gov.kw

Public Authority for Civil Information www.paci.gov.kw

Prisoners of War Committee www.pows.org.kw

Kuwait News Agency www.kuna.net.kw

Ministry of Foreign Affairs www.mofa.gov.kw

Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affair www.islam.gov.kw

Kuwait Municipality www.municipality.gov.kw

Ministry of Energy (Oil) www.moo.gov.kw

Kuwait Electronic Government www.e.gov.kw

Ministry of Energy (Electricity and Water) www.energy.govt.kw

Ministry of Finance www.mof.gov.kw

Public Authority for Housing Welfare www.housing.gov.kw

Ministry of Commerce and Industry www.moci.gov.kw

Ministry of Justice www.moj.gov.kw

Ministry of Education www.moe.edu.kw

Ministry of Communications www.moc.kw

Ministry of Information www.moinfo.gov.kw

Supreme Council for Planning and Development www.scpd.gov.kw

Kuwait Awqaf Public Foundation www.awqaf.org

Psychologists /Psychotherapists

Al-Shohada’a

22545171

Al-Shuwaikh

24810598

Al-Nuzha

22545171

Sabhan

24742838

Al-Helaly

22434853

Al-Fayhaa

22545051

Al-Farwaniya

24711433

Al-Sulaibikhat

24316983

Al-Fahaheel

23927002

Jleeb Al-Shuyoukh

24316983

Ahmadi

23980088

Al-Mangaf

23711183

Al-Shuaiba

23262845

Al-Jahra

25610011

Al-Salmiya

25616368

Al-Madena Police Station

22434064

Al-Murqab Police Station

22435865

Al-Daiya Police Station

22544200

Al-Fayha’a Police Station

22547133

Al-Qadissiya Police Station

22515277

Al-Nugra Police Station

22616662

Al-Salmiya Police Station

25714406

Al-Dasma Police Station

22530801

Kuwait Airways Jazeera Airways Jet Airways FlyDubai Qatar Airways KLM Air Slovakia Olympic Airways Royal Jordanian Reservation British Airways Air France Emirates Air India Sri Lanka Airlines Egypt Air Swiss Air Saudia Middle East Airlines Lufthansa PIA Alitalia Balkan Airlines Bangladesh Airlines Czech Airlines

Dr. Mohammad Al-Khalaf

22547272

Dr. Khaled Hamadi

Dr. Abdal-Redha Lari

22617700

Dr. Abd Al-Aziz Al-Rashed

Dr. Abdel Quttainah

25625030/60

Family Doctor Dr Divya Damodar

23729596/23729581

Psychiatrists Dr. Esam Al-Ansari

22635047

Dr Eisa M. Al-Balhan

22613623/0

Gynaecologists & Obstetricians DrAdrian arbe

23729596/23729581

Dr. Verginia s.Marin

2572-6666 ext 8321

Endocrinologist

25665898 25340300

Dr. Zahra Qabazard

25710444

Dr. Sohail Qamar

22621099

Dr. Snaa Maaroof

25713514

Dr. Pradip Gujare

23713100

Dr. Zacharias Mathew

24334282

(1) Ear, Nose and Throat (2) Plastic Surgeon Dr. Abdul Mohsin Jafar, FRCS (Canada)

25655535

Dentists

Dr. Fozeya Ali Al-Qatan

22655539

Dr. Majeda Khalefa Aliytami

25343406

Dr. Shamah Al-Matar

22641071/2

Dr. Ahmad Al-Khooly

25739272

Dr. Anesah Al-Rasheed

22562226

22618787

Dr. Abidallah Al-Amer

22561444

Dr. Faysal Al-Fozan

22619557

Dr. Abdallateef Al-Katrash

22525888

Dr. Abidallah Al-Duweisan

25653755

Dr. Bader Al-Ansari

25620111

General Surgeons Dr. Amer Zawaz Al-Amer

22610044

Dr. Mohammad Yousef Basher

25327148

Internists, Chest & Heart Dr. Adnan Ebil

22639939

Dr. Mousa Khadada

22666300

Dr. Latefa Al-Duweisan

25728004

Dr. Nadem Al-Ghabra

25355515

Dr. Mobarak Aldoub

24726446

Dr Nasser Behbehani

25654300/3

info@soorcenter.com www.soorcenter.com

Dr. Abd Al-Naser Al-Othman

3729596/3729581

Neurologists Dr. Sohal Najem Al-Shemeri

25633324

Dr. Jasem Mola Hassan

25345875

Gastrologists Dr. Sami Aman

22636464

Dr. Mohammad Al-Shamaly

25322030

Dr. Foad Abidallah Al-Ali

22633135

Dr. Naif Al-Mutawa, Ph.D. 2290-1677 Susannah-Joy Schuilenberg, M.A. 2290-1677

25339330

Dr. Ahmad Al-Ansari 25658888 Dr. Kamal Al-Shomr 25329924 Physiotherapists & VD Dr. Deyaa Shehab

25722291

Dr. Musaed Faraj Khamees

22666288

Rheumatologists: Dr. Adel Al-Awadi

Dr Anil Thomas

Dr. Salem soso

171 177 22924455 22414400 22423888 22425747 22434940 22420002/9 22418064/5/6 22433388 22425635 22430224 22921555 22438184 22424444 22421578 22421516 22426306 22423073 22422493 22421044 22414427 22416474 22452977/8 22417901/ 2433141 22456700 22958787 22453820/1 22404838/9

