30 May

ON IP TI SC R SU B

MONDAY, MAY 30, 2011

Rebel generals say Saleh let ‘terrorists’ take Abyan

NATO strike kills 12 kids, Karzai issues ‘last warning’

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JAMADI ALTHANI 27, 1432 AH

Vettel wins crash-hit Monaco thriller

Grieving mothers adopt life-like dolls

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Opposition warns govt to heed youth protests Barrak says new grilling against PM in the pipeline conspiracy theories

By B Izzak

Emerging from the tunnels

By Badrya Darwish

badrya_d@kuwaittimes.net

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inally the people of Gaza emerged from the underground tunnels to the ground, under the sun and fresh air. There was seven years of torture and blockades which forced people to dig the ground and go several meters underground to cross the borders to the Egyptian side to get food and the basic necessities of life - medicine, clothes, medication, gas cylinders etc. In a nutshell, people lived in misery.

On the ironic side, under Mubarak’s rule, the Egyptian government made sure that the border was sealed with steel gates which went down as far as 30 meters. The young determined men, however, found a way to penetrate the steel walls and get to the other side to fight for survival. On top of that, many used to get bombarded in the tiny holes and tunnels by the Israelis. Young men got killed and buried in these deep holes like rats.

There were no corpses dug out. There were no funerals or family members in attendance.

The end of the sad story came after the ousting of the Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak and the new government in Egypt that decided that enough is enough. I want to take this opportunity and thank Gen Mohammed Tantawi, head of the ruling Supreme Council of the Egyptian Armed Forces, for taking this courageous step. There was no need for these tunnels to be dug or exist. So the Rafah border crossing at last opened on Saturday. The justification given by Mubarak and the Israelis to block the besieged city - that the tunnels were used to smuggle arms and drugs into Gaza - is nothing but a silly joke. But what a joke. It affected the lives of millions for decades.

I visited Gaza two years ago. It took me a whole day of waiting at the Rafah border crossing, though I was lucky to be blessed and allowed by the Egyptian side to come in. I saw with my own eyes and experienced a day of the suffering of the Gazan people. Now, thank God, the people of Gaza can live like anybody else on Earth. They have normal borders and a gate to cross if they want to visit relatives, study, go to the hospital or travel or for any other reason just like any human being. They are relieved from the restriction of their movement.

Injustice cannot be permanent. There comes a day when freedom prevails. Mabrouk Gaza!

ZURICH: Media crew wait under a sign of the football’s world governing body FIFA at its headquarters yesterday. (Inset) Asian Football Confederation President Mohamed bin Hammam arrives for an ethics hearing over alleged bribery during his campaign for the FIFA presidency at the headquarters yesterday. — AFP/AP

FIFA clears Blatter, suspends bin Hammam ZURICH: FIFA suspended senior executives Mohamed bin Hammam and Jack Warner over bribery allegations yesterday, while completely exonerating President Sepp Blatter in the gravest corruption crisis facing football’s world governing body. Blatter now is in line to be re-elected unopposed to a fourth term Wednesday after his only challenger, bin Hammam, withdrew his candidacy just hours before being provisionally excluded from all football activities by FIFA’s ethics committee.

The ethics panel said there was sufficient evidence to further investigate allegations that bin Hammam and Warner, the CONCACAF President, offered $40,000 bribes to delegates at a Caribbean football association meeting on May 10-11 in Trinidad. The payments were allegedly made to secure votes for bin Hammam, a Qatari who heads Asia’s football confederation, in his campaign to unseat Blatter. The evidence was compiled by American executive committee member Chuck Blazer.

FIFA said bin Hammam and Warner, a FIFA vice president from Trinidad, will now face a full FIFA inquiry. If found guilty, they could be expelled from FIFA and banned for life from all football activity. “We are satisfied that there is a case to be answered,” Petrus Damaseb, deputy chairman of the ethics committee, said at a news conference at FIFA’s headquar-

Seven dead as tanks circle Syrian towns DAMASCUS: Syrian security forces shot dead seven people and wounded more than 100 in and around Talbisa and Rastan yesterday after tanks encircled the towns near the central city of Homs, an activist said.

“Two more civilians have been killed at Talbisa and a nearby village, taking the number of dead to seven” in the region, said the activist, who asked not to be named. Earlier the activist said three people were killed in Talbisa and another two in nearby Rastan. More than 100 wounded were also taken to hospitals in Homs, a flashpoint of anti-regime protests.

Among those killed at Rastan were “a little girl called Hajar Al-Khatib”, he said.

Another activist, contacted by telephone from Nicosia, said several people were wounded as security forces unleashed “intense gunfire” in Rastan and Talbisa, after tanks sealed off both towns. “Dozens of tanks at dawn encircled the towns of Rastan and Talbisa,” the activist told AFP. The

Max 44 Min 28 Low Tide 03:42 & 17:10 High Tide 09:38 & 23:33

PARIS: Protesters wave the Syrian flag and hold placards bearing the writing in Arabic and French ‘Leave’ as they demonstrate against President Bashar Al-Assad (picture) and his regime at Trocadero square yesterday. — AFP towns are located between Homs, where a large crowd took to the which is Syria’s third-largest city, and streets on Friday for an anti-regime Hama, on a stretch of highway north demonstration, said Rami Abdul of Damascus that was cut off by tanks Rahman, head of the London-based during the operation. Security forces Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Continued on Page 13 were carrying out searches in Talbisa,

ters. Bin Hammam said the suspension is “unfortunate but this is where we are - this is FIFA.” Two officials from the Caribbean Football Union, Debbie Minguell and Jason Sylvester, were also suspended over the bribery allegations.

Bin Hammam, who denied any wrongdoing, had asked the ethics panel to investigate Blatter on grounds that he knew of alleged bribe attempts and did nothing about it. But Damaseb said the five-man panel received “lots of confirmation from every individual conceivable” that there was no evidence to take action Blatter, who has been office since 1998.

“Is there a reason I should not believe him?”

Damaseb, a Namibian judge, told reporters. “You can disagree with the decision I have taken. I can just give you the reasoning behind our decision.” FIFA stressed that, despite the turmoil, the election will go ahead as scheduled on Wednesday during the congress of 208 national members.

With FIFA’s reputation severely tarnished by repeated allegations of vote-buying and financial wrongdoing, Blatter responded yesterday by saying he regrets “what has happened in the last few days and weeks”. “FIFA’s image has suffered a great deal as a result, much to the disappointment of FIFA itself and all football fans,” the Swiss official said. FIFA secretary general Jerome Valcke acknowledged that this Continued on Page 13

KUWAIT: Spokesman of the opposition Popular Action Bloc MP Musallam Al-Barrak said yesterday a new grilling will be filed against Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser Mohammad Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah over public funds and property as opposition MPs called on the government to understand the messages of the youth protest on Friday. Barrak said the new grilling will be filed only after the two grillings against the prime minister and deputy premier and minister of state for housing and development Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahd Al-Sabah have been completed.

The two grillings are scheduled to be debated on Tuesday but it was unclear yet if the debate will go ahead or Sheikh Nasser and Sheikh Ahmad will ask for a delay or refer the two grillings to the constitutional court. State Minister of Cabinet Affairs Ali Al-Rashed said yesterday after the Cabinet’s weekly meeting that it was decided to leave the issue of grillings to the concerned minister. He did not elaborate.

If the premier and Sheikh Ahmad agree to be questioned, then the grilling of Sheikh Ahmad will be debated first because it was filed first. Opposition MP Mubarak Al-Waalan meanwhile warned the government against trying to refer the grillings of the premier and Sheikh Ahmad to the constitutional court or the Assembly’s legal committee. In a related development, the constitutional court is due to hold its first session today to look into the first grilling against the prime minister which the National Assembly agreed to refer to the constitutional court over suspicions of breaching the constitution.

Continued on Page 13

Egypt to expel Iran diplomat spy suspect CAIRO: Egypt will expel an Iranian diplomat who was briefly detained on suspicion of spying on the North African country for Tehran’s intelligence services, security officials said yesterday. The officials said the diplomat, who had been released earlier in the day, would be “expelled within 48 hours”. The decision was made public shortly after the man, identified as Qasim Al-Hosseini, a third secretary at Iran’s mission in Cairo, was freed after his arrest on suspicion of spying for Tehran’s intelligence services.

Egypt’s official MENA news agency had earlier reported that the state security prosecution let Hosseini go after it was “notified by the (Egyptian) foreign ministry that he was a diplomat in the Iranian mission”. It quoted a security official saying that Hosseini “breached diplomatic protocol” by organising a spy ring to glean Egypt’s military and economic secrets. An initial probe found he gathered “information about Egypt on the latest developments the country has experienced and the conditions through which it is passing, then sent them to Iran’s intelligence services”.

Egyptian security men arrested Hosseini on Saturday in his Cairo home, where they found documents, a computer and spying devices banned in Egypt, said a security official.

Before Hosseini’s release, state security attorney Continued on Page 13

Cheetah captured roaming Abu Dhabi DUBAI: A city of gleaming skyscrapers along the Arabian Gulf hardly seems a fitting habitat for a cheetah, but there it was prowling among residential villas in Abu Dhabi. An animal welfare activist who helped rescue the urban cheetah yesterday said it might have been kept as a pet and had an injured front left paw - perhaps from leaping off a roof, where some owners of exotic pets keep their animals. Raghad Auttabashi of the Al Rahma Animal Welfare and Rescue Society said the big cat appeared to be 7 or 8 months old and was found with a broken metal chain around its neck.

It’s not clear how the cheetah got free in Abu Dhabi’s Karama district, a short drive from the skyscrapers lining the Emirati capital’s waterfront. Animal control authorities rounded up the cheetah, which was later handed over to a wildlife conservation center, Auttabashi said. Photos she took at the scene showed the spotted animal being held in a cage in the back of a van with its injured paw held off the ground.

Cheetahs are the fastest land animals and once lived across wide areas of Africa, the Middle East and Asia. But they are no longer believed to have any native habitats on the Arabian peninsula. They are listed as a vulnerable species, meaning they are at risk of becoming

ABU DHABI: A seven- or eight-month-old cheetah that escaped and was wandering around Abu Dhabi looks on in the cage after it was captured yesterday. — AP endangered. International trade in the animals is restricted, though some limited export is allowed from certain African countries. It’s not the first time an exotic animal has been found roaming streets in the United Arab Emirates. In December, a cheetah was captured near a mosque in Sharjah, the emirate just north of Dubai. Witnesses saw that cat swimming off a port and then prowling past a hotel and offices.

Thai authorities arrested an Emirati citizen at Bangkok’s international airport

earlier this month after they found drugged baby leopards, panthers, a bear and monkeys in his suitcases.

Authorities there believe he is part of a wildlife trafficking network. And over the weekend, two sick lions that Emirati authorities rescued from a home where they were being kept illegally underwent dental surgery. Local media reported that the lions, which had been declawed, needed the procedure because their teeth had been filed down and had become infected. — AP

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Kuwait Digest

The shortest way to stardom!

By Sheriedah Al-Maosherji

S

ome politicians, including lawmakers and others, have surely found their way into the worlds of stardom and heroism and purifying their own political records from any faults or shortcomings.

They realized that joining a demonstration or a march against the government and the PM and making their way to the podium to address the public at the top of their voices would grant them a clearance and more blinding political glamour.

All the applause and the goals that were thrown into the air in support, admiration and glorification are but signs that the crowds have labeled the speaker as an ‘honest heroic politician.’ This is the utmost of the aspiration of politicians who wish to either retain their parliamentary position or establish a new one.

However, politicians seem to have overlooked a simple fact which says that the very same crowds who had cheered them on can, at any given time give them up and step on their photos before incinerating them.

In addition to this, wipe off their names from the lists of honor and send them instead, to dust bins, whenever they contradicted the people’s views, refused to attend a march the people called for or simply opposed the people even for once. Then, no previous political stances would do them any good as, for the people; they should meet their demands all the way or be considered traitors.

Therefore, the best thing to do is to prioritize the nation’s public interests, maintain its security and stability, following rightful channels and constitutional tools in making any demands, patience in anticipating reform. Allah holds us responsible for the work we do, not for the results.

May Almighty Allah save our country from all evils, guide us to the right path, unite us, help and support the oppressed everywhere. — Aljarida

MONDAY, MAY 30, 2011

LOCAL

Kuwait visa ban keeps many families at bay ‘Difficult security conditions’ in five countries

By Ben Garcia KUWAIT: Jilil, a teacher from Pakistan who has been living in Kuwait for 19 years said that he cannot spend the summer with his wife.

An officer at the Immigration Department stamped ‘Denied’ on his wife’s visit visa application. The reason for denial was not improper documentation or the lack of salary cap but a recently introduced visa ban on few nationalities.

Kuwait has stopped issuing new visas to citizens from Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan and Syria a fortnight ago. The officials quoted in the media attributed the visa ban to the ‘difficult security conditions’ in these five countries. Authorities said that the ban will be strictly implemented and no visa application will be considered from these five countries.

This ban has shattered Jilil’s summer plans. Jilil, who works in a Pakistani school in Kuwait, has been teaching for 19 years. Once in every two or three years, either he would go back home to Pakistan or invite

his wife or members of his family to visit him in Kuwait. This time, however, the new legislation has derailed his family vacation plans.

“It’s really upsetting for me to be denied a visit by a family member. I have been inviting my family to visit me once in a while in Kuwait, but it looks like I will spend the summer alone this year,” Jilil told the Kuwait Times.

The new decision has not been well-received by the Pakistani community in Kuwait. An event scheduled to inaugurate a new Pakistani television channel and a quiz show was postponed indefinitely when a visa for Tariq Aziz, a famous T V anchor from Pakistan was refused, even after the organizers sought approval from the State Security Department.

“We invited him to grace a quiz show and to inaugurate an Urdu TV channel, but he was refused a visa,” said Abdul, a Kuwait-based community organizer. “It’s really disappointing turn of events because we have already prepared so much for that and we informed our community on

the event, but unfortunately it didn’t happen,” he added.

“I really hope that the current ban will be lifted as soon as possible.” According to him, the temporary ban has affected the regular affairs of the community. “We created a program for community entertainment but we had to untimely cancel everything because we couldn’t secure a visa for our invited guest from Pakistan. We already spent cash, purchased gifts and prizes for the winners,” he claimed.

In an interview earlier by the Kuwait Times, Iftekhar Aziz, Ambassador of Pakistan to Kuwait asserted that the current ban is only temporary, “As far as I know, it will be temporary, so I don’t think there is a reason for us to be alarmed,” he told this reporter. News reports claim the ban includes suspension of all tourist, visit and trade visas as well as visas sponsored by spouses.

Immigration authorities here assured these five countries’ nationals that all visa renewal(s) for their citizens who are already residents of Kuwait will not be affected.

News

in brief

Meeting proposed for protests KUWAIT: The ‘NAHAJ’ group will hold a meeting this week, to deliberate on the mechanism of youth movements that will stage protests next Friday. Officials said that there is a possibility that invitations will be extended to student groups and other political streams to attend the meeting and listen to their views and evaluate the results of last Friday’s protest. Officials hinted at the possibility of assigning roles among participants. Youth are discussing with some MPs, the possibility of having the protest in ‘Al-Iradah’ yard reported Al-Anba. Furthermore, officials revealed that the government has ordered an enquiry into those who tore and burned the photos of National Assembly Speaker Jassem Al-Kharafi and HH the Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser Al-Mohammad Al-Sabah and some other MPs. Bedoons to benefit from ration cards KUWAIT: Minister of Commerce and Industry Dr. Amani Buresli has issued an official decision naming the groups to benefit from government ration cards, which will now include members of Kuwait’s bedoon (stateless) population. Dr. Buresli said that her decision was based on the recent decision by the Council of Ministers which suggested that bedoons should benefit from the ration cars.

Other beneficiaries include all Kuwaiti citizens and resident nationals of other GCC countries and their families.

Agencies to hire expat doctors KUWAIT: The Ministry of Health (MoH) recently contacted the Central Tenders Committee (CTCT) requesting permission to authorize private recruiting agencies to recruit expatriate doctors. This ministry will resort to this approach instead of making direct appointments, reported Aljarida. In this regard, officials said that the same method is followed while hiring nursing staff members and technicians.

Moroccan delegation to visit Kuwait KUWAIT: The Moroccan Ambassador to Kuwait Mohamed Belaich revealed yesterday that a delegation of senior Moroccan officials will be arriving in Kuwait within the next couple of days on an official visit. Stressing the excellent relations between the two nations, particularly in the economic sphere, Ambassador Belaich told KUNA that the delegates would be briefing their Kuwaiti counterparts on investment opportunities in Morocco in the tourism, energy, mineral, industrial, agricultural, fisheries and retail sectors. He added that the delegation is expected to meet with the recently appointed Minister of Commerce and Industry Dr. Amani Buresli, as well as with officials from the Kuwait Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI).

The ambassador stressed that Morocco benefits from political and social stability, as well as enjoying an exceptional geographic location.

GCC health official marks Saudi contributions on big anniversary RIYADH: The accomplishments of Saudi Arabia during the six years since the Pledge of Allegiance to King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz provide ample cause for pride and devotion, said a Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) official yesterday on the occasion of the sixth anniversary of the pledge of allegiance to the Saudi monarch. Director General of the Executive Bureau of GCC Health Ministers Dr. Tawfiq Khojah told KUNA that the Saudi leadership shows tremendous dedication to developing the healthcare sector, adding that the level of service offered is exemplary, not only in the Gulf region but internationally.

Recent development plans have brought new pledges in this respect, including the expansion of specialist healthcare facilities, the establishment of new care centers, and the expansion of services and residential facilities in health zones and medical sectors across the kingdom.

At the GCC level, King Abdullah had ordered the construction of a massive medical facility under the administration of the Arabian Gulf University in the Kingdom of Bahrain as a contribution towards the development of medical education and research in the GCC region.

The King also continues to constantly support the initiatives and efforts of the health ministers’ bureau, the official noted, focusing his attention on the priorities agreed among the GCC health authorities, including the creation of a GCC health database. Recent reform initiatives for the health sector in the kingdom have included a pledge of 16 billion Riyals in March of this year for the development of healthcare provided to Saudi citizens. —KUNA

RIYADH: Kuwaiti Ambassador Sheikh Hamad Jaber Al-Ali Al-Sabah with Saudi Minister of State Prince Miteb Bin Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz.

Ambassador meets Saudi minister RIYADH: Kuwait’s Ambassador to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Sheikh Hamad Jaber Al-Ali Al-Sabah, met here last Monday with Saudi Minister of State Prince Miteb Bin Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz, who is also a member of the Council of Ministers and President of the Saudi National Guard.

Afterwards, Sheikh Hamad said

Servicemen’s names removed from CSC employment lists KUWAIT: The Ministry of Defense (MoD) has asked the Civil Service Commission (CSC) to remove the names of 230 of the ‘jobless’ individuals included on the CSC’s electronic employment database since they have already been recruited for military positions.

According to a CSC insider, the commission receives lists periodically from the MoD which include the names of militar y recruits to be compared against the names of applicants on the database in order to ensure that the

registers tally. Kuwaiti employment regulations ban citizens with military or other public sector jobs, as well as those working in the private sector, from registering with the CSC for new positions. There have been a number of complaints in recent months that the large number of military personnel registering with the commission is leading to employment shortages for the genuinely jobless. According to unconfirmed reports, at least 2,800 military personnel are currently registered on the CSC’s database. — Al-Qabas

that during the meeting he had given Prince Miteb a letter from the Deputy Chief of Kuwait’s National Guard, Sheikh Mishaal Al-Ahmad AlSabah, concerning bilateral relations.

He added that during the meeting they discussed relations between the two brotherly countries and ways to support, develop

and push them to new frontiers in various fields, chiefly in the military sphere.

Sheikh Hamad also extended the deepest thanks and gratitude on behalf of the State of Kuwait to the President of the Saudi National Guard on the efforts exerted by Saudi hospitals in treating Kuwaiti patients.—KUNA

Awqaf minister promotes decentralization KUWAIT: Senior officials from the Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs have been instructed to prepare detailed reports on the obstacles that hinder the accomplishment of vital future projects. Discussions were held during a weekly meeting chaired by Minister Mohammad Al-Numas. According to officials, the minister issued a three-week time frame to prepare reports, along with lists of developmental projects. These are yet to be completed for assessment purposes. Furthermore, officials were also told during the meeting to adopt decentralization and full transparency, while making sure that bureaucratic snags be avoided in order to handle complaints from employees with care, reported Al-Qabas. Moreover, minister Al-Numas asked that mosques be prepared ahead of the Holy month of Ramadan which starts late July. It includes setting up new mechanisms to avoid traffic jams around mosques during prayer times.

KUWAIT: Brig Yousef Al-Ansari yesterday inaugurated the latest training course for middle management-level staff with the Kuwait Fire Services Directorate (KFSD).

Al-Ansari, the KFSD’s Deputy Director General for Firefighting Affairs and Human Resources Development, said that the course is part of the directorate’s annual training program, which offers several development courses, as well as promotion opportunities for these personnel.

— Photos by Hanan Al-Saadoun

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MONDAY, MAY 30, 2011

local

Steep increase in prices of commodities causes complaint

in my view

The usurped shame parade

Greedy traders under fire

By Hussain Al-Qatari

By Nawara Fattahova KUWAIT: With the local prices of many goods doubling in recent months, the level of public complaint at these steep increases has been rising. One item that’s seen a sharp price rise recently has been cigarettes, whose prices have increased by 20 percent and more dependent on the brand in recent months, but it’s certainly not the only item whose rising cost has been prompting complaint. Abu Abdullah, a staff member at Jabriya Co-op, blamed the rise in cigarette prices on suppliers. “The price rise in cigarettes was caused by greedy traders demanding higher prices for cigarettes,” he told the Kuwait Times.

KUWAIT: Picture shows the new price list of cigarettes uploaded by a complaining consumer on Twitter.

The supermarket’s decision not to stock one well-known brand of milk after the suppliers raised the prices also led to complaints from many customers. “We posted a letter of apology [for customers] explaining that this brand of milk wasn’t available at our supermarket due to the price rise demanded by the importing firm,” explained Abu Abdullah, warning, “There are also other goods that will subject to price increases soon, such as coffee, biscuits and other items.”

Staff at Jleeb Al-Shuyoukh Co-op, however, denied that there had been significant price rises on many commodities there, although they admitted that there were shortages of some types of milk due to the price increases demanded by the suppliers.

“We aren’t selling the items at an increased price,” said one staff member, who gave his name as Khalid.

“Some customers think that the price of

Grilling: Al-Mubarak criticizes colleagues KUWAIT: “I have always spoken nothing but the truth. Please withdraw your request immediately,’ MP Massouma AlMubarak told Annahar when an interviewer asked her to give frank and straightforward answers.

Commenting on Sheikh Nasser AlMohammed Al-Sabah’s candidacy as PM for the seventh time was an appointment by HH the Amir and stressed that the Amir’s wishes and decisions ought to be fully respected.

“Neither lawmakers nor anybody else is entitled to direct HH the Amir on who to appoint as PM. It is his constitutional right following regular consultations with HH the Crown Prince and former speakers of the house,” she underscored.

They pointed out that neither MPs nor public opinions were needed.

Furthermore, Al-Mubarak expressed amazement at some of the slogans that protestors used before reappointing AlMohammed as PM. “ They shouted..

Leave, Kuwait deserves sacrifice.” Who was meant by such calls? Were they not addressing HH the Amir himself?,’ she exclaimed, reported Annahar.

In addition, Al-Mubarak criticized some of her colleagues such as MP Ahmed Al-Saadoun who, according to

her, used to describe Al-Mohammed as a reformist, and all of a sudden urges him step down for no valid reason. “Has AlMohammed committed something bad or evil of which we are not aware, let them tell us or tell HH the Amir about it,” she stressed. As a former speaker of the house, Al-Saadoun met the Amir during consultations, she said. “Why didn’t he express his reservations then? Now is too late and what’s done is done!’, she stressed.

Responding calls made to appoint a PM from outside the ruling family, AlMubarak warned that in view of the current power struggle, the idea was rejected. She stressed that such a step would result in ‘massacres.’

Moreover, Al-Mubarak urged the ruling family members to display more unity and to close any ‘Swiss cheese-like holes’ that paves the way for some opportunists. She also condemned the grilling motion filed against the PM and accusing him of ‘posing a threat to Kuwait.’ “This questions the man’s patriotism and devotion to Kuwait.....what a shame!,” she added. She accused the MPs behind the motion of occasionally creating a tumult to weaken national unity.

KUWAIT: Swiss Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Peter Maurer pictured with Board Chairman of Kuwait Red Crescent Society, Barjas Hmoud AlBarjas yesterday.

Swiss official holds talks with KRCS officials KUWAIT: A visiting Swiss official held talks yesterday with officials of the national relief agency on preparations for the upcoming meeting of the Red Cross and Red Crescent societies due to take place in Geneva.

Emerging from the coordination meeting with the Board Chairman of Kuwait Red Crescent Society, Barjas Hmoud Al-Barjas, Peter Maurer, the Swiss Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, expressed appreciation for the substantial relief and humanitarian missions, carried out by the Kuwaiti NGO to aid nations around the world which are in need or suffering from catastrophes.

He indicated that his talks with AlBarjas dealt with forecasts on coordination for the execution of relief operations and preparations for the upcoming board meeting of the relief agencies, due to take place in Geneva in November, where the planned talks will tackle such humanitarian missions and coordination among the relevant organizations and associations.

Maurer elaborated, noting that the discussions with the top Kuwaiti architect of relief operations addressed the society’s efforts for providing relief for the people of Libya, the Palestinian territories and a number of Asian nations.

Touching on the Kuwaiti-Swiss ties, Maurer affirmed that the two sides have been seeking to further enhance these relations.

Al-Barjas indicated that the society is coordinating with Arab and international relief organizations to assist victims of disasters in the region and across the globe.

During the trip, Maurer’s delegation inspected departments of the KRCS and attended a screening of a documentary about its activities and future plans.

Ku wa i t e nj oys a d i sti ng u i she d record on relief efforts, with teams of relief workers from the country reaching remote areas of the globe, aiding people suffering from catastrophes, with food, medical supplies and equipment. —KUNA

some products has risen, but it’s not true.

Occasionally we have promotions on certain goods and after three or four days the promotion’s over and the price goes back to the original one so [customers] think it was increased. Here the situation is worse as most of the residents of this area are expats on low salaries.”

At Daiya Co-op, a staff member who gave his name as Ahmad said that prices are definitely rising, adding, “the Cooperative Union is responsible for price regulation, so when they stop us from selling certain products we can’t stock them. At the moment, for instance, we don’t have a certain variety of milk due to the price increase. Also the prices of some types of chocolate have risen but only by about 10 percent, so they’re still selling. In addition, the cigarettes have risen in price by about KD1 per carton [of 200].”

At Al-Qurain Co-op, customer Ibtisam said that she and many others have noticed

sharp increases in the prices of some items.

“During the past few months, I’ve noticed terrible increases in the price of one brand of tea, which went up from 700 fils [per box] to KD1.200. Also the price of a popular brand of baby soap went up almost 100 percent from 450 fils to 800 fils. Then there’s a brand of tissues that increased from KD1.100 to KD1.700. The prices are really mad!”

Mohammed, a 50-year-old expatriate who was shopping at another popular supermarket well known for its low prices, was also disgruntled at the steep recent price increases. “For instance, the price of a Mortadella has gone up from 990 fils to KD1.400, with the cost increasing gradually until it reached this amount,” he said, adding, “The cost of sweets has increased incredibly.

A box of chocolates containing 48 chocolates used to cost KD2.100. Now the same box contains only 35 chocolates and cost KD2.600.”

128,000 tons of imports, exports at Doha port KUWAIT: A number of futuristic projects will be executed to upgrade and develop the Doha port in a manner that will meet expected growth, remarked Doha Port Manager, Adel Ali Al-Showayyeb. He added that a total number of 6,040 vessels were accommodated at the port.

Speaking at a press conference, AlShowayyeb said that the total number of imports made stood at 110,000 tons while

exports stood at 18,000 tons, with a monthly average of 11,000 tons of goods exported and imported into the country, reported Aljarida.

Furthermore, Al-Showayyeb stressed that development projects would include improving the dock, providing modern rubberized protection, deepen the waters from 4 to 6.5 meters in order to receive vessels that carry larger loads.

have faith in Kuwaiti youth. I do. I believe that they can bring change to the country, and they have set great examples for that in the past. However, what riots they hold these days do not truly represent the ideology of a youth demanding change. It represents the agenda of angry parliamentarians who are dissatisfied with the government and the Prime Minister namely. By no means do I mean that the government is innocent of committing any wrongs. However, I truly don’t believe that corrupt MPs should be speaking on behalf of the people, especially the youth.

It could be argued that the youth and the corrupt parliamentarians who attended the riots last Friday share the same sentiments of disapproval towards the government’s performance. However, these MPs have actually usurped the riot and made it theirs. All the effor ts of the honest youth demanding change were therefore wasted.

The problem does not lie in the fact that these parliamentarians usurped the riot, but in the fact that the people gladly accepted and allowed them to do it. I don’t think the youth need anyone to speak on their behalf.

There are many smart, well-spoken, charismatic young people who should be given an opportunity to speak. A new demonstration is planned to take place next Friday, and it is expected to have a bigger turnout. Let’s hope that the youth realize they have been scammed by those MPs, and let’s hope that we see a civil demonstration, not a shame parade like last week’s.

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MONDAY, MAY 30, 2011

LOCAL

Security forces praised for performance on ‘Day of Rage’ No force used in dispersing protesters

Wataniya Telecom awarded ‘Challenge Contest’ winner KUWAITY: Wataniya Telecom awarded the “Challenge Contest” winner; a three months challenge organized by Gulf University of Science and Technology (GUST),initiated for the purpose of motivating and encouraging overweight students. It started last February with the participation of 3 students who weigh more than 130 kgs. Results have been announced recentiy during an awarding ceremony.

Afnan Al-Rkhayyes, the first winner was awarded with BlackBerry Torch, Gold line and a trip for two to Dubai including accommodation. She succeeded in dropping 19 kgs and ranked on top of the remaining two winners.

Mustafa Ashkanani, the 2nd winner won 9 months free gym subscription while the third winner Abdullah Bushehri received an award of 6 months free gym subscription.

Wataniya telecom was honored to sponsor this challenge, and provide participants with diet meals and exercise regimes along with consultations from professional nutritionists and fitness trainers for three months, to help them reach their target weight. This Challenge commenced on 20th of February and will end on 20th of May, 2011.

Abdolaziz Al Balool, the Public Relations Director of Wataniya congratulated the winners and said: “We congratulated all winners in this challenge and we are proud to see how enthusiastic and passionate those students were; they got the will to move on and made a great change in their lives” “Our aim behind taking part in this event is to promote a healthy lifestyle and help the youth of Kuwait achieve their goals and fulfill their aspirations.”

Al-Balool further added.

Hamad al-Matar, PR Senior executive was presenting Wataniya during the event and Talal Al-Awadhi from GUST’s Sports Club.

Wataniya Telecom has gone beyond the usual in its efforts to support and help the local community. Over the years it has sponsored events and activities in different fields and sectors like sports education, environment and culture to bring more growth and prosperity in our nation. Wataniya will continue to find innovative ways to create memorable experiences that will add value in the lives of the residents of Kuwait.

Wataniya Telecom was commercially launched in 1999 as the first privately owned operator in Kuwait. National Mobile Telecommunications Company (NMTC) trading under the brand name Wataniya Telecom is listed in the Kuwait Stock Exchange and has operations in 6 countries including Maldives, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Algeria and Palestine.

Qatar Telecom (Qtel) owns 52.5% of Wataniya Telecom.

Wataniya is a customer-driven company that aims to provide product and service excellence. Over the past 10 years Wataniya has risen to be the second largest operator in one of the most competitive markets, and continues offering a wide range of prepaid and postpaid mobile voice and internet services to both individual and corporate customers.

Wataniya has built its reputation on offering innovative services, maintaining excellent network quality and delivering outstanding customer experience.

These three pillars remain the basis of Wataniya’s strategy as it continues to solidify its strong market position.

18,000 drug addicts in Kuwait KUWAIT: Forty-one people have died from drug overdoses in Kuwait during the past year, according to newly released statistics from the Ministry of I nterior ’s Criminal Evidence General Department. More worryingly, the latest figures also indicate that the number of OD victims in 2011 has already reached a similar level less than half way into the year, raising questions about the effectiveness of the state authorities’ approach to tackling this problem.

The department’s statistics for 2009 shows that 44 people died in Kuwait as a result of drug overdoses in that period.

The seemingly stable rates of drug related cases throughout a two-and-a-half year period come as a surprise to many in light of the efforts of the state authorities, mainly the General Department for Drug Control (GDDC) to tackle the drug trade and drug abuse. Earlier reports noted that, as of last Thursday, May 26, 39 people had fatally overdosed on narcotics in Kuwait since the beginning of 2011. An additional two overdose-related deaths were reported on Friday when two young men were found separately

UAE mulls ban on KAC aircraft KUWAIT: The UAE’s civil aviation ministry is mulling over the possibility of barring Kuwait Airways Companies’ aircraft from landing in UAE airports.

Officials said that one of KAC pilots had committed a grave technical error which could have caused an air disaster.

In Kuwait, the technical glitch was attributed to UAE civil aviation officials since the device to measure distance between aircrafts was changed at the last minute, reported Al-Shahed.

Emirates authorities have asked KAC and the civil aviation authority to make necessary investigations.

Kuwait authorities reportedly investigated the matter with the pilot, and said that the mistake occurred owing to poor weather conditions. Officials said that the Chairman of KAC Hamad AlFalah was subjected to pressure from some MPs.

dead in their homes, with more such fatalities being repor ted yesterday (Sunday).

In the meantime, a senior MoI official working in the anti-narcotics field indicated that Kuwait currently has an estimated 18,000 drug addicts, with the problems facing its efforts to eradicate drug use including the insufficient monitoring capacity to secure its large coastal area against smugglers, as well as a lack of recreational and leisure options for young people. Both these problems help to increase rates of drug use and addiction, the official said.