INTERNATIONAL CALLS

Paediatricians

Plastic Surgeons

Soor Center Tel: 2290-1677 Fax: 2290 1688

22418714

Indian Airlines Oman Air Turkish Airlines Aeroflot

PRIVATE CLINICS Ophthalmologists Dr. Abidallah Al-Mansoor 25622444 Dr. Samy Al-Rabeea 25752222 Dr. Masoma Habeeb 25321171 Dr. Mubarak Al-Ajmy 25739999 Dr. Mohsen Abel 25757700 Dr Adnan Hasan Alwayl 25732223 Dr. Abdallah Al-Baghly 25732223 Ear, Nose & Throat (ENT) Dr. Ahmed Fouad Mouner 24555050 Ext 510 Dr. Abdallah Al-Ali 25644660 Dr. Abd Al-Hameed Al-Taweel 25646478 Dr. Sanad Al-Fathalah 25311996 Dr. Mohammad Al-Daaory 25731988 Dr. Ismail Al-Fodary 22620166 Dr. Mahmoud Al-Booz 25651426 General Practitioners Dr. Mohamme Y Majidi 24555050 Ext 123 Dr. Yousef Al-Omar 24719312 Dr. Tarek Al-Mikhazeem 23926920 Dr. Kathem Maarafi 25730465 Dr. Abdallah Ahmad Eyadah 25655528 Dr. Nabeel Al-Ayoobi 24577781 Dr. Dina Abidallah Al-Refae 25333501 Urologists Dr. Ali Naser Al-Serfy 22641534 Dr. Fawzi Taher Abul 22639955 Dr. Khaleel Abidallah Al-Awadi 22616660 Dr. Adel Al-Hunayan FRCS (C) 25313120 Dr. Leons Joseph 66703427

Al-Madena

25330060

Dr. Khaled Al-Jarallah

25722290

Internist, Chest & Heart DR.Mohammes Akkad

24555050 Ext 210

Dr. Mohammad Zubaid MB, ChB, FRCPC, PACC Assistant Professor Of Medicine Head, Division of Cardiology Mubarak Al-Kabeer Hospital Consultant Cardiologist Dr. Farida Al-Habib MD, PH.D, FACC Inaya German Medical Center Te: 2575077 Fax: 25723123

2611555-2622555

William Schuilenberg, RPC 2290-1677 Zaina Al Zabin, M.Sc. 2290-1677

Afghanistan Albania Algeria Andorra Angola Anguilla Antiga Argentina Armenia Australia Austria Bahamas Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados Belarus Belgium Belize Benin Bermuda Bhutan Bolivia Bosnia Botswana Brazil Brunei Bulgaria Burkina Burundi Cambodia Cameroon Canada Cape Verde Cayman Islands Central African

0093 00355 00213 00376 00244 001264 001268 0054 00374 0061 0043 001242 00973 00880 001246 00375 0032 00501 00229 001441 00975 00591 00387 00267 0055 00673 00359 00226 00257 00855 00237 001 00238 001345 00236

Chad Chile China Colombia Comoros Congo Cook Islands Costa Rica Croatia Cuba Cyprus Cyprus (Northern) Czech Republic Denmark Diego Garcia Djibouti Dominica Dominican Republic Ecuador Egypt El Salvador England (UK) Equatorial Guinea Eritrea Estonia Ethiopia Falkland Islands Faroe Islands Fiji Finland France French Guiana French Polynesia Gabon Gambia

00235 0056 0086 0057 00269 00242 00682 00506 00385 0053 00357 0090392 00420 0045 00246 00253 001767 001809 00593 0020 00503 0044 00240 00291 00372 00251 00500 00298 00679 00358 0033 00594 00689 00241 00220

36

MONDAY, JUNE 4, 2012

LIFESTYLE G o s s i p

Simon Cowell’s ex-fiancee writing a tell-all book ezhgan Hussainy apparently wants to get back at the music mogul after comments in his own biography about how they parted ways because when he grew bored of her. The literature will tell the story of his 39-year-old former flames’s life from povertystricken Afghanistan to Hollywood make-up artist. But most importantly will give an account on what it was like dating Simon and living in his mansion as well as revealing the arguments that led to her split with the 52-year-old ‘X Factor’ boss last year. A family told the Mirror: “Mezhgan was very hurt by some comments in the biography, particularly a quote from Simon’s mum Julie that said Mezhgan made her stomach churn. “She was embarrassed, feeling she’d been made to look a fool, and she plans to put her side across, which is likely to leave Simon squirming.” In the recent biography, written by journalist Tom Bower, Simon referred to his relationship with Mezhgan as a “big mistake”. He added: “I’m attracted to personalities who are difficult to control. So there are tantrums, tears and fights, which is all part of the drama.” The Mezghan source added: “Mezhgan had initially planned to be very positive about Simon but things have changed after some of the things that have come out and she’s not shy about speaking her mind. “Mezhgan is a very strongminded woman, she doesn’t allow herself to be walked over. Simon should be quietly worried.”

M

Drew Barrymore weds Will Kopelman he ‘Charlie’s Angels’ actress - who is pregnant with her first child tied the knot with the art dealer at their home in Montecito, California. A source told People.com the ceremony was “a classic, simple, very pretty, gardeninspired wedding,” officiated by Kopelman family. Among guests were Drew’s ‘Charlie’s Angels’ co-star Cameron Diaz, TV host Jimmy Fallon and his wife Nancy Juvonen and actresses Busy Philipps and Reese Witherspoon, the latter accompanied by her husband, Jim Toth. Drew, 37, wore a Chanel gown for the nuptials, while Will, 34, wore a suit by the same designer, where his father was formerly an executive. A friend

T

said Drew is happy to be settling down and is “ready for a quieter, more family-oriented life”.

Another source told US Weekly magazine:”Drew has found a family that she wants to be a part of, for so long she had the fun friends and career success but always wanted to be part of a close family, like Will’s.” Another friend said Drew had decided on a June wedding because she wanted “to get married before the baby comes, but doesn’t want to be huge.” Will proposed to Drew during a holiday in Sun Valley, Idaho, in January.

The marriage is Drew’s third, after she was wed to Welsh bar owner Jeremy Thomas between March and April 1994 and comedian Tom Green,

who she married in July 2001, but filed for divorce from before the end of the year. In February Drew told how much she was looking forward to becoming a part of Will’s family. She said: “I am as in love with his family as I am with him. Which is an extraordinary sort of gift. You never take that for granted. It really is an absolute blessing. I feel very lucky. They’re incredible people.”

Kate Moss forced to hire a dog trainer he supermodel’s new Staffordshire Cross dog called Archie has been destroying her new luxurious house by tearing up carpets and urinating where he shouldn’t.

Kate and her guitarist partner Jamie Hince, 33, bought the pet to adorn their new home in Highgate, north London. A friend told the Daily Star: “She got Archie because she wanted a new start. A new home and new family, completed with her first ever puppy. “But things have taken a very sour turn as Archie is wreaking havoc with Kate’s new carpets and furniture. He’s even ruined one of her favourite fluffy cream rugs doing what puppies do.” The source added: “Poor Kate is pulling her hair out. She loves Archie but she’s had to have everything cleaned since he arrived. She is desperate for the trainer to get him under control.” The insider hinted that the couple are considering another new arrival in the form of baby. They continued: “Kate keeps saying: ‘Next it’ll be another addition, you never know.’”

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The Killers are ‘desperate’ to perform live he ‘Mr. Brightside’ hitmakers are currently working on the follow-up to 2008’s ‘Day and Age’ - which has the working title of ‘Battle Born’ and can’t wait to show off their new songs. Drummer Ronnie Vanucci Jr. said: “These songs are so good I’m just desperate to play some shows. I’d play the opening of a 7-eleven at this point.” Frontman Brandon Flowers also admitted that taking four years out of the group to focus on solo projects has been a “risk” but he hopes they can continue with their previous successes. He told Q maga-

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zine: “I’m sure taking too much time off is a danger. It’s a bit strange to spend time learning to hone your skills and figure out what makes you unique as a band then take half a decade off. “We just hope that lightening strikes again.” The singer also revealed the album will be “heavier” than previous efforts but will still be recognisable as The Killers. He said: “It’s still eclectic, I’ve not thrown the keyboards away. “But it’s definitely heavier.”

Rihanna lives her life with ‘blinders’ on he 24-year-old singer - who has courted controversy by recording with ex-boyfriend Chris Brown and reportedly smoking - has stopped worrying about what other people think of her because she knows she can’t please everyone all of the time. She said: “Who wants to be bashed every day of their lives? That’s not fun. “Today I could eat an apple, and 10 people like it and one will not.

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The next day I could do shots and five people will like it and five won’t.

“What’s important is, you never know.

You can’t do it for the reaction because it’s never going to be the same. “I learned to live my life with the blinders on. At one point it was so bad, it became numb for me. It was a scary place to be.” Now when people say something negative, Rihanna tries to “decompartmentalise” her feelings.

She added to Esquire magazine: “I completely shut off from it so much, I didn’t feel anything. I didn’t feel the good or the bad. It just didn’t matter.

“It was all faÁade. I put my guard up. It hurts when people say negative stuff but you have to decompartmentalise that. It’s not easy.”

Kylie Minogue says relationships take hard work he ‘All The Lovers’ singer - who is currently dating Spanish model Andres Velencoso - admits romance isn’t always easy and has learnt over the years what is important and what’s not. She said: “You have to work at love. I have never believed that marriage would be the ultimate. There are people who think a love story should last an entire lifetime. I tell myself it will last as long as it lasts, that way there are fewer disappointments. “I’m wising up. More tolerant, less demanding. I am very happy today because Andres totally respects who I am. Whether I’m stepping off stage looking fabulous or waking up looking a sight, it’s all the same to him. And

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when I’m spinning out of control for no reason, or feeling totally lost and am asking myself thousands of questions - Who am I? What do I want? Where am I going? - he is there.” The 44-year-old beauty - who successfully beat breast cancer after being diagnosed in 2005 - says she’s never been happier and loves being with Andres. She told Britain’s Hello! magazine: “I am healed and very in love, that helps. Andres is handsome, kind and very easy to live with.”

David Beckham wants two more kids he soccer star already has four kids with fashion designer wife Victoria - sons Brooklyn, 13, Romeo, nine, and seven-year-old Cruz, as well as 10month-old daughter Harper - but he admits he would still like to add to their brood even though Victoria is not so keen on the idea. He said: “We are very lucky to have four healthy children. It would be great if we had one or two more although two might scare Victoria! But maybe one more, you never know. We’re enjoying the kids at the moment, so we’ll continue to do that. If we decide in the future to have two more, who knows.” David also revealed Harper is already showing signs of being a girly girl and won’t be following in the footsteps of her boisterous big brothers. He told ‘This Morning’: “With three boys, obviously there’s a lot of energy in our house. They are constantly on the go from the moment they wake up to the moment they sleep.