Meanwhile, the director of the justice ministry’s juvenile prosecution department is quoted in a recent repor t as warning that teenagers are being lured into drug-related activities, as well as other serious crimes such as forgery and fraud through organized crime networks who recruit them online. The director, Meshal Al-Mutawa’a, further noted that 1,618 crimes were committed by juveniles in Kuwait last year, also indicating that some of these organized crime networks work internationally. —Al-Qabas

state media bound by govt policies KUWAIT: The official Kuwait television and radio stations are state-owned enterprises which have limits that they should not cross in their coverage of political events, said a senior information ministry official on Saturday. Mohammad Al-Awash, the Ministry of Information’s Assistant Undersecretary for Radio Broadcasting Affairs, made the comment in response to claims that Radio Kuwait’s news coverage of fast-moving recent political events has been inadequate.

“The news and current affairs programs department is keen to follow up updates on the local scene in accordance with the state’s general policies,” said Al-Awash in an interview with local daily Al-Rai. Al-Awash also revealed that there are plans to boost transmission of the radio station’s signal to border areas, with FM broadcasts to be launched, transmitting from south of Al-Sabahiya and Al-Subbiya by 2014.— Al-Rai

Plans to hike fines KUWAIT: The Minister of Public Works and State Minister of Municipality Affairs has reportedly contacted the Fatwa and Legislation Department, to seek legal advice on a proposal submitted to increase fines levied on food suppliers accused of importing or trading in items that are unfit for human consumption, reported Al-Rai. According to an official, the Kuwait Municipality has decided to impose ‘hefty fines’ against spoiled food suppliers following raids that resulted in the seizure of hundreds of tons of spoiled food since last year. Minister Dr Fadhel Safar’s letter to the Department includes a request to legally authorize the Municipality’s bid to increase the penalty amount.

KUWAIT: Senior security officials met yesterday with Ministry of Interior (MoI) Undersecretary Lt Gen Ghazi Al-Omar to discuss the extra security measures imposed on Friday to quell demonstrations and protests.

An interior ministry insider said that the ministry officials were satisfied with the way the MoI and the security forces had handled the situation and treated the protesters, adding that they had kept everything under control very well. Flatly denying that the security forces had used any force in dispersing protesters, the insider condemned the protests, saying that they had caused major inconvenience for both citizens and expatriates, as well as creating a state of unprecedented tension for the country’s security

services.

The MoI completely rejects the holding of any unlicensed rallies or gatherings, the insider stressed, adding that such events would be deemed a severe challenge to the country’s laws as well as a form of civil insurgence and rebellion aimed solely at undermining the country’s reputation and the state of law.

Anybody wishing to hold a rally or gathering should first consult the Constitutional Court for a decision on the legality of such an event, said the ministry insider.

Meanwhile, a decision to put an end to the dispute between owners of shops in Abu Ftaira and the Municipality will be issued soon, recent report quoting officials stated.

Fire in one of the sheds in Kabad.

At least 800 citizens who own businesses at Abu Ftaira had received notices from the Municipality to remove all illegal constructions before June 6. The problem stems from an incident where the owners obtained licenses from the Municipality to run commercial activities.

Municipality inspectors informed them that their ventures contradict with the licenses issued, as per details mentioned in the state’s registration dossiers. The shop owners blamed a certain Municipality official who is responsible for the licensing process. His contract was eventually terminated. The Municipality asked to close down shops or change activities to match with those mentioned in their licenses.

The shop owners feel that they

should not be held accountable for the mistake committed by a high-ranking official. Changing the nature of their businesses result in substantial financial losses.

Last year, several shop owners won lawsuits filed against the Municipality ’s eviction order, which has since been appealed.

September has been decided as the month in which the final court ruling will be passed, reported Al-Rai. Officials who spoke on condition of anonymity indicated that the topic will be addressed during a weekly Cabinet meeting to be held ‘in the near future.’ Fadhel Safar, Minister of Public Works and State Minister of Municipality Affairs has been keenly monitoring the situation.

Blaze in the Fahaheel Co-operative store

Fire breaks out in Kabad, Fahaheel, Sulaibiya

By Hanan Al-Saadoun KUWAIT: Two expatriate workers were treated at the scene for smoke inhalation after a fire broke out in one of the sheds used to house them in Kabad. Thankfully, all the workers were evacuated from the

12 buildings where the fire subsequently spread to.

Meanwhile, in a separate blaze, two floors of the Fahaheel Co-op were gutted by a fire that broke out there shortly after midnight on Saturday night. Although firefighters rushed to the scene after the

incident was reported, two departments - the greengrocers and homeware sections - were totally destroyed. No casualties were reported.

In a third incident, firefighters from Sulaibikhat and Jleeb AlShuyoukh extinguished a massive

blaze that broke out in an animal feed store at a Sulaibiya dairy farm.

A 500 meter area of the 2,000meter building was gutted by the blaze, with firefighters managing to prevent the fire from spreading any further. Municipal council vehicles were also used in fighting the fire.

Arab panel hails Obama for supporting Palestine DOHA: The Ministerial Committee on the Arab Peace Initiative expressed its appreciation for the stance adopted by US President Barack Obama in his recent address on achieving peace based on the two-state solution along the borders of June 1967.

Further, it supported the remark by Obama that the Palestinian state will have coterminous borders with Egypt, Jordan and Israel.

The previous remarks came in a statement issued by the Arab Peace Committee at the close of its meetings this evening under the headship of Qatari Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem AlThani.

Sheikh Hamad made clear that the committee reached its final stance after discussing what was embedded in Obama’s speech on the 19th of this month as well as the reply of Israeli Prime Minister to it, the statement explained.

It also said that the committee listened to a review by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on the outcome of his latest contacts with the US administration on the PalestinianIsraeli negotiations, and the efforts made by the US for pushing forward the peace process.

The committee stressed, “its rejection of the address delivered by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu before the US Congress on 24 of this month,” noting that, “it interrupted the path toward making any progress in the achievement of peace according to the international legitimacy resolutions.” Within this context, “the committee holds Israel fully responsible for the failure of peace process due to the latter’s persistence in its aggression on the Palestinian people, and its insistence on rejecting the twostate principle along the frontiers of 1967.” It added that, “it holds Israel fully responsible for the continuance of its settlement activities, particularly in (occupied) East Jerusalem as a substitute for peace, and in the face of the international unanimity on the illegitimacy of constructing settlements, while calling on the US Congress to revise its stances, and keep to a balanced attitude to protect the US interests and its role in achieving peace.”

Further, the committee stressed that, “Israeli government should accept the frames of reference of the peace process including the land for peace principle and the two-state solution based on the frontiers of 1967 along with stopping settlement construction as the only way for resuming the final status negotiations which have been long stressed by the Palestinian side.”

The ministerial committee of the Arab Peace Initiative said that, “in light of the address delivered by the Israeli Prime Minister, the committee decided to head to the UN to file an application for getting full membership of the State of Palestine at this world body on the basis of 1967 frontiers with East Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital during the coming session the of the UN General Assembly, namely in September 2011.” Further, “it decided to take necessary legal measures according to the rules applied by the UN, and to ask from a working group which is made up of the committee’s chairman, the Arab League’s Secretary General, and the State of Palestine, and whoever the committee selects of the Arab League member states to put these measures into force.” The committee “will also follow up with the UN on the implementation, along with asking Arab League Secretary General ... to continue his role in this respect, and to take part in the working group and to continue to follow up the situation.”

Moreover, it said that, “the Arab side is determined upon taking all necessay measures, and to conduct all contacts in order to mobilize the support required from the Security Council members, and political and geographical groupings in the UN in what allows for the issue of the desired above-mentioned resolution.”

The committee also expressed its appreciation for the countries which recognized the Palestinian state on the basis of 1967 borders, and decided to, “call on these countries which did not recognize the Palestinian state yet to take this step at the earliest in order to reach the international unanimity based on the necessity of the establishment of the Palestinian state on the territories occupied in 1967.”

The Ministerial Committee also expressed its appreciation for the stance adopted by the European Union in its statement on the 23rd of this month, in which it stressed necessity of respecting the international law, and the adoption of the two-state principle, and the invalidity of the Israeli measures in East Jerusalem and other occupied Palestinian territories along with calling on the European Union to take practical steps to activate such stance.” The committee also stressed that, “security will not be fulfilled except through reaching a just, lasting and comprehensive solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict, and that any security arrangements should ensure the full and comprehensive withdrawal from the occupied Arab territories, and ending any form of the Israeli existence in the Palestinian territories, while calling on Obama to continue his efforts on these previous bases.” — KUNA

KUWAIT: The Asian drug dealer pictured after his arrest.

Drug dealer caught

By Hanan Al-Saadoun KUWAIT: An Asian drug dealer who was plying his illegal trade on behalf of a Central Prison inmate was caught by police during a routine stop-and-search operation. Police who searched his car found 100 grams of heroin, along with 100 illicit narcotic tablets there, going on to recover an additional KD700 in cash from his home when they searched the property. The drug dealer had been conducting the illicit trade whilst working at a restaurant near his home in Khaitan. The detainee admitted that the money recovered from his home was the profits from his sale of drugs and has been remanded in custody pending further legal action.

Road accidents Two Indian expatriates in their thirties were rushed to Mubarak Hospital after sustaining various serious injuries in a crash on King Fahad Road near the Sabah Al-Salem turnoff.

In a separate incident, a 42-year-old Kuwaiti man suffered fractures to his left thighbone in a crash in South Surra. He was also taken to Mubarak Hospital.

Meanwhile, a 35-year-old Indian man sustained severe bruising, whilst a 51-year-old Iraqi man suffered lacerations to his nose in a crash in Kabad. Both were taken to Farwaniya Hospital.

In a fourth accident, a 40-year-old Jordanian man was taken to Sabah Hospital after being injured in a crash on Airport Road.

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More pressure on cabinet for grilling of premier Ministers analyze opinions of experts KUWAIT: With the new cabinet’s final position on the grilling motions against the premier and deputy premier supposedly settled during yesterday’s weekly cabinet meeting, one political activist was quietly confident that the cabinet “won’t make the same mistake again,” a view shared by a number of others. The comment referred to the grilling motion against His Highness the Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser Al-Mohammed Al-Sabah, which was submitted to the constitutional court earlier this month. Another grilling motion has also been presented against the Deputy Prime Minister, Sheikh Ahmad AlFahd Al-Sabah.

KUWAIT: Deputy Amir and Crown Prince Sheikh Nawaf Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah receives Speaker of the National Assembly Jassem Mohammad AlKhorafi yesterday.

“Failure to face the grilling would damage the cabinet’s political and public standing,” the activist said, adding that if the premier or other cabinet members were to choose this path this would leave the door open to further interpolations being filed since the initial ones were not defeated.

Reports from cabinet insiders also indicate that during a brief recent ministerial meeting at the conference suite in Kuwait International Airport following the return of defense minister Sheikh Jaber Al-Mubarak Al-Sabah from an overseas trip, the ministers analyzed the opinions of a panel of constitutional experts on the issue of the two grilling motions.

This comes as MP Marzouq Al-Ghanim, the co-presenter of the grilling motion against Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad, confirmed that the Deputy Premier would face grilling in an open session.

The grilling motions against both the premier and deputy premier, which were filed by the Development and Reform Bloc (DRB) and the National Action Bloc (NAB) respectively, are set to be debated during Tuesday’s parliamentary session.

Meanwhile, several MPs appeared buoyed by reports suggesting that ministers could lose cabinet support by submitting grilling motions to the constitutional court. “This shows our support for the cabinet should it go ahead with this approach,” said NAB member Saleh Al-Mulla, adding that ministers will also be subjected to grilling if the Prime Minister faces interpolation.

MPs Nadji Al-Abdulhadi, Saifi Al-Saifi and Dr. Walid Al-Tabtabae also supported the suggestion of more ministers facing interpellation.

On a separate issue, 20 lawmakers have

Bedoons to receive subsidized food KUWAIT: Sheikh Jaber Al-Mubarak Al-Hamad Al-Sabah takes the constitutional oath as the First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defense.

Sheikh Jaber takes constitutional oath KUWAIT: His Highness the Deputy Amir and Crown Prince Sheikh Nawaf AlAhmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah received yesterday the Speaker of the National Assembly Jassem Mohammad Al-Khorafi at Seif Palace.

His Highness also received His Highness the Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser Al-Mohammad Al-Ahmad AlSabah.

His Highness the premier was also present as the deputy amir received Sheikh Jaber Al-Mubarak Al-Hamad AlSabah who took the constitutional oath as the First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defense.

The deputy amir expressed his hope for the new cabinet to meet its objectives and sustain the state’s best interest and for the ministers to uphold their responsibility before the law, before which all are accountable regardless of post and status.

The oath ceremony was attended by Deputy Minister of Amiri Diwan Affairs Sheikh Ali Al-Jarrah Al-Sabah, Minister of State for Cabinet Affairs Ali Fahad AlRashed, Amiri Diwan Undersecretary Ibrahim Mohammad Al-Shatti, and Cabinet Undersecretar y Abdelletif Abdullah Al-Roudhan.

The deputy amir received the Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister Sheikh Ahmad Al-Humoud Al-Jaber AlSabah, Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Dr. Mohammad Sabah Al-Salem Al-Sabah, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of State for Housing Affairs and Minister of State for Development Affairs Sheikh Ahmad AlFahad Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, and Minister of State for Cabinet Affairs Ali Fahad AlRashed.

The deputy amir also received Governor of Ahmadi Sheikh Dr Ibrahim Al-Duaij. —KUNA

‘Traffic crisis too complex’ KUWAIT: The attempts to resolve the traffic crisis in Kuwait has been a failure and that it has reached a dead end, remarked Dr Bader Al-Muttar, Head of the Kuwaiti Society for Traffic Safety(KSTS). He added that the traffic crisis has become too complex and unbearable. He pointed out that a number of factors have contributed toward complicating the traffic issue such as the rapid increase in the number of cars, the Kuwait Public Transport Company’s (KPTC) digressing from the real purpose that it had been established for. The company was established to present good transportation services for passengers. However, the aim has since diverted into a utilitarian one, ignoring national interest to decrease traffic jams on Kuwaiti roads. Al-Muttar affirmed that strong-smelling exhaust gas is released by most of the company buses due to bad

maintenance operations, reported Aljarida.

Further, Al-Muttar urged that a series of solutions be enforced to expedite the metro project’s execution by establishing a special authority. This is in order to start building the required stations and railways.

These are similar to the railway project in Saudi Arabia, Mecca project, and United Arab Emirates (UAE).

In conclusion, he recommended an immediate start to execute the ground stations to launch the metro project as soon as possible. Underground stations need a long time to be constructed. He added that the society is ready to cooperate with government authorities. This is even though all technical and manpower services help resolve the traffic crisis, indicating that the Society will spread awareness among people.

KUWAIT: Stateless residents (bedoons) can now purchase food items at subsidized rates following the government’s decision to expand the categories of beneficiaries.

In a statement that appeared in the Kuwait News Agency (KUNA), Dr Amani Buresli, Minister of Commerce and Industry announced that bedoon residents along with nationals of Gulf Cooperation Council countries, as well as Kuwaitis and female citizens married to non-Kuwaitis are now entitled to obtain

the special card that allows them to received subsidized food items.

As per new regulations, people entitled to receive subsidized food in Kuwait are as follows: Kuwaiti citizens and their relatives until the third degree relatives, female citizens married to non-Kuwaitis along with their sons and grandsons, GCC nationals living in Kuwait and their families, as well as stateless residents whose names are registered with the Central System for Remedying the Status of Illegal Residents (CSRSIR).

ABUJA: His Highness the Amir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah’s envoy and Amiri Diwan Adviser Mohammad Abulhasan arrived at the Nigerian capital, Abuja, on Saturday. Abulhasan is set to deliver a letter from His Highness the Amir to the Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan.

Domestic workers allowed to convert work visas KUWAIT: Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Social Affairs and Labor and Minister of Justice Dr. Mohammad Al-Afasi has issued a decree allowing domestic workers to convert their visas to enable them to work in the private sector. The workers in question will be able to convert their visas between May 25 and August 31.

In a statement issued yesterday, the ministry said that workers wishing to convert their visas must meet a number of eli-

gibility criteria; amongst these, the worker’s legal status must be legal, while the new jobs must be offered by the same employer or a first degree relative of theirs. The worker must also have been resident in Kuwait prior to May 2011 in order to be eligible.

By introducing the new policy, the ministry aims to better serve employers’ staffing requirements, its statement added. —KUNA

submitted a joint request for a two-hour period to be allocated during Tuesday’s parliamentary session for discussion of the increasing cancer rates in Kuwait and the government’s approach to tackling the issue.

Also on a medical note, MP Saadoun AlHamad submitted a number of parliamentary questions to health minister Dr. Helal Al-Sayer concerning cases of alleged medical negligence at local state medical facilities. The MP’s questions are considered to be a possible prelude to his filing a grilling motion against the minister.

One of the cases cited by Al-Hamad concerned an eight-year-old boy who was reportedly left mute after suffering heavy bleeding following an operation to remove his tonsils at the Zain Otolaryngology Hospital in 2009.

The MP has requested further details on the case.—Agencies

kuwait digest

Teachers’ influence

By Dr Yaqoub Al-Sharrah he elements that leave a negative impact on the teaching process var y between errors mentioned in students’ textbooks, and the behavior of teachers. The teacher ’s behavior constitutes the manner in which they speak or perform while explaining the subject’s content. This process is highly affected by the personal beliefs and points of view of teachers.

It would not necessarily fall in line with the general social norms or the state’s educational policies all the time.

For example, a teacher who is bigoted will most likely have his or her way by imparting their beliefs. If a history teacher is less tolerant to others’ beliefs or points of view, they might intentionally or unintentionally - alter facts to suit their beliefs during the teaching process.

Likewise, a teacher who nurses sectarian feelings might influence students, thereby affecting their loyalty to the country.

For that reason, countries focus on teachers’ early training and preparation which begin as soon as they are selected for the job. Schools in these countries will not hire a teacher unless they obtain a special ‘teaching license’ obtained only after meeting certain conditions which qualifies for the job, which include adopting an unbiased approach throughout the teaching process.

When a teacher does not have the element of loyalty and instead would have their approach influenced by sectarian or tribal influences, it is when the educational process falls in very dire straits. The spread of such situations will result in a catastrophe; a generation educated on intolerance will be created, placing personal interest ahead of public good. When teacher’s behavior deviates from its right path, it would be like a bomb that explodes to kill everyone around.

There is no way to ensure that the behavior of teachers in local schools and colleges falls in line with the state’s educational plans, unless they are carefully selected, accompanied by continuous follow up of their performance. This goal, of course, needs to improve curriculum in a way that the principles of tolerance and national unity are conveyed. —Al-Rai

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Many thanks to Kuwait’s youngsters

By Abdulatif Al-Duaij

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n my column that was published last week, I had written that His Highness the Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser Al-Mohammad Al-Sabah would be held accountable for any negative consequences that could take place as part of a rally that was organized here on Friday. Thankfully, no ‘bad’ was done as the government successfully contained the gathering. Demonstrators were able to assert their opinion - even if they did not really reach the Safat Square.

The argument was not about whether the protestors should gather at the Safat Square or the Iradah Square, as some people - given their feeble awareness of the Constitution and regulations - imagined.

The argument put forward, ahead of Friday’s events focused on the people’s right to demonstrate freely, which was met with the Ministry of Interior deciding on the place and time that they wanted the protestors to gather.

The place where the protestors were to gather should not be placed for debate. If the protestors indeed carried out their demonstration at the Iradah Square, it could be looked at as ‘victory’ for a government that enforces its own will on the people.

The Kuwaiti youth were thankfully aware of their constitutional rights and the importance of staying committed to them; even more than some parliamentarians who tried to use the demonstration for their own benefit.

When they insisted on selecting the Safat Square as the place for ‘gathering,’ the youth chose to protect their constitutional rights. It was the main purpose behind their decision to assemble. Moving to the Iradah Square as the government demanded, would have been counted as a ‘violation’ of the will of the public, It would not be any different from infringing upon the Parliament’s authorities when HH the PM’s grilling motion was referred to the Constitutional Court.

Personally, I disagree with the calls being made for HH Sheikh Nasser’s ouster. I believe that those calls are unconstitutional and illegitimate, in addition to being illogical and unrealistic.

However, making such demands remain an unquestionable right; regardless of their goals or points of view. The government as well as the prime minister have no other choice but to protect the people’s constitutional right. Who knows? It might eventually turn out that they were right all the time. — Al-Qabas

MONDAY, MAY 30, 2011

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‘Friend’ dumps overdosed youth into dumpster Woman killed in Gulf Road accident KUWAIT: Police arrested a young man who confessed to placing the dead body of his friend into a dumpster following a drug-taking session. Investigations had been taking place since the body was found in the trash container in Salmiya. A surveillance camera attached to a nearby building caught the attention of criminal investigators at the scene, who checked the footage to see if it had captured the disposal of the body. The footage showed an individual coming out of the building which the dumpster was adjacent to and placing the victim’s body into the receptacle. After the culprit was positively identified, officers immediately went to his apartment and arrested him, reported Al-Rai. During interrogation, he confessed that he panicked after his friend overdosed while the two were using drugs in the flat, opting to dump the body instead of calling for an ambulance. The suspect is being held pending legal procedures.

Two overdoses Two young men were found dead in separate incidents, both as a result of drug overdoses. The first victim, a 35year-old Kuwaiti citizen, was found dead in his family’s house in Khaitan, with drug paraphernalia also recovered from the scene, reported Al-Rai. The same evening, detectives from the Capital area

reported to another scene where a man was found dead inside his home. His death was later confirmed to be the result of a drug overdose.

Pedestrian killed The body of a female pedestrian was removed for autopsy when she died after being run over by a car on Gulf Road. The victim, an Asian woman, was reportedly crossing the road when a car driven by a Kuwaiti motorist hit her, reported Al-Rai. Although police and paramedics rushed to the scene after the motorist immediately called the emergency service hotline to report the incident, the woman was pronounced dead shortly after their arrival. The driver was taken into custody for questioning.

Vicious brawl Police arrested 12 people who were among a group of Asian workers that engaged in a vicious brawl during which light weapons were used. It was later discovered that the fight escalated from a dispute that rose between two workers over a bed they found in a dumpster. The men planned to separate metal or wooden objects they found in trash cans in order to sell them as junk, a common practice among Kuwait’s low-paid laborers, reported AlRai. The brawlers have been detained

pending further investigations.

Stolen phone found A teenager was arrested for stealing a mobile phone, which he subsequently gave to his unsuspecting mother as a ‘present.’ Investigations had been ongoing in a theft case filed by a mobile phones shop in Farwaniya last March.

Officials were able to track the phone which was found in the possession of a woman who was summoned for questioning. After explaining to police that she had received the phone as a gift from her son, the teenager was questioned and confessed to stealing the phone, reported Al-Rai. In defense of her son, the woman attempted to alter her story by claiming that she bought the phone from an unidentified person.

Hostage situation Jahra police detained a mentally ill man who held his family hostage.

Officers accompanied by paramedical staff headed to a house in Al-Sulabiya where the 40-year-old citizen reportedly held his mother and two brothers at knifepoint. Police initially struggled to negotiate with the man after discovering that he was deaf. At first, a relative was brought to try and contain the situation, but his presence made matters worse as the suspect threatened to stab his family

members if officers did not leave his home. The situation was resolved eventually after a sign language expert was called to negotiate with the man, reported Al-Qabas. The expert managed to control his frenzy and convinced him to drop the sharp object. The man was referred to the Psychiatric Hospital for evaluation.

Fans held Two Egyptian nationals face deportation after being caught for holding a banner containing the Kuwaiti flag along with flags of Arab countries which featured public revolutions. They are suspected of potentially promoting public protests. The two were among others at a cafe cheering for their home club of AlAhli while watching the match against Al-Salmiya Club of Kuwait, reported AlWatan. They were detained for questioning for holding a banner that that also contained flags of Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Algeria and Palestine.

During interrogation, they insisted that the banner intended to express the collective support that Al-Ahli club has in the Arab World, rejecting claims of inciting public unrest in the country. Officials indicated that the duo could be deported if evidence was found during investigations, convicting them of promoting unrest.

Assessment teams’ credibility questioned KUWAIT: Frustration is mounting in the educational sector, as teams from the Ministry of Education embarked on missions to assess public schools.

Corruption is reportedly heavily influencing this process.

The Schools Assessment Commission of the Ministry of Education has formed a sub-committee in each of the country’s six educational directorates. Each of these

have also created work teams whose duty is to carry out field trips to public schools and assess their situation.

According to officials, the problem emerges from the fact that members of team that visits a certain school would in some cases include the principal and other administrators from the same school, which would affect the credibility of the assessment process, reported Al-

Qabas. Meanwhile, officials who spoke on condition of anonymity noted that the presence of school administrators in work teams harms the process, especially if administrators are in conflict with headmasters of competing schools, “You will not be surprised if an assessment team member gives bad marks to a school over a previous incident of personal antipathy.”

Al-Tijari on social network websites KUWAIT: As part of marketing campaigns that are aimed at direct and swift communication with customers, Commercial Bank of Kuwait (CBK) launched its official account on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to expand its web presence with customers through social network websites. This has proved to be a great success while communicating with all segments of society.

Amani Al-Waraa, Executive Manager - Advertising and Public Relations Department said that “Needless to say that the Bank always endeavors to keep up with the developments and employ technology to serve customers. It is, therefore, necessary to take this important move to launch such web accounts as a direct channel for communication with customers. This is so that they can view the latest news and updates related to activities, products and services that the Bank provides.

Al-Waraa concluded by saying that chances will be availed to receive customers’ queries and proposals through such websites. This will help the Bank enhance its services to meet and achieve our customers’ aspirations and satisfy their needs. The bank account on Facebook is Commercial Bank of Kuwait and on Twitter and YouTube is AltijariCBK.

AOU holds graduate jobseekers’ workshop KUWAIT: The Kuwait branch of the Arab Open University (AOU) recently held a workshop for graduates offering advice on preparing a resume, along with tips on job interview techniques. The event was organized in coordination with the Manpower and Government Restructuring Program (MGRP) and the state executive apparatus for students.

Mariam Al-Abdul Ghafour, the AOU official in charge of upgrading students’ skills, said in a statement issued yesterday that the workshop included advice on tech-

niques for writing a curriculum vitae (CV) along with job interview tips, to improve job applicants’ chances of success.

On the subject of the skills sought by employers, Ms. Al-Abdul Ghafour said that applicants equipped with excellent educational qualifications, experience and good presentation skills, who are also confident and well-presented, would stand the best chance in job interview situations.

The university is keen to help its students to find

work in the domestic employment market, she added.

Representing the MGRP at the event, Al-Ubaidan emphasized that students should be educated in CV preparation and job interview techniques.

The MGRP encourages graduates to choose professions suited to their qualifications, areas of specialty training, character traits and future ambitions, she added. Abdul Ghafour also underlined the need to assist those graduates who wish to do so in launching small businesses. — KUNA

Top GCC officials discuss traffic, common security

Amani Al-Waraa

ABU DHABI: The meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) traffic Directors-General began here yesterday. Kuwait is represented in the meeting by Deputy Director General for Planning and Traffic Research Brigadier Saleh Al-Najim.

Director General of Traffic Coordination in the UAE Interior Ministry and Chairman of the meeting Brig Ghaith Hassan Al-Zaabi stressed in the opening speech UAEís commitment to support and enhance the march of the GCC common security and achieve the ambitions and aspirations of the GCC leaders and peoples. He added that the meeting would also work on facilitating the movement of citizens between the GCC countries. Al-Zaabi expressed hope that the conferees would come up with recommendations that serve the common Gulf traffic march. He said the

meeting comes as a continuation of the previous meetings of the GCC Directors in charge of traffic to continue the march of joint collaboration and common security. For his part, acting director of safety and preventive security in the General Secretariat of the Gulf Cooperation Council, Ali Hassan said in his speech that these recommendations will be submitted to the Ministers of Interior in the GCC countries.

The participants held their first working session during which they discussed a number of topics on the agenda including the issue of linking the UAE violations system with the GCC one, in addition to the standardized form of certificates of vehicles export made by the Sultanate of Oman, which is characterized by high quality specifications of security to reduce fraud export certificates. — KUNA

KOC hosts 94th human resources meeting KUWAIT: Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) announced yesterday that it would host the 94th meeting of human resources in Gulf oil companies between May 31 to June 1.

Human Resources Director at the KOC, Sami Al-Juhayem told KUNA that the 94th meeting of administrators of human resources in the Gulf oil companies will be chaired by KOC, noting that these periodic meetings represent a protocol of cooperation that has been established between these companies.

He pointed out that the companies

participating in the meeting are KOC, Saudi Aramco, Qatar Petroleum Company, Oman Petroleum Development Company, Abu Dhabi National Oil Company and the Bahrain Petroleum Company.

He stated that the meeting’s agenda includes several items of particular mechanisms for information exchange and the latest applications of systems and regulations of human resources to oil companies, adding that each company will submit a working paper in accordance with the agreements. — KUNA

KUWAIT: Employees from the Public Authority for Youth and Sports (PAYS) employees took part in a training course that was held recently as part of the authority’s ongoing program to improve the basic skills and expertise of staff members. This is in order to boost the level of services provided.

Kuwaitis win gold medals in photography competition KUWAIT: Kuwait won four gold medals in Austria 2011 International Photographic Com petition, and the winners included Haitham Al-Mesri.

Al-Mesri, the winner of the gold in the Arabs photography category, said he was proud of his achievement, along with four other Kuwaitis, for clubs and individuals entries. Bait Lothan and Kuwait V ting along with 7,200 photographers Haitham Al-Mesri from 84 countries.

Al-Mesri and Yaqoub Al-Kandiri won for individual entries. The competition included various photography categories, including landscape, portraits, architectural photography, sports, and others. — KUNA

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A third of Abyei civilian structures razed

Joplin tornado death toll rises to 139

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Britain readies bombs for Libya MISRATA: A Libyan rebel fighter fires a rocket propelled grenade launcher on the front line. — AP

TRIPOLI: Britain is to add “bunker-busting” bombs to the arsenal its warplanes are using over Libya, a weapon it said yesterday would send a loud message to Muammar Gaddafi that it is time to quit. Britain and other NATO powers are ratcheting up their military intervention in Libya to try to break a deadlock that has seen Gaddafi hold on to power despite weeks of air strikes and a rebel uprising. “We are not trying to physically target individuals in Gaddafi’s inner circle on whom he relies but we are certainly sending them increasingly loud messages,” British Defense Secretary Liam Fox said in a statement.

“Gaddafi may not be capable of listening but those around him would be wise to do so,” he said.

His ministry said the Enhanced Paveway III bombs, each weighing nearly a tonne and capable of penetrating the roof or wall of a hardened building, have arrived at the Italian air base from where British warplanes fly missions over Libya. NATO warplanes have already been raising the pace of their air strikes on Tripoli, with Gaddafi’s Bab Al-Aziziyah compound in the centre of the city being hit repeatedly. The military alliance says it is acting under a mandate from the United Nations to protect civilians from attack by security forces trying to put down a rebellion against Gaddafi’s four-decade rule.

But the more aggressive tactics risk causing divisions within the fragile alliance backing the intervention, and could also lead to NATO being dragged closer towards putting its troops on Libyan soil, something it is anxious to avoid.

The Qatar-based Al-Jazeera television station broadcast video footage of what it said were foreign forces, possibly British, on the ground near the rebel-held city of Misrata. There were a number of armed men, some wearing sunglasses and keffiyahs, or traditional Arab headscarves, who moved off when they realised they were being watched, the footage showed. Further deepening their involvement, Britain and France have said they will deploy attack helicopters over Libya to better pick out pro-Gaddafi forces. Helicopters are more vulnerable to attack from the ground than high-flying warplanes.

Gaddafi denies attacking civilians, saying his forces were obliged to act to contain armed criminal gangs and Al-Qaeda militants. He says the NATO intervention is an act of colonial aggression aimed at grabbing Libya’s plentiful oil reserves. South African leader Jacob Zuma was expected to arrive in Tripoli today, his second visit since the conflict began, to try to broker a ceasefire

on behalf of the African Union. Zuma’s previous visit made little progress because Gaddafi has refused to relinquish power while rebel leaders say that is a precondition for any truce deal.

Gaddafi’s foreign minister held talks in Tunisia on Saturday with Lord David Trefgarne, a former British government minister, according to a former British ambassador to Libya who took part in the discussions.

The ex-ambassador refused to disclose what they talked about and Britain’s government said neither it not any intermediaries were talking to officials loyal to Gaddafi.

Rebels control the east of Libya around the city of Benghazi, Libya’s third-biggest city Misrata, and a mountain range stretching from the town of Zintan, 150 km (95 miles) south of Tripoli, towards the border with Tunisia. Helped by NATO air support, the rebels have been able to push back attacks by pro-Gaddafi forces but in many places they are still under bombardment and cut off from supplies. A Reuters reporter in Zintan said he heard about a dozen rockets, fired by government forces, strike the outskirts of the town yesterday.

There were no reports of casualties.

Forces loyal to Gaddafi have cut electricity supplies to much of the region, causing problems with water

supplies because there is no power to pump water from underground wells. Colonel Juma Ibrahim, a senior rebel fighter in Zintan, said he feared an imminent attack. “They are preparing for something, this is the time,” he said. “We are asking Benghazi to supply us with weapons.” In Misrata, a rebel spokesman said an attack by forces loyal to Gaddafi on the western suburb of Dafniyah had been repelled.

“Today is a good day, thank God. We achieved a great victory,” said the spokesman, called Ahmed. “We .... captured a tank and killed several soldiers ... Two revolutionaries were martyred and 28 others wounded.”

Libyan officials took journalists yesterday to a school in Tripoli near the part of Gaddafi’s Bab al-Aziziyah compound that had been hit by NATO planes during air strikes on Saturday. There was little evidence of damage, but head teacher Hamid Miftar said the nearby blast had broken one or two windows and terrified the children as they sat for the first day of exams. “Imagine the scene, with children this age in a school of this capacity. They all tried to run out at once,” he said.

“These are civilians.” As reporters toured classrooms, teachers led the schoolchildren in chants of “Allah, Muammar, Libya together!”. — Reuters

Islamic militants tighten grip on south Yemen town

SANAA: Anti-government protestors shout slogans during a demonstration demanding the resignation of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh yesterday. — AP

SANAA: Hundreds of Islamic militants solidified their control over a town in southern Yemen yesterday after seizing tanks in clashes with fleeing soldiers, military officials said.