Harper is totally different. She is relaxed, she is feminine. I think that was the biggest thing for me. It’s silly, but everything about her is feminine and to have a little girl, it still amazes me every time I change her, I’m like ‘Oh my God, we’ve got a little girl.’ “ —Bangshowbiz

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LIFESTYLE

Indian guitar players raise their instruments in unison after making a new Limca record for “largest guitar ensemble” in Guwahati yesterday. Some 5,406 people made up the mass guitar ensemble for an attempt in the Limca Book of Records, a record book of Indian origin first published in 1990. —AFP

‘Housewives’ actress Kathryn athryn Joosten, a character actress best known as the crotchety, yet loveable, Karen McCluskey on “Desperate Housewives” and the president’s secretary on “The West Wing,” has died. She was 72. Joosten, who had battled lung cancer for 11 years, died Saturday at her home in Los Angeles, her publicist Nadine Jolson said. Joosten “was surrounded by love and humour ‘til the end,” her family said in a statement. “We are laughing through our tears.”

Joosten won two Emmy awards for her portrayal of Mrs. McCluskey, who kept a close eye on her Wisteria Lane neighbors on “Desperate Housewives.” The hit show ended its eight-year run on ABC last month with a series finale in which Joosten’s character passed away. Her character’s battle with cancer was a story line in the show. Joosten’s “Desperate Housewives” co-stars took to Twitter to express their condolences.

“Rest in peace, she was an amazing woman and a wonderful actress,” Felicity Huffman wrote.

Brenda Strong said in a tweet: “Wisteria Lane won’t be the same without you.” Joosten was a psychiatric nurse and single mother in suburban Chicago when she began her acting career at 42.

She wrote on her website that she pursued her

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India’s unlikely romance with Ayn Rand

Joosten dies at 72

childhood dream of acting after getting involved with her hometown theater in Lake Forest, Illinois.

Kathryn Joosten

to make ends meet and moved to Hollywood in 1995. She said she landed her first small role within months on the comedy “Family Matters.”

Over the years, she found steady work appearing in such popular shows as “Dharma & Greg,” “Ally McBeal” and “Scrubs.” She became a familiar face to fans of NBC’s “The West Wing” when she appeared as Dolores Landingham, President Jed Bartlet’s trusted secretary.

“Some people in Hollywood think of me as a model for dramatic midlife transitions: suburban housewife to Emmy-winning actress,” she wrote on her website. “But I never plotted a master plan for following my dreams.” Joosten was an advocate for lung cancer awareness and research and sat on the board of governors for the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

Active in animal rights causes, she appeared with other celebrities at a 2008 news conference in Los Angeles to ask the city to abandon a project for a $40 million elephant enclosure at the Los Angeles Zoo. She is survived by her sons, Jonathan and Timothy. Plans for a memorial service were pending. —AP

She said she received her first break when she was hired to be a street performer at Disney World in Orlando, Florida. She worked odd jobs

Tintin comic book cover fetches record price rare 1932 cover illustration of “Tintin in America” by Herge, the artist who dreamed up the boy reporter, on Saturday fetched a record 1.3 million euros ($1.6 million) at an auction in Paris.

“The work has been sold at 1,338,509.20 euros, costs included, by a person who wishes to remain anonymous,” a spokesman for the auctioneers, Artcurial, told AFP. The previous owner, another Tintin collector, had bought it for 764,218 euros in 2008, which had until today stood as the record price in this domain.

While Artcurial had not announced an estimate of what they thought it would fetch this time, a spokesman said they had expected it to break the one-million-euro mark. Belgian comic book artist Herge painted the Indian ink and gouache colour cover for the

In this picture, a young Indian woman walks past a display of Ayn Rand’s novels on a roadside stall in New Delhi. —AFP

first edition of the book, which first appeared in 1934.

shows the young adventurer dressed as a cowboy sitting on a

One of only five such works of cover art remaining by Herge, it

rock, his dog Snowy at his side, as three Indians, two wielding axes,

creep up behind him. The sale Saturday was part of a larger sale of Tintin-related memorabilia.

In February a Belgian court refused to ban the sale of “Tintin in the Congo”, rejecting a complaint from a Congolese man, Bienvenu Mbutu Mondondo, that it was filled with racist stereotypes about Africans. Herge himself, real name Georges Remi (1907-1983), who revised some of the scenes for later editions had himself justified the book by saying it was merely a reflection of the naive views of the time. Last year, film director Steven Spielberg released a 3D film, “Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn” and is already planning a sequel. —AFP

iterary tastes in India, as anywhere, change with the times, but one writer has never gone out of vogue: Ayn Rand-the high priestess of free-market capitalism and unfettered individualism. A marginal, and often derided literary figure in many other countries, Rand is a perennial presence on Indian bestseller lists and regularly name-checked on the “favourite author” list of influential Indians-from company CEOs to Bollywood stars. Until 2007, Indians conducted more Google searches for the Russian-American novelist than residents of any other country, and in recent years have ceded the top spot only to Americans.

Rand’s rabid anti-statism and promotion of laissez-faire capitalism has long resonated with conservatives in the United States, where former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan numbers among her high-profile devotees. She is currently championed by the right-wing Tea Party movement, whose members focus on her opposition to state welfare programmes, while selectively ignoring her staunch advocacy of abortion rights.