Opponents of the country’s embattled president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, accused him of allowing the militants to freely seize Zinjibar in a bid to stoke Western fears that AlQaeda would take over the country if he responded to demands by demonstrators to step down. Three months of mass street protests calling for Saleh’s ouster have posed an unprecedented threat to his 33-year rule. The takeover of Zinjibar, a small town of more than 20,000 people near the shores of the Gulf of Aden, was the latest turn in a crisis that has imperiled the stability of an impoverished and volatile corner of the Arabian peninsula.

Hundreds of militants stormed the town, which is the capital of Abyan province, on Friday and seized a number of banks and government offices. Military officials said the militants extended their control starting late Saturday night, capturing six army tanks and several armored cars after the governor, the security chief and the commander of a local army brigade fled. Other army units clashed with the militants outside the city, and medical officials said six civilians were killed in the crossfire. It was unclear if any soldiers or militants were killed.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media. In the capital, Sanaa, Maj. Gen. Abdullah Ali Elewa, a spokesmen for army units that have defected to the opposition, said Saleh sought to spread fear “that Yemen without him will become another Somalia.”

Elewa called on army units to fight militant groups in the Abyan province and elsewhere. Saleh, who is under tremendous pres-

sure by the United States, Europe and the rulers of neighboring Gulf Arab nations to heed demands to step down, has warned repeatedly that without him, the Yemen-based Al-Qaeda branch would take control of the country.

His political opponents and experts on Yemeni affairs have discounted those fears, though the estimated 300 fighters of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula could exploit the growing turmoil to operate more freely in remote parts of the country.

It is not clear if the militants who seized Zinjibar were linked to the Al-Qaeda group. Yemen is home to numerous Islamic extremist groups. Islamist militants also took over the nearby town of Jaar at the end of March, and there were similar accusations then that the government - which has cooperated with the US in battling Al-Qaeda militants - purposely stood aside. Saleh has clung to power despite daily protests, a wave of defections by army officers and political and tribal allies, and international condemnation of his crackdown.

Saleh has refused to sign a US-backed proposal by Yemen’s powerful Gulf Arab neighbors to step down in exchange for immunity from prosecution. And the US, which once considered Saleh a necessary ally in fighting Yemen’s active AlQaeda branch, has turned its back on the ruler, calling for him to transfer power peacefully. With diplomatic efforts stalled, the political crisis gave way to serious street battles last week between Saleh’s forces and armed men loyal to one of the country’s most powerful tribal leaders, who has turned against the president. The clashes killed 124 people and raised fears of a civil war before the two sides reached a cease-fire agreement over the weekend. — AP

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Bomb kills Iraqi soldier, firefighter near Baghdad BAGHDAD: A roadside bomb planted outside a suburban liquor shop west of Baghdad killed an Iraqi soldier and a firefighter yesterday as security forces tried to extinguish a blaze from an explosions minutes earlier. In the Sunni-dominated Baghdad suburb of Abu Ghraib, emergency responders rushed to the scene of a blast outside the closed liquor store at about 6 am local time, only to be hit by a second bomb just minutes later. Such follow-up attacks are one hallmark of Al-Qaeda. Police officials

say the second bomb instantly killed one soldier and the firefighter died later at a hospital. They say five soldiers and five firefighters also were wounded.

A hospital medic confirmed the casualties. A few hours later, in the northern city of Mosul, an attack wounded a retired general and former candidate for defense minister in what police called the most recent assassination attempt on a prominent Iraqi.

Technology professor Khalid Mitaab AlObeidi was driving to his office on the cam-

pus of the city’s university when he hit a roadside bomb. Al-Obeidi was wounded in the face and leg, police said. His nephew, who serves as his bodyguard, also suffered minor injuries. All police and medical officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information.

Dozens of government and political officials have been targeted for assassination in recent months as extremists exploit Iraq’s instability. Though violence has dropped

dramatically across the country since the titfor-tat sectarian killings just a few years ago, deadly attacks still occur daily. Al-Obeidi, a Sunni, was a brigadier general and pilot in Iraq’s army during Saddam Hussein’s regime.

He recently withdrew as a contender for the vacant post as Iraq’s defense minister after being nominated by the secular but Sunnibacked Iraqiya political coalition, said Mosul lawmaker Abdul-Rahim Al-Shammari.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki has been struggling to fill the top posts at the

defense and interior ministries, but political bickering over candidates among political rivals has delayed the nomination in the six months since Iraq’s new government was seated. In turn, the delay has held up key negotiations between Baghdad and Washington over whether thousands of US troops will remain in Iraq past a year-end deadline that was set by a 2008 security agreement. Representatives for each of Iraq’s main political parties will meet Monday in another step to break the impasse. — AP

A third of Abyei civilian structures razed: Report Tens of thousands of civilians displaced

TEHRAN: In this photo, Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, places his hand on his heart as a gesture of respect to the lawmakers (foreground) as some of them clench their fists while chanting slogans, at the start of their meeting yesterday. — AP

Iran denies purchasing ship from Israel firm TEHRAN: Iran’s top trade official has denied that a public company in Iran, which does not recognize the Jewish state, has bought a ship from an Israeli firm as claimed by Washington, local media said yesterday. “Based on the laws of the country, any kind of trade or economic transaction with the Zionist regime and its affiliated firms is against the law,” the chairman of Iran’s Chamber of Commerce, Industries and Mines (ICCIM) Mohammad Nahavandian was quoted as saying.

“The news regarding the activities of Zionist firms in regard to Iran is a new game which has surfaced in reaction to other nations welcoming establishing economic ties with Iran,” Nahavandian said.

“Thus they (West powers) are naming some Zionist firms as engaged in doing business with Iran.” On May 24, the United States announced new sanctions against Iran, targeting foreign firms including the Israeli firm Ofer Brothers Group. The firm is accused of selling a tanker for $8.6 million to Iranian shipping company Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL) in September 2010 in violation of the international embargo imposed on Tehran over its controversial nuclear program.

Ofer Brothers Group has denied the allegation, and the Israeli authorities have opened an investigation into the issue. The Islamic republic does not recognize Israel’s right to exist and its animosity has hardened under the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has launched repeated tirades against the Jewish state.

Israel, like the United States, has not ruled out a militar y strike against

Tehran to halt its controversial nuclear program, which the West says masks a drive for atomic weapons. Tehran says the program is for civilian purposes only. Israel has also been indirectly implicated in an attempt by a Spanish company to illegally export to Tehran military helicopters purchased in the Jewish state. The transaction was foiled earlier this week by the Spanish authorities. The sale of such helicopters to Iran is banned under the United Nations sanctions. Iran has so far not reacted to this news.

In another development, Iran yesterday hanged in public in the western city of Kermanshahon two men convicted of child rape, the official IRNA news agency reported. The men sent to gallows were identified as P. Mohammadi Pashterizeh and A Namaki, convicted respectively of raping a child and filming the act and of raping a nine -year-old child. IRNA reported that the crowd gathered in the square where the executions were carried out shouted, “Judiciary, thanks ... thanks.”

No additional information was given. Iran says the death penalty is essential to maintain law and order, and that it is applied only after exhaustive judicial proceedings. The latest hangings bring to 145 the number of executions reported in Iran so far in 2011, according to an AFP count based on media and official reports.

Iranian media reported 179 hangings last year.

But international human rights groups say the actual number was much higher, mak ing the Islamic republic second only to China in the number of people it put to

JUBA: About a third of all civilian structures have been razed in the main town of Sudan’s disputed Abyei region after the northern army took control of the area, a satellite monitoring project report said yesterday.

Khartoum sent tanks into Abyei on May 21, sparking an international outcry less than two months before the south is expected to break off into a new country, and stoking fears the two sides could return to full-scale conflict.

The Satellite Sentinel Project (SSP) said recent images showed the northern army had positioned tanks, mobile artillery, heavy transports and other armour in and near Abyei town.

“Tens of thousands of civilians have been displaced. Approximately one-third of all civilian structures in Abyei town have been razed,” the report quoted Harvard Carr Center Executive Director Charlie Clements as saying.

A spokesman for the northern army was not immediately available to comment on the report. The army said on Saturday it had stopped military operations in Abyei after taking full control of the area, and called on residents to return home.

The SSP report said its images confirmed the destruction of a key bridge, known as the Banton bridge, south of Abyei town. Its demolition will make it harder for tens of thousands of displaced people to return home, it added. The report said the project would send the information it had gathered to the UN Security Council and the International

JUBA: In this photo, a truck mounted with a heavy machine-gun manned by unidentified armed uniformed men drives past the burning huts of businesses and homesteads. — AP Criminal Court. The fertile Abyei region is used all year round by the Dinka Ngok people, who have ethnic ties to the south, and for part of the year by the northern Arab Misseriya nomads. It also produces some oil. Abyei was a major battleground in Sudan’s last civil war and has a potent symbolic value for both north and south. Tensions rose in the region after a May 20 attack on a convoy of northern

Year after Gaza flotilla, Israel faces new storms

BAGHDAD: Buffalos bathe in a receding swamp in Al-Wahda, south of the Iraqi capital yesterday. Iraq has often complained that Turkey monopolizes the waters of the Euphrates and Tigris through a series of dams built on both rivers as part of a massive project to irrigate its southeastern corner. — AFP

Nigeria’s Jonathan sworn in for first full term ABUJA: Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan was sworn in for his first full elected term at the helm of Africa’s most populous nation yesterday, faced with the challenge of driving reform and trying to heal regional rifts. Heads of state from across Africa, foreign dignitaries, religious leaders and traditional rulers gathered in Eagle Square in the centre of Abuja for the ceremony and a military parade to mark the start of his four-year term. “Together we will unite our nation, improve the living standards of all our people, whether in the north or in the south, in the east or in the west,” Jonathan said in a speech after taking the oath of office. The former zoology student won elections last month which, while far from perfect, were deemed to have reflected the will of the people in a nation that had known virtually nothing but military rule and rigged votes for the past half-century.

But the polls also threw religious and ethnic fault lines into sharp relief.

Jonathan, a Christian from the south, swept to victory in his home region while his rival, ex-military ruler Muhammadu Buhari, performed strongly in the mostly Muslim north. Hundreds of people were killed in riots and sectarian violence in northern towns after Jonathan’s victory was announced, with homes, churches and mosques razed. “President Goodluck Jonathan’s election has seriously polarized Nigeria along ethnic, sectional and religious lines and this will be his challenge,” said Shehu Sani, president of the

northern-based Civil Rights Congress of Nigeria.

Jonathan first came to power after the death of his predecessor, northerner Umaru Yar’Adua, last year. He emerged from the April polls with a credible mandate, having won 59 percent of the vote, but with his ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) chastened by a weaker parliamentary majority and the loss of several powerful state governorships. Buhari, one of the few living former heads of state absent from yesterday’s ceremony, has challenged the result.

Jonathan pledged to create jobs and drive economic growth, voicing commitment to banking reforms, the privatization of the domestic power sector and promising to develop infrastructure and agriculture in Africa’s third biggest economy. He also vowed better management of the OPEC member’s oil revenues, saying the creation of a sovereign wealth fund he signed into law on Friday would avoid “boom and bust” cycles.

Jonathan’s relationship with his opponents will be key if he is to galvanize support for reforms and govern strongly. The first big test will be his choice of ministers.

“It is a delicate balancing act,” said Dapo Oyewole, director of the Centre for African Policy and Peace Strategy. “He has to balance out the regional interests to ensure the cabinet displays a federal character, he has to reflect a religious coloration that ensures different parts of the country are carried along, but he is also

troops and U.N. peacekeepers that was blamed on southern forces.

The north sent tanks in the following day, and tens of thousands of people fled after widespread looting and burning broke out.

Khartoum has since defied calls by the United Nations, the United States and south Sudan’s president to withdraw, saying Abyei belongs to the north. — Reuters

going to have to reward some of the people that backed him,” he told Reuters.

Jonathan is the first president from the restive Niger Delta oil region, where expectations are also running high. He brokered an amnesty in 2009 which ended years of attacks on oil facilities, but thousands of former gunmen remain without jobs.

“People are very optimistic based on hope rather than reality,” said Bismarck Rewane, head of Lagos-based consultancy Financial Derivatives. “If those expectations are not managed, a few months

down the road he will be getting the blame for things that are beyond his control,” he told Reuters. Jonathan will also have to deal with the growing threat from radical Islamist sect Boko Haram in the remote northeast, which has been carrying out almost daily killings and fire bombings of police stations with impunity. Jonathan is serving what would have been the second term of late president Yar’Adua and there is an expectation in the north that at the next elections in four years, a northern candidate will take the ruling party ticket. — Reuters

ABUJA: Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan waves to the crowd during his inauguration ceremony at the main parade ground yesterday. — AFP

JERUSALEM: A year after Israeli marines stormed a Gaza-bound aid flotilla, killing nine Turkish activists and drawing worldwide condemnation, the Jewish state finds itself in even deeper diplomatic water. The May 31 operation, which saw troops stage a pre-dawn raid on six ships seeking to break the naval blockade on the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, plunged Israel’s already cool relationship with Ankara into crisis. The bloodshed provoked worldwide condemnation and played a major role in deepening Israel’s isolation on the international stage. One year on, and with the relationship with Turkey still ice-bound, Israel is facing another potential crisis as a second “Freedom Flotilla”-this time comprising 15 ships-prepares to sail for the tiny Palestinian enclave at the end of June.

IHH, the Istanbul-based Islamist charity that spearheaded the 2010 mission, says around 1,500 activists from more than 100 countries will participate in the fresh attempt to break the naval blockade on Gaza that Israel imposed in 2006. The flagship Mavi Marmara, a passenger ferry that was the scene of the bloodiest confrontations last year, will also take part in the new venture. “If you have a bit of conscience, you have to allow this second fleet,” IHH head Bulent Yildirim said earlier this month.

“Otherwise, everything you do will turn against you.”

Last year’s debacle, which ended up forcing Israel to ease its blockade on Gaza, was seized upon by proPalestinian activists as an effective way of putting pressure on the Jewish state. Since then, there have been a number of copycat attempts to reach Gaza. The latest was just two weeks ago, when Israeli forces fired warning shots toward a Malaysian aid ship as it approached Gaza, forcing the vessel to retreat to Egypt. Turkey, which is still demanding the Jewish state apologise and compensate the victims’ families for last May’s bloodshed, has warned Israel against using force against the new flotilla.

“It should be known that Turkey will give the necessary response to any repeated act of provocation by Israel on the high seas,” Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told Turkey’s NTV television. Israel sees attempts to breach the naval blockade as political rather than genuinely humanitarian. It has repeatedly offered to transfer any bona fide aid shipments directly to Gaza-as long as it can inspect the cargo to prevent arms smuggling to Hamas and other militant groups.

“The idea of another flotilla is both unnecessary and a provocation and we’ve called upon all fair-minded governments to do what they can to prevent another such occurrence,” Mark Regev, spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told AFP. “Israel will continue to make sure, to the best of our ability, that the only cargo that reaches Gaza has been inspected to ensure that it does not contain weaponry,” he said. On Saturday, Egypt reopened its Rafah border crossing with Gaza, allowing people to cross freely for the first time in four years, a move hailed by Hamas but criticised by Israel. The Jewish state imposed a tight blockade on Gaza in June 2006 after militants there snatched Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who is still being held.It was tightened a year later when the militant Islamist Hamas movement seized control of the territory, but the wave of international pressure that followed the flotilla debacle forced Israel to ease the restrictions. For Israel, the arrival of a new flotilla is part of a broader Palestinian strategy that seeks to chip away at the Jewish state’s legitimacy on the international stage. — AFP

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Local voting in Italy test for Berlusconi Berlusconi’s popularity sagging post scandals ROME: Italians were electing mayors in cities and towns across the country yesterday, with Premier Silvio Berlusconi hoping to avert defeat in his stronghold of Milan. The voting, which continues today, is fraught with potential risks for the government’s stability and Berlusconi’s leadership. A defeat in Milan, where Berlusconi has done well in the past, would be a heavy blow to the 74-year-old leader and likely unleash further tensions with his government allies.

The premier has been weakened by sex scandals, worn out by legal woes and besieged by unhappy allies, including the Northern League, on whose support the government depends. Berlusconi

was spending the weekend outside of the public eye in his Sardinian villa.

More than 5.5 million Italians are eligible to cast ballots in almost 90 run-offs to elect mayors and other local representatives across Italy. But in political terms it all boils down to the contests in Milan and, to a lesser extent, Naples. The conservatives have held Milan, Italy’s financial and fashion capital and the center of Berlusconi’s business, for nearly 20 years.

The city is also a crucial power base of Berlusconi’s main government party, the Northern League. But in the first round of voting two weeks ago, Berlusconi’s candidate, incumbent Mayor Letizia Moratti, trailed behind her center-left

opponent, Giuliano Pisapia, by more than 6 percentage points.

In Naples, the other key race, Berlusconi’s candidate, Gianni Lettieri, is seen as a front-runner after he won the first round - though he failed to garner the 51 percent of the vote necessary to avoid a run-off. His opponent is a former magistrate, Luigi de Magistris, who promises to increase recycling to help ease Naples’ long-standing garbage collection crisis. The center-left has long controlled Naples, but Berlusconi has a chance to grab it as Neapolitans might punish local administrators for failing to solve the garbage problem and decrease the city ’s high unemployment rate.

Berlusconi insists his government’s stability will not be affected by the local voting, whatever the result. But his own popularity has been sagging, amid the country’s economic woes and his personal legal problems. Ratings agency Standard and Poor’s has cut its outlook for Italy’s debt from stable to negative, citing low growth and concerns about the government’s ability to reduce public borrowing. This week, the government was criticized by the powerful industrialists’ association Confindustria for failing to revive the country’s sluggish economy. In April, Berlusconi went on trial on charges that he paid for sex with an underage Moroccan prostitute

and tried to cover it up. This current voting is his first electoral test since the trial opened. Another three cases - all related to his business - are active against him in Milan. The premier has denied all the charges and accused magistrates of being intent of ousting him politically.

He even took his fury against the Italian magistrates to last week’s Group of Eight summit in France, telling a seemingly surprised President Barack Obama that “we have almost a dictatorship of leftist judges.” The move, caught by cameras, has drawn a barrage of criticism and scorn, and led a recently appointed undersecretary, Daniela Melchiorre, to pull out of the government. — AP

British Queen, Obama put Irish tourism back on map Internet searches on Ireland surge after visits

BELGRADE: Darko Mladic, Ratko Mladic’s son (center) talks to members of the press yesterday. — AP

Mladic had nothing to do with Srebrenica, says son BELGRADE: Ratko Mladic - charged with genocide by a UN war crimes court - claims he did not order the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica when it fell during the 19921995 war, his son said yesterday. The former Bosnian Serb army commander, known for his brutality during the war, insists that he was not responsible for the mass executions committed by his troops after they overran the eastern Bosnian enclave in July 1995, his son Darko Mladic said. “Whatever was done in Srebrenica, he has nothing to do with it,” Darko Mladic said.

The massacre in Srebrenica is considered to be Europe’s worst atrocity since World War II. Bosnian Serb troops under Mladic’s command rounded up the Srebrenica boys and men and executed them in just several days, burying the remains in mass graves in the area. The UN tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, has indicted Mladic with genocide for the Srebrenica massacre and other atrocities of the Bosnian war. Prosecutors say they have compelling evidence that Mladic personally ordered and oversaw the executions in and around Srebrenica. The son, Darko, says his father is adamant that the massacre was committed without his knowledge - something that prosecutors have argued is impossible because of the scope of the killings.

“His orders were to evacuate the wounded, the women and the children and then the fighters. Whatever was done behind his back, he has nothing to do with that,” Darko Mladic said. The 69-year-old former general is being held in a Serbian jail after his arrest last week after 16 years on the run. He was indicted in 1995. It was not clear when Mladic made the claims about Srebrenica, which his son described as his “general position.” Mladic’s family and lawyers have been fighting extradition, arguing that the general is too ill to face charges. Serbian authorities have stepped up security throughout the country ahead

of an ultranationalist rally planned in central Belgrade yesterday evening to protest Mladic’s arrest.

Similar rallies in the past have resulted in clashes between the police and rightwing extremists. In Bosnia, some 3,000 supporters arrived yesterday by bus from other parts of Bosnia to his hometown of Kalinovik, many in black T-shirts with Mladic’s picture and the words “Serbia in my heart.” The crowd called Serbian President Boris Tadic a “betrayer” for ordering the arrest of “the Serb hero” and urged him to “kill himself.” Many said they would fight under Mladic again. Mladic’s family plans to demand today that a Serbian court order an independent medical checkup to dispute a conclusion by court-appointed doctors that Mladic is fit to stand trial.

“His basic human rights are being violated,” Darko Mladic said. Prosecutors have dismissed the family’s moves as a delaying tactic. Defense requests appear likely to delay Mladic’s extradition until at least tomorrow. His lawyer, Milos Saljic, said he would send an extradition appeal by mail instead of submitting it personally - in order to gain more time. Mladic has suffered at least two, and possibly three, strokes, the latest in 2008, his son said. The suspect’s right arm is only semi-functional, and his family says he is not lucid.

“It is impossible to talk to him sensibly about usual things, to talk about his defense case,” lawyer Saljic said. “Because he is really in bad shape psychologically.”

Above all, the former commander keeps demanding that he be allowed to visit the grave of his daughter, who committed suicide in 1994. “He says if he can’t go there, he wants his daughter’s coffin brought in here,” the lawyer added. “His condition is alarming.” Saljic said the family does not believe that Mladic would receive proper medical attention in The Hague. He noted that several high-profile Serbs had died there, including former President Slobodan Milosevic with a heart attack. — AP

DUBLIN: After Barack Obama put it on the map by downing a gulp of Guinness, residents of the US president’s tiny ancestral home of Moneygall have spent the past week greeting busloads of tourists.

“It’s still all happening. We’re still buzzing,” said Moneygall resident Marian Healy, whose son Henry welcomed his distant cousin Barack to the sleepy village during the president’s day trip to Ireland last week. “ There was a busload of Japanese tourists this morning and there were Americans here earlier too, looking for Henry to have his photograph taken with them.”

Restaurateurs, hoteliers and tour operators countrywide are now hoping for a “Moneygall effect” of their own.

Obama’s morale-boosting stopoff, together with Queen Elizabeth’s historic state visit just days earlier, have given Irish tourism a boost it desperately needed after three years of recession saw revenues and visitors drop by about a third.

After a record 1,200 foreign journalists arrived for the first visit of a British monarch since independence from London in 1921, global headlines took a rare positive turna break from the relentless run of bad economic news that culminated in Ireland’s IMF/EU bailout late last year.

The renewed interest in a country famed for its beautiful coastlines and rich literary history seems to be working. Internet searches by potential visitors from Ireland’s two main overseas markets surged by almost 200 percent for some tourist spots included on the royal itinerary, according to Hotels.com, a leading provider of worldwide hotel accommodation.

The website said searches last week by UK tourists for the county of Tipperary, where the Queen visit-

ed the Rock of Cashel, a medieval national movement that attracts thousands of tourists each year,

capitalize on the publicity.

“If we were riding along normally, I’d say it’s lovely to have the

WARSAW: Soldiers march past US President Barack Obama as he takes part in an arrival ceremony at the presidential palace, May 28, 2011. — AFP nearly trebled compared to a year ago.

Searches by US tourists for Corkthe last stop of the Queen’s fourday trip-doubled. Interest also jumped at home, with 225 percent more Irish tourists thinking of visiting Kildare, where the Queen spent an afternoon in the heartland of Irish horse-racing. With state-funded Tourism Ireland increasing its advertising spend this month by 35 percent compared to a year ago, officials say they are prepared to

queen here and you’re always delighted to have the President of the United States, but it would have a marginal impact on tourism,” Eamon McKeon, chief executive of the Irish Tourist Industr y Confederation (ITIC), told Reuters.

“But I think coming as it did at the tail end of six months when the news has just been awful every day, it’s far more important. It’s up to us to stretch the publicity out for months and milk the goodwill for all it’s worth.”

French minister accused of rape resigns

Maltese say yes to divorce VALLETTA: Overwhelmingly Catholic Malta has voted in favor of legalizing divorce, Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi announced yesterday after a referendum in one of the only two countries where it is still banned.

Gonzi, who campaigned against the introduction of divorce ahead of Saturday’s nonbinding referendum, said it was now up the Mediterranean archipelago’s parliament to legalize the dissolution of marriage. “This is not the result that I wished for, but the will of the people has to be respected and parliament should enact a law for the introduction of divorce,” the conservative prime minister said. Malta is one of only two countries in the world-the Philippines is the otherthat bans divorce. Chile was the last country to legalize divorce in 2004 after overwhelming public pressure.

Saturday’s non-binding referendum asked the island’s 306,000 mainly Catholic voters whether parliament should introduce a new law that would allow couples to obtain a divorce after four years of separation. Legal separation is widespread in the European Union’s smallest member state, but there are many legal obstacles to remarrying. “The yes vote has won and we urge parliamentarians to vote a bill for the introduction of divorce,” said lawyer Deborah Schembri, who led the ‘yes’ campaign. With ballots still being counted and an official result not expected until later yesterday, Schembri said the yes camp had

won around 54 percent of the vote based on a sample from different constituencies.

Arthur Galea Salomone, spokesman for the anti-divorce campaign, admitted “the people’s choice was clear, they opted for the introduction of divorce.” Divorce legislation is likely to squeeze through parliament as Gonzi’s ruling Nationalist Party has the slimmest of majorities-one seat-and analysts have said at least one of his MPs had backed the yes campaign.

The Roman Catholic Church, which looms large over the archipelago where 95 percent of the population claim the faith, did not campaign officially in the referendum. However, Valletta’s Archbishop Paul Cremona had warned churchgoers in a letter they faces a choice between building and destroying family values. “By this vote, the citizen will either build or destroy. A choice in favor of permanent marriage is an act of faith in the family, built upon a bond of love which cannot be severed,” said the letter, read out at masses. In addition, priests have reportedly threatened to refuse communion to those who vote “yes” in the referendum. Marriages can only be annulled by the Catholic Church’s Ecclesiastical Tribunal in a complex and rare procedure that takes around eight years.

The only exception to the divorce ban is for Maltese married to foreign nationals or Maltese who are permanent residents abroad.— AFP

Ireland’s new government is banking on a recover y in the tourism industr y, having this month come up with a modest package of measures to revive the labor-intensive sector. Dublin agreed the measures-which include a temporary reduction in the sales tax on restaurants and hotels, an easing of visa restrictions and the scrapping of a travel tax-with its creditors in the IMF and the European Union, on the basis that it would not derail efforts to cut the budget deficit.

ITIC predicts that these measures, along with the increased publicity and a regaining of some of the competitiveness lost during the heady days of the “Celtic Tiger” economy, when hotel prices jumped, will return the industry to revenue and visitor growth of between 4 and 6 percent this year.

McKeon said 10 percent growth in 2012 and a 6 percent rise per annum after that would-all things being equal-see the industry match its 2007 peak where it welcomed 7.7 million tourists to the country.

While economic recovery will be led by exports and a hoped-for recovery in consumer spending, economists say a pickup in tourism would do much to eat into Ireland’s 14.6 percent unemployment rate, the second highest in the euro zone after Spain.

“It won’t bring a huge amount of money into the economy on a national sense and it won’t for example do a great deal to solve the budget deficit, but it gets at those industries that are hurting the most,” said Ronnie O’ Toole, chief economist at National Irish Bank. “We have got a few very big problems right now and one of them is unemployment, so strong growth from the one export sector that’s really employment-intensive would be very positive.” — Reuters

MADRID: A protester holds a sign reading ‘Listen to the anger of the people’ during a general assembly yesterday. —AP

Some immigrants cite lack of Spanish as impediment NEW YORK: Cornelia Aguilar needs help when she goes to the doctor or when her coworkers at a nail salon call her on the phone.

A Mexican who has lived in the US for two years, she only speaks a variant of Mixteco, an indigenous language from the states of Oaxaca, Puebla and Guerrero in southern Mexico. “It is hard sometimes,” whispers the 28-year-old, who was born in San Miguel Grande. She is one of a sizable number of Latin American immigrants who have settled in New York in recent years and speak only indigenous languages - ancient tongues that existed long before Spanish conquistadors arrived in the Americas.

Speaking neither the primary language in their adopted homes nor the most common language of their fellow countrymen, many say not knowing Spanish is a barrier akin to not knowing English. Experts say that’s fueling an increase in the number of Spanish classes attended by indigenous Latin American immigrants. Arnulfo Gonzalez, an older brother of Aguilar’s husband, still remembers the mockery from his Mexican coworkers when he first arrived in the United States in 1993 speaking one of the many

kinds of Mixteco. He said he worked at a restaurant and did not know what broccoli was because he had never seen one in his hometown of San Marcos, in Oaxaca.

“I learned Spanish here. It was very hard, because I worked with people who spoke to me in Spanish and they insulted me,” he said.

According to the 2000 Census, the latest data available, more than 400,000 people living in the US are of Hispanic American Indian origins. In the New York City borough of Staten Island, many Mexicans speak Chinanteco. In the South Bronx and Astoria, Queens, some speak Otomi. Nahuatl can be heard all over the city. A community speaking primarily Trique lives in Albany, New York. In Trenton, New Jersey, some Guatemalans speak Quiche.

Peruvians who speak Quechua live in Queens and Paterson, New Jersey. Hondurans and Nicaraguans speaking Garifuna live in the Bronx. There about 150,000 members of the Mixteco community in California, according to a study done by Radio Bilingue, a radio company. Latin American immigrants who speak indigenous languages can also be found in North Carolina and Texas, among other areas, experts say.—AP

PARIS: A minister accused of sexually assaulting two women he once worked with resigned yesterday in an apparent bid to spare the French government the kind of notoriety the opposition has faced since its leading man, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, was charged with attempting to rape a Manhattan hotel maid. A preliminary investigation was opened last week against George Tron, who served as a junior civil service minister, after two women alleged that he had attacked them between 2007 and 2010.

One of the women said she was inspired to come forward after a housekeeper at a luxury Manhattan hotel claimed she was sexually assaulted by Strauss-Kahn, 62, a leading presidential hopeful in next year’s elections for the rival Socialist Party. He resigned his post as International Monetary Fund chief after charges were filed in New York.

Tron, 53, is a member of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s conservative UMP party who joined the government just over a year ago. Tron’s resignation appeared to be damage control as Sarkozy primps his image for a likely re-election bid in the presidential race in a year’s time. The popular Strauss-Kahn had been expected to run as the Socialist candidate for president.

Both Tron and Strauss-Kahn have denied any wrongdoing. No replacement for Tron was immediately announced. It was widely reported that Budget Minister Francois Baroin would absorb Tron’s functions, seamlessly filling the void in a move to keep the spotlight off the government. A statement from Prime Minister Francois Fillon’s office noted Tron has denied the allegations and praised him for acting in the “general interest.” Tron’s lawyer, Olivier Schnerb, has said the allegations against him are “unjust” and he has received instructions from his client to sue the women for “malicious slander.” He claims the women were both fired from their jobs at the town hall of Draveil, south of Paris - where Tron has been mayor since 1995 - suggesting that they had a personal vendetta.

A preliminary investigation for rape and sexual assault was opened Wednesday against Tron. This initial probe allows prosecutors to decide whether to pursue or drop the case. The two women, aged 34 and 36, have claimed that foot massages administered by Tron evolved into assault. Tron is adept at foot reflexology, an alternative medicine based on the notion that zones of the foot correspond to certain body parts and pressure on those points can promote health. —AP

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Obama set to promote General Dempsey to top military post WASHINGTON: US Army General Martin Dempsey, a former English literature teacher who commanded an armored division in key battles in Iraq, was expected to be named new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff toay, a US source said. The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said President Barack Obama was “expected” to promote Dempsey to the top uniformed military job on Memorial Day, the annual holiday set aside to remember America’s war dead. The White House earlier issued an advisory saying the president, who is on his way back from Europe, would make Department of Defense “personnel announcements” in the White House Rose Garden. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and National Security Adviser Tom Donilon will attend the ceremony, the release said.

Dempsey had been considered the most likely candidate to succeed the outgoing holder of the US military’s top job, Admiral Mike Mullen, after Obama’s “favorite general” James Cartwright was passed over amid concerns over his standing among fellow officers. Nominating Dempsey would be an unusual move and suggested that earlier plans were scrapped, given that the four-star army general took over as chief of the US Army only in April. Dempsey served in the Iraq war, commanding the 1st Armored Division in Iraq in 2003-04, and later led training efforts for Iraqi forces.

The search for a successor to Mullen as the president’s top military adviser highlights uneasy relations between civilians in Obama’s White House and top officers, who have clashed over the war in Afghanistan.

The next chairman of the Joint Chiefs will form part of a new national security team under Obama that will have to contend with the nine-year-old war in Afghanistan, turmoil in the Middle East and mounting pressure on the defense budget. In April, Obama nominated CIA director Leon Panetta to take over as defense secretary and Afghan war commander General David Petraeus to succeed Panetta at the spy agency.

Media reports said the current chief of the air force, General Norton Schwartz, was a top contender to succeed Cartwright as the next vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The nominations all must be confirmed by the Senate. Cartwright, a technologysavvy Marine currently serving as vice chairman, has been described as the president’s preferred general who drew up an alterna-

tive plan in 2009 for the war in Afghanistan, breaking ranks with senior military leaders who were pushing for a large surge of US troops. Obama in the end agreed to most of what the military asked for, ordering 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan. But Cartwright emerged as a favorite of a White House team that had sharply disagreed with other military leaders over Afghan strategy, including Mullen, the current chairman. As a result of Cartwright’s role in the Afghan strategy sessions and other episodes, some officers concluded he was not a “team player,” raising potential questions about whether he would enjoy the confidence of senior officers, officials and analysts said.

Cartwright, known for his expertise on missile defense and cyber warfare, had once been seen as the likely successor to Mullen-

whose four-year tenure ends in September.

But speculation has mounted in recent weeks that he would be passed over.

Last month, the White House announced nominations for the next defense secretary and Afghan commander but not for the chairman’s job. An investigation by the Pentagon’s inspector general in February cleared Cartwright of allegations that he had a sexual relationship with a junior officer.

The probe found no evidence of a romantic relationship prohibited under military rules, but it did criticize the general for failing to discipline the woman after she passed out drunk on a bench in his hotel room during a work trip. Some officials said the episode investigated by the inspector general was not a crucial factor in the decision not to nominate Cartwright. — AFP

A ‘non’ to secession? An election shakes Quebec Debate on whether French-Canadian province needs separatist movement

JOPLIN: Katlyn Wilkins (in tree) and Andrea Wilkins Morelli work on securing an American flag in a tree as they deal with the destruction caused by a massive tornado that passed through the town killing at least 139 people yesterday. — AFP

Joplin tornado death toll goes up to 139 JOPLIN: The numbers look increasingly bleak for families hoping for the best after a monster tornado that devastated the town of Joplin, as the city has raised the death toll to at least 139 and state officials say 100 people are still missing.

Thousands more people far beyond Joplin had been waiting for good news about a teen believed to have been ejected or sucked from his vehicle on the way home from graduation. Several social-networking efforts specifically focused on finding information about Will Norton. But his family says he, too, is among the dead found in a pond near where his truck was located. “At least we know that he wasn’t out there suffering,” his aunt Tracey Presslor said, holding a framed portrait of her 18-year-old nephew at a news conference. “Knowing that he was gone right away was really a blessing for us.” Joplin City Manager Mark Rohr said Saturday during a news conference that the death toll rose by three to at least 142, but later revised that figure down to 139 without elaboration.

Mike O’Connell, a spokesman for the Missouri Department of Public Safety, told The Associated Press on Saturday that he could not confirm the city’s updated death toll number. He said the state of Missouri currently places the death toll at 126, saying they have no reason to raise

that number. State officials say there are 142 sets of human remains at the morgue handling those killed by the storm and some could be from the same victim. If the death toll does stand at 139, it would place this year’s tornado death toll at 520 and make 2011 the deadliest year for tornadoes since 1950. Until now, the highest recorded death toll by the National Weather Service in a single year was 519 in 1953. There were deadlier storms before 1950, but those counts were based on estimates and not on precise figures. On Saturday night, the Department of Public Safety made public a list of 73 people who had been confirmed dead and whose next of kin had been notified. The tornado - an EF-5 packing 200 mph (322 kph) winds also injured more than 900 people.

Tallying and identifying the dead and the missing has proven a complex, delicate and sometimes confusing exercise for both authorities and loved ones. Missouri officials said Saturday that the number of people unaccounted for stands at 100. The Missouri Department of Public Safety said that within that number, nine people have been reported dead by their families, but state officials are working to confirm those. Newton County coroner Mark Bridges said most, if not all, of the people brought to the temporary morgue could be identified this weekend. — AP

For ground zero workers, another 9/11 anniversary NEW YORK: The men and women who build New York City’s skyscrapers aren’t a soft bunch, but even the toughest were unprepared for the job that took over their lives in September 2001. While Americans grieved the 9/11 attacks and US troops went to war in Afghanistan, another army, one made up of ironworkers, heavy equipment operators and mason tenders, toiled day and night to clear away the destruction of the World Trade Center ’s twin towers in lower Manhattan and recover the bodies.

In just 81/2 months, an estimated 1.8 million tons of twisted steel and pulverized concrete were painstakingly removed from the site of the destroyed World Trade Center twin towers, transforming a mountainous pile into a 16acre (6.5-hectare) hole that became known as The Pit. By Memorial Day, at the end of May, it was all but over. The day after the holiday, workers cut down the last column of steel still standing at the site. “I remember coming out of the hole,” said ironworker Danny Doyle, one of the men to wield the cutting torch.

“And it was Fleet Week, and all the sailors and the enlisted men had come down, and they lined the whole ramp on both sides, and as we were leaving ... they were all saluting us.”

Today marks the ninth anniversary of the formal end of the recovery operation, which concluded in 2002 with a ceremony to remove the 65-ton column that Doyle and others had cut down. The steel, covered in a black shroud, was driven up a long ramp to street level. “It was closure, really, more or less,” he said. “That was it for us. For me, anyway. From what I saw down there, and to see it finally empty. I thought, ‘That’s good enough for me.’ It was time to move on.” In the end, closure - that state of grace people

QUEBEC CITY: For all the stereotypes of Canada as a ho-hum, steady-as-she-goes sort of place, politics here can be a wild ride. With virtually no warning from pollsters, voters have dealt Quebec’s separatists a stunning humiliation and set off a debate about whether the French-Canadian province even needs a separatist movement in this globalized age. The upheaval wrought by the May 2 parliamentary election is not unusual; in 1993 voters stripped the ruling conservatives down from 151 seats to just two in one of the biggest reversals in the annals of parliamentary democracy. This time they reshuffled the deck four ways: by routing the Bloc Quebecois separatists; handing an unassailable majority to a conservative prime minister and Ronald Reagan admirer; boosting the leftist New Democratic Party from obscurity to leader of the opposition; and relegating the Liberals, long considered Canada’s natural party of government, to third place.

The Bloc Quebecois slumped from 47 seats to 4 in the 308-seat federal Parliament, rendering it all but impotent at the national level at a time when Quebec separatists are also out of office in their own province.

Separatism “may not be dead, but it’s hardly healthy. You can’t divorce the election results from the larger picture of sovereignty versus federalism,” says Chantal Hebert, a respected political commentator from Quebec. One reason may be that Quebec, 80 percent Frenchspeaking, has plenty of independence even without quitting Canada. It sets its own income tax, has its own immigration policy favoring French-speakers, bases its legal code on France’s and has legislation favoring the use of French over English.

Still, the province of 7.8 million people always has been a contentious subject: in the 1760s, when the British completed their takeover of what was then called New France; in 1867, when the country of Canada was formed as a dominion under Queen Victoria, and a century later, when it thrilled to visiting French President Charles de Gaulle and his cry of “Vive le Quebec libre!” - long live free Quebec.

Spasms of terrorism in the 1960s and late 1970 injected menace into the campaign, and a “language police” on patrol for overly prominent displays of English, added an Orwellian undertone that triggered an exodus of English-speakers, mostly to neighboring Ontario. Since then Quebec has gone through one election, referendum or constitutional parley after another, sometimes falling a hairsbreadth short of approving secession.

Even now, no one is predicting the death of the independence movement. For one thing, this was a national election, and the Parti Quebecois (as opposed to the Bloc Quebecois) remains strong as a provincial party, even if out of power now. It stands a good chance of winning the next provincial election, in 2012 or 2013, at which point it could hold another referendum on secession. By

MONTREAL: In this file picture, Parti Quebecois leader Pauline Marois speaks to university students. — AP contrast, the New Democratic Party, which picked up many of the Bloc Quebecois’ seats, has no provincial home of its own, and seeks to represent the left throughout Canada.

From 1993 until this month’s rout, the Bloc had won the majority of Quebec’s 75 seats in six straight federal elections. Now it may want to shift its efforts from contesting national elections to boosting the provincial party as the standard-bearer of the independence quest. Some are making the argument that the secessionists will have better luck with a referendum under the current prime minister, Stephen Harper. Although Harper speaks good French - anyone who does not could not win election to his job - he comes from distant Alberta and may be too conservative for Quebec’s broadly center-left taste. His Conservative Party lost half of its 10 Quebec seats in the election.

But for now, the defeat is so thorough that a whole wave of young unknowns, mostly New Democrats, suddenly find themselves in Parliament. They include five college students and an assistant bar manager, Ruth Ellen Brosseau, who barely speaks French and who took a Las Vegas vacation in mid-campaign.

Even Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe was unseated. “It’s very hard to fight change, especially change represented by ghosts candidates who didn’t bother campaigning, who didn’t speak French,” he grumbled. Not all Quebec French-speakers want to quit Canada. The province currently is governed by the Liberals whose leader, Premier Jean Charest, is a staunch federalist who rejoices at the swing to the NDP. “Quebecers chose to support a political party that believes in building Canada, and that’s significant,” he told The Associated Press. “They don’t want the referendum, sovereignty, independence option. We’re not

there. They’ve moved on from that issue, so that’s a very positive sign.” Parti Quebecois leader Pauline Marois acknowledged the election result was “a hard moment,” but added in an interview with The AP: “I have bad news for the people who think that sovereignty is dead: It is not the case.” However, random interviews with voters in Montreal and in Quebec City, the capital and one of the oldest cities in North America, confirmed that Quebec identity was not a top priority.

Emma Potvin, 29, used to vote for the Bloc Quebecois, but “I was just a bit tired of them talking about separation,” so she switched parties. Some pointed to a generational shift.

Younger voters who have grown up with Celine Dion and Cirque de Soleil are more at ease with the English-speaking world where those icons found their global audience. “For certain their view of English is different,” said commentator Hebert. “For them English is the language of the Internet. It’s kind of a passport to do things. It is not the language of someone who colonized or conquered you.”

They are not hostile to sovereignty, she said, it is just “not the priority in the way that it was for their parents.”

Sitting with a friend on a Montreal stoop, 33-year-old Erik Gaudreault said he feels more Canadian than Quebecois and thinks his compatriots should be bilingual and think big.

Language is not the problem right now, he said. “It’s jobs, it’s money... Education, health, all the problems we have in Quebec.” On the other hand, there are those like Serge Perreault, a 44-year-old forklift driver in Montreal, who worry that the NDP, as a national party, will not be able to serve his province the way the Bloc Quebecois did. “Is a federal party able to defend Quebecois people, Quebec culture, to defend a province?” he asked. — AP

Mexico detains nearly 50 members of 2 drug gangs

NEW YORK: In this file photo, construction and recovery workers watch as an ironworker cuts down the last remaining steel beam from the site of the Sept 11 terrorist attacks. — AP always seem to seek after tragedy - was elusive, both for the project and the workers themselves.

Construction workers would continue finding bones and other fragments of human remains for years, hidden in adjacent buildings and beneath manholes.

Demolition work on one heavily damaged tower at the edge of the site, the former Deutsche Bank building, didn’t end until this year. Two firefighters died in 2007 when that tower caught fire.

And, as the years wore on, it became apparent that the men and women who cleared the site had given more than their back-breaking labor. — AP

MORELIA: Mexico’s federal police detained nearly 50 members of two major drug cartels, including suspects in the recent armed attack on a police helicopter, authorities said Saturday. The suspects include 36 members of the La Familia cartel and 10 members of the Zetas drug gang, the federal police said in a statement. La Familia gang members were detained in connection with the attack on a federal police helicopter Tuesday that wounded two officers and forced the craft to land. The statement said 11 other alleged cartel members were killed during the operation Friday night in the Pacific Coast state of Jalisco.

Authorities added that the 10 Zeta members were detained Friday at a ranch in Cancun, where a kidnapping victim was found and released. Along with the 36 La Familia members, police seized over 70 rifles, 20,000 weapon cartridges, three grenades and 14 handguns in an air and land raid that left two officers injured.

Federal Police Commissioner Facundo Rosas said the mass

detention has delivered a blow to a top leader of La Familia, Jose de Jesus Mendez Vargas, the alleged leader of the detained suspects.

“His group has been weakened, which is why we don’t rule out the possibility that (Mendez Vargas) will look to other criminal organizations for support,” Rosas said during a news conference.

Rosas said Mendez Vargas is locked in a confrontation with The Knights Templar, a rival faction of La Familia. The Knights’ split from the cartel is believed to be the source of a recent surge in violence in the western state of Michoacan. The increase in cartel firefights and clashes with police in the state prompted frightened villagers to flee outlying hamlets and seek shelter in town centers earlier this week. Since then, all 3,500 rural residents who had sought refuge in churches, schools and recreation centers in Apatzingan and Buenavista Tomatlan have returned home, said Michoacan state Civil Defense Director Carlos Mandujano.

The makeshift shelters were dismantled Saturday, he added.

However, 1,000 federal police and armed forces deployed earlier in the week to patrol trouble spots and calm fears will stay at their posts until further notice, military authorities say. In a separate incident, an Air Force helicopter crashed Saturday near the same violence-plagued Michoacan city of Apatzingan where the first helicopter had been shot on

Tuesday, the Defense Department said in a statement.

This time, however, the crash was an accident caused by apparent mechanical failure and is being investigated, the Defense Department said. The pilot and co-pilot suffered minor injuries when the chopper went down in a wooded area shortly after lifting off from a local Army base. — AP

MEXICO CITY: Federal police escort one of nearly 50 suspects of two major drug cartels to her presentation to the news media, Saturday May 28, 2011. — AP

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NATO airstrike kills 12 children Karzai issues ‘last warning’ to US over deaths KABUL: A NATO airstrike targeting insurgents inadvertently hit two civilian homes in the volatile southwestern Helmand province, killing 14 women and children, an Afghan government official said yesterday. Dawood Ahmadi, a spokesman for the provincial government, said the alliance launched the airstrike late on Saturday in retaliation for an attack earlier in the day on a US Marine base in Helmand’s northwest district of Nawzad. He said NATO hit two civilian houses, killing five girls, seven boys, and two women.

NATO spokesman Maj Tim James said a joint coalition and Afghan delegation was traveling yesterday to the site to investigate. He didn’t confirm the airstrike and provided no details about it or the attack on the

stepped up a spring offensive across Afghanistan. On Saturday, a Taleban suicide bomber wearing a police uniform blew himself up inside a heavily guarded compound in northern Afghanistan as top Afghan and international offi-

cials were meeting with members of the international coalition.

Among the dead was Gen Daud Daud, regional police commander in northern Afghanistan.

Daud was a former deputy interior minister for counternarcotics

TALOQAN: Former Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah (center) sits near the coffin of slain police chief, General Mohammed Daoud Daoud, who was killed in a suicide bombing at a provincial governor’s office yesterday. —AFP Marines. Civilian deaths are an ongoing source of tension between NATO and Afghan officials. Afghan President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly called on coalition forces to minimize night raids and airstrikes in order to avoid accidental deaths. Helmand borders Pakistan and is an insurgent bastion. The province’s vast poppy fields, especially in the north, are the Taleban’s prime profit center.

Afghan insurgents have

cials were leaving a meeting. The blast killed two senior Afghan police commanders and wounded a German general in command of coalition troops in the region.

Two German soldiers and two other Afghans were also killed in the blast that came just weeks before a planned drawdown of US troops begins this summer. The bomber detonated his explosivesladen vest inside the governor’s complex in Takhar province, where high-ranking Afghan offi-

and a former bodyguard of Ahmad Shah Massoud, the charismatic Tajik leader who commanded the Northern Alliance and died in an Al-Qaeda suicide bombing two days before the Sept 11, 2001, attacks that provoked the US invasion. Also killed were provincial police chief Gen Shah Jahan Noori, a secretary to the governor and one of Daud’s bodyguards, the health director said.

Gen Markus Kneip, the NATO force’s commander for nine north-

Nepal’s parliament survives KATHMANDU: Nepal’s political leaders narrowly avoided a constitutional crisis yesterday by agreeing to give parliament a threemonth reprieve to complete its work, but they remain deeply divided on key issues.

The deal, in which the prime minister agreed to stand down after less than four months in office, followed days of tense negotiations over the future of Nepal’s 601member parliament, or Constituent Assembly. The assembly was elected in 2008 after a decade of civil war with a twoyear mandate to write a new national constitution and oversee the peace process that began when the conflict ended in 2006.

The new constitution was intended to pave the way for fresh elections, but despite a 12-month extension agreed last year, the assembly has so far been unable to complete even a draft version, amid deep divisions. Under the latest agreement, reached just before dawn after talks dragged into

ALLAHABAD: An Indian migrant laborer sleeps on the trunk of a wayside tree where he secures his belongings also on hot afternoon yesterday. Most parts of northern India are experiencing severe hot weather with the maximum temperature around 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit). —AP

the early hours yesterday, the parties pledged to produce at least a draft of the charter by August 28 for the public to see.

They also promised to address the major outstanding issues of the peace process, which include the integration of thousands of former Maoist rebel fighters into the national security forces and the establishment of a commission to investigate wartime rights abuses.

But the constitution is a far-reaching document that seeks to create a new secular, democratic republic following the abolition of Nepal’s centuries-old Hindu monarchy in 2008, and similar pledges have been broken in the past. The three biggest parties-the ruling UML (Unified MarxistLeninist), the Maoists and the main opposition Nepali Congress-remain at odds on key issues such as the creation of federal states where none currently exists. “Three months is not very far away,” said political commentator Yubaraj Ghimire.

“They have bought some time, but I don’t know if they can settle the big issues like federalism, or the setting up of a truth and reconciliation commission (in that time).” Prime Minister Jhalanath Khanal agreed to step down once a new powersharing government could be formed, although no time frame was given. Khanal, who was only elected in February after 16 failed attempts to vote in a new leader for the troubled Himalayan nation, leads a coalition government that includes the former rebel Maoists, the largest party in parliament.

The widespread hope that followed the end of the civil war and the abolition of the unpopular monarchy has been replaced by a growing sense of anger and frustration in Nepal, one of the world’s poorest countries.

Political instability has stifled economic growth, forcing many people to seek work overseas, and thousands of Nepalese have taken to the streets in recent days to protest at the lack of progress in their country. In a statement released ahead of yesterday’s deal, President Ram Baran Yadav urged the parties to work together to ensure the new constitution succeeded. “We all are concerned that the Constituent Assembly failed to promulgate a constitution despite the one-year extension,” he said. “However, there is no alternative to complete the constitution-making process through mutual trust and agreement.” —AFP

ern provinces, was among the wounded, German Defense Minister Thomas de Maiziere said in Berlin. Abdul Jabar Taqwa, the Takhar province governor who was at the meeting and suffered burns to his head, hands and back, described the attack from a residence where he was recovering yesterday.

“General Kneip and I were about to leave the building,” he said. “Suddenly, we heard a very big explosion. I didn’t know from which direction the sound came or what was going on ... the explosion threw me out of the building and down the stairs.”

Nine other Afghans were wounded, including a cameraman working in the governor’s office and eight Afghan troops. The meeting focused on ways to prevent another violent protest in the northern province, where security has deteriorated as NATO and Afghan forces tackle insurgent strongholds in the south. Last week, 12 people died in Taloqan when a protest over a NATO raid that killed four dissolved into a riot.

The Afghan public, which has grown increasingly hostile to foreigners as the nearly decadelong war continues, tends to perceive the NATO raids as capturing the wrong people or mistreating civilians during searches of private homes and compounds. On Saturday, Karzai ordered that only Afghan troops - not NATO forces - should carry out special operations and night raids and that the international coalition should not conduct any raids that have not been coordinated beforehand with Afghan authorities. The move was aimed at quelling popular anger over what the raids, but it wasn’t immediately clear what impact, if any, Karzai’s orders would have on NATO’s actions. The coalition has defended the raids as a necessity to flush out insurgents from their hideouts. —AP

HELMAND: US Marines walk in their camp as smoke and dust rise from a controlled explosion near the US military base Camp Leatherneck yesterday. —AFP

Kabul claims NATO has left 52 Afghans dead KANDAHAR: Afghan authorities said yesterday NATO had killed 52 people, mostly civilians, in air strikes against insurgents as violence picked up in recent weeks with the start of the fighting season. In the southern province of Helmand, local authorities said at least 14 civilians, including women and children, were killed and six injured in an air raid Saturday. US Marines in Helmand’s Nawzad district called in air support after their base came under attack from small arms fire, the provincial government said in a statement.

“During the air strike, two civilian houses were targeted which killed 14 civilians and six others were wounded,” it said. The statement said the dead included five girls, seven boys and two women. “ISAF are aware of the reports that civilians were allegedly killed in an ISAF air strike,” Major Tim James, a spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, told AFP. “(The) Regional Command South West has sent a joint assessment team to the area to look into the allegation and they will issue their findings to the press.”

Aslam, a local elder of Nawzad district, told AFP he “lost 12 relatives while 10 others including children were injured” in the air strike. He said some shots were fired at ISAF helicopters which flew into the area, adding that the choppers returned after 10 to 20 minutes and fired rockets, killing the “innocent civilians”. According to him, five children, five men and two women were killed in the attack. Separately the governor of Nuristan yesterday told AFP that 18 civilians and 20

police were killed by “friendly fire” during USled air strikes against insurgents in his troubled northeastern province.

Nuristan was the scene of heavy battles last week between the Taleban and Afghan security forces. The police and civilians were targeted Wednesday after they were mistaken for militants, Jamaluddin Badr said. “The policemen were killed due to friendly fire,” Badr said, adding the air strike in the troubled district of Do Ab targeted a location that the officers “had just” taken from the insurgents during fighting. “Civilians were killed because the Taleban... (who) ran out of ammunition fled into the civilians’ houses and then the civilians were mistaken with the Taleban and fired upon,” the governor said. Major James said those allegations were also being investigated. “ISAF has sent a fact-finding team to investigate the allegations about civilian and police casualties in Nuristan,” he said. “Our initial reporting does not indicate civilian casualties in that air strike,” he added.

Civilian casualties in the US-led war against Al-Qaeda-linked Taleban insurgents are a sensitive issue and one of the main causes of a widening drift between President Hamid Karzai and his US backers.

Karzai on Saturday ordered Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak to take over control of night raids from the NATO forces.

Karzai’s administration says most civilian casualties occur during such operations and that night raids of civilian homes drive warweary Afghans against his already-fragile administration. —AFP

News

in brief

Constitution of Tibet govt-in-exile amended DHARMSALA: The Dalai Lama has signed amendments to the constitution of the Tibetan government-in-exile giving up his position as political leader. Tibetan parliament member Karma Yeshi said yesterday the 75-yearold Dalai Lama will now only make suggestions to the Cabinet. Yeshi said the parliament passed the amendments Saturday. They also include changing the name of the Tibetan government-in-exile to the Tibetan Administration to include Tibetans in Tibet. Earlier this year the Dalai Lama announced he would relinquish his political role. In April Harvard legal scholar Lobsang Sangay was elected prime minister. The Dalai Lama has lived in Dharmsala in northern India since fleeing Tibet after a failed 1959 uprising against Beijing’s rule.

Gunmen kill 2 police in Pakistan QUETTA: A Pakistani police officer says gunmen have killed two Shiite policemen in the country’s southwest.

Amir Mohammad says the attack yesterday at a checkpoint also wounded three bystanders in Quetta city, the capital of the sparsely populated, rugged province of Baluchistan. He says both the dead men belong to minority Shiite community often targeted by al-Qaida linked Sunni militant groups. Baluchistan, rich in resources, has seen a low-level insurgency by nationalist groups who want a bigger share of the revenues.

Pakistan has been under attack by militants since the May 2 US raid that killed Osama Bin Laden. On Saturday, a suicide bomber targeting pro-government tribal elders killed eight men in the troubled Bajur tribal region, near the Afghan border.

Cars abandoned over Delhi import racket NEW DELHI: A Bentley and an Aston Martin car have been abandoned in New Delhi as Indian police probe a racket in which Asian diplomats import luxury vehicles and then sell them on, press reports said yesterday. The Hindustan Times said the two cars, valued at between $300,000 and $640,000 each, were found after police seized more than 40 luxury vehicles during their investigations. Officials from the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) told the newspaper that the cars were brought into India by Asian diplomats, who can import them for personal use without paying hefty customs duties. The vehicles were then sold illegally to their new owners, who abandoned them in panic as news spread that police were closing the net around the racket. One man has been arrested by detectives. “The investigation is at a sensitive stage,” RK Sharma, a senior DRI official, told the Hindustan Times. India’s luxury car market has recently seen the arrival of Ferrari, Aston Martin and Lamborghini showrooms but heavy import tariffs imposed on foreign vehicles have dissuaded all but the richest buyers.

KABUL: In this file photo, an Afghan soldier runs near the gate of Defense Ministry where a gunman in an army uniform gunned down two Afghan soldiers before being killed. —AP

Taleban’s latest tactic: High-profile inside jobs KABUL: A car with the license plate of a highranking Afghan general approached the gates of the Defense Ministry in Kabul last month. A special “A” pass also was on its windshield, so guards quickly waved it through. Once inside, a man in an army uniform jumped from the car and stormed the ministry’s main office building, an Afghan government official said. He gunned down two Afghan soldiers before being killed.

The gunman also fatally wounded an Afghan army officer who died later at a hospital.

The April 18 attack - brazen and cleverly orchestrated by insurgents - is indicative of the high-profile yet small-scale attacks that are trademarks of the Taleban’s spring campaign.

Unable to match the firepower of the US-led coalition and Afghan forces, insurgents conduct suicide bombings and assaults on government buildings, figuring these types of attacks will prove their resilience. On Saturday, a suicide bomber wearing a police uniform detonated a vest laden with explosives at a provincial governor’s compound in northern Afghanistan, killing two top Afghan police commanders and wounding the German general who commands NATO forces in the north. Two Germans and two other Afghans died.

It’s unclear how deep of a dent the US-led military campaign made in the insurgency over the winter or if these attacks are preludes to more widespread fighting by the Taleban this summer. Insurgents need to take back part of the southern provinces of Kandahar and Helmand, their traditional strongholds, if they hope to retain their power base and the opium fields that fund their movement. “Certainly the types of attacks they are now doing is an indicator they don’t want to send a large number of fighters against coalition or Afghan National Security Forces because they know they will get the worse of that,” said Lt Col John Dorrian, a spokesman for the coalition.

“The types of attacks they are doing are intended to create a propaganda flash and try to discredit the Afghan government.” Military

and NATO officials, including the top commander in Afghanistan, Gen David Petraeus, have predicted heavy fighting this summer.

They have also predicted the Taleban will continue its campaign of terror and assassination.

That campaign targets anyone who backs the Afghan security forces, peace talks with insurgents, or the Afghan government’s reintegration program designed to lure Taleban foot soldiers back into their communities with offers of economic development for their villages. “This is going to be a tough fighting season. The Talibs are not going to take these security gains laying down, and we have already seen them trying to come back. There are no certainties here,” said British Maj Gen Phil Jones, a veteran of four tours in Afghanistan and NATO’s point man on efforts to reintegrate Taleban fighters back into society.

Nearly all the Taleban’s recent attacks have been on a small scale, with one or two notable exceptions in the mountainous northern province of Nuristan - a remote area where no permanent NATO or Afghan forces are deployed. Insurgents, however, have increased the tempo of assaults with attacks conducted by disgruntled Afghan soldiers and police or militants impersonating them. “The enemy is hugely making efforts to infiltrate into Afghan security organizations,” Gen Abdul Rahim Wardak, the Afghan defense minister, recently told parliament. The Taleban claim that indirect tactics, such as suicide attacks, assassinations and infiltration are part of their new strategy against the government. “The mujahedeen are able to infiltrate into the ranks of the enemy and using opportunities are able to attack,” Taleban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said after the attack. Since September 2007, the coalition has recorded 21 incidents in which a member of the Afghan security forces or someone in a uniform used by them have killed coalition forces. Forty-nine coalition troops, including at least 35 Americans, have been killed. —AP

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Inner Mongolia set for more protests China tightens security grip ahead of demonstrations

HONG KONG: A protester puts a picture of detained Chinese artist Ai Weiwei in a bird cage during a rally yesterday, ahead of the 22nd anniversary of the June 4th military crackdown on the pro-democracy movement in Beijing. — AP

Hundreds take part in HK Tiananmen democracy rally HONG KONG: About 1,000 pro-democracy supporters marched in Hong Kong yesterday to call for justice for the victims of the bloody 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown in Beijing ahead of its 22nd anniversary. The march, joined by politicians, students and unionists, came ahead of an annual candlelight vigil in Hong Kong on Saturday to mark the June 4 crushing of pro-democracy protests which is expected to draw thousands of people.

The protesters, mostly clad in black and white as a sign of mourning, carried banners and placards on their three-hour march to the government offices, watched by police. Carrying a white three-meter (10-foot) tall “Goddess of Democracy” statue a replica of one built by students in Tiananmen Square in 1989 — and a black makeshift coffin, they chanted slogans including “Justice for June 4” and “Return power to the people”. “ The truth of June 4 should be respected, the movement of June 4 should be vindicated,” said Albert Ho, secretar y general of the Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic

Movements of China, which led the march. “ Those who are responsible should be brought to justice,” Ho, who is also a prominent lawmaker, told AFP as he called on China to end its “one-party dictatorship”.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of people were killed in central Beijing on the night of June 3-4, 1989, when the military violently crushed six weeks of student-led democracy protests on Tiananmen Square. Chinese authorities keep a tight lid on details about the Tiananmen protests, which remain a taboo subject on the mainland, but Hong Kong activists frequently cite the crackdown in their criticism of Beijing.

Hong Kong, a former British colony, returned to Chinese rule in 1997 but maintains semi-autonomous status from China and enjoys civil liberties not seen on the mainland. The Tiananmen vigil organisers expect a bigger turnout this year, due to anger over recent arrests of activists in Beijing, including prominent artist Ai Weiwei, and the jailing of dissident Nobel peace laureate Liu Xiaobo. — AFP

HOHHOT: Security forces sealed off parts of the capital of China’s vast northern region of Inner Mongolia yesterday to prevent residents from staging a planned mass protest after the hit-andrun death of a herder sparked six days of protests by ethnic Mongolians. Hundreds of paramilitary policemen and police in riot gear, armed with shields, batons and helmets, patrolled Hohhot’s Xinhua Square, next to the Inner Mongolia radio and television station, after calls spread online for a protest on Monday. Police also surrounded Ruyi Square, in front of the local government building, but elsewhere in the city appeared bustling as normal.

Chinese authorities sealed off parts of the northern region of Inner Mongolia, a resourcerich region strategically located on the borders of Russia and Mongolia, on Friday in what residents described as martial law. In a rare sign of defiance, hundreds of China’s Mongolians, who make up less than 20 percent of the roughly 24 million population of the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region, have taken to the streets in other parts of the province despite tighter security.

They were angered by the death this month

of a Mongolian herder, Mergen, after being struck by a coal truck. The government announced the arrest of two Han Chinese for homicide, but that failed to stem public anger.

But the resentment goes much deeper. Inner Mongolia, which covers more than a tenth of China’s land mass, is supposed to offer a high degree of self-rule, but Mongolians say the Han Chinese majority run the show and have been the main beneficiaries of economic development. China’s Mongolians rarely take to the streets, unlike Tibetans or Xinjiang’s Uighurs, making the latest protests highly unusual. The New York-based Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Centre said Mongolians were planning further protests over the next few days, including in Hohhot, less than an hour’s flight from Beijing. Some schools in Hohhot said authorities had stepped up security.

“The school has told us to keep an eye for any illegal gathering these days as June 4 is coming,” one man in a high school in Hohhot told Reuters, referring to the armed crackdown on prodemocracy protesters on June 4, 1989, in Beijing.

“Security is tight, there are many policemen in the streets,” he added. He declined to give his

name. A worker at a university in Hohhot said three entrances had been sealed off and there was a heavy police presence. He declined to comment on the reason. Telephone calls to the Hohhot government and its propaganda department went unanswered.

In the first response from the ruling Party to the demonstrations, Inner Mongolia’s Communist Party chief Hu Chunhua told students and teachers on Friday he was representing the government to seek their views on the situation and said “public anger has been immense,” state media reported. “Please be assured, teachers and students, that the suspects... will be punished severely and quickly, so that the ... rights of victims and their families can be resolutely safeguarded,” the Inner Mongolian Daily cited Hu as saying. But Hu’s reassurances are unlikely to bring lasting calm, said Enghebatu Togochog of the Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Centre. “The conflict between the Chinese authorities’ attempts to exploit the natural resources and the disrespect of the Mongolians’ way of life will not be easily resolved, unless the Chinese government changes its policy,” he said. — Reuters

800 tons of fish die, rot on Philippine fish farms TALISAY: More than 800 tons of fish have died and rotted on fish farms in a lake near Taal volcano south of Manila, with authorities blaming it on a sudden temperature drop. The massive fish deaths star ted late last week but have eased. Officials have banned the sale of the rotting fish, which are being buried by the truckload in Talisay and four other towns in Batangas province, Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources official Rose del Mundo said yesterday. The deaths are unre-

lated to recent signs of restiveness in Taal volcano, which is surrounded by the lake where many villagers have grown milkfish and tilapia - staple food for many Filipinos, officials said. The volcano and lake are a popular tourist draw.

Talisay agricultural officer Zenaida Mendoza said an initial investigation showed the deaths may have been caused by the temperature change as the rainy season set in last week after a scorching summer, which also depleted the lakeís

oxygen levels. Schools of fish were seen swimming in circles before they floated dead to the surface in huge numbers. The deaths have occurred in the past at summerís end but in much smaller numbers, Mendoza said.

Some Taal lake areas turned white due to the massive numbers of dead milk-colored fish.

Workers covered their noses with their hands or clothing yesterday as they scooped up the rotting fish and placed them into sacks. ´Many were sad and

devastated because they invested a lot in these fish cages,ª Talisay Mayor Zenaida Mendoza told The Associated Press by telephone. More than 400 tons of milkfish have died in Talisay alone since Friday in 84 out of about 1,000 fish pens - lake areas about half the size of a basketball cour t which are fenced off by bamboo poles and nets. Damage has been estimated at $770,000 (33 million pesos), Mendoza said.

About 400 tons more have died in the other towns. — AP

Japan PM could face no-confidence motion TOKYO: Japan’s centre-left Prime Minister Naoto Kan, under fire for his handling of the response to the March 11 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster, faces the threat of a no-confidence motion this week. Although Kan’s opponents have only a slim chance of rallying enough support for a successful motion in the Diet legislature, the move would be a fresh headache for the PM, who has been in office for less than a year.

Leaders of the main conservative opposition Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its smaller ally the New Komeito party threatened the move on Friday against Kan, Japan’s fifth prime minister in as many years. A rebel powerbroker in Kan’s Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), Ichiro Ozawa, long dubbed the “Shadow Shogun”, did not rule out supporting a move to oust Kan, according to an interview published by The Wall Street Journal.

Kan’s approval ratings slipped below 20 percent shortly before the March 11 calamity, which sparked the world’s worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl and threw the country back into recession. A political truce ended about a month after the disaster, and the LDP has rejected Kan’s offer for it to join a national unity government. Ichiro Aisawa, the LDP’s Diet affairs chief, told a political talk show on yesterday: “Our party has decided to submit a noconfidence motion against Prime

TOKYO: Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan (center) smiles while attending a meeting to draw the reconstruction plan after the March 11 earthquake, at his official residence yesterday. — AFP Minister Naoto Kan... It won’t be long before we submit it.”

He said the LDP’s president, Sadakazu Tanigaki, would make the final decision on timing. The Kyodo news agency said the LDP would submit the motion on Thursday, a day after a debate on quake reconstruction. Kan has taken some bold steps since the disaster, including shutting down a second quake-prone nuclear plant southwest of Tokyo, the Hamaoka plant, and announcing a radical energy policy review that stresses clean renewables.