The historic and enduring popularity in India of Rand’s seminal novels, “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead,” seems, at first glance, harder to explain. Decades of quasi-socialist state planning dampened Indians’ entrepreneurial spirit, and the economic liberalisation of the past 20 years has done little to promote the individual freedoms Rand held sacrosanct.

According to entrepreneur Monisha Singh, 43, Rand speaks to a part of the Indian psyche that has traditionally been denied its place or voice in society. Singh, who picked up “The Fountainhead” when she was just 14, said reading Rand was “a rite of passage” among her contemporaries when she was young. “The socio-cultural milieu in India was very conformist, and suddenly this voice emerges that challenges the established order, that celebrates individuality. It was very aspirational,” she told AFP. Three decades later, Singh believes Rand’s work remains relevant. “Indian society, despite economic growth, despite globalisation remains very conservative.

So I think her work still resonates here, it provides a space for people to question the traditional order and be an individual,” she said. Pirated copies of Rand’s novels are hawked by pavement booksellers in India’s major cities and the country’s leading online bookstore, Flipkart.com sells

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her books in multiple languages.

Although Flipkart.com would not reveal exact sales figures, Ankit Nagori, vice president for categories told AFP that Rand “consistently ranks amongst our top 20 writers, in terms of sales, across genres.”

In south Delhi’s busy Midland bookstore, 45-year-old Mirza Afsar Baig remembers the days when his father used to run the shop. “Way back in 1973 I would see my dad working here and university students wandering in to buy her novels for 15 rupees (28 cents) each,” he told AFP. “Today, when I am running the place, she still sells in big numbers,” he said.

Prominent Indian media commentator and brand management expert Suhel Seth believes Rand’s anti-establishment message strikes a particular chord with modern, middle-class Indians frustrated by social constraints. “Indians are still fighting for certain freedoms, their fight for individual rights is thwarted all the time, whether it is by the family structure, or by politicians,” Seth told AFP. “So it makes sense to me that Ayn Rand’s popularity hasn’t changed in all these years.” In some respects, that popularity taps into a nationwide fascination with inspirational and self-help literature.

In bookshops across India, shelves sag under the weight of tomes offering guidance on everything from making a fortune to holding a conversation. After India’s former president A.P.J. Abdul Kalam wrote a best-selling autobiography in 2000, he followed up with a series of motivational titles aimed at young readers. “You Are Born to Blossom,” “You Are Unique” and “Indomitable Spirit” are just some of the books written by the former head of state.

The taste for “inspirational” literature has even extended to Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf”-popular in business student circles as a management strategy guide.

Novelist Shobhaa De recalled how Rand’s books had acquired “a cult status” on university campuses some 40 years ago. “As far as young Indians are concerned the cult has never ended.” “Her books are about idealism, heroism and corruptionissues that are of particular interest to the young of India,” De said. —AFP

51 pageant queens compete in Vegas for Miss USA parade of beauty queens in swimsuits and evening gowns are competing to become the next Miss USA in Las Vegas. Miss USA 2011 Alyssa Campanella will crown her successor during the competition at the Planet Hollywood casino on the Las Vegas Strip Sunday night. The judge’s panel includes Chef Cat Cora, TV personality Arsenio Hall, singer Joe Jonas and reality TV star Rob Kardashian. The show will also feature performances from Akon and Cobra Starship. Andy Cohen and Giuliana Rancic are stepping in to host.

The pageant has three competitions: swimsuit, evening gown and interview

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Indian villagers perform rituals during a frog marriage at Akail Pur village in Gazole, about 375 kilometres (234 miles) north of Kolkata, India yesterday. The villagers believe performing this ritual brings in rain and ensures a good harvest. —AP

question. Contestants from 50 states and the District of Columbia will be whittled to 15 after the show’s opening number based on competitions and interviews during the week before the telecast. The winner will represent the United States at the 61st Miss Universe pageant. An American has not been named Miss Universe since Brook Lee won the title in 1997. The Miss Universe Organization is co-owned by NBC and Donald Trump. The competition is not affiliated with the Miss America pageant. —AP

MONDAY, JUNE 4, 2012

lifestyle

Guests and visitors are pictured.

Tourism agency officials are pictured with Oman Ministry of Tourism executives.

Salalah ‘Khareef’ O

man’s Ministry of Tourism has strategically partnered with Oman Air to launch a summer travel campaign in time for Oman’s ‘Khareef’ monsoon season, which is widely celebrated in Salalah. The launching event was recently held at Safir International Hotel in Kuwait City, with around 200 travel agents in attendance.

The special packages unveiled include discounted rates to some of the Sultanate’s top hotels, free iftar dinners, and free extra night stays. Oman Air will also introduce a new brochure highlighting Oman’s touristic attractions and will encourage travelers to avail of the 10 weekly flights from Kuwait to Muscat to take part in Oman’s colorful Khareef festivities.

Oman’s Ministry of Tourism partners with Oman Air Last year Oman welcomed almost 27,000 visitors from Kuwait topping the previous year’s number by 14 percent.

The Oman Ministry of Tourism’s online accommodation booking partners add that their transactions grew from 25 to 40 percent in 2011. The Salalah Tourism Festival and Muscat’s declaration as Arab Tourism Capital for 2012 by the Arab League’s Tourism Ministers are some of the major factors expected to further drive up Oman’s touristic appeal this year.

“Every year from late June to September the Khareef mon-

soon rains transform Oman into a paradise of greenery and mist. It is during this period that we hold a comprehensive calendar of cultural and entertainment events for the Salalah Tourism Festival. Through our collaboration with Oman Air we intend to encourage more travelers from Kuwait to take respite from the summer heat and join our various festivities.

Oman Ministry of Tourism is keen to introduce Salalah and Oman to the Kuwaiti market,” said Gamal Sadek, Director, Oman Ministry of Tourism Representative Offices, GCC. Oman has emerged as a preferred holiday destination for Kuwait visitors. Oman Air will reward Oman’s Kuwaiti guests by offering comprehensive promotions that focus on convenience, a fulfilling experience, and flexible options. Oman Air’s commitment to quality, comfort and a seamless passenger experience has resulted in international acclaim recently, including: Best Business Class Seat in the World and Service Excellence, Middle East (World Airline Awards 2011); Best Luxury Airline, Middle East (Business Destinations Awards 2011); TTG Travel Award 2011 as “Commended Airline of the Year”; “Best In-flight Connectivity & Communications” award in The 2011 Passenger Choice Awards in Seattle USA; The Airline of the Year Award at France’s Lauriers d’Or du Voyage d’Affaires, Top Resa 2011.

Most recently Oman Air was awarded ‘Best Business Class Airline, Middle East’ in the prestigious Business Destinations Travel Awards 2012. Oman’s Ministry of Tourism has been cooperating with Oman Air to attract more international transit passengers and short-break travelers from the GCC markets. Among the Ministry’s key initiatives are stopover and value offers as well as a unique year-round cultural, entertainment and sporting events calendar.

campaign launched

Oman Ministry of Tourism executives are pictured at the event.

NYC exhibition evokes Claude Monet’s flower garden C

laude Monet’s beloved flower and water gardens in the north of France are world-famous.

But for those unable to visit the artist’s iconic home, a trip to the Bronx over the next several months will offer a taste of Monet’s indisputably radiant living masterpiece - a riotous display of colour, plant variety and landscape design. “Monet’s Garden” at the New York Botanical Garden evokes Monet’s lush garden at Giverny, the impressionist’s home from 1883 until his death in 1926.

A passionate gardener who once declared, “I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers,” Monet found endless inspiration from his exuberant gardens. The water garden alone accounts for some 250 paintings, including a series of monumental canvases that led to his Grandes Decorations at the Musee de

In this photo, a display of flowers is seen in ‘Monet’s Garden,’ at the New York Botanical Garden in New York. — AP photos

In this photo, visitors to the New York Botanical Garden in New York walk through ‘Monet’s Garden’.

This photo provided by the New York Botanical Garden shows Claude Monet’s painting, “The Artist’s Garden in Giverny”.

This photo provided by the New York Botanical Garden shows French impressionist artist Claude Monet in his garden in Giverny, France.

d’Orangeries in Paris. His flower garden is featured in at least 40 works. The exhibition, which runs through Oct. 21, will feature a seasonally changing display of flora, currently a spring kaleidoscope of poppies, roses, foxgloves, irises and delphiniums inside the botanical garden’s Enid A. Haupt Conservancy. It also includes two scarcely seen garden-inspired paintings, Monet’s wooden palette, rare photos of Monet in his garden and 30 photographs of Giverny by Elizabeth Murray, who has recorded Monet’s flower oasis for 25 years. These are all located at the botanical garden’s LuEsther T. Mertz Library.

A facade of Monet’s pink stucco house with its bright green shutters - a historically accurate replica

by Tony Award-winning set designer Scott Park marks the start of the exhibition. From there, visitors are led down the Grand Allee, a shorter recreation of Monet’s rose-covered trellis pathway lined on both

sides with thick beds of vibrant flowers. The path opens up to a replica of his famous Japanese footbridge arching over a water lily pool encircled by willow trees and flowering shrubs.

“He could stand at his doorstep, as you can in this recreation, and look down the allee to the Japanese bridge in the distance,” said the exhibition curator, Monet scholar Paul Hayes Tucker. “Since we know what flowers he planted, we can be very accurate historically,” Tucker said. “It is only a fraction of his undertaking but, nonetheless, an enormously rich and extensive fraction that will hopefully encourage people to learn more about him and if one is lucky enough to go” to Giverny.

In the courtyard outside the Victorian greenhouse, two immense water basins contain a plethora of water lilies. Monet, who made a fortune during his lifetime, was constantly planting, replanting and redesigning his gardens. He would remove the water lilies in the winter so they would survive the cold and then replant them in the spring and summer. “What’s wonderful is to think of Monet literally as planting a still life because it is in the end the arrangement of those water lilies that he paints in his pictures. He is constructing his painting, at least part of his painting, as he replants the pond,” Tucker said, adding that the job of one of Monet’s gardeners was to dunk the lilies so that the pads would glisten.

Summer months will see yellow and orange blossoms of nasturtiums, and lavenders, lilies and geraniums will fill the conservancy. In September and October, they will be replaced with chrysanthemums, salvia, sunflowers, asters, sages, dahlias and other fall

flowers. Among the rare artefacts in the exhibition are two paintings of his garden executed by the artist 15 years apart. “The Artist’s Garden in Giverny,” on loan from the Yale University Art Gallery, was painted around the year 1900 and shows his flower garden with a dense arrangement of irises and decorative trees.

“Irises,” painted during World War I, is darker and moodier. On loan from a private Swiss collection and never before shown in the United States, it depicts a corner of the water garden that is replete with irises.