But Kan’s critics have faulted his handling of disaster relief and the slow pace of building temporary new homes for tens of thousands made homeless by the monster tsunami that hit the

northern Pacific coast. The DPJ’s scandal-tainted veteran Ozawawho last year narrowly failed in an attempt to oust Kan as party president and premier-told the Wall Street Journal that he was considering whether to back a move against the premier. He told the paper he was “thinking about how to deal” with a noconfidence motion and said: “If the prime minister cannot implement policies, it’s meaningless for him to stay in power”.

“The sooner he is replaced, the better,” Ozawa added. If the motion were passed-which would require scores of DPJ lower house lawmakers to defect to win a lower house majority-the premier would have to either resign or call a snap election.

Ozawa, who years ago defected from the LDP, was indicted this year over an alleged violation of campaign-funding laws. He has maintained his innocence. Asked about his political future, he said: “I’m an old soldier. Have you heard of General MacArthur’s words, ‘Old soldiers just fade away’? I was thinking about just fading away, but now I feel I have a bit more work to do.”

Tomoaki Iwai, a Nihon University politics professor, said for now Kan’s opponents would face an uphill battle in pushing through a no-confidence motion.

“It will be very difficult,” he told AFP. “More than 80 DPJ members would be needed in order to pass the no-confidence motion against Kan, but I doubt so many people would have resolve that strong.... When Ozawa held a meeting recently with his DPJ supporters, only 60 people gathered.” He also said that the DPJ rebels would have to split away from the party and that this was unlikely because “Ozawa wants to take control of the DPJ”.

“For Kan, if the motion is rejected, he would be able to avoid the most immediate crisis and would no longer need to dissolve parliament,” said Iwai. “He would still have to deal with some members who are unhappy about his administration inside the party, but a failed no-confidence motion may actually solidify his political standing somewhat.” — AFP

EU officials to visit N Korea on food aid

SEOUL: Policemen arrest one of the students who tried to march towards the presidential house, urging the government to lower college tuition drastically yesterday. The government and ruling Grand National Party agreed last Wednesday to push to lower the tuition in a bid to relieve financial burdens on students. — AP

SEOUL: A group of European Union officials will visit North Korea next month to assess the food situation in the impoverished communist state after a similar trip by US officials, a report said yesterday. Officials from the European Commission Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection (ECHO) group will head to Pyongyang after the US team wraps up a probe into the Northís food needs this week, Yonhap news agency said, citing a Seoul government source. ìThe international community for now is evaluating the Northís food conditions and is not discussing in earnest resumption of food aid yet,î Yonhap quoted the official as saying.

The US delegation, led by Robert King, Washingtonís special envoy on the Northís human rights, arrived in Pyongyang last Tuesday. King left the North on Saturday after securing a release of a Korean American detained there for months, but several officials will stay until June 2 to tour the hermit state and investigate its food needs. Washington is likely to reach a decision on resuming food aid to Pyongyang after the European officials finish their own two-week tour, said the source quoted by Yonhap.

The North, where hundreds of thousands died in a famine in the 1990s, suffers chronic food shortages and has partly relied on aid from overseas. Pyongyang early this year pleaded to its historic enemy the United States and other countries for food after an exceptionally harsh winter hit crop yields. — AFP

JOKANG DO: In this undated photo, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, (eighth left) accompanied by his son Kim Jong Un (fourth left) pose with officials during his inspection of the construction site of the Huichon Power Station in North Korea. — AP

N Korea’s Kim celebrates ‘successful’ China trip SEOUL: North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il and his son and heir apparent celebrated the “successful” outcome of his trip to China last week, state media said yesterday, without elaborating on what was achieved. The North held art performances celebrating the accomplishments of his visit and watched by Kim and his youngest son, Jong-Un, as well as senior officials of the communist regime, Pyongyang’s Korean Central News Agency said without saying when it took place. “A music and dance performance was given... on his successful unofficial visit to the People’s Republic of China,” KCNA said, describing the trip “historic” and “fruitful” without elaborating further.

It said Kim’s tour made an “undying contribution” in boosting ties between the two communist neighbors. It is rare for Pyongyang to stage such a large public celebration of a trip to China by the leader,

who has made seven visits to the neighboring country since 2000, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said. Kim, making his third trip in just over a year to China, toured the northeast and east as well as Beijing, where he met President Hu Jintao and other top officials. The 69-year-old’s trip to China, the impoverished but nucleararmed state’s sole major ally and economic prop, was aimed at garnering more aid and Beijing’s support for the hereditary power transfer to Jong-Un, experts said. Jong-Un, believed aged around 27, was made a four-star general and given key posts at the ruling communist party last year in a sign of the youngest son’s status as heir apparent. China has pressed the North to return to six-nation nuclear disarmament talks and to ease tensions with South Korea. It also wants its ally to undertake a Chinese-style opening-up of the statedirected economy. — AFP

TAIPEI: Students of the military academy perform during a military music exhibition at the square of Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall yesterday. — AP

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NUREMBERG, Germany: Visitors walk inside an artistic installation called ‘Cortex Blau’ during the ‘Blue Night’ on late Saturday in this southern town where the 12th edition of the event including arts setups and outdoor shows organised by museums, churches and theaters attracted thousands of spectators. — AFP

US man celebrates 85 yrs of living with diabetes LOS ANGELES: When Bob Krause turned 90 last week, it was by virtue of an unflagging determination and a mentality of precision that kept his body humming after being diagnosed with diabetes as a boy. A leading diabetes research center named the San Diego resident the first American known to live 85 years with the disease, a life that has paralleled - and benefited from - the evolution in treatment.

Krause’s wife of 56 years, his family and friends were to celebrate his longevity yesterday with a party and a medal from the Joslin Diabetes Center to commemorate his 85-year milestone.

“Bob has outlived the life expectation of a normal healthy person born in 1921,” said his physician, Dr. Patricia Wu, attributing Krause’s success to his strong character. “He knows that he has to deal with this and he sees this as a part of his life, he doesn’t let this get him down.” The trim, whitehaired Krause puts it more succinctly: “I’m a stubborn old man. I refuse to give up.”

That trait certainly plays into how closely he has tracked his body’s chemistry and become expert in the life-saving math that has kept his diabetes under control. About 18.8

million Americans have been diagnosed with diabetes and an estimated 7 million more live with the disease unwittingly. Krause’s form of diabetes, type 1, was once known more commonly as juvenile diabetes, and the more common form of diabetes often tied to obesity is type 2. About 3 million Americans live with type 1 diabetes, a chronic illness in which their bodies don’t make enough insulin, which is needed to convert blood sugar into energy.

The exact cause is unknown, though genetics and autoimmune problems are thought to play a role. Life expectancy is diminished for many diabetics because they face a higher risk of serious health complications, including heart disease, stroke, blindness, kidney damage and limb amputations. Many struggle to manage blood pressure. The former University of Washington mechanical engineering professor says he’s succeeded because he treats his body like a car and he only eats enough food to fuel the machine.

“To keep your diabetes under control you only eat the food you need to before you have activities to perform,” said Krause. “I eat to keep me alive instead of eating all the time, or for pleasure.” He says he’s not as active as he once was, so

Egypt to expel Iran diplomat spy suspect Continued from Page 1 Taher Al-Khouli accused him of “spying for a foreign country to harm the interests of Egypt” based on an initial investigation, Egypt’s official MENA news agency said. The report said he had been caught violating diplomatic protocols by “forming spy rings to collect political, economic and military information about Egypt and Gulf countries in exchange for money”.

The Iranian interests section in Cairo had denied that Hosseini was arrested. “He is in the embassy as I speak. It did not happen that way, he

was not arrested,” an official in the section told AFP on condition of anonymity. Earlier, in Tehran, the Arabic-language television channel Al-Alam quoted a source as saying that Hosseini “is currently in his office and working normally” in Cairo. “We are following the case,” he added without elaborating.

Iran and Egypt have no diplomatic ties and relations between the two countries were tense under former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak.

Tehran severed diplomatic relations with Egypt in 1980 in protest at Cairo’s peace treaty with Israel signed a year earlier, and the two states maintain

only interests sections in each other’s capitals. But the two Muslim countries have signalled they plan to mend ties in the wake of the fall of Mubarak’s regime on February 11 this year.

Mubarak’s regime had accused Shiite Iran of trying to gain a foothold in the Sunni country through a plot by the Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah to attack tourist sites and shipping in the Suez Canal. The defendants in the case, several who received life sentences, said they were merely sending arms to Palestinian militants in the neighbouring Gaza Strip and Iran denied Cairo’s assertions — Agencies

FIFA clears Blatter, suspends bin Hammam Continued from Page 1 was a watershed moment for the organization. “It’s sad - definitely there is a need for change,” Valcke said.

“FIFA must make the necessary changes so that the institution has systems in place to avoid that something like this happens again.

“This is the pattern of the work which we have to do very quickly in the next months - to change what has to be changed and put in place a number of systems to make sure that the presidential election also comes under a number of rules.” Warner, the CONCACAF President, had warned that a “football tsunami” would be unleashed after the findings of the FIFA panel were released. The corruption crisis was sparked by Blazer, whose evidence file implicated his executive committee colleagues. Blazer, Warner’s longtime No. 2 at the CONCACAF regional body, spent more than an hour at FIFA headquarters before leaving yesterday Bin Hammam, who decided to run for president after helping Qatar secure the 2022 World Cup, pulled out of the race early yesterday morning. “Recent events have left me hurt and disappointed - on a professional and personal level,” bin Hammam wrote on his personal website. “It saddens me that standing up for the causes that I believed in has come at a great price - the degradation of FIFA’s reputation. This is not what I had in mind for FIFA and this is unacceptable. I cannot allow the name that I loved to be dragged more and more in the mud because of competition between two individu-

als. The game itself and the people who love it around the world must come first. It is for this reason that I announce my withdrawal from the presidential election.

I pray that my withdrawal will not be tied to the investigation held by the FIFA ethics committee as I will appear before the ethics committee to clear my name from the baseless allegations that have been made against me.”

Bin Hammam and Warner, a 28-year veteran at FIFA’s high table, are accused of arranging bribes for up to 25 presidential voters from the Caribbean Football Union.

Bin Hammam has acknowledged paying travel and accommodation expenses, and conference costs, but denies vote-buying. Instead, he implicated Blatter’s camp in a plot to remove him from the election contest, and fought back by bringing the FIFA president into the ethics case. According to bin Hammam’s formal complaint, Blatter broke FIFA “duty of disclosure” rules because he was apparently aware via Warner that payments had been arranged and “had no issue”. The evidence file was compiled by John Collins, a former United States federal prosecutor who is now a member of FIFA’s legal committee.

Blatter succeeded Brazil’s Joao Havelange, defeating then UEFA president Lennart Johansson at the 1998 FIFA Congress. Blatter acknowledges that claims of vote-buying surrounded his first election but has always denied involvement. After facing a challenge from African football president Issa Hayatou in 2002, Blatter was re-elected unopposed for a third successive term in 2007. — AP

he doesn’t need a lot of fuel - or variation in diet. For breakfast every day, he eats a bowl of nuts and five pitted prunes.

He usually skips lunch and eats a salad with some lean meat for dinner.

The first time Krause met Dr Wu at Kaiser Permanente San Diego, he came into the endocrinologist’s office with a briefcase full of meticulous hand-drawn graphs charting months of his blood sugar levels, caloric intake and insulin doses. He tests his blood up to a dozen times a day and he brings in updated charts every visit, said Wu. “I think that’s a testament of why he is successful in living with this very difficult to live with condition,” said Wu. “Because of his persistence, his consistency, his hard work.” Krause’s careful attention is not unlike many others who have been awarded by Joslin for successfully living with the illness for decades, according to researcher Stephanie Hastings.

The Boston-based center has honored long-time diabetes survivors since 1948, and 34 have earned 75-year medals.

Hastings said Krause is like many longtime successful diabetics, who “always have more information than we need.” If anything, Wu has worked with Krause over the past three years to be a

little less rigid so that he doesn’t overdose himself with insulin and push his blood sugar too low. It can be tough to change the patterns of a patient who has dealt with an illness for so long. Krause was lucky to be diagnosed with diabetes not long after the commercial production of insulin made it widely available. It was 1926, and he was five years old and living in Detroit where his father worked for the US Rubber Company.

Krause’s younger brother Jackie died of diabetes after being diagnosed a year earlier because insulin wasn’t yet available. Before the discovery of insulin, a diabetes diagnosis was a death sentence, with an expected survival of a couple years at most if patients undertook starvation diets to buy more time. “I watched Jackie die by starving to death,” said Krause. “Before insulin, diabetics would just die because eating doesn’t make any difference: anything that you ate couldn’t be converted and you literally starved to death because your body couldn’t absorb anything.” Canadian scientists Frederick Banting and John Macleod made the discovery in 1921 through experiments with a mixture of ground cow pancreas, water and salts that eventually became insulin. — Ap

Seven dead as tanks circle Syrian towns Continued from Page 1 “Soldiers are now all over Talbisa.

They are breaking into houses and arresting people,” one resident in the town of 60,000 said in a telephone interview. The sound of bullets echoed in the background. “There is news that a microbus with university students that was heading out of Talbisa was fired upon by soldiers and there are bodies on the highway, but no one can leave the town to check,” he added.

Another witness in Rastan, further to the north, said the town’s main clinic was full of wounded people and there was no way to get them to a hospital because of heavy tank fire. “This is pure revenge,” said the witness, a lawyer who declined to be named for fear of reprisals. Thousands of protesters in Rastan on Friday demanded the removal of Assad in one of the largest demonstrations in the region since the uprising against the government erupted in southern Syria on March 18.

The lawyer said Internet, water, electricity, land lines and most mobile telephone links had been cut, a step commonly used by the military before they storm urban centres.

In the eastern town of Deir Al-Zor, at least one man was injured yesterday when security forces opened fired to disperse a night-time demonstration, a witness said. “I was hearing the bullets and the protesters chanting ‘the people want the overthrow of the regime’ at the same time,” the witness, a resident of the city, said by telephone.

Demonstrations have been held nightly in Deir Al-Zor and other cities and towns to circumvent heavy security which has intensified in recent weeks after street demonstrations grew in numbers and tanks were deployed in and around urban centres. Human rights campaigners said a night-time rally took place on Saturday in the town of Binish in the northwestern province of Idlib in protest against arrests on Friday, when the biggest demonstrations typically occur after weekly prayers.

Also yesterday, Syrian doctor and activist Mohammed Awad Al-Ammar was charged with “damaging the prestige of the state and spreading false information,” Abdul Rahman told AFP by telephone. The doctor, who works at a hospital near Daraa, a hotspot of the revolt, was arrested on April 29

shortly after meeting with a high-level military official to propose a “democratic solution” to Syria’s political crisis, he said.

On Friday, security forces killed at least 12 protesters in dispersing demonstrations against the regime of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, according to activists. More than 1,000 people have been killed and 10,000 others arrested since the revolt began, rights groups say. Syrian authorities say 143 soldiers, security forces and police have been killed. Foreign journalists are barred from travelling inside Syria, making it difficult to report on the unrest and verify witness accounts. The government insists the unrest is the work of “armed terrorist gangs” backed by Islamists and foreign agitators.

It initially responded to the revolt by offering some concessions, including lifting the state of emergency in place for nearly five decades, but coupled this with a fierce crackdown. The opposition has dismissed calls for dialogue, saying that could only take place once the violence ends, political prisoners are freed and reforms are adopted. — Agencies

Opposition warns govt to heed youth...

Continued from Page 1 Barrak and a number of MPs meanwhile warned the prime minister and the government not to underestimate the power of youth activists who staged a noisy demonstration on Friday to call for the ouster of the prime minister. The opposition lawmakers were responding to remarks by the prime minister that the 2,000-strong protest does not represent the opinion and the will of the Kuwaiti people who number more than one million.

Barrak said that youths in other Arab countries have succeeded in toppling regimes “but we are not talking here about the Kuwaiti

regime because the Kuwaiti people have a firm loyalty to the Amir and the ruling family”. He said the youths have demonstrated against those who are attempting to undermine the Kuwaiti constitution by plotting against it. Barrak urged the prime minister not to play down the significance of the protest, adding that the number was “good”. He also asked the prime minister “about the number of protesters that would make him quit”. The lawmaker also challenged the premier to prove that many of the protesters were in fact secretaries of MPs and called on him to provide whatever information he has.

MP Waleed Al-Tabtabaei refuted

the premier’s statement that the 2,000 protesters do not represent the Kuwaiti people, recalling that after one of the grillings against the premier, only 30 supporters marched to his house to celebrate his victory.

Tabtabaei asked if the 30 people were the only supporters of the prime minister. The lawmaker said that the real number of the protesters was around 5,000 who turned up despite the strict security measures, adding that without the extraordinary security measures, the number would have been around 20,000.

The legal and legislative committee meanwhile agreed to lift the immunity of MPs Saleh Ashour and Barrak over press charges.

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MONDAY, MAY 30, 2011

OPINION

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Obama uses own story in Europe, attract voters

By Jeff Mason irst he was Irish, then he was British, and now he’s Polish, too. US President Barack Obama, during a week traveling through Europe, used his personal story to woo a continent some feel he has neglected, while simultaneously reaching out to important political constituencies back home. From Ireland to Britain to Poland, Obama - the son of a Kenyan father and a Kansas mother - discovered and exploited his European roots, delighting foreign crowds and inking images that could turn up in presidential campaign commercials next year.

“My name is Barack Obama - of the Moneygall Obamas - and I’ve come home to find the apostrophe that we lost along the way,” Obama, joking about the “Irish” spelling of his name, told a crowd of some 25,000 in Dublin, hours after visiting the town where his greatgreat-great grandfather once lived. The crowd loved it, and references to his roots continued at his next stop in London. “I bring warm greetings from tens of millions of Americans who claim British ancestry, including me, through my mother’s family,” he told Queen Elizabeth II. In Warsaw he talked about his hometown of Chicago and adopted one of its more prominent ethnic groups as his own. “If you live in Chicago and you haven’t become a little bit Polish, then something’s wrong with you,” he said at a press conference with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk. The result? The United States’ first African-American president connected himself personally to three of the four European countries he visited, burnishing his credentials on the continent after an emphasis on Asia in the first years of his administration sparked concern that US focus had shifted dramatically eastward.

Heather Conley, a Europe expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said the visit showed Obama could reach out to the “Atlantic Community” in the West and the Asia Pacific region in the East at the same time. “The visit accomplishes its mission,” she said. “He was certainly clarifying that his personal narrative goes in both directions.”

That accomplishment may be the main one on a trip that was heavy on imagery but light on substance. In France - the one country where he did not claim an ancestral or cultural bond - Obama met with fellow leaders from the Group of Eight industrial nations, all of which adopted a unified position that Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi must go. But that was a rare foreign policy achievement on an otherwise largely ceremonial six-day tour. White House advisers believe that the images of Obama dining with the British queen and meeting with international leaders will quell lingering criticism from opponents that he is a lightweight on the world stage.

Public compliments from British Prime Minister David Cameron about the successful US operation that killed Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden also reinforced Obama’s political strength in the area of national security. With potential Republican rivals competing to establish their own presidential qualifications, Obama’s trip also helped him appear above the domestic political fray. Creating enduring images for tens of millions of Irish Americans, a significant voting bloc, and US citizens of British and Polish decent was also a plus. “The president’s political consultants got some great video for his 2012 TV ads,” said Larry Sabato, a politics professor at the University of Virginia. “The Irish stop was golden for the millions who trace their ancestry to Eire. The appealing scenes with the royals can be recycled.”

But the trip was not a complete win in the imagery department. Deadly tornadoes in the US Midwest dominated domestic news coverage while Obama was away and some analysts said many Americans did not even realize he was gone. The White House was aware of that problem. It scheduled a last-minute televised statement

by Obama about the tornadoes on Tuesday morning in London so he could announce a trip today to the affected region. Shortly after speaking to the cameras, he left to spend the day at Buckingham Palace.

Still, while Americans and Obama’s political advisers fret about the state of the US economy, the president put in a plug for having space to focus on foreign policy such as the democratic upheavals in the Middle East and North Africa, which dominated talks in each of the countries he visited. —Reuters

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

G8’s last hurrah? Summitry evolves, not dead

By Alastair Macdonald he latest Group of Eight summit was “historic”, the moment for the great powers to rally their wealth and arms behind the Arab people and staunch a gap in the spread of “Western” values across the world.

Really? Or was it a pointless, costly absurdity, a vanity project for leaders of nations in decline, marginalised by the rise of China and other big, industrialising nations, for whom the forum founded in the 1970s is a neo-colonial throwback?

Some answers in that debate should emerge in the coming year when France, proud host of a summit in Deauville, hands the chair to the United States, where officials have been sceptical of the group’s utility.

The White House has not set a date for the 2012 G8 summit; it may all but merge into the Group of Twenty, which brings in China, India, Brazil and others and became Washington’s favoured global forum after President Barack Obama’s predecessor George W Bush hosted the first G20 summit three years ago. On Friday, however, after 24 hours of talk on the Normandy coast, it seemed US attitudes to the smaller G8 might have been warmed by a summit that offered big credits to new Arab

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democracies and rallied Russia, an often awkward post-Cold War addition, to the cause of ousting Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi.

“This has actually been quite a good G8 and in many respects it has underscored what is best about the G8,” a senior official in the administration said. “We are strong proponents of the G20 as the premier forum for international economic coordination. “But there is something about the G8 and a small group of leaders who deal with each other across a wide range of issues ... on a very regular basis ... It builds a strong relationship with them and it really came out here.”

The G8’s critics are far from convinced. “The Deauville summit ... is a monumental waste of time and money,” British commentator Timothy Garton Ash wrote in the Guardian. “If the G8 did not exist today, no one would dream of inventing it. Its core business, the management of the global economy, cannot properly be discussed without the presence at the top table of countries like China, India and Brazil.”

Obama should focus on merging the G8 into the G20 and improving the functioning of that newer, larger forum, he said. Yet among admirers, John Kirton of Toronto University, whose G8

Research Group tracks the forum’s effectiveness, said it was needed “now more than ever”. He compared its aid for Egypt and Tunisia to its role in Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall. “If there was ever a time for the G8 after the post-Cold War victory it was now, and the Deauville summit got the job done,” he said. “This is as transformational and historic as that.”

The calendar of the coming year’s events may be revealing.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, for whom such gatherings are welcome platforms as he campaigns for re-election, has set this year’s G20 for Cannes in November, six months after the G8. Obama may prefer a G8 that is essentially a preparatory caucus for the G20 summit to held in Mexico - last year Canada hosted both G8 and G20 summits on succeeding days.

“I was ... surprised that the (US) president did agree to two visits to France this year,” Heather Conley, director of the Europe program at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies, said before Deauville. “But I think you’ll see perhaps the same difficult decision next year - should we do a formal G8 summit?” she added, noting discomfort among European leaders at their diluted weight in the G20. “We’re in this, I fear prolonged, transition period,” Conley

said, “where the G8 doesn’t feel like it’s got the right combination but the G20 has not matured into a coherent body.”

One senior European official at Deauville conceded: “If you really want to make something happen in the world, you have to go to the G20.” But the G8 was a less formal “club of friends” where leaders spoke more freely. “It still has a role.” The world has changed dramatically since the group began.

France hosted the first summit 36 years ago, when President Valery Giscard d’Estaing invited peers from the United States, Japan, Britain and West Germany to Rambouillet to seek consensus on surging global capital flows and soaring OPEC oil prices.

Once Italy and Canada had joined by the next year, 1976, the G7 accounted for two thirds of the world’s economic output. Even with Russia, added in 1998 in hopes of fostering its post-Soviet democracy, the G8 now has only about 40 percent of world GDP. China’s economy has surpassed all but that of the United States. But Daniel Schwanen at Canada’s Centre for International Governance Innovation said: “You’re talking about very rich countries, with two thirds or more of the military power in the world ... That makes it still a credible and

viable institution, and one that need not stand in opposition to the G20 at all.”

“The point is to get together and talk,” one French diplomat said in Deauville. “We know we have diverging views on many issues.

Meetings at the highest level are a way of harmonising our positions, even if a decision does not emerge right away.” European fondness for the club is not always shared.

David Bosco, writing for US magazine Foreign Policy, said: “There is a significant chance that this will be the last major G8 summit meeting.

But this forum won’t bury itself; the Obama administration will have to make a point of it. In the months ahead, the administration will have to weigh whether ending the G8 is worth the diplomatic headache.”

But Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov, whose country also sits in the BRICS group of emerging economies with China, India, Brazil and South Africa, made clear that Moscow sees all such summitry as important to pushing Kremlin policies.

“G20 is not an alternative to the G8,” he said in Deauville. “We need to use the opportunities and formats we have, and hence multiply the channels to promote our national interests. So we will keep on playing on all of these chessboards.” —Reuters

Midfield machine drives Barca to greatness

By Kevin Fylan he midfield machine behind Spain’s first World Cup success ticked back into the same relentless rhythm to deliver Barcelona’s fourth European Cup triumph at a spellbound Wembley Stadium on Saturday. Technically, tactically and temperamentally superior, and with the genius of Lionel Messi to provide the coup de grace, Barca crushed Manchester United with the simple logic that without the ball you can’t do your opponents a lot of damage. It must have been a depressingly familiar feeling for Alex Ferguson and the eight members of the starting XI that had also begun the final in Rome two years ago, as Barcelona completed a 3-1 victor y that might easily have been a far higher margin.

Then, as now, the English side began by snapping at Catalan heels and threatening to exploit a defence with just a hint of vulnerability about it. Then, as now, it took barely 10 minutes for the Barcelona midfield to

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exert their authority and carry the team to a comprehensive two-goal victory. Unlike in Rome, when United were beaten 2-0, the English side recovered from a first-half goal to equalise as Wayne Rooney wafted in a fine shot after starting the move himself.

If there was any hint that they might go on to triumph despite having only a passing acquaintance with the ball it was disabused by a ruthless second-half Barcelona display. It fell to the three strikers to score the three goals - Messi following up Pedro’s first-half opener by scoring the second himself and helping create the third for David Villa with an outrageous turn past substitute Nani on the right - but this was a triumph built on the extraordinary work done in midfield.

Xavi continually dropped deep to work his way forward, finding space where none appeared to exist thanks to the deftness of his touch and eye for the right pass the inevitable pass as it seems when you watch the replay.

Iniesta, the man who scored the winning goal in last year’s World Cup final victory over Netherlands in South Africa, maintained the same passing rhythm while both looked to feed Messi in central areas outside the penalty area. Xavi completed 124 of 136 passes, while Iniesta found his intended target 98 times out of 107.

Barcelona enjoyed 63 percent of the possession and it would have been much higher had they not felt comfortable enough to relax the rhythm over the closing minutes thanks to that two-goal cushion.

There was no surprise in any of this, nothing Ferguson and everyone else has not seen on countless other occasions watching Spain and

Barcelona, but the execution was so good that the United manager acknowledged his side had been left helpless. “I think it was obvious what happened tonight,” Ferguson said. “We knew we were up against a good team before the game and

planned as best we could. But they do mesmerise you with their passing and we never really controlled Messi. Of course, many people have said that.”

If Ferguson was being oppressed by a sense of deja vu, his Barca counterpart was revelling in familiar surrounds. It was at the old Wembley that Barcelona won their first European Cup in 1992, helped by a skinny midfielder who learned first-hand from thencoach Johan Cruyff that it is through the greedy accumulation of possession that trophies are won. Pep Guardiola was an outstanding player for Barca, the classic deep-lying, ball-playing midfielder, but as a manager he has touched greater heights.

Based around Xavi, the man groomed to replace him, his Barcelona team played with something close to perfection on Saturday, securing a second Champions League win in three years.

“It’s the way we played I’m most proud of,” Guardiola said in a fitting summation of his philosophy. “It isn’t easy to play like this but we have managed it and I’m very happy tonight. It was a very good result.”

—Reuters

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MONDAY, MAY 30, 2011

ANALYSIS

Laden raid avenged CIA deaths

By Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman

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or a small cadre of CIA veterans, the death of Osama bin Laden was more than just a national moment of relief and closure. It was also a measure of payback, a settling of a score for a pair of deaths, the details of which have remained a secret for 13 years. Tom Shah and Molly Huckaby Hardy were among the 44 US Embassy employees killed when a truck bomb exploded outside the embassy compound in Kenya in 1998. Though it has never been publicly acknowledged, the two were working undercover for the CIA. In Al-Qaeda’s war on the United States, they are believed to be the first CIA casualties.

Their names probably will not be among those read at Memorial Day memorials around the country this weekend. Like many CIA officers, their service remained a secret in both life and death, marked only by anonymous stars on the wall at CIA headquarters and blank entries in its book of honor. Their CIA ties were described to AP by a half-dozen current and former US officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because Shah’s and Hardy’s jobs are still secret, even now.

The deaths weighed heavily on many at the CIA, particularly the two senior officers who were running operations in Africa during the attack. Over the past decade, as the CIA waged war against AlQaeda, those officers have taken on central roles in counterterrorism. Both were deeply involved in hunting down bin Laden and planning the raid on the terrorist who killed their colleagues.

“History has shown that tyrants who threaten global peace and freedom must eventually face their natural enemies: America’s war fighters, and the silent warriors of our Intelligence Community,” CIA Director Leon Panetta wrote in a Memorial Day message to agency employees.

These silent warriors took very different paths to Nairobi. Hardy

was a divorced mom from Valdosta, Georgia, who raised a daughter as she traveled to Asia, South America and Africa over a lengthy career. At the CIA station in Kenya, she handled the office finances, including the CIA’s stash of money used to pay sources and carry out spying operations. She was a new grandmother and was eager to get back home when AlQaeda struck.

Shah took an unpredictable route to the nation’s clandestine service. He was not a solider or a Marine, a linguist or an Ivy Leaguer. He was a musician from the Midwest. But his story, and the secret mission that brought him to Africa, was straight out of a Hollywood spy movie. “He was a vivacious, upbeat guy who had a very poignant, self-deprecating sense of humor,” said Dan McDevitt, a classmate and close friend from St Xavier High School in Cincinnati, where Shah was a standout trumpet player. Shah his given name was Uttamlal was the only child of an Indian immigrant father and an American mother, McDevitt said.

He had a fascination with international affairs. He participated in the school’s model United Nations and, in the midst of the Cold War, was one of the school’s first students to learn Russian.

From time to time, he went to India with his father, giving him a rare world perspective. “At the time, that was unheard of. You might as well have gone to Mars,” said McDevitt, who lost touch with his high school friend long before he joined the agency. Shah graduated from Berklee College of Music in Boston and Ball State University’s music school. He taught music classes and occasionally played in backup bands for entertainers Red Skelton, Perry Como and Jim Nabors.

His doctoral thesis at Indiana’s Ball State offered no hints about the career he would pursue: “The Solo Songs of Edward MacDowell: An Examination of Style and Literary Influence.” “He was one of our outstanding people,” said Kirby Koriath, the graduate student adviser at Ball State. Shah

Uttamlal T Shah and his wife, Linda, were married in 1983, the year he received his master’s degree. In 1987, after earning his doctorate, Shah joined the US government. On paper, he had become a diplomat. In reality, he was shipped to the Farm, the CIA’s spy school in Virginia. He received the usual battery of training in surveillance, counterespionage and the art of building sources. The latter is particularly hard to teach, but it came naturally to Shah, former officials said.

Shah was regarded as one of the top members of his class and was assigned to the Near East Division, which covers the Middle East. He spoke fluent Hindi and decent Russian when he arrived and quickly showed a knack for languages by learning Arabic. He worked in Cairo and Damascus and, though he was young, former colleagues said he was quickly proving himself one of the agency’s most promising stars. In 1997, he was dispatched to headquarters as part of the Iraq Operations Group, the CIA team that ran spying campaigns against Saddam Hussein’s regime.

Around that time, the CIA became convinced that a senior Iraqi official was willing to provide intelligence in exchange for a new life in America. Before the US could make that deal, it had to be sure the information was credible and the would-be defector wasn’t really a double agent. But even

Molly Huckaby Hardy talking to him was a risky move. If a meeting with the CIA was discovered, the Iraqi would be killed for sure. Somebody had to meet with the informant, somebody who knew the Middle East and could be trusted with such a sensitive mission. A senior officer recommended Shah.

The meetings were set up in Kenya, former officials said, because it was considered relatively safe from Middle East intelligence services. It was perhaps the most important operation being run under the Africa Division at the time, current and former officials said. Among the agency managers overseeing it was John Bennett, the deputy chief of the division. He and his operations chief, who remains undercover, were seasoned Africa hands and veterans of countless spying operations.

Because of the mission’s sensitivity, Shah bottled up his normally outgoing and friendly personality while at the embassy. “This is the glory and the tragedy of discreet work,” said Prudence Bushnell, the former ambassador to Kenya.

“You keep a very low profile and you don’t do things that make you memorable.” Officials say Shah was among those who went to the window when shooting began outside the embassy gates. Most who did were killed when the massive bomb exploded. He was 38. Hardy was also

killed in the blast. She was 51.

The US government said both victims were State Department employees. But like all fallen officers, they received private memorial services at CIA headquarters.

Every year, their names are among those read at a ceremony for family members and colleagues.

Hardy’s daughter, Brandi Plants, said she did not want to discuss her mother’s employment. Shah’s widow, Linda, sent word through a neighbor that the topic was still too painful to discuss. Shah’s death did not stall his mission.

The Africa Division pressed on and confirmed that the Iraqi source was legitimate, his information extremely valuable. He defected and was relocated to the United States with a new identity.

Bennett later went on to be the station chief in Islamabad, where he ran the agency’s effort to kill Al-Qaeda members by using unmanned aircraft. He now sits in one of the most important seats in the agency, overseeing clandestine operations worldwide. His former Africa operations chief now runs the agency’s counterterrorism center. Both have been hunting for bin Laden for years.

Both were directly involved in the raid.

Shah and Hardy are among the names etched into stone at a memorial at the embassy in Nairobi, with no mention of their CIA service. Shah is also commemorated with a plaque in a CIA conference room at its headquarters. Both were among those whose names Panetta read last week at the annual ceremony for fallen officers.

“Throughout the effort to disrupt, dismantle and defeat AlQaeda, our fallen colleagues have been with us in memory and in spirit,” Panetta said. “With their strength and determination as our guide, we achieved a great victory three weeks ago.” Bin Laden said the embassy in Nairobi was targeted because it was a major CIA station. He died never knowing that he had killed two CIA officers there. — AP

Culture clash hits China’s Brazil push

By Bradley Brooks

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tocking shelves in a Chinese grocery store, Thiago warned that he didn’t want to be caught chatting during working hours. Within seconds, however, the Brazilian unleashed a pent-up flood of complaints about the owners, who lingered just beyond hearing distance.

“My bosses have never heard of a day off,” said the 20-year-old, who would only allow his first name to be used, for fear of losing his job. “Vacations? Forget it.

They pay well and they pay for extra hours, but they don’t understand that some things are more important to Brazilians than money.

“I’ve seen many workers walk in, see the Chinese way of doing things, and quit the very same day.” Such cross-cultural tensions have become a stumbling block in an otherwise meteoric rise in business ties between China and Brazil, two of the world’s fastestgrowing economies. Chinese companies’ direct investment in Brazil jumped to $17 billion last year, nearly 60 times the investment the previous year, according to SOBEET, a Brazilian economic think tank. At the same time, more Chinese companies are hiring local workers rather than following their old practices of bringing in Chinese laborers.

That new reality has meant frequent contact between two cultures that hold vastly different expectations about the role of workers, government regulations and unions. Brazilians enjoy some of the most labor-friendly protections in the world, with guarantees such as one-month annual bonuses and stipends for meals and transportation. China, on the other hand, has quickly become the world’s second biggest economy on the strength of a low-paid work force and, in practice, virtually nonexistent labor protections, according to the US-based nonprofit Global Institute for Labor & Human Rights. Brazil’s strong independent labor movement also clashes with a centralized Chinese system of company unions without collective bargaining power.

“You’re looking at a whole different model of how society operates,” said Charles Kernaghan, the institute’s director. “That means no rights to

organize, virtually no labor protections.” Chinese companies are attempting to export that model and, at least in Brazil, have been finding it difficult to retain workers, even in management positions. A survey of 500 Brazilian executives working for Chinese, North American and European companies recently conducted by the Michael Page International recruitment firm for the newspaper Folha de S Paulo found that 42 percent of Brazilian executives working for Chinese companies left their jobs within a year, a 68 percent higher turnover rate than found in the other firms studied.

Brazilian workers complain that their Chinese employers don’t understand the country’s culture of developing personal relationships among co-workers.

Brazilians also bristle against a centralized office hierarchy that puts little trust in local execu-

say about 30 of China’s big staterun companies with annual revenues above $1 billion are now in the country, more than three times the number five years ago.

China and Brazil’s bilateral trade surpassed $56 billion last year, up from $2.3 billion a decade earlier. In 2009, China replaced the US as Brazil’s biggest trading partner. Brazil isn’t China’s first foray into Latin America Chinese companies have a strong presence across the region, from mining operations in Argentina to manufacturing in Mexico. China has bilateral trade agreements with Peru, Costa Rica and Chile.

Zhang Jianhua, chief of the Bank of China’s operations in Sao Paulo, said Chinese companies have been enticed by Brazil’s wealth of iron ore, soy, oil and other natural resources, and many companies are finding it more cost effective to move clos-

ment, can require trips to the notary and stacks of paperwork.

Brazilian workers also balked at what they saw as their Chinese superiors’ suffocating management style, said the executive, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of putting in jeopardy the jobs of other Brazilians at Lenovo. “It was not the quantity of work - we’re all chained to our Blackberry, working 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” she said. “But the Chinese bosses wanted people physically in the office 100 percent of the time so they could control them.

That’s definitely not how deals are closed in Brazil. It’s over dinner, at lunch, having a drink. You cannot keep your work force locked up in an office and expect to make headway in Brazil.” The executive added that Chinese bosses would often create ill will by upbraiding Brazilian project managers in front of their staff.

Daniela Liu teaches Chinese to Brazilians in a school in Sao Paulo May 26, 2011. — AP

tives. “The cultural misunderstandings are going to frustrate the development of Chinese business in Brazil,” said Marcelo de Lucca, director of Michael Page’s Brazil operations.

“Multinational companies, when they arrive in Brazil or any country, have to adapt to the local culture. But the Chinese, with their old culture, being a country ruled by a strong Communist party with extreme levels of hierarchy, for them this process will take longer.”

Global accounting firm KPMG, whose specialists help Chinese companies get started in Brazil,

er to the commodities. Chinese companies also see Brazil’s booming middle class as a lucrative market. hinese companies’ experience elsewhere in Latin America, however, hasn’t helped them avoid problems in Brazil. A former top executive for Chinese computer maker Lenovo said most Brazilians at the company’s local offices were frustrated by demands to come up with almost immediate results in a country with some of the world’s worst red tape. Even seemingly mundane tasks, such as getting a phone line or renting an apart-

“They thought the workers would do more if the orders were coming from the big boss, but that’s not what Brazilian workers think - it’s just the opposite,” she said. “They lost motivation because they thought their manager had no respect within the company, to the point that he was being dressed down in front of them. I saw that a lot.” Calls to Lenovo were not returned.

Asian executives have had their own complaints about what they’ve seen as the lax work ethic of Brazilian employees, but are up against laws that require all foreign companies in Brazil to

hire locally. Charles Tang, who founded the Brazil-China chamber of trade and industry 25 years ago, vividly recalls the difficulties he encountered when the Bank of Boston first sent him to Brazil in the mid-1970s. He was particularly frustrated with what he said was some Brazilians’ lack of punctuality.

“I banged my head against the wall for a year or so before I really got into Brazilian culture,” he said. Tang said he soon learned the Brazilian way - essentially to relax, realize nobody is going to arrive at a meeting on time and understand that informality doesn’t necessarily equate with a lack of professionalism. He realized that the differences in style ultimately didn’t affect the bottom line. In fact, data from the US-based business group The Conference Board show Brazilian workers were 30 percent more productive last year than their Chinese counterparts. Chinese worker productivity, however, grew at more than twice the annual rate than that of Brazilian workers.

In the past, Chinese firms circumvented such complications by importing thousands of their own workers, a practice Brazilian officials don’t tolerate, said Antonio Barros de Castro, a former president of Brazil’s state development bank who has closely studied China’s rise.

“They know that here they have to work mostly with Brazilian laborers, the government has made that clear,” Barros said. “In places like Africa, they resolved workforce problems by ignoring the problem, by working with Chinese workers.”

Despite efforts to build better working relationships between the two countries, distrust was still rife on a recent afternoon in the Liberdade neighborhood of central Sao Paulo. Celio Lin, 29, sat by the cash register of his family’s busy Chinese restaurant complaining about the Brazilian staff, while his mother checked on the line cooks by tugging on their coats and attentively peeking into pots of soup and noodles. “Brazilians want vacations for I-don’t-know-what, they want a day off for I-don’t-know-what, they want to go to the beach, to relax,” Lin said. “The beach is obviously pleasant, but if you send a Chinese man to the beach, he’ll go there to sell something!”—AP

Focus

For Israelis, ‘defensible’ border means more land

By Dan Williams

T

o ask Israeli officials how the border with a future Palestine should look is to invite a deluge of data - from the regional military balance, to topographical surveys, to intelligence projections on Hamas strength. But no one will map it out. For while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has refused any return to the “indefensible” lines held before the West Bank’s occupation in the 1967 war, the Israelis themselves have no ready alternative to hand. The issue was at the centre of a White House spat last week between Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama, who in an unprecedented step proposed publicly the 1967 boundaries serve as the basis for delineating the Palestinian state.

“Is there some kind of borders chart that can be whipped out and presented now? No,” said Yosef Kuperwasser, a former chief military intelligence analyst who now serves as director-general of Israel’s Strategic Affairs Ministry. Such planning, he argued, is impossible given the nebulous menaces of a Middle East in upheaval and of the Palestinian polity, which has balked at Netanyahu’s peacemaking terms that include recognition of Israel as a Jewish state. “We can’t have a map until we know what the solutions will be, in terms of both strategic security and the philosophical security of being assured that the Palestinians have ceased to be even a prospective source of hostility,” Kupperwasser said.

The Netanyahu government’s sequencing promises to bedevil US peace mediation that seeks to set borders before other core disputes - such as Jerusalem’s status and the future of Palestinian refugees - are tackled. Palestinians, and Netanyahu’s domestic critics, see in his rejection of the pre-1967 lines a rightwing legerdemain designed to scrap draft territorial deals of previous Israeli governments and prepare for sweeping West Bank annexations.

While Israel’s hope of keeping swathes of its West Bank settlements under an accord would appear to have been met by US and Palestinian calls for “mutually agreed swaps” of land, this falls far short of satisfying Netanyahu’s defence doctrine. Like his predecessors, Netanyahu insists the Palestinian state be demilitarised and that Israel have free access to its airspace and control of sensitive communications frequencies.

The worst-case scenario posited by Netanyahu advisers and confidants for the post-withdrawal West Bank, meanwhile, recalls the pan-Arab mobilisations in 1967 against a fledgling Israel just 16 km wide at its coastal heartland: Once US forces leave Iraq, it could close ranks with Iran and send tanks toward Israel; the buffer offered by Jordan might not hold, especially if revolutions seen in Egypt and Tunisia reach Amman; the West Bank would risk becoming a springboard for Palestinian militants, bolstered by Arab armies as well as the Hezbollah and Hamas guerrillas to Israel’s north and south.

More immediately, Israel’s commercial hub of Tel Aviv and nearby Ben-Gurion Airport, its international gateway, could be paralysed should Palestinian rocket and mortar crews have the run of the West Bank highlands overlooking them.

“Israel cannot base itself on a snapshot of reality in 2011,” said Dore Gold, a former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations who accompanied Netanyahu to Washington as a consultant. “No one can guarantee, for Israel, which regimes to the east will be in power in five years’ time.”

Past Palestinian land offers to Israel had amounted to single-figure percentages of the West Bank - enough, Gold said, to take in settlements but not to ensure national security. How much might that require? Gold, like Kupperwasser and other officials, would not be drawn on figures. But he said Israel would be hard put to compensate the Palestinians. “You would have to carve out from the living flesh of Israel - roads, kibbutzim, military bases,” he said.

Shaul Arieli, a centre-left peace activist who in the late 1990s served as a military consultant under first-term premier Netanyahu, said Israeli negotiators’ maps then called for a 40 percent West Bank annexation. That has likely been pared down to between 15 percent and 20 percent due to Netanyahu’s current openness to keeping a minimal Israeli military garrison in the Jordan Valley, Arieli said: “In any event, Israel does not have land that it can give up in exchange for anything more than a 3 percent swap.”

Though few dispute the region’s volatility, Netanyahu’s views are challenged by experts who say they play down Israel’s military primacy and the corrosion caused to its demographics and international legitimacy by remaining mired over Palestine. “Any border the political echelon sets as the State of Israel’s border is a border that the Israel Defence Forces would be capable of defending,” said Dan Halutz, a former military chief now aligned with the centrist opposition party Kadima.

“Of course I wouldn’t rule out that we must prepare for the possibility of tanks being lined up on the border, but the kind of wars being waged in recent years do not have a territorial dimension as much as an aerial one,” he told Israeli television.

Military historian Martin van Creveld credited Israel’s current containment of Hezbollah, Hamas and Syria to its superior arms and said these could be brought to bear in turning the kidney-shaped West Bank into a “noose” for any Arab invader. “It is crystal-clear that Israel can easily afford to give up the West Bank,” he wrote in the Jewish Daily Forward. “Strategically speaking, the risk of doing so is negligible. What is not negligible is the demographic, social, cultural and political challenge” of maintaining the West Bank occupation. — Reuters

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MONDAY, MAY 30, 2011

Years

sp orts Batsman Tharanga tests positive MUMBAI: Sri Lanka opening batsman Upul Tharanga tested positive for an banned substance at this year’s World Cup, an International Cricket Council (ICC) source told Reuters yesterday.

Left-hander Tharanga scored two centuries in the tournament cohosted by India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, and was the fifth highest run-getter.

“The ICC will not comment on this as per World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) regulations,” an ICC spokesman said. Tharanga, 26, has played 15 tests and 121 one -day internationals for Sri Lanka and scored 12 international centuries.

Sri Lanka’s Sunday Times said Tharanga had claimed he was prescribed prednisolone by an alternative medicine practitioner who had treated other cricketers in the past. Prednisolone, a corticosteroid, is on the WADA banned list. Sri Lanka Cricket, the national governing body, could not be reached for comment. —Reuters

Players held for match-fixing SEOUL: South Korean prosecutors said yesterday they had arrested three more football players for alleged involve ment in a growing match-fixin g scan dal, Yon h ap n ews agency reported.

The three play for Daejeon Citizen, a club based in the central city of Daejeon. Two of the team’s players and two suspected match fixing brokers had already been arrested.

The detained players are suspected of receiving money to help fix the result of an April 6 matc h again st Poh an g Steelers, which Daejeon lost 30, Yonhap said. Rumors abound about match-fixing in South Korea’s professional football league.

Indians extend AL Central lead ST. PETERSBURG: Shelley Duncan and Orlando Cabrera each had two RBIs as the Cleveland Indians beat the Tampa Bay Rays 7-3 on Saturday, extending their lead in the American League Central to a surprising 6-1/2 games.

Duncan, who was pinch-hitting, and Cabrera both had two-run singles during the eighth to put Cleveland ahead 7-2.

Duncan had a bases-loaded drive off JP Howell that hit the left-field wall, but he was held to a single because it looked like outfielder Sam Fuld might catch the ball.

Indians starter Carlos Carrasco (4-2) gave up two runs over six innings, helping the AL Central leaders end a three-game losing skid. Cleveland had been outscored

with a drive to right off Gavin Floyd (5-5) for his third homer of the season. It was the fourth game-winning homer of his career.

Floyd pitched seven innings in Texas on Wednesday but was called out of the bullpen in the 13th, his first relief appearance since 2007.

Jose Bautista also went long, for his majors-leading 20th homer of the season.

Blue Jays left-hander Luis Perez (1-0) pitched 3 2-3 shutout innings for his first career win.

Rangers 10, Royals 1 In Arlington, Texas, Mitch Moreland, Mike Napoli and Endy Chavez hit consecutive homers to match a club record, powering Texas past Kansas City.

Three straight Rangers homered for the fifth time in club history. It hadn’t happened since 2004 and was the first time any team had done it this season. Texas’ Matt Harrison (5-4) pitched six shutout innings, walking only one.

Adrian Beltre added his team-best 11th homer, and Nelson Cruz connected for his ninth as the Rangers went deep five times against Sean O’Sullivan (2-4).

Athletics 4, Orioles 2 In Oakland, Coco Crisp had two hits and ST PETERSBURG: Cleveland Indians’ Shelley Duncan drove in the go-ahead run to help Oakland follows the flight of his eighth inning, two-run single beat Baltimore. Mark off Tampa Bay Rays relief pitcher JP Howell during a Ellis hit a home run and baseball game. —AP Josh Willingham and 23-4 over those games. James Shields (5-3) Kevin Kouzmanoff also drove in runs for the A’s. The Orioles have lost 11 of their took the loss. past 12 games in Oakland.

Josh Outman (1-0), in his second start Mariners 5, Yankees 4 In Seattle, Adam Kennedy scored Luis since returning to the majors for the first Rodriguez with a bloop single off Mariano time in two years, allowed two runs over Rivera in the bottom of the 12th as Seattle six innings for his first majors victory for edged New York and won for the ninth two years. Baltimore starter Brad Bergesen (1-6) allowed nine hits in 5 2-3 innings. time in 10 games.

Rivera (1-1) made career appearance Twins 1, Angels 0 No. 1,001 in the 12th inning and gave up a In Minneapolis, Danny Valencia hit a one-out single by Justin Smoak and a double by Jack Cust. Rodriguez replaced bases-loaded single in the bottom of the Smoak as a pinch-runner at third, and after 10th inning, lifting Minnesota over Los an intention walk to load the bases, Angeles.

The teams combined for only three hits Kennedy dumped an pitch in front of the center fielder to score Rodriguez. David until the decisive 10th, when Valencia Pauley (4-0) worked two innings of relief to lobbed a flyball over the right fielder’s head. Twins starter Anthony Swarzak, a get the victory. late fill-in for Francisco Liriano (shoulder), didn’t give up a hit until the eighth.

Blue Jays 9, White Sox 8 Angels starter Jered Weaver needed a In Toronto, Corey Patterson hit a gameending homer in the 14th inning to lift season-high 128 pitches in nine innings, Toronto over Chicago. Patterson, who tied but gave up only two hits while striking a career high with five hits, led off the 14th out seven. —AP

MLB results/standings Major League Baseball results and standings on Saturday.

Pittsburgh 10, Chicago Cubs 0; San Diego 2, Washington 1; Toronto 9, Chicago White Sox 8 (14 innings); Milwaukee 3, San Francisco 2; Cleveland 7, Tampa Bay 3; Arizona 11, Houston 3; Minnesota 1, LA Angels 0 (10 innings); Texas 10, Kansas City 1; Atlanta 7, Cincinnati 6 (12 innings); Philadelphia 5, NY Mets 2; Colorado 15, St Louis 4; Oakland 4, Baltimore 2; Florida 6, LA Dodgers 1; Seattle 5, NY Yankees 4 (12 innings).

National League American League Eastern Division Eastern Division Philadelphia 33 19 .635 W L PCT GB Florida 30 20 .600 2 Boston 29 22 .569 Atlanta 29 24 .547 4.5 NY Yankees 27 23 .540 1.5 NY Mets 23 28 .451 9.5 Tampa Bay 27 24 .529 2 Washington 22 29 .431 10.5 Toronto 26 26 .500 3.5 Central Division Baltimore 24 26 .480 4.5 St Louis 31 22 .585 Central Division Milwaukee 28 24 .538 2.5 Cleveland 31 18 .633 Cincinnati 27 26 .509 4 Detroit 25 25 .500 6.5 Pittsburgh 24 26 .480 5.5 Kansas City 23 28 .451 9 Chicago Cubs 22 28 .440 7.5 Chicago White Sox 24 30 .444 9.5 Houston 19 33 .365 11.5 Minnesota 17 33 .340 14.5 Western Division Western Division San Francisco 28 23 .549 Texas 27 25 .519 Arizona 28 24 .538 .5 Seattle 26 25 .510 .5 Colorado 25 26 .490 3 LA Angels 27 27 .500 1 LA Dodgers 23 30 .434 6 Oakland 26 27 .491 1.5 San Diego 21 31 .404 7.5

N e ws p a p e r s s ay foot b a l l clubs tend to hush up such scandals and have been silently expelling players implicated in m a tc h-r i ggi ng s i nce l a s t year.

P l aye rs a re e xp os e d to growing temptation because the country’s illicit online gambling sites, many of them operated by crime rings in South Korea and China, have been growing exponentially, news reports said.

The K-Le a gue w i l l a s k authorities to take its games off Sports Toto, the country’s only licensed sports lottery, for a while to prevent match-fixing, league secretary general Ahn Gi-Heon told repor ters Thursday. —AFP

Malhotra cleared to play VANCOUVER: Vancouver Canucks center Manny Malhotra was cleared on Saturday to play in the Stanley Cup finals two months after suffering a serious eye injury. Malhotra, who had been expected to miss the rest of the season after having eye surgery in March, was given permission on Friday to join his team mates in some light contact at practice.

“It’s obviously a very exciting prospect for me at this point,” Malhotra told reporters after Canucks coach Alain Vigneault gave him the green light earlier on Saturday.

“Coming from where I was two months ago and making the statement that the season was over to potentially having a chance to play in the NHL Stanley Cup Final is obviously incredibly exciting for me.”

Vigneault did not say whether Malhotra would be in Vancouver’s lineup on Wednesday when the Canucks host the Boston Bruins for Game One in the best-of-seven series.

Malhotra, 31, has not competed in the league since March 16 when a puck deflected off an opponent’s stick and into his eye during a game against Colorado.

At that time, the Canucks said Malhotra, who had 30 points while playing on the team’s shutdown third line, would not return for the remainder of the regular season and playoffs. —Reuters

Giants fall to Brewers MILWAUKEE: Jonathan Lucroy ’s basesloaded suicide squeeze scored Ryan Braun in the ninth, lifting the Milwaukee Brewers to a 3-2 win over the San Francisco Giants in the National League on Saturday.

Braun and Prince Fielder opened with consecutive singles off Guillermo Mota (2-2) in the ninth and moved up on a groundout before an intentional walk loaded the bases.

Pinch-hitter Lucroy’s then delivered a wellexecuted bunt, out of the reach of Mota and Braun easily scored.

The Brewers had squandered a 2-0 lead after the Giants scored twice in the eighth.

Brewers reliever John Axford (1-1) pitched the ninth, taking the win.

Phillies 5, Mets 2 In New York, Ryan Howard hit a tiebreaking double in the eighth inning and Philadelphia went on beat New York. Phillies starter Cole Hamels (7-2) struck out a seasonhigh 10 and walked none over seven innings to win his third straight outing and improve to 3-9 in 15 career games against the Mets.

He had lost five consecutive starts against them.

This time, he recovered from a shaky start to retire his final 11 batters _ five by strikeout _ without allowing a ball out of the infield.

Ryan Madson got three quick outs for his 11th save in as many tries. Philadelphia pitchers set down the last 17 Mets. Mike O’Connor (0-1) took the loss.

Rockies 15, Cardinals 4 In Denver, Chris Iannetta homered twice and drove in a career-high six runs as Colorado routed St. Louis. The hard-throwing Juan Nicasio (1-0) pitched seven solid innings, conceding jut one unearned run in his recall from the minors.

Nicasio may have just made a compelling case to stick around a while longer as the Rockies tinker with their rotation in the wake of the season-ending elbow injury to Jorge De La Rosa. The usually reliable Jaime Garcia (5-1) had a rough outing and the Rockies took full advantage to break out of their offensive funk by setting season highs for runs and hits (18).

Braves 7, Reds 6 In Atlanta, Chipper Jones’ single in the 12th inning drove in Jordan Schafer to give Atalanta victory over weary Cincinnati.

It was the second extra-inning game in four days for the Reds, who lostin 19 innings in Philadelphia on Wednesday. Carlos Fisher (0-2) walked Schafer to lead off the 12th.

Fisher, working his second inning after throwing 5 2-3 innings Wednesday, also walked Mar tin Prado. The switch-hitting Jones pulled a pitch past the second baseman into right field. The speedy Schafer easily beat the throw to the plate.

Brian McCann had four hits, including two homers. Freddie Freeman also homered for Atlanta. Scott Linebrink (1-1) pitched two innings for the win.

MILWAUKEE: Brewers second baseman Rickie Weeks (23) leaps overt San Francisco Giants’ Pat Burrell (5) to turn a double play on a ball hit by Cody Ross during the eighth inning. —AP Marlins 6, Dodgers 1 In Los Angeles, Greg Dobbs and Wes Helms each drove in two runs in Florida’s defeat of Los Angeles. Gaby Sanchez doubled twice and scored twice for the Marlins.

There was a small fire in a storage area during the fifth inning, causing an evacuation of the immediate area, with some fans being relocated. Edward Mujica (5-2), the second of five Marlins pitchers, allowed one hit over two scoreless innings and struck out four to get the victory. Dodgers starter Hiroki Kuroda (55) pitched 5 1-3 innings and allowed five runs.

D’backs 11, Astros 3 In Houston, Zach Duke pitched seven strong innings and hit a three-run homer in his first game of the season, leading Arizona over Houston.

Duke’s first home run in seven major league seasons came off Bud Norris (2-4) in the Diamondbacks’ four-run fourth inning.

Duke (1-0) missed Arizona’s first 51 games while recovering from a broken hand suffered in spring training. He prevented the Astros getting a hit until the fourth. Duke, activated off the disabled list earlier Saturday, didn’t allow another runner until he issued a walk in the sixth.

Pittsburgh 10, Cubs 0 In Chicago, Paul Maholm pitched a shutout to record his first victory in a month and guide Pittsburgh to a big win over Chicago.

Maholm (2-7) got his third career shutout in a place he’s always pitched well. He is 8-2 in 15 career starts against the Cubs, including 62 in 11 starts at Wrigley Field. Ronny Cedeno, Lyle Overbay, Chris Snyder and Andrew McCutchen each homered for the Pirates.

Activated off the disable list for just his second start of the season, Chicago’s Randy Wells (1-1) lasted only four innings, giving up five runs with three walks.

Padres 2, Nationals 1 In Washington, Tim Stauffer pitched seven innings for his first win of the season, leading San Diego to a tight victory over Washington.

Stauffer (1-3) limited the Nationals to one run to win for the first time in 11 starts. Heath Bell worked the ninth for his 11th save.

Blake Tekotte had his first two major league hits for San Diego, which had lost six of seven. The Padres, who came in with a woeful .226 batting average scored three or fewer runs for the 11th straight game. The last time they did that was 1976. Jordan Zimmermann (2-6) took the loss. —AP

MOD clinch Ministries Basketball title KUWAIT: The Ministry of Defense was crowned as the newest champions of the Ministries and

State Departments Basketball Tournament following a 58-53 victory over the National Guard in

the final match that was held at the Kuwait Sports Club Hall.

The MOD’s victory came fol-

lowing a tough competition shown by their opponents, as they were up by one point 26-25 during the half time score. The National Guard tried to trim the lead during the third and fourth quarter with a number of three pointers, but the MOD managed to contain their charge by being able to convert fast break points and scoring three pointers of their own.

Following the match the MOD team was crowned as champions for the 2010/2011 season, in a coronation ceremony that was attended by Kuwait Basketball Association board member Dr. Musa’ed Al-Kraibani, as well as other sports officials and enthusiasts of the game.

The Kuwait Airways team was also awarded during the ceremony after finishing third in the tournament that was supervised by the Public Authority for Youth and Sports, following a 71-61 victory over the Kuwait Fire Services Department.

MONDAY, MAY 30, 2011

S P ORT S

Miami and Dallas promise a classic NBA final MIAMI: The most impressive player of the NBA playoffs comes up against the most scrutinized t r i o i n p r o fe s s i o n a l b a s k e t b a l l w h e n D i r k Nowitzki and the Dallas Mavericks take on the Miami Heat in the NBA finals starting tomorrow.

The best-of-seven series is a repeat of the 2006 finals, which Miami won, coming back from 2-0 down and trailing by 12 points with five minutes left in game three, a bitter experience that Dallas found hard to stomach.

This is a tougher, more resilient and more experienced Mavericks team, who showed their class by sweeping the Los Angeles Lakers in the second round of the playoffs, while the Heat line-up is a very different one indeed from the team that triumphed five years ago.

O n l y D w y a n e Wa d e a n d U d o n i s H a s l e m remain on the Heat roster from 2006 with twotime league MVP LeBron James and six-times All Star Chris Bosh making up the much-vaunted

‘Big Three’ with Wade.

While Wade struggled at times in the Eastern Conference series with the Chicago Bulls, the bumps and bruises of a long season having taken their toll, he has made big plays went it has mattered down the stretch.

Bosh is the most under-rated of the trio and initially found the whole adjustment to a new ‘shared’ way of playing to be a tough one, but he has shown his value in the post-season.

It was James’ decision to move to Miami when he became a free agent last year, that sparked such a huge debate about the appropriateness of one team assembling so much expensive talent on one roster.

J a m e s we n t o n t e l e v i s i o n t o f a m o u s l y announce that he was leaving Cleveland and, as he put it, “taking my talents to South Beach” and although he has since apologized for the way he handled his exit from Ohio, there are still some

who have yet to get over his move.

James has shown his value on both sides of the ball and has matured into his new role in Miami which he describes as being a ‘facilitator’ as much as a finisher.

Nonetheless, despite his all-round contribution, James still made 25.9 points per game in the playoffs and is the number one threat facing the Mavericks. The former Cleveland favourite is arguably the reason why the Heat have been able to produce late shows such as their remarkable comeback against the Bulls in game five.

Dallas are burning with a desire to avenge that bitter loss in 2006 even though their record since against Miami has been one of total domination, winning all ten meetings of the two teams, including both games this regular season.

Towering German Nowitzki, who stands 7foot (2.13 metres), has been in great form during

the playoffs, averaging 28.4 points a game and has been close to automatic from the free throw line.

Nowitzki has sunk baskets from all over the court and there is no obvious candidate on the Heat roster to reduce his effectiveness, with coach Erik Spoelstra likely to look to doubleteaming the German.

While Nowitzki’s performances in the postseason have drawn the attention, not surprisingly given he twice made 40 points in the 4-1 series win over the Oklahoma City Thunder, of Jason Kidd, the Mavericks’ 38-year-old point guard, has defied his years with some excellent contributions. Tyson Chandler showed in the regular season that he could keep the Heat away from easy baskets while Jason Terry’s contribut i o n s f ro m t h e b e n c h w i l l a g a i n b e v i t a l.

Whatever happens, if the playoffs are any guide, it won’t be dull. —Reuters

Palmer leads Garcia by one shot at Byron Nelson

INDIANAPOLIS: IndyCar driver Oriol Servia, of Spain, takes a photo of the Borg-Warner Trophy before the drivers’ meeting for the Indianapolis 500 auto race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The 100th anniversary running of the Indianapolis 500 was to be held late yesterday. —AP

IndyCar looks to future as fans embrace past INDIANAPOLIS: For a race that has been around for 100 years and bills itself as “ The Greatest Spectacle in Racing”, the Indianapolis 500 will speed into a new era late yesterday focused on the future as fans embrace the past.

On a race weekend dripping with nostalgia, the sleek and sexy Car of the Future on which the IndyCar series is betting its survival stole the spotlight from the classics that once ruled the Brickyard as they sat on display in the Speedway Plaza.

Next year the winning car of yesterday’s centennial race will likely join the others in the Speedway Museum, suddenly obsolete as the IndyCar series undergoes a dramatic makeover to make the racing more exciting for fans and sponsors.

Honda, the series’ long-time single engine supplier, will have competition next season with Chevrolet and Lotus coming on board while aerodynamic kits will be available, providing teams with more distinctive and unique looks.

However, even the best-look ing designs must be modelled on the big stage and in motor racing there is none bigger than the Indianapolis 500, the Super Bowl of IndyCar racing. “ This race is the golden goose,” IndyCar chief executive Randy Bernard told Reuters. “This is the race that every race fan in the world knows about.

“It’s the largest sporting spectacle in the world and to me it is the make-orbreak of our year. Sponsors look at this event and will make their future decisions on what we are able to do here this week.

“We’re up 10 percent on our attendance and over 25 percent on our merchandise. Those are important numbers to me. It shows our sport is going in the right direction.” Just a few years ago, the only direc tion in which IndyCar appeared to be heading was down.

The damage done by a bitter decade-long feud that split the sport into two warring series (Indy Racing League and Champ Car) until reunification in 2008 had left deep scars.

As the two series bickered, NASCAR swooped in to fill the void and scooped up unhappy motor racing fans, sponsors and television ratings.

Undoing that damage and winning back fans has been a slow, humbling

process but there are signs IndyCar and its crown jewel, the 500, are starting to regain some of their sparkle.

“It’s coming back, it’s going to take us a few years to get to where we were,” said Bernard. “Our goal is to be the number one form of motorsport in the United States.

“We once were there and we can be there again.” If IndyCar is to return to its former glory and become the destination of choice for the world’s top drivers, it means taking on NASCAR, who look ready to snatch away IndyCar’s biggest asset-the series’ best-known driver Danica Patrick.

The only woman to win an IndyCar race, Patrick has dabbled in stock cars the last few years and, though she has been coy about future plans, they seem certain to include NASCAR. A year ago, Bernard conceded that, with I ndyCar battling to regain a foothold in the crowded and competitive North American marketplace, the defection of the series’ marquee name to a rival would have dealt IndyCar a serious blow.

But Bernard is confident the sport is on much firmer footing now with some of NASCAR’s supporters finding value in what they are offering.

“I think we’re making progress,” said Bernard, who came to IndyCar from the Professional Bull Riders (PBR). “ The momentum is there.

“We’ve been able to bring in new companies and new sponsors like Verizon and IZOD. It’s been reported that Verizon withdrew their $12-$17 million sponsorship out of NASCAR and brought it over here.”

Bernard plans to steer IndyCar back to the front of the sporting grid by using many of the same tools and lessons he learned transforming bull riding from a cowboy pastime seen at country fairs into a mainstream sport with a worldwide television audience and millions of dollars in sponsorship and prize money.

“It’s still a steep learning curve,” said Bernard, who admits he had never seen an IndyCar race before becoming chief executive almost two years ago.

“My wife asked what it’s been like and I said: ‘It’s like not knowing the Japanese language and saying that you are going to learn it in seven days and go and teach at a university’.” —Reuters

DALLAS: American Ryan Palmer carved out a one-shot lead despite bogeying three of the last five holes in a gruelling third round of the Byron Nelson Championship in Ir ving, Texas on Saturday.

On a difficult day for scoring in gusting winds at the TPC Four Seasons Resort Las Colinas, Palmer battled to a three-over-par 73 for a fiveunder total of 205.

Playing partner Sergio Garcia had been tied for the lead overnight with Palmer but the Spaniard dropped one stroke off the pace after toiling to a four-bogey 74.

India’s Arjun Atwal, among the earlier starters, fired a best-of-the-day 67 to share third place at three under with Japan’s Ryuji Imada (70).

Americans Gary Woodland (68), Joe Ogilvie (72) and Matt Kuchar (68) were a further stroke back at the end of a sweltering afternoon with winds gusting up to 39 mph (62.76 kph) on a firm and fast-running layout.

“The scores show how hard it was,” Palmer, 34, told reporters after putting himself in position to claim his fourth PGA Tour victory. “It got tougher and tougher. You never could figure out the gusts; that was the hard part.

“I hit it pretty good I felt ... I grinded it out all day, I fought and fought. But my bad round is out of the way, I think, and I still lead by one.”

Only eight players in the 74-strong field carded sub-par scores in the third round when the scoring average was 73.338.

Garcia, who won the most recent of his seven PGA Tour titles at the 2008 Players Championship, began the day level with Palmer at eight under overall.

He slipped one behind with a bogey at the par-three second but regained a share of the lead when Palmer faltered at the sixth after missing the green to the right with his approach.

The Spaniard dropped another shot at the par-four eighth, after finding a fairway bunker off the tee and failing to reach the green with his second, to trail by one at the turn.

Palmer forged two ahead when he knocked in a nine-footer to birdie the 10th but he slid back to seven under with a bogey at the 14th where he drove into the left rough.

With the final three holes playing into a daunting headwind, Palmer and Garcia each bogeyed the par-five 16th, the American having to lay up from a poor lie in the rough off the tee and the Spaniard three-putting.