In a nearby glass case is one of Monet’s paint-encrusted palettes, “a place where literally the hand and the eye come together and where that mysterious poetic moment of realization takes place,” Tucker said. It’s on loan from the Musee Marmottan Monet in Paris.

There are also documents and personal correspondence that provide a rich sense of how the gardens were conceived and how they functioned in Monet’s life and art. A digitalized version of one of Monet’s sketchbooks reveals his propensity to draw before he set out to paint. “We think of him almost exclusively as a painter so these sketchbooks reveal ... he would jot these pictorial ideas right in front of his motifs,” Tucker said. “They provided a kind of touchstone for when he came back to the studio and began to organize the picture.” Hopefully, he said, visitors will come away from the exhibition “with a greater sense of how complex and inventive Monet was as an individual.” — AP

MONDAY, JUNE 4, 2012

lifestyle

‘Family Feud’ TV host Richard Dawson dies at 79

This June 1978 file photo shows Richard Dawson, host of “Family Feud” in character. — AP

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ichard Dawson, the wisecracking British entertainer who was among the schemers in the 1960s sitcom “Hogan’s Heroes” and a decade later began kissing thousands of female contestants as host of the game show “Family Feud” has died. He was 79. Dawson, also known to TV fans as the Cockney POW Cpl. Peter Newkirk on “Hogan’s Heroes,” died Saturday night from complications related to esophageal cancer at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, his son Gary said.

The game show, which initially ran from 1976 to 1985, pitted families who tried to guess the most popular answers to poll questions such as “What do people give up when they go on a diet?” Dawson won a daytime Emmy Award in 1978 as best game show host. Tom Shales of The Washington Post called him “the fastest, brightest and most beguilingly caustic interlocutor since the late great Groucho bantered and parried on ‘You Be Your Life.’” The show was so popular it was released as both daytime and syndicated evening versions.

He was known for kissing each woman contestant, and at the time the show bowed out in 1985, executive producer Howard Felsher estimated that Dawson had kissed “somewhere in the vicinity of 20,000.” “I kissed them for luck and love, that’s all,” Dawson said at the time.It was on “Feud” that Dawson met contestant Gretchen Johnson, who appeared on the show teamed with members of her family.

After dating for a decade, she and Dawson wed in 1991. They had a daughter, Shannon. Dawson reprised his game show character in a much darker mood in the 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger film “The Running Man,” playing the host of a deadly TV show set in a totalitarian future, where convicts try to escape as their executioners stalk them. “Saturday Night Live” mocked him in the 1970s, with Bill Murray portraying him as leering and nasty, even slapping one contestant (John Belushi) for getting too fresh.

The British-born actor already had gained fame as the fast-talking Newkirk in “Hogan’s Heroes,” the CBS comedy that starred Bob Crane and mined laughs from a Nazi POW camp whose prisoners hoodwink their captors and run the place themselves. Despite its unlikely premise, the show made the ratings top 10 in its first season, 1965-66, and ran until 1971.

“We ran six years,” Dawson once quipped, “a year longer than Hitler.”

Both “Hogan’s Heroes” and “Family Feud” have had a second life in recent years, the former on DVD reissues and the latter on GSN, formerly known as the Game Show Network. On Dawson’s last “Family Feud” in 1985, the studio audience honoured him with a standing ovation, and he responded: “Please sit down. I have to do at least 30 minutes of fun and laughter and you make me want to cry.”

“I’ve had the most incredible luck in my career,” he told viewers.

“I never dreamed I would have a job in which so many people could touch me and I could touch them,” he said. That triggered an unexpected laugh. Producers brought out “The New Family Feud,” starring comedian Ray Combs, in 1988. Six years later, Dawson replaced Combs at the helm, but that lasted only one season.

Steve Harvey is the current host. Dawson was born Colin Lionel Emm in 1932 in Gosport, England. When he was 14 he joined the Merchant Marines, serving three years. He first got into show business as a stand-up comedian, playing clubs in London’s West End including the legendary Stork Room. It was there, in the late 1950s, he met blond bombshell Diana Dors, the film star who became known as Britain’s answer to Marilyn Monroe. They married in 1959. The couple divorced in the late 1960s. Dawson landed roles in TV comedy and variety shows in the early 1960s, including “The Steve Allen Show” and “The Dick Van Dyke Show.” Then his performance as a military prisoner in the 1965 film “King Rat” led to his being cast in “Hogan’s Heroes,” which truly made him a star to American audiences. He became a frequent celebrity contestant on game shows, which led to hosting jobs on both daytime and prime-time versions of “The Match Game.” While still hosting “The Match Game,” he began on “Family Feud,” where his popularity grew to such levels that he was mentioned as a frontrunner to win the “Tonight Show” host chair to succeed Johnny Carson, who at the time was considering retirement. —AP

NYC exhibition evokes Claude Monet’s flower garden

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The Queen’s rowbarge ‘Gloriana’ (foreground) leads the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee River Pageant on the River Thames in London, yesterday.

Boats fill Thames for diamond queen’s river pageant H

Children of expatriates enjoy an elephant ride.

People carrying umbrellas queue to enter Battersea Park festival.

undreds of rowing boats, barges and steamers filled the River Thames with a blaze of colour yesterday as Queen Elizabeth II sailed through London as part of her spectacular diamond jubilee pageant. Ships bearing the flags of the Commonwealth, fluttering in the breeze, sailed past as the British monarch and her family watched from the royal barge, the red-and-gold-painted Spirit of Chartwell. Despite the overcast skies, and the rain that had soaked the capital earlier, hundreds of thousands of loyal subjects and curious onlookers packed the riverbanks for a spectacle not seen on such a scale for 350 years.

On the south bank, next to the iconic Battersea Power Station, yachting company employee Nicola Glanville wore a Union Jack around her shoulders as she looked out for friends in the flotilla. “When are we ever going to see something like this again? Forget the weather and have some fun!” she said. The queen “does a jolly good job”, she said. “She’s open to different opinions and she’s a great figurehead.” People cheered enthusiastically as the queen stepped aboard the launch boat to start the pageant marking her 60 years on the throne.

Spectators with painted faces cheer.

The crowd gathered at Chelsea Pier in west London screamed as the sovereign, dressed in silver and white, turned to wave in their direction. Her husband Prince Philip, upon whom the queen bestowed the title of lord high admiral on his 90th birthday last June, wore his naval uniform, as did her son and heir-to-the-throne Prince Charles.

Prince William, Charles’s eldest son and next in line, donned his Royal Air Force uniform while his wife Catherine was in a striking red Alexander McQueen dress. The queen, Prince Philip, Charles and his wife Camilla seemed in jovial spirits, smiling broadly and laughing as they sailed out to the Spirit of Chartwell. The riverside flats of the Pimlico district had balloons and bunting hanging from the balconies and crowds stood 15 to 20 deep along the riverbank.

Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, waved a Union Jack flag as he sailed down the Thames on the Havengore, which had carried the coffin of wartime prime minister Winston Churchill during his state funeral in 1965.

Downstream on Westminster Bridge, next to the Houses of Parliament, hundreds of people had got there early-some camping out overnight in the rain-to secure a prime spot. Tenille Wong, a 30-year-old Australian who works for the EMI record label, said: “It’s such a historic occasion and even A reveller is pictured. the weather can’t dampen our spirits.

“The achievement of anyone doing their job for 60 years is impressive.

“It’s a great opportunity to be among loads of people in London when everyone’s happy-because Londoners can be a bit grumpy!” Wong, who was wearing an Australian flag baseball cap, added: “I just love the idea that one day my grandkids might be doing a school project on the British monarchy, and I can say I was here.” Plumber Dave Tong, 48, said he had made the journey from Lancashire in northwest England, because the queen is “one of the things that makes Britain great.”

He and his wife Carmel, who was wearing a miniature Union Jack top hat, were looking forward to their large supply of “wet sandwiches” for lunch, having got soaked in the earlier rain. “It’s too easy to watch it on telly,” he said, laughing. “You’ve got to come down here and be wet. It’s the Dunkirk spirit.” Harking back to the 1940 Battle of Dunkirk, the phrase has come to sum up defiant courage and solidarity in the face of adversity-and several of the boats that took part in the wartime evacuation were sailing in the flotilla. — AFP

Royalist supporters wear masks depicting Britain’s royal family.

A woman dresses as a ‘coronation chicken’.

Queen’s jubilee a fiesta for souvenir-sellers

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hat’s red and white and blue all over? In Britain, everything. As the country celebrates Queen Elizabeth II’s 60 years on the throne, retailers are embracing the jubilee spirit, doing a roaring trade in tricolour British flags, bunting and party supplies. “Anything with a Union Jack on it is selling like hot cakes,” said Matt Compton, party goods buyer for the Tesco supermarket chain. “This is the biggest week we have had since the Millennium in terms of party sales, with demand far exceeding sales (during) last year’s royal wedding.”

The patriotic outpouring stems from a mix of affection for the 86-year-old queen and delight at a four-day holiday weekend, granted for the second royal Diamond Jubilee in British histor y. Only Queen Victoria, Elizabeth’s great-great grandmother, ruled for longer than the current monarch. Hundreds of thousands of people planned picnics or

street parties yesterday, when the queen’s royal barge lead a 1,000-boat jubilee flotilla along the River Thames through London.

It’s a welcome boost for struggling retailers. Britain has sunk back into recession, and retail sales slumped during a soggy April. The Bank of England has warned that the extra holidays will hit economic output, but some stores, at least, have reason to celebrate. Food and clothing chain Marks and Spencer said it had sold more than 200,000 jubilee teacakes, 50,000 commemorative cookie tins and 50 kilometres (31 miles) of bunting.

Gift shops and departments stores are stocked with souvenirs that range from classy to kitschy, and from cheap to cheekily expensive. The Royal Collection is offering an official Diamond Jubilee tea blend, at 8.95 pounds ($13.75) and a cake (14.95 pounds or $23), from a recipe by Fiona Cairns, who baked Prince William and Kate Middleton’s wedding

cake. Don’t forget the cake stand - yours for 395 pounds ($607).

It would not be a British occasion without a touch of the eccentric, irreverent and even downright tacky. House and garden supply chain B&Q says it has sold 3,100 jubilee garden gnomes - pointy headed lawn ornaments styled on the queen and her husband, Prince Philip. And enterprising English designer Lydia Leith, who had a cult hit last year with her custom-made royal wedding sick bags, has designed a series of temporary tattoos of corgis, crowns and carriages, as well as a jelly mold in the shape of the queen’s head.

“It’s not meant to be offensive in any way.

It’s just meant to be fun,” said Leith, who will be selling her wares at a jubilee festival in London’s Battersea Park yesterday. “There’s something for everyone. If you don’t like the royal family you can buy a sick bag. If you do, you can buy a tattoo.”—AP

A shop window with a display in honour of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee in Durham, England. — AP/AFP photos