One ahead with two holes to play, Palmer bogeyed the par-four 18th after pushing his tee shot right into trees from where he was unable to reach the green in two.

However, he maintained his one -stroke advantage when Garcia also bogeyed the hole after ending up in the same treeline off the tee and missing an eight-footer for par.

“It was definitely hard,” said Garcia, champion here in 2004. “At the same time I have to say I got nothing out of my round. I could not shoot one shot higher than I did today.

“So if you look at it that way-and I’m only one shot back behind Ryan and I have tomorrow-I think it’s pretty positive.” Similar weather conditions are expected for late yesterday’s final round. — Reuters

IRVING: Jordan Spieth, of Dallas, blasts out of the sand on the fourth hole during the third round of the Byron Nelson Championship golf tournament. —AP

Donald recovers from early wobble VIRGINIA WATER: Luke Donald sprayed the ball around the course like Seve Ballesteros before fighting back to tie for the lead with Italian teenager Matteo Manassero after the PGA Championship third round on Saturday.

World number two Donald, normally so steady from tee to green, frequently found the trees and the rough at Wentworth as he dropped an unlikely five strokes in the opening six holes.

Donald though recovered brilliantly with a flawless four-birdie back nine giving him a oneover-par 72 and a five-under tally of 208.

Manassero, 18, the hottest young prospect in golf, continued to show maturity beyond his years as he finished with nine straight pars on another tough day for scoring to return a matching 72.World number one Lee Westwood produced his second consecutive 69 to tie for third position with little-known Paraguayan Fabrizio Zanotti (69) on 210.

“I felt like Seve out there,” Donald told reporters. “I was in trees with leaves all over my back and I was dropping balls in high grass and escaping from everywhere.

“I had to dig pretty deep and I found a few birdies and then I made a few crucial putts for birdies at 16 and 17 and for a par on 18. I made about 80 feet worth of putts there and that was a good way to finish.”

The Briton took on an improbable escape shot between two pine trees at the 13th, much like the great Ballesteros would have done in his prime. “It would have been an easy chip out to the fairway and I could have played for a bogey

five there,” said the 33-year-old. “The trees were about 20 yards ahead and there was probably a six-foot gap but I had a decent enough lie.

“I felt like I could get through there and create some left to right spin and I hit it perfectly.

Sometimes you have to take risks and that one paid off,” added Donald who will take over as world number one if he finishes ahead of Westwood on Sunday.

While Donald was taking a few gambles to recover from his dreadful start, Manassero carefully plotted his way round the West Course in his bid to become the youngest winner of the PGA Championship.

“It feels fantastic to be leading with some tricky pin positions and tough weather out there,” said the twice tour winner. “I’m a lucky 18year-old.”

Asked if he was strong enough psychologically to tackle the world number one and two on Sunday, Manassero replied: “I don’t know, we’ll see.

“I don’t think it’s going to be a mental battle on that course. I think it’s going to be down to who plays and putts better.”

Westwood, bidding to land the coveted title for the first time, said no one was ever going to produce a runaway victory this week. “I am edging my way up there,” said the 38-year-old Briton.

“This is the kind of course where you have to do that. “It has that feel of a major championship where you are just hanging around, trying not to make too many mistakes. It’s not the kind of course where anybody was going to run away with it.” —Reuters

China win Sudirman Cup QINGDAO: China demolished Denmark 3-0 to capture their fourth Sudirman Cup on the trot in front of a raucous sell-out home crowd in the seaside city of Qingdao yesterday.

The hosts and hot pre -tournament favourites were the outstanding side at the world mixed team championships and no other country came even remotely close to toppling them as they rampaged their way to yet another big title.

The heavy defeat at a packed house of about 12,500 left Denmark, Europe’s best badminton team, contemplating a future without their world number five Peter Gade, who confirmed this would be his last Sudirman Cup. Head coach Li Yongbo, under whom China have enjoyed extraordinary success, said: “Denmark were strong. Most of their players are experienced and quite old but it was difficult for them against us today.

“Today’s performance was the best of the week. We recovered from some small difficulties in the group stages to find the confidence to put on a good performance in the final.”

And he admitted: “I didn’t expect it to be so smooth.” Gade, 34, acknowledged after he was sent packing by Lin Dan that it was “almost” impossible to beat China on their own turf.

“You need a few things to get together before you can do it,” he said.

“They’ve not been that much under pressure in the tournament and they still have a lot

QINGDAO: (From left) China players Lin Dan, Cai Yun and Fu Haifeng celebrate with the champion’s trophy at the Sudirman Cup badminton tournament. — AP left in the reserves. “Maybe we used a bit more energy along the way, and if are to beat them, we need that extra edge. We need to be honest, they could almost put out two teams which could make the final.”

China took an emphatic early lead and never looked back. Their mixed doubles pair of Xu Chen and Ma Jin saw off Joachim Fischer Nielsen and Christinna Pedersen in comprehensive fashion, 21-14, 21-14.

Then Lin steamrollered Gade in the most mouthwatering match of the final. Lin, widely regarded as the best player ever, was in sparkling form from the off, winning the first game 21-16 and the second 21-11.

China wrapped up yet another Sudirman Cup triumph when the men’s duo of Cai Yun and Fu Haifeng came from behind in the first game to put away Carsten Mogensen and Jonas Rasmussen 21-17, 21-13. —Reuters

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sp orts

Semenya, Heidler win at Dakar Grand Prix

Gulf Bank, KFH vie for KBC Cup KUWAIT: The Gulf Bank aim to wrap up their successful season by adding the KBC Football Cup title to the KBC Football League championship, which they clinched last month, when they square off

against the Kuwait Finance House in the final match of the tournament tonight at the Sabah Al-Salem Stadium in the Arabi Sports Club in Al-Mansouriya.

The event will be attended by

chairman of the Kuwait Banks Club Hamad Al-Marzouq, as well as board members and other senior officials who will personally award the victorious teams during the coronation ceremony. Kickoff is at 8:30 pm.

Centurians Cook and Trott torment Sri Lanka CARDIFF: England’s Alastair Cook and Jonathan Trott were once again tormenting the opposition as they shared an unbroken 240-run partnership to frustrate Sri Lanka on another rain-affected day in the first test on Saturday. Opener Cook was 129 not out while Trott was unbeaten on 125 as England reached 287 for two, trailing the tourists by 113 runs at the close on day three.

The duo dragged England back into the match on a placid batting surface with their fluid strokeplay. Nightwatchman James Anderson (1) was the only wicket to fall in the day after the morning session had been washed out. But thereafter, Cook, with his fifth century in eight tests, and Trott dominated a day that was occasionally entertaining and turgid at other times.

They continued their prolific form from the recent Ashes series when Cook plundered 766 runs at an average of 127.66 and Trott racked up 445 at 89. There, they also they put on 329 together in Brisbane.

Conditions in Wales were much different to Brisbane, with the sky murkier and the pitch slower. But the batsmen displayed the same determined mindset to bring England back from adversity.

Cook now wants to make sure the hosts put enough runs on the board so that they do not have to bat again in the second innings.

“It’s nice to score a few again and continue from Australia. It’s pleasing personally but it also puts us in a position where we can win

this game,” said the 26-year-old. “This is an opportunity for Trotty and I to make big ones.

The only way we can win this game is to bat once and bat big.”

Tailender Anderson, diagnosed with a side strain that will prevent him from bowling any further in the match, was caught at slip by Mahela Jayawardene off Ajantha Mendis attempting an ugly slog in the third over of the day.

It took England 22 balls to score their first runs in the day, when Cook on-drove Suranga Lakmal through midwicket for two after a misfield. They scored just 30 runs in the first hour but thereafter the runs came much more easily. The 100 was raised by an elegant off-drive from Trott which slowed in the damp outfield and brought him three runs.

Later an attempted quick single to extra cover off Farveez Maharoof earned Trott five runs as Lakmal’s errant throw went for four overthrows.

Sri Lanka should have run Trott out when he was on 59 after he scampered through for a quick single to Thisara Perera but his throw from five metres was wide and Trott survived despite being a metre short of his ground.

Cook batted patiently and his scoring rate at one point in the evening session almost ground to a halt, when he also could have been caught at short leg by Tharanga Paranavitana off Herath, but the fielder could not hold on to a tough chance.

Cook registered his 17th test ton with a

DAKAR: World champion Caster Semenya ran her fastest time this season to win the women’s 800 meters at the IAAF World Challenge Dakar Grand Prix on Saturday.

The South African led the field throughout at Leopold Sedar Senghor Stadium in her first international meet of 2011, crossing in 2 minutes, 0.61 seconds — more than a second quicker than her previous best this year.

World record-holder Betty Heidler won the women’s hammer throw with 75.33 meters. The German couldn’t get close to the 79.42 she threw to set a new world mark just a week ago, but still dominated the event ahead of Jessica Cosby of the United States in second with 69.53 meters.

Former Olympic 200-meter champion Shawn Crawford of the US took the men’s 200 in 20.58 seconds, while Aziz Ouhadi of Morocco won the 100 in 10.09. Crawford was way off the pace in the 100 with 10.37.

The 20-year-old Semenya continued her buildup to the defense of her two-lap title at the world championships in Daegu, South Korea in August with a fifth win in five races this season, easing away from Cuba’s Yusneysi Caballero.

Semenya bettered the seasonbest 2:01.77 she ran in a provincial meet in South Africa in March, but is still to dip under two minutes this year — the target ahead of her 2011 Diamond League debut at the Prefontaine Classic in Eugene, Oregon next weekend.

“The race was not easy as I did not achieve my best time,” Semenya said. “I will try next time.” A gender controversy sidelined Semenya for

DAKAR: South African athlete Caster Semenya (right) runs during the 800 meters at the Dakar Grand Prix. World champion Caster Semenya won the women’s 800 meters clocking her season’s fastest time in her first international race of 2011. —AP most of 2010 and a back injury then Crawford said he had been wellprevented her competing at the tested in the men’s 200 as he held end-of-season Commonwealth off Ben Youssef Meite of Ivory Coast by just 0.02 seconds.

Games after she was cleared to run.

Zimbabwe’s Brian Dzingai — The world champion had made steady early season progress run- who was four th in the 2008 ning at home, but in her first race Olympic final — was third in Dakar outside South Africa this year she in 20.77 seconds. Ouhadi’s 10.09 in was still some way off the form that the 100 was his second Moroccan saw her blow away the competition national record in two weeks. Meite to win at the 2009 worlds as a was second again in 10.21 seconds, while Crawford could only manage teenager in 1:55.45.

A week after her world record in the eighth-fastest time.

In the men’s 400 hurdles, 22Halle, the 27-year-old Heidler was too strong for the rest of the field in year-old American Johnny Dutch Senegal, producing five throws bet- — a former world junior silver ter than second-place Cosby. medallist — upset in-form South Tatyana Lysenko of Russia was third African Cornel Fredericks. Dutch won in 49.17, ahead of Fredericks with 68.13 meters.

Athens 2004 Olympic champion (49.39) and Britain’s Jack Green and Beijing silver medallist (49.88). —AP

SCOREBOARD Scoreboard at the close of the third day of the first test between England and Sri Lanka in Cardiff, Wales on yesterday: Sri Lanka first innings 400 England first innings (overnight 47-1): Strauss c J’wardene b Lakmal 20 Cook not out 129 Anderson c J’wardene b Mendis 1 Trott not out 125 Extras: (b 5 lb 2 nb 5) 12 Total: (for two wickets; 90 overs) 287 Fall of wickets: 1-46 2-47 Still to bat: K. Pietersen, I. Bell, E. Morgan, M. Prior, S. Broad, G. Swann, C. Tremlett.

Bowling (to date): Lakmal 19-4-54-1 (1nb), Perera 14-1-53-0, Dilshan 9-1-270, Maharoof 15-1-56-0 (3nb), Mendis 184-43-1 (1nb), Herath 15-1-47-0.

backward cut for four off Lakmal, while Trott raised his sixth test century and the 200 partnership with a square drive off Lakmal.

Sri Lanka, minus the now-retired spinner Muttiah Muralitharan, looked a tired bunch late on and Mendis’s knee-high full-toss to Trott three overs from the close, which was struck to the cover boundary, demonstrated their lethargy. Attendance was again disappointing with 10,500 tickets sold, well short of the ground’s 15,000 capacity. —Reuters

Loeb fights back to win Argentina Rally CORDOBA: Seven-times world champion Sebastien Loeb overcame a one-minute time penalty to take a narrow victory in the Rally of Argentina yesterday.

The Frenchman, winning his sixth Argentine title in a Citroen, won by 2.4 seconds from Finn Mikko Hirvonen with

overnight leader Sebastien Ogier third 7.3 seconds behind. A gripping race went down to the wire after Frenchman Ogier rolled his Citroen on the gruelling, 48.21 kms Ascochinga stage, the first of the day, with damage to the front of the car and the power steering. “This morning I made a mistake

ARGENTINA: Citroen’s team driver Sebastien Loeb (top right) from France, and codriver Daniel Elena, from Monaco (top left) wave as they pose for photos after winning the Argentina Rally. —AP

and it was impossible to drive the car,” a visibly distraught Ogier, who was in the lead until the decisive final power special, told reporters. Ogier come in more than 11 seconds off the pace set by power stage winner Petter Solberg of Norway, who took three bonus points to two for second-placed Hirvonen and one for Loeb.

Loeb, who was penalised on Friday but had cut compatriot Ogier’s overall lead to a mere 3.3 seconds in the penultimate special, is top of the standings with 126 points from six races. Hirvonen is second on 113 with Ogier third with 96. “After all the difficulties I had I’m pleased with this finish,” Ford driver Hirvonen said at the finish.

Fog hung over the hills of Cordoba province during the early kilometres of the day’s first stage as cars continued to get punished on the often tight dirt and gravel roads. “The first 20 kilometres were in fog and we were fighting well...We hit a few banks here and there but no dramas,” Hirvonen told the championship website (www.wrc.com). Solberg, world champion in 2003 before Loeb notched up seven titles in a row, won the penultimate stage and the closing power stage in his Citroen for three bonus points. He finished fourth overall, just over half a minute behind Loeb.

Finn Jari-Matti Latvala, who led from early Friday until the 13th stage on Saturday before pulling out with suspension damage to his Ford, won the 17th special after being allowed to resume the race but finished seventh nearly 12 minutes off the pace.

“Rallying can be the hardest game,” said the 26-year-old Finn. —Reuters

MILAN: Spain’s Alberto Contador lifts the trophy after winning the 94th edition of the Giro d’Italia, Tour of Italy cycling race. —AP

Contador wraps up title Giro d’Italia MILAN: Alberto Contador secured his second Giro d’Italia title yesterday with a comfortable third-place finish in the final stage, beating his closest rival for the pink jersey by more than six minutes.

The Spaniard and pre-race favorite beat his chest and celebrated with his traditional pistol shot sign as he finished the 26-kilometer (16-mile) individual time trial around the streets of Milan 36 seconds behind stage winner David Millar’s time of 30 minutes, 13 seconds.

“It is an amazing feeling to win the Giro here today and it is a dream finale,” Contador said. “My team was really supportive throughout and we didn’t really have a bad day.”

With his hearing at the Court of Arbitration for Sport pushed back until later in the summer, it opens up the possibility that Contador could try for a clean sweep of Giro, Tour de France and Vuelta a Espagna. Contador, who also won the 2008 edition, finished with an overall time of 84 hours, 5 minutes, 14 seconds. He was six minutes, 10 seconds ahead of Michele Scarponi, and also won

the red jersey for points winner with a total of 202, 80 ahead of Scarponi.

“Myself and Vincenzo (Nibali) fought to the end, but it wasn’t to be,” Scarponi said. “Alberto Contador was stronger than all of us. He’s stronger than everyone. I’m happy with second though and I’ve had a good Giro.” The win is Contador’s sixth success in a grand tour event. He won the Tour de France in 2007, 2009 and 2010 and the Vuelta in 2008.

However, if he is found guilty of doping offenses when he appears before CAS there is the possibility that he could be stripped of the title, meaning that Scarponi would be promoted to first place. Contador has been unchallenged at the top of the classification since winning the ninth stage on Mount Etna in Sicily to take the lead. Local favorites Scarponi and Nibali were unable to keep pace with him whenever he attacked on the mountain stages and they had to watch the Spaniard open a morale-sapping lead that he regularly extended over the race. — AP

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Barcelona builds a legend that will last

BARCELONA: Barcelona players celebrate their victory on winning the Champions League soccer title, during a bus tour through Barcelona city. — AP

Europe-conquering Barca return home BARCELONA: Europe -conquering Barcelona returned home yesterday for a victory parade on an open-top, doubledecker bus in a city-centre celebration with adoring fans.

Barca landed at Barcelona-El Prat airport bringing home the Champions League Cup after their 3-1 demolition of Manchester United in London’s Wembley Stadium.

Coach Joseph Guardiola, man-of-thematch Lionel Messi and the rest of the team boarded an open-top, doubledecker bus decked out in the team’s red and blue colours and headed to Barcelona’s port.

Thousands of fans had already gathered under a baking hot sun to hail their heroes in a parade beginning in the port and then weaving through the city centre past a statue of Chrisopher Columbus.

Many tourists joined the fans.

“As an Englishman it pains me,” admitted one tourist, John Stirling, admitting however that he had joined Barcelona fans in a city-centre party that raged Saturday night as his way of thanking them for great football.

The parade culminates at the Barca stadium Camp Nou, which has a capacity of 100,000. Celebrations including concerts are on a two-hour program starting 8.30 pm (1830 GMT).

Barcelona defender Gerard Pique said immediately after the win Saturday that he would go with his teammates to finish the night at a concert by his girlfriend Shakira who is playing in Barcelona.

“Champions!! Champions!! thank you so much!!” Pique wrote. “Tomorrow at Barcelona and then the players will go to @shakira concert in the Olympic Stadium!!”

The 24-year-old Pique met Shakira last year while shooting the video to her song “Waka Waka (This Time for Africa)”the official track of the 2010 World Cup won by Spain.

Meanwhile, police detained more than 80 people for public order offences and other infringements while around 130 fans needed medical attention after celebrations of Barcelona’s fourth European title turned ugly on Saturday.

Around 50,000 gathered in the centre of the Catalan capital to mark the 3-1 victory over Manchester United at London’s Wembley Stadium and most celebrated peacefully, police said in a statement on Sunday. However, 84 people were later detained for public order offences, throwing stones and other objects, damaging city property and attacking officers, the statement said. Some 37 police were among the injured, though none were seriously hurt.—Reuters

BARCELONA: Riot police officers walk past a burning flare in Barcelona during clashes with Barcelona supporters following their Champions League final soccer match against Manchester United. — AP

Guardiola fidgets on throne LONDON: After Barcelona’s dazzling Champions League triumph over Manchester United, manager Pep Guardiola should be contemplating how to extend his club’s European hegemony, yet his future remains uncertain.

The 40-year-old has only been in charge for three seasons but such is the mental strain of being at the helm of an institution that is so much more than a football club, that he is contemplating walking away after one more year at the helm.

Indeed, after Saturday’s 3-1 Wembley defeat it was United’s evergreen 69-year-old year old boss Alex Ferguson, in charge for 25 years, who was already planning how to build a team to challenge the Spaniards for top European billing.

Guardiola is steeped in Barcelona history and never misses an opportunity to remind people that he is a “mere cog in the machine”.

He was a player in the team that won their first European Cup at the old Wembley in 1992 and has now guided them to their third and fourth triumphs, both coming with final victories over United.

As dignified in victory as in his rare defeats, he was all modesty again after goals from Pedro, Lionel Messi and David Villa sweep United aside in one of the all-time great final performances.

“I feel privileged to have these players, I don’t feel like the boss of them,” he said after Saturday’s triumph. “So many people have worked so hard to achieve this and I congratulate everyone.

“I’m so happy to be here as a coach of these guys. I intend to continue one more year and we’ll see. “The challenge has to come from inside myself. When the passion of the night has gone I’ll go home, rest a bit and come back.”

It might seem extraordinary that such a young, fresh and wildly successful manager could consider walking away from one of

the greatest teams ever to play the game, when the prospect of hauling the club closer to Real Madrid’s daunting tally of nine European Cups is right there in front of him.

Yet Guardiola has often spoken of the emotional toll taken on the man tasked with leading a team who symbolise the whole notion of a separate Catalan nation.

The rows with Jose Mourinho and subsequent antics of the players on both sides in the semi-final victory over Real Madrid did not sit well with him and it was noticeable how much more comfortable he was pitting his wits against Ferguson in an atmosphere to total mutual respect.

Guardiola also knows that for all the plaudits raining down on his team, the concept of a total dominance of European football is something of a veneer.

His first triumph in 2009 came after his team had been frustrated by a resolute Chelsea in the semi-finals, only to sneak through on away goals after Andres Iniesta scored with their only shot on target in stoppage time of the second leg.

Mourinho’s Inter also stifled Barcelona out of the competition in the semi-finals last season. However, they were peerless in this campaign and against a United team who had not conceded a single Champions League goal away from Old Trafford, looked a class apart in the final.

Ferguson had no complaints, accepting that his side had been beaten by a team “right at the top of their cycle”, yet vowed to go away and work hard to knock them down. “In my time as manager, I’d say they are the best team I’ve faced,” Ferguson said.

“Beating them is the challenge. The challenge is always to improve yourselves, to build your team, I think we have some very good players, we’ll mull it over in the summer.” Guardiola might yearn for some peace and quiet but Ferguson, who briefly toyed with retirement himself in 2002, shows no signs of calling it a day. — Reuters

WEMBLEY: In one sublime Champions League final, football got two emphatic answers. One: this Barcelona squad, absolutely without question now, is among that small fistful of teams that can legitimately be considered the best club sides ever. Two: Lionel Messi is as good as Pele and Diego Maradona ever were.

No ifs, or buts, or maybes. Just facts. Proven on the green pitch of Wembley and by the shattered hearts of Manchester United.

The final scoreline on Saturday said 3-1. But that was kind. It could have been worse, far worse, for Alex Ferguson’s players. They weren’t just beaten, they were humbled. Not merely outplayed and outthought, but utterly outclassed, too.

“In my time as manager, it’s the best team I’ve faced,” said Ferguson, who is a quarter-century, and counting, at the United helm.

Not that there’s any shame in being overshadowed by perfection. United’s white-shirted worker-ants, as one expects of any team fielded

by Ferguson, a master motivator, did not surrender, did not stop running, did not let their heads droop.

They dignified themselves by not losing their tempers, which would have been so easy

because Barcelona rarely shares the ball. Barca’s winning recipe includes a big dollop of selfishness.

Once it had snuffed out United’s spirited start to the match, Barca’s triumph quickly started to take on an air of inevitability. Even Wayne Rooney’s cleverly worked and sweetly struck goal on 34 minutes could only delay, not change, United’s fate.

Ferguson once coined the term “carousel” to describe Barca’s dizzying passing game. At Wembley, it span ever quicker as the match wore on. Between them, Barca’s super-trio of Messi and midfield partners Andres Iniesta and Xavi Hernandez completed 305 passes _ four more than the entire United team.

So if Barca can do this to mighty United twice in three years, then what hope is there next season for them and all the other teams in Europe?

Not much. Not, that is, if Pep Guardiola sticks around. The Barca manager has done more than take an already good team and make it nigh-on unbeatable, he is presiding over what looks like the makings of a dynasty. In three years, Guardiola has 10 titles.

He spoke wearily before the match of the mental and physical toll exacted by leading a

club of such high expectations, which fueled suspicions that he may move elsewhere. Still, it’s not a stretch to think that in another three years, his title-tally could be doubled if he stays.

Messi, remember, only turns 24 next month.

There are plenty more goals, plenty more goalmaking passes, left in the speedy little legs of the Argentine who finished as the Champions League top scorer for the third season running and who must now be a dead-cert for a third consecutive world player of the year award.

Messi conjured his goal at Wembley out of nothing, really. A pass from Iniesta, a sprint into the box, a shot so fast that it caught everyone off-guard. It was now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t magic and gave Barca the lead for good. That made 12 goals in the Champions League this season for Messi, matching Ruud van Nistelrooy’s single-season record of 2002/2003.

“Lionel is the best player I have seen and probably the best I will ever see,” said Guardiola.

Amen to that. For United, the future looks less certain. Ryan Giggs won’t get any younger, nor will Paul Scholes, and Edwin van der Sar didn’t get the winner’s medal he hoped for in his last match. Ferguson has rebuilding work to do.

Barcelona has hegemony to enjoy. — AP

Messi shimmies and jinks his way to more greatness LONDON: The moment that defined Lionel Messi as the greatest player in the world came after 69 minutes of the Champions League final on Saturday, rather than the 54th when he scored. That’s how remarkable it was.

Having already made his mark as the outstanding player on the pitch and having scored a sublime goal to put Barcelona 2-1 ahead against Manchester United, the 23-yearold Argentine found himself wide on the right with his team attacking again.

The United defence stood firm to block his advance towards goal where he would no doubt inflict more damage on their already fragile and battered self-confidence.

The World Player of the Year, though, merely shimmied past them into space, providing the pass that led, almost inevitably, to David Villa’s wonderfully struck, high curling shot that sealed Barcelona’s 3-1 victory.

The way Messi moved, having the audacity to take on international defenders with such confidence, emphasised just how superior Barca were to United for almost all of the final apart from the opening 10 minutes when the English side saw more of the ball than they would for most of the next 80.

Messi still has a boyish look about him and it was almost as if he was back being the most gifted boy in the playground, dancing around opponents as if they were not there.

The performance not only earned Messi the Man of the Match award but moved the little forward another notch closer to the game’s alltime greats Pele and fellow Argentine Diego Maradona.

Barca manager Pep Guardiola said: “Messi is the best player I’ve seen and probably the best I ever will see. We have great players but he makes the difference and without him we would not have that difference in quality. He is unique. A one-off.”

Messi’s Portuguese rival Cristiano Ronaldo, on the losing side when Barca knocked Real Madrid out of the Champions League in the semi-finals, must have thought the same thing if he was watching the match on TV like hundreds of millions of others.

Messi’s goal-his second against United in a Champions League final after his header in 2009 — was a brilliantly executed 20-metre left-foot curling shot that spun away from diving goalkeeper Edwin Van der Sar to put Barca

SPAIN: Barcelona’s Lionel Messi (center) from Argentina, celebrates with teammates after Barcelona’s demolition of Manchester United in the Champions League final. —AP

back in front and really finished the game as a contest. It was also, remarkably, his 53rd of the season, his 12th in the Champions League to equal the record set by Ruud van Nistelrooy in 2002-03 and means he has now topped the Champions League scoring charts for the last three seasons. The intriguing thing about that statistic is that Messi is not an out-and-out centre forward because Barcelona’s approach echoes the way Hungary played in their golden years of the early 1950s and Ajax Amsterdam did in the era of ‘Total Football’.

Hungary bamboozled opponents at the time when Nandor Hidegkuti played as a deep-lying centre-forward, leaving defenders perplexed about who to mark.

Johan Cruyff was nominally Ajax’s target man, but was in fact the creator who went all over the pitch, like Messi, deep into midfield, or wide on the flanks.

Fast forward 40 years to Saturday at Wembley and United’s central defenders Nemanja Vidic and Rio Ferdinand were left marking empty spaces with Messi playing so far deep he was in his own half at times.

But then when he, Andres Iniesta, Xavi and

Ferguson: We were mesmerised LONDON: Manchester United were never able to control Barcelona’s midfield or deal with the brilliance of Lionel Messi as they were overwhelmed 3-1 in Saturday’s Champions League final, manager Alex Ferguson said.

Like many before them, United had no answer to the wonderful passing of the players who did so much to help Spain become world and European champions and seemed powerless to get a grip on Messi as he danced through their defence almost at will. “They do mesmerise you with their passing,” Ferguson told a news conference in the bowels of Wembley to the background accompaniment of departing Barcelona fans celebrating their third European title in six years.

“We never really controlled Messi, but many people have said that. We never really closed the midfield well enough to counter them.

“We tried to play as near to the way we normally play. For instance, it’s alien to us to try to man-mark players. We tried to play as normally as we can. It wasn’t good enough on the night, we acknowledge that.”

United actually started well but, just as they did when they lost the 2009 final to Barcelona in Rome, they quickly fell away.

Pedro put the Spaniards ahead after 27 minutes but there was a spark of hope for United when Wayne Rooney fashioned an excellent equaliser seven minutes later. “When we got the lifeline I

expected us to do better in the second half, but it wasn’t to be,” said Ferguson, whose hopes were blown away by second-half goals from Messi and David Villa.

“Nobody’s given us a hiding like that but they deserve it because they play the right way and they enjoy their football.”

Ferguson has led United to three Champions League finals in four years, winning in 2008 having also triumphed in 1999, and said he was now facing up to the task of finding a way to compete with Barcelona for the ultimate club honour.

“It’s not easy but that’s the challenge, we shouldn’t be afraid of that,” he said. “ The challenge is always to improve yourselves, to build your team, I think we have some very good players, we’ll mull it over in the summer. “We’ve been consistent in Europe in the last few years but maybe this might be the same sort of stepping stone as when they beat us 4-0 a few years ago,” he added in reference to the group-stage Nou Camp drubbing in 1994.

“Great teams do go in cycles and the cycle they are in at the moment is the best in Europe. “How long it lasts and whether they can replace that team, they certainly have the philosophy ... it’s always difficult to say that you can find players like Xavi, (Andres) Iniesta and Messi, probably not, but they are enjoying the moment. “In my time as a manager I’d say yes, they are the best team I’ve faced.” —Reuters

Villa burst through to attack, their wonderful passing leaves opponents straining every last muscle to prevent them running riot.

Many people, including Dutch great Marco Van Basten, have called this Barca team the greatest club side of all time.

That may be a little premature considering Real Madrid’s all-conquering side of the 1950s which won the first five European Cups, or the Ajax or Bayern Munich teams that won hattricks of titles. But Van Basten is as good a judge as any, having been a European champion with AC Milan in 1989 and 1990, though he was no longer in the team that beat Barca 4-0 in 1994 — the last great exhibition in a European Cup final before Saturday.

Barcelona might yet have to emulate Milan’s feat as the last team to win successive finals to start deserving that accolade.

But there is little doubt they can-and there is little doubt too that with good health and no serious injuries to stop him, Messi has many more years left to win many more honours. He is already pulling up his chair to join the greats and may possibly end up taking a place at the head of the table. — Reuters

Barca return home

Semenya, Heidler win at Dakar Grand Prix

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Miami and Dallas promise a classic NBA final Page 17

MONACO: Red Bull Racing’s German driver Sebastian Vettel drives at the Circuit de Monaco during the Monaco Formula One Grand Prix. (Inset) Vettel, of Germany celebrates after winning the Formula One Grand Prix. —AP

Vettel wins Monaco GP MONACO: Sebastian Vettel profited from a large stroke of fortune to win yesterday’s Monaco Grand Prix, beating Fernando Alonso and Jenson Button in a thrilling and incidentpacked race that several drivers failed to finish. Defending F1 champion Vettel has won five of six races for Red Bull this season, with only McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton beating him in China.

“It was unbelievable, the race today was pretty entertaining,” Vettel said. “The roulette button must have stopped last night and kept on spinning.” The German driver gambled by staying out on the same set of soft tires, turning the last 15 laps into a battle of wits as both Alonso’s Ferrari and Button’s McLaren were on his tail. “ Watching these guys hustle was great fun, I was waiting for the move,” Button said.

That gamble looked certain to backfire until a crash on lap 72 resulted in a red flag that suspended the session just as he was close to being caught. That allowed Vettel to change his tires and when the race resumed, the last few laps became a procession.

“I saw the only chance to win this race was to try and stay out. I was nearly 20 laps under pressure with

PARIS: Daniela Hantuchova of Slovakia serves against Svetlana Kuznetsova of Russia in the fourth round match at the French Open.—AP

Fernando and Jenson behind, it was getting closer and closer,” Vettel said.

Alonso’s second place is the best performance of the season for the two-time former F1 champion, although Ferrari must be wondering what might have been, while Button will be exasperated at coming so close to winning again in Monaco.

“Third in Turkey and now second here, definitely a good weekend for us,” Alonso said. “I think the first safety car played a big part. If not, Jenson was on his way to the victory. We gained one position with the first safety car, and maybe we lost victory with the red flag ... I had two places in mind (to attack) Vettel.”

Seven-time former champion Michael Schumacher, Ferrari’s Felipe Massa, and Vitaly Petrov — whose Renault was involved in the late crash that halted the race — were among those who failed to finish.

The safety car was out twice even before the late red flag in a chaotic, intense afternoon of motor racing.

Vettel, starting from pole position for the fifth time this season, made a flying start under perfect blue skies.

Button was not quite close enough to pass him, and when he tried to go outside Vettel saw the

McLaren coming and shifted across smoothly to close the gap. After just one lap, Vettel was ahead by 2.4 seconds and stretched his lead to nearly four seconds by the third.

But any thoughts that this would be a comfortable win for Vettel, F1’s youngest champion, proved unfounded as the most exciting race of the season featured almost as many twists and turns as Monaco’s famed street circuit itself. Vettel looked to be certain to succumb to either Alonso or Button with the German losing time on every lap as the traction of his soft tires started giving way. Alonso, who had pitted twice, and Button, three times, looked set to pass him until a crash involving Petrov and Toro Rosso’s Jaime Alguersuari swung the balance back in Vettel’s favor.

The red flag came up, a dazed Petrov was taken out of his car, and drivers took the oppor tunity for much-needed repairs. This gave Vettel a priceless gift in the form of a tire change. “It was good to hear that Vitaly (Petrov) is fine,” Vettel said.

While Vettel’s Red Bull team was figuring out their strategy, the race behind him was increasingly fraught.

Massa clipped the tunnel wall and

damaged the left side of his Ferrari just after an incident with Hamilton.

The Brazilian driver did well to bring his car to a comfortable stop, while Schumacher’s Mercedes ground to halt at La Rascasse just under Prince Albert’s hilltop palace with smoke billowing from the engine only moments later.

Hamilton and Schumacher went to battle for a few laps, and Hamilton passed him with a brilliant move inside on Saint Devote on lap 10 as their front wheels clipped.

Alguersuari and Force India’s Paul Di Resta bumped into each other and Di Resta was given a drive through penalty for causing the collision as the mini-battles continued behind Vettel. Di Resta also clipped a Virgin car later on, while Alguersuari bashed Petrov in the late crash. Button took his first pit stop on lap 15, while Vettel and his Red Bull teammate Mark Webber both came in a lap later. But both pit stops were painfully slow.

“That certainly cost us the lead at that stage,” said Vettel, who switched to primes on his only stop.

That played into Button’s hands as he streaked ahead on the supersofts and the 2009 F1 champion led by nearly 11 seconds with a third of the

race gone. “He was pulling away like crazy,” Vettel said. “If there had been no safety car it would have been difficult to beat Jenson as he was so far ahead.”

Button extended his lead to 13 seconds until he decided to make his second tire change on lap 33, giving Vettel the lead again.

Soon after Hamilton and Massa got tangled up at a hairpin bend and Massa’s Ferrari veered onto the dirty left side of the tunnel, with scattered debris and marbles, and into the wall.

Hamilton continued despite his front wing having being clipped in the incident with Massa.

“I went up the inside and he (Massa) turned in on me, on purpose!”

Hamilton said on race radio. But those pleas made little difference to the stewards as Hamilton was given a second drive through penalty of the afternoon for causing a collision.

Then it was Schumacher’s turn to pull out with smoke billowing from his engine. A safety car came out on

the track, taking away Button’s momentum and giving Vettel a second chance to stamp his authority on the race. Massa, meanwhile, watched the race glum-faced.

“When I got into the tunnel the car was (not) turning anymore and I went straight,” Massa told Brazilian television. “It all happened because of (Hamilton’s) attempt to pass me.”

Button came in for his third stop on lap 48, switching to primes, but Red Bull decided not to _ banking on Vettel’s ability to hold a lead on a track notoriously hard for overtaking.

Vettel had no choice but to keep pounding his tires, as by lap 65 Alonso and Button were within touching distance, and it became a case of surival until the red flag reprieve.—AP

Federer sets new q-final record PARIS: Roger Federer set yet another record by reaching the French Open quarterfinals yesterday, and Novak Djokovic closed in on a pair of his own. Federer extended his quarterfinal streak at major tournaments to 28 with a 6-3, 6-2, 7-5 victory over Olympic Roger Federer

gold medal doubles partner Stanislas Wawrinka.

“Twenty-eight quarterfinals in a row, that’s great,” Federer said. “But that’s another opportunity for me to go one step further.”

Shortly after Federer’s match on Court Philippe Chatrier, Djokovic maintained his perfect season and stretched his overall winning streak to 43 matches by beating Richard Gasquet of France 6-4, 6-4, 6-2. “I’m definitely playing the best tennis of my life,”

Djokovic said, “and I’m trying to stay focused on each game and we’ll see how far I can go.” Federer and Djokovic could meet in the semifinals. Also yesterday, Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova knocked out the highest seeded player remaining in the women’s draw, beating No. 3 Vera Zvonareva 7-6 (4), 2-6, 6-2 to earn a spot in the quarterfinals.

Defending champion Francesca Schiavone later advanced by defeating No. 10 Jelena Jankovic 6-3, 2-6, 6-4.

Federer, a 16-time major champion who completed a career Grand Slam at Roland Garros in 2009, improved on the record he shared with Jimmy Connors on Court Philippe Chatrier. The last time Federer failed to reach the quarterfinals at a major was at the 2004 French Open, when he was the top-seeded player but lost to Gustavo Kuerten in the third round.

Federer again dominated with his serve Sunday. He was broken once early in the third set, but broke back twice to remain one of four players to have won every match in straight sets. “I was playing with the wind against me, and it was a bad game because all of a sudden there was more wind, and I had the feeling that I was playing against the wind and not against Stan,” Federer said of the third set. “So in the end I made wrong decisions.” Federer also beat Wawrinka, his

Davis Cup teammate, in the quarterfinals of the Australian Open. In 2008, the Swiss pair teamed up to win the doubles gold at the Beijing Olympics.

“In the third set I had a few openings, and if I had managed to serve a little better and hold on to my break, maybe anything could have happened,” Wawrinka said.

Besides his record 16 major titles, Federer also set a record of 23 straight Grand Slam semifinal appearances. That run ended at last year’s French Open, when he was beaten in the quarterfinals.

Federer set his quarterfinal streak in 28 consecutive Grand Slam tournaments, while Connors skipped some in his run.

In the next round, Federer will face either No. 7 David Ferrer or No. 9 Gael Monfils.

Djokovic is 41-0 in 2011, including a pair of clay-court final wins over top-ranked Rafael Nadal. If he beats unseeded Fabio Fognini in the quarterfinals, he will match John McEnroe’s record for the best start to the season. “To beat him you need to produce the perfect match and not make any mistakes. You need to play like Nadal, hit the ball really strong, to make him run. But only a few guys can beat him at the moment,” Gasquet said.

“Even Nadal struggles to organize his game when he plays against him.” With

three more wins, Djokovic will equal Guillermo Vilas’ overall Open era record of 46 consecutive wins. “Actually, I think I’m playing really well at this moment,” said Djokovic, whose winning streak dates back to last year’s Davis Cup final.

“And this match today I think I even increased a level since the last match, which makes me even happier.” Fognini, the first Italian to reach the quarterfinals at Roland Garros since 1995, overcame a cramping left leg and five match points to defeat Albert Montanes of Spain 4-6, 6-4, 36, 6-3, 11-9. The third-seeded Zvonareva followed No. 1 Caroline Wozniacki and No. 2 Kim Clijsters out of the tournament after losing to Pavlyuchenkova, at 19 the youngest player still in the tournament. Wozniacki and Clijsters both lost in the third round. No. 4 Victoria Azarenka of Belarus is now the highest seeded player left.

“I don’t really want to comment on this, because, well, it’s not of my business,” Pavlyuchenkova said. “I’m just trying to do my thing, focusing on me. ... The rest, I don’t really care.” It is only the third time that none of the top three seeded women has reached the quarterfinals at a Grand Slam tournament in the Open era, which began in 1968, and the first time at the French Open. —AP

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GAZA CITY: Palestinian laborers work at the construction site of a shopping mall in Gaza City. Once completed in June, the three-storey retail complex will be the biggest of its kind in the Palestinian Territories.—AFP

Ireland may need more EU-IMF cash Greeks favor selloffs to end debt crisis DUBLIN/ATHENS: Ireland may have to ask for another loan from the European Union and International Monetary Fund because it will struggle to return to debt markets to raise funds next year, a government minister said yesterday.

In comments to The Sunday Times newspaper, Transport Minister Leo Varadkar became the first cabinet member to cast doubt in public on Ireland’s ability to raise cash on the bond market because of punishing yields demanded by investors.

“I think it’s very unlikely we’ll be able to go back next year. I think it might take a bit longer ... 2013 might be possible but who knows?” Varadkar was quoted as saying.

“It would mean a second program (of loans from the EU/IMF),” he said.

“Either an extension of the existing program or a second program. I think that would generally be most people’s view.”

Deputy Prime Minister Eamon Gilmore told broadcaster RTE that fears of a domino effect from Greece’s problems were overblown. The possibility of a Greek default has sent bond yields rocketing for indebted Ireland, Portugal and Spain.

“It’s not a situation that if Greece defaults then there are immediately implications for Ireland,” Gilmore said.

“If Greece defaults there are implications for the wider euro zone and obviously we are part of that.”

“It is wrong to put Ireland in the same basket as Greece.” Greece’s hopes of averting default dimmed over the weekend amid fears the country, whose debt burden stands at around 330 billion euros, may have missed fiscal targets set by its creditors.

The IMF has dismissed reports that an international inspection team had found that Greece had missed all its fiscal targets. But the current mission to Athens has stayed far longer than on previous occasions and is locked in talks with the government to get economic reforms on track.

Athens’ creditors are increasingly focused on the possibility of raising more funds from privatisations and a

Kabulbank doled out $500m loans without documents KABUL: A failed Afghan bank doled out nearly half a billion dollars in unsecured, undocumented loans to a roster of Kabul’s elite, including sitting cabinet ministers and a powerful former warlord, anti-corruption officials said yesterday.

Azizullah Luddin, chairman of the High Office of Oversight and Anti-corruption, also said that records suggested the government would only be able to get back around two thirds of Kabulbank’s $925 million in outstanding loans.

“We are sure that $347 million will be paid back which we have no worries about,” he told a news conference to release the findings of a report detailing the bank’s woes.

“Other borrowers have properties in Dubai and in Kabul and in case they aren’t able to pay back, we can get $200-$250 millions by selling them...So we can get back a possible total of around $600 million,” he added. The bank, whose major shareholders had close family ties to Afghanistan’s leadership, came to the brink of collapse last year and was taken over by the Central Bank.

The Afghan government has since pledged to dismantle it, to meet

International Monetary Fund requirements on financial standards, but progress has been very slow.

Ludin said three or four sitting cabinet ministers, several MPs and Abdul Rashid Dostum, a power broker and former warlord, were among the names on a list of debtors who had evaded usual banking standards to secure a loan. “$467 million has been paid out without any documents or any guarantees or papers,” Ludin said. “We might be able to get back large amount of this money because we have prepared a list of 207 borrowers,” he said.

Dostum owed around $1 million to the bank, he added.

But both Ludin and Yasin Usmani, chairman of the Anti-Corruption Monitoring and Evaluation Committee, placed most of the blame for Kabulbank’s failure at the door of the Central Bank, rather than with Kabulbank’s owners and top managers.

These include Mahmoud Karzai, brother of President Hamid Karzai, and Mohammad Haseen, brother of the deputy president. Ludin said Afghanistan’s intelligence agency had

warned the Central Bank months ago there were major problems in Kabulbank’s finances, but had been told that it was not their business.

Individuals in the financial sector also tried to raise a red flag with the auditors, Usmani said. “ We blame the Central Bank because their monitoring was very weak,” he said, adding that he thought all private banks in Afghanistan needed more rigorous checks.

The 30-page report, which Ludin waved around during the news conference, has been delivered to President Karzai and the Attorney General. They will decide whether to release it to the public and whether to pursue any prosecution, he said.

The tangled state of the bank’s finances was evident even at the news conference, where officials gave figures $13 million apart for the total amount of loans outstanding. They later explained the higher figure came from an updated calculation of interest due. But other figures for the amounts repaid and still outstanding, and summaries of different types of loan, had discrepancies of several million dollars. — Reuters

poll on Sunday showed that an overwhelming majority of Greeks are in favor of selling and developing state assets to raise 50 billion euros.

The European Central Bank and the IMF, however, don’t believe the privatization program is ambitious enough.

ECB board member Juergen Stark said Greece could raise six times more than the 50 billion euros planned from asset sales, echoing earlier views from the IMF. A Greek paper reported on Sunday that the government was considering setting up a Spanish-style “bad bank” to clean up its lenders’ accounts from “toxic” Greek bonds and make them more attractive to potential buyers.

Athens is in a race against time to

secure political consensus on fiscal reforms before the EU and the IMF will free up more cash to plug funding gaps in the next two years.

Ireland, meanwhile, wants to tap investors for funding in 2012 before its 85 billion euros EU-IMF bailout runs out the following year. But investors believe Ireland will be unable to return to the market and instead will have to tap the European Union’s permanent rescue fund in 2013, which might require some restructuring of privately held sovereign debt.

Reflecting this medium-term risk, Ireland’s two-year and five-year paper are yielding close to 12 percent, more than its 10-year bonds on the secondary market.

Some 50 billion euros of the existing EU-IMF bailout has been earmarked for sovereign funding requirements with the remainder set aside to prop up the country’s ailing banks.

Earlier this month, the IMF said whatever was left over after recapitalizing the banks could be channelled to the sovereign if there was a delay in returning to markets.

At the end of March, the Irish government said the banks needed 24 billion euros to bulletproof their balance sheets but Dublin hopes some five billion euros can be raised from imposing losses on junior bondholders and asset sales, meaning that 19 billion euros of the 35 billion would be tapped. — Reuters

Brokers ready for new DFM settlement system DUBAI: Dubai Financial Market said its brokers and custodians are fully ready to implement a new settlement system as the region seeks an upgrade to emerging market s ta tu s from influ entia l index complier MSCI. UAE’s domes tic bou rs es launched a new Deliver Versus Payment (DvP) settlement system, an international settlement standard, on April 28 but gave more time to participants to implement the system after a few concerns

emerged. “The introduction of this model reflec ts DFM’s ong oing commitment to develop the exchang e’s infra s tru c tu re a nd adopt international best practices,” Essa K azim, Managing Direc tor and CEO of DFM said in a statement.

Market participants were given time till May 29 to implement the process. After snubbing the UAE for a second time in 2010, index compiler MSCI warned domestic bourses must change from dual

account structures such as separate custody and trading accounts.

MSCI will a nnou nce in Ju ne whether it will upgrade the UAE and Qatar from the ‘frontier markets’ category, a move that could open up the countries’ bourses to multibillion dollar liquidity and drive index fund investments.

Many traders are pessimistic over whether MSCI will upgrade the UAE, with low volumes and regional political unrest cited as likely deterrents. — Reuters

Tunisia needs $125bn in funding TUNIS: Tunisia’s government said it needs $125 billion in funding over the next five years to finance a massive economic program aimed at boosting growth and cutting unemployment, state-run news agency TAP said yesterday.

The government presented a plan to support its new development program to the Group of Eight Summit in Deauville earlier this week, TAP said, at which G8 nations pledged $25 billion in loans to Tunisia.

Public consultation is set to begin in Tunisia on the program, which will address good governance, the modernization of infrastructure, human resource development, economic integration in the global markets and the modernization of the financial sector.

The agency gave no details of the source of the extra funds. Nearly a quarter of Tunisia’s population currently lives below the poverty line and unemployment affects 700,000 people, including a majority of young people, Tunisian

Minister of Social Affairs Mohamed Ennacer said on Saturday.

Protests against poverty and unemployment in Tunisia toppled former President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali on January 14 after 23 years of autocratic rule, sparking a wave of similar protests across the Arab world. Internal forecasts suggest that Tunisia’s economy will grow by a mere 1-2 percent this year due to ongoing uncertainty, mainly because of a crisis in tourism and successive strikes. —Reuters

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MONDAY, MAY 30, 2011

business Hansen sees bullish market despite recent setbacks KUWAIT: Ole Sloth Hansen, Senior Commodity Manager at Saxo Bank, the online trading and investment specialist, will be visiting Dubai next week to discuss with investors and the financial media recent trends in commodity prices, which have risen dramatically over the past two years.

Total investments into commodities have risen 250 per cent from $159 billion in 2008 to $400 billion in 2011, according to Barclays Capital, with investments in gold and silver rising three-fold during the period.

Hansen recently observed that investment flows into commodities have been very strong due to a combination of strong fundamentals and new inventions, such as exchange traded funds (ETFs), which has made the sector accessible to everyone.

“ETFs have had a strong impact on the commodities market, making them accessible to everyone from the biggest hedge fund managers to the retail investor,” said Hansen.

“May has been a month of setbacks across most commodities. Prior to this, commodities had been outperforming bonds, equity and currency investments, so it is most likely that this deceleration is just a temporary correction in an overall bullish market.”

Ole Sloth Hansen is a specialist in traded futures with over 20 years experience, both on the buying and selling side. He joined Saxo Bank in 2008 and is today Senior Manager analyzing a diversified range of products from fixed income to commodities. He previously worked for 15 years in London, most recently for a multi-asset Futures and Forex Hedge fund where he was in charge of the trade execution team.

Ole Sloth Hansen will be in Dubai 7/8 June to discuss the commodities landscape at present and the new strategies for entering the market through ETFs. East and Australia. Saxo Bank opened its Dubai office in 2009 and was the first Danish bank to establish its presence in the Gulf Corporation Council region.

Saudi Jabal Omar OKs capital hike

Ali Alghanim & Sons Automotive mechanics win BMW certification Exclusive BMW importer holds training session have come to expect from Ali Alghanim & Sons Automotive.”

“This is the second group of mechanics that have become BMW Certified. We had 11 graduates from the program last year and aim to conduct more sessions in the near future, as part of our continuous efforts to improve and elevate the level of quality we provide to our BMW Group customers,” he added.

Ali Alghanim & Sons Automotive has enjoyed a strong first quarter of the year, achieving 11% growth in its BMW Group sales over the first quarter of 2010. The importer has also launched three new vehicles: the all-new BMW 6 Series Convertible, the second generation of the BMW X3 and the MINI Countryman, the first four-door, four-wheel-drive MINI. Ali Alghanim & Sons Automotive is the exclusive importer for BMW, MINI and Rolls-Royce automobiles in Kuwait.

One of the oldest premium car importers in the region, AA&SA began its relationship with the BMW Group in 1986 when it became their exclusive importer in Kuwait.

KUWAIT: Ali Alghanim & Sons Automotive held a ceremony for eight staff members who completed their official BMW Mechanics Certification recently, following intensive training program conducted by a certified BMW Group Master Trainer, and passing the test to qualify for the level of BMW Certified Mechanic.

This is the second consecutive year that the exclusive importer of the BMW Group in Kuwait has conducted the training session, aimed at providing their local mechanics with international BMW Group certification. The training works on increasing the level of knowledge the mechanics have of BMW vehicles and ensuring the quality of work is at a premium standard.

“We are proud to contribute to the development of our aftersales staff,” said Mohammed Alghanim, Group General Manager of Ali Alghanim & Sons Automotive. “The training program provides our mechanics with in-depth knowledge of the BMW group vehicles, allowing them to service our customers’ vehicles at the premium level that they

Over the years the company has expanded its reach in the luxury market with the opening of a multi-million dollar showroom in Shuwaikh adjacent to the Airport Road.

The importership offers a full range of

‘Discover your favorite Frappuccino’ at Starbucks KUWAIT: This summer, Starbucks is urging customers to move away from the traditional menu board to experience a new coffee innovation with the ‘Discover Your Favorite Frappuccino, service, a new approach to ordering a variety of new personalized blended beverages that are now available in the Middle East.

‘Discover your Favorite Frappuccino’ encourages customers to mix things up in order to create their own unique blended

HiLITE Builders a fine mix of craft, aesthetics iLITE Builders, better known as North Kerala’s most reputed builders group. The only builder who makes each of their projects a fine mix of craft, aesthetics and business acumen creating spaces that is on the finer side of life. After being a part of major projects that have carved a niche for itself in the real estate sector, HiLITE Builders are now on the endeavor to present the largest mall till date, HiLITE Mall at Calicut.

Planned on a grand 4.26 acres, HiLITE mall will have a total built-up area of 7.6 lac sqft. The most significant aspect of the mall is that it’s a part of HiLITE City, the urban township that is a world within itself. Comprising residential spaces in HiLITE Residency, commercial spaces at HiLITE Plaza and retail spaces at HiLITE Mall, HiLITE City is the first-ofits-kind infrastructural wonder at the bustling NH Thondayad Bypass, Calicut. All the prime development activities including the two newly launched Govt. Cyber Parks of the city are at this NH Bypass.

Envisioned to be Calicut’s ultimate lifestyle destination, HiLITE Mall can house more than 250 international branded outlets, a 3 star hotel, multiplexes, food courts and much more. The new generation brand conscious consumer’s needs will be catered to at the mall which has floor options ranging from 458 sqft to 23, 174 sqft. This in turn would mean a viable investment option to anyone who can profit from renting out the spaces.

The mall culture has taken Kerala by storm and having built Focus Mall in 2007 at Calicut, the state’s first shopping mall, HiLITE Builders have proved their expertise in creating sustainable spaces that are both beneficial to the customer as well as the retailer. A space such as HiLITE Mall by HiLITE Builders is sure to attract multinational players from across the region. Thereby reinstating the fact that every sqft of this giant mall comes with the promise of 10% assured rental returns for investment through buying spaces. HiLITE delegates are camping at Hotel Ramada and will be available on 99518217.

H

Frappuccino beverage. A large variety of syrups, toppings, fresh milks (whole, low fat or soy milks), coffee strengths and intensities will be available to choose from, in addition to the popular classic flavors which customers are invited to modify.

There are more than 87,000 ways to create a personalized beverage at Starbucks and now the ‘Discover Your Favorite Frappuccino’ blended beverage brings more unique opportunities to satisfy individual tastes.

Starbucks is also launching the New Starbucks Bali Single-Origin Coffee, now made available for a limited time in the Middle East.

This exquisite new coffee will transport the customer to tropical Bali through its signature full body with herbal over tones, while

RIYADH: Saudi developer Jabal Omar said yesterday its shareholders approved a 38.4 percent capital increase through a rights issue, as it seeks to finance a major project.

The company will issue one share for each 2.6 outstanding shares at 10 riyals per share and the firm’s capital will be raised from the current 6.7 billion riyals to 9.3 billion riyals ($2.48 billion), it said in a statement on Saudi Arabia’s bourse website.

In October, the developer secured a 1.35 billion ($360 million) riyals bridge loan to finance building the project close to the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Islam’s holiest city.

The project will include luxury hotels, shops and houses. The developer also sought shareholders’ approval last year for a change in its basic charter that would allow it to borrow more. Saudi Arabia’s bourse earlier yesterday amended Jabal Omar’s closing stock price on Saturday to 14.9 riyals a share from 16.8 riyals to adjust for the capital increase.

Last week, Saudi developer Emaar Economic City received a 5 billion riyals loan ($1.33 billion) from the kingdom’s finance ministry to speed up construction of a project. — Reuters

Customer Support Facilities including a state -of-the -ar t Workshop, Quick Service, Body Shop, Parts & Accessories, a BMW Premium Selection (BPS) used car division, Vehicle Financing and 24 hrs Road-side Assistance.

adding in the complexity of a sweet dark chocolate flavor that is definitively Balinese. This coffee, much like the island itself, is both refreshing and indulgent.

Commenting on these special offers this summer Rana Shaheen, Regional Communications and CSR Manager at Starbucks MENA region said: “In line with our objectives of maintaining a close relationship with our customers and the community, we are very excited to be launching this fantastic new beverage for the summer months. The new blended beverages will not only satisfy customers’ coffee cravings, but will also encourage fun and entertainment in our stores. I look forward to seeing how our valued customers will enjoy this new offering.”

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

.2700000 .4500000 .3900000 .3200000 .2780000 .2910000 .0040000 .0020000 .0744020 .7248720 .3810000 .0700000 .7106050 .0040000 .0430000

.2765000 .4600000 .3990000 .3310000 .2880000 .2990000 .0072500 .0035000 .0751490 .7321570 .4010000 .0770000 .7177470 .0072000 .0530000

CUSTOMER TRANSFER RATES .2740500 .4524150 .3925490 .3226400 .2806310 .0526480 .0440780 .2932750 .0352220 .2216870 .0033910 .0000000 .0000000 .0000000 .0000000 .0746430 .7271160 .0000000 .0730990 .7120030 .0000000

US Dollar/KD GB Pound/KD Euro Swiss francs Canadian dollars Danish Kroner Swedish Kroner Australian dlr Hong Kong dlr Singapore dlr Japanese yen Indian Rs/KD Sri Lanka rupee Pakistan rupee Bangladesh taka UAE dirhams Bahraini dinars Jordanian dinar Saudi Riyal/KD Omani riyals Philippine Peso

.2761500 .4558820 .3955570 .3251120 .2827810 .0530520 .0444160 .2955220 .0354920 .2233860 .0034170 .0061500 .0025220 .0032300 .0037960 .0752140 .7326880 .3905940 .0736600 .7174590 .0064220

Al-Muzaini Exchange Co. ASIAN COUNTRIES Japanese Yen Indian Rupees Pakistani Rupees Srilankan Rupees Nepali Rupees Singapore Dollar Hongkong Dollar Bangladesh Taka

3.451 6.111 3.227 2.511 3.833 224.120 35.538 3.739

Philippine Peso Thai Baht Irani Riyal - Transfer Irani Riyal - Cash

6.376 9.096 0.271 0.273 GCC COUNTRIES

Saudi Riyal Qatari Riyal Omani Riyal Bahraini Dinar UAE Dirham

73.750 75.990 718.330 734.360 75.291 ARAB COUNTRIES

Egyptian Pound - Cash Egyptian Pound - Transfer Yemen Riyal Tunisian Dinar Jordanian Dinar Lebanese Lira Syrian Lier Morocco Dirham

49.500 46.419 1.265 201.790 390.550 183.400 5.970 35.442

EUROPEAN & AMERICAN COUNTRIES US Dollar Transfer 276.450 Euro 400.020 Sterling Pound 460.570 Canadian dollar 287.370 Turkish lire 172.510 Swiss Franc 329.500 Australian dollar 292.620 US Dollar Buying 275.250 GOLD 20 Gram 10 Gram 5 Gram

285.000 145.000 75.000

Bahrain Exchange Company 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

SELL CASH 298.300 732.180 3.980 285.600 540.800 14.100 53.800 167.800 48.690 398.000 36.110 6.310

SELL DRAFT 296.800 732.180 3.730 284.100

224.000 46.352 396.500 35.960 6.100

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 Thai bhat Tunisian dollar UAE dirham U.S. dollars Yemeni Riyal

0.033 0.239 0.241 3.500 390.450 0.186 93.890 47.500 4.320 228.700 1.867 51.300 715.090 3.310 6.600 76.160 73.510 223.970 42.320 2.648 458.300 45.100 328.300 5.800 9.460 198.263 75.060 275.700 1.230

10 Tola

GOLD 1,579.300

Sterling Pound US Dollar

0.033

389.110 0.186 93.890 3.830 227.200

6.124 3.236 3.758 6.368 678.726 3.479 9.216 6.036 3.920

Kuwait Bahrain Intl Exchange Co. 714.910 3.230 6.370 75.730 73.510 223.970 42.320 2.502 456.300 326.800 5.800 9.280 74.960 275.300

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 Nepali rupee Yemeni Riyal Jordanian Dinars Syrian Pounds Euro Canadian Dollars

TRAVELLER’S CHEQUE 456.300 275.300

275.250 3.225 6.100 2.515 3.740 6.385 75.030 73.590 731.600 46.215 459.700 0.00003280 3.910 1.550 391.000 5.750 399.700 287.700

Al Mulla Exchange

Dollarco Exchange Co. Ltd Rate for Transfer US Dollar Canadian Dollar Sterling Pound Euro Swiss Frank Bahrain Dinar UAE Dirhams Qatari Riyals Saudi Riyals Jordanian Dinar Egyptian Pound Sri Lankan Rupees

Indian Rupees Pakistani Rupees Bangladesh Taka Philippines Pesso Cyprus pound Japanese Yen Thai Bhat Syrian Pound Nepalese Rupees

Selling Rate 276.700 286.245 446.875 391.755 312.706 732.342 75.312 75.980 73.756 390.866 46.518 2.514

Currency US Dollar Euro Pound Sterling Canadian Dollar Japanese Yen Indian Rupee Egyptian Pound Sri Lankan Rupee Bangladesh Taka Philippines Peso Pakistan Rupee Bahraini Dinar UAE Dirham Saudi Riyal

Transfer Rate (Per 1000) 275.450 396.300 456.100 283.900 3.425 6.108 46.250 2.510 3.726 6.375 3.222 732.180 74.950 73.500 *Rates are subject to change

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MONDAY, MAY 30, 2011

BUSINESS

Risk aversion eases globally, forex mixed NBK MONEY MARKETS REPORT KUWAIT: The noise continues in Europe, as the IMF and the EU are not able to produce a credible plan for Greece. Following European headlines has been a tedious job for investors who have been trying to differentiate the material from the non-useful information. As a result, markets remained extremely nervous during the past couple of weeks.

After many attempts to push the euro below the 1.4000 level, reports from Asia on Thursday that China might be interested in increasing its purchases of European bonds helped the overall sentiment and managed to save the week from another wave of deleveraging. The Euro managed to close the week at 1.4319 as European Financial Times reported that the European Financial Stability Fund (EFSF) chief had said Asian investors including China might buy Portuguese bailout bonds.

The sterling pound had its best per formance after strong GDP, Exports, and Consumer Confidence figures. UK consumer confidence had the fastest monthly increase since May 1993 although still languishing at low levels. The GBP gained over 2.84 % to close the week at 1.6510.

The Swiss Franc continues to trade at historical levels on the back of the Euro problems. Leading indicators in Switzerland continued to impress markets and the currency managed to break new highs against the Euro and remains extremely well positioned against the Dollar. EURCHF finished the week at 1.2159.

After trading above the 82.00 level the whole week, the Japanese yen broke higher against the USD after

the GDP figures on Thursday disappointed the market in the US. USDJPY went sharply lower to reach 80.84 after the news and closed the week at 80.80.

After the massive drop in the commodity market during the past couple of weeks, the precious metal complex experienced a comeback this week. Silver increased by over 10% and gold by 1.5%. Oil on the other hand remains extremely volatile due to the Middle East unrest and the shortage of inventories in the US.

ruptions in supplies of auto parts due to the earthquake in Japan. The 3.6% decrease was the biggest since October and followed a 4.4% surge in March that was larger than previously estimated. Economists predicted a 2.5% decline in April.

Personal spending climbed also less than forecast in April registering an increase of 0.4% compared with expectation of 0.5%. Retailers are reporting slower US sales and major US investment banks are revising the GDP lower due to the falling figures.

in Hellenic Postbank SA and the country’s ports in the first phase of the asset-sale program. The state’s direct 34% stake in Postbank has a market value of about 275 million Euros. The government plans to complete the sale of Hellenic Postbank by the end of the year, and to sell 75 % stakes in Piraeus Port Authority and Thessaloniki Port Authority SA. It also intends to extend the concession for Athens International Airport this year.

Greece owns a 20 % stake in Hellenic Telecommunications

Jobless claims The US Q1 GDP stayed at 1.8 % due to weakness in consumer spending, and unemployment claims rose by 10,000 to 424,000 in the week ended May 21. Consumer spending eased more than previously estimated in the first quarter as the jump in food and fuel cost held back US consumers. Household purchases climbed 2.2% less than the 2.7% in the previous month and missed the 2.8% expectation.

Durable Goods Orders for US durable goods missed estimates in April, reflecting a drop in aircraft demand and dis-

Pending home sales in the US plunged more than forecast in April, a sign that the industry that triggered the recession continues to struggle. The index of pending home sales declined 12% after a revised 3.5% increase the prior month. The prospect that foreclosures will continue to drive down property values is keeping buyers on the sidelines. Economists missed the number by a mile, by calling for a drop of only 1%.

Europe Greece continues to be the hot topic of the week. The Greek government said it would sell its stake

Organization, or OTE, and has the right to sell a 10% stake to Deutsche Telekom AG, which already has a 30% holding. The government also said it would create a sovereignwealth fund composed of state assets to accelerate the sale process.

Tougher tone from European counterparts and disagreement with the ECB: UK Business Secretary became the first British minister to say he believes that Greece will have to reschedule its debts, reported the Guardian this week. He added that he did not think that continually asking Greece to cut public spending was the answer.

Dutch Finance Minister noted that Greece knows it will not receive further aid if it does not meet conditions set by the EU and IMF. He also added that Portugal should raise its retirement age. In a meeting with Schaeuble, Germany’s Finance minister, De Jager expressed hope that the idea of banks participating in solving the Greek debt problem was something that was being looked at.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy rejected using the term “restructuring” in relation to Greece and said Euro-area countries must repay their debts. “Restructuring is not a word France wants to use” nor is it something that should be done, Sarkozy told reporters at the end of a Group of Eight summit in Deauville, France.

“The sharp increase in commodity prices and their excessive volatility pose a significant headwind to the recovery”, the G8 said.

British banks Moody ’s rating agency mentioned it would place 14 of the 18 British banks and building societies it covers on review for downgrade.

It also mentioned that more than one of the big four UK banks will be placed on review, including Lloyds Banking Group Plc. Rating agencies made it clear that the ‘implied’ government guarantee to support the banks was worth a notch or two on the ratings spectrum. They also implied that as conditions normalized and banks learn to stand on their own feet that the ratings would have to be adjusted downwards to reflect the government staying more at arm’s length.

UK exports impressed on Wednesday rising 3.7% in the quar-

ter and GDP rose 0.5% on the quarter and 1.8% from a year earlier, matching initial economists’ estimates. Consumer spending dropped 0.6% and company investment plunged 4.4%. Consumer confidence jumped the most in 18 years in May as consumers became less pessimistic about their finances and the overall economy. The number jumped to -21 from -31 the previous month. Although the rise seems exceptional, the index is still languishing at low levels.

Gold, silver come back Gold futures rose to a three week high and silver climbed as deleveraging and risk aversion eased this week. After starting the week on a negative note, Gold was able to hold above the $1,500 support level and closed the week at $1,536.40.

Silver had a much more volatile week starting at the lows of $34.39 to end the week 10.67% higher at $38.01.

The World Gold Council reported this week that China passed India as the world’s largest source of gold demand. The world’s foremost precious metals consultancy GFMS said yesterday that demand for bars and coins in that country could push China’s imports past 400 tons this year.

Oil had also a positive week as major investment houses in the US increased their price projections.

They mentioned that OPEC would probably raise oil output quotas next month as the group seeks to ease pressure on consumers and help sustain a global recovery.

Kuwait Dinar at 0.27460 The USDKWD opened at 0.27460 on Sunday morning.

Saudi firms continue to grow bottom line KAMCO ECONOMIC REPORT KUWAIT: Corporate earnings witnessed a significant improvement during 2010 with aggregate net profit of the listed Saudi companies surging 34 per cent to SAR 78.6 bn ($20.96bn) up from SAR 58.5bn ($15.6bn) reported in 2009. The Petrochemical and Banking sectors remain the main drivers of market profitability with a combined profit of SAR 51.6 bn ($3.76bn) for FY-2010 accounting for 66 per cent of total market profits. This is the main reason for the dependence of the market on the banking and petrochemical stocks that continue to constitute a significant portion of trading in the stock market.

Petrochemicals During the quarter, Tadawul earnings witnessed a significant growth with net profits increasing 22.9 per cent to SAR 21.8 bn (USD 5.8 bn) up from SAR 17.8 bn ($4.7bn) reported in Q1-10. The Petrochemical and Banking sectors also remained the drivers of market profitability with a combined profit of SAR 17.4bn ($4.6bn) for Q1-11 accounting for 79 per cent of total market profits. In terms of sectors, 11 out of the 15 sectors of the market managed to enhance their bottom lines by the end of Q1-11 as compared to a year earlier. Four sectors reported a decline in their net profits for the period while three sectors ended with net loss, namely, Energy and Utilities, Transport and Insurance sectors.

Healthy Profits on the back of Strong Oil Prices and Global Economic Recovery: Most of the petrochemical companies announced impressive financial

results during FY-2010 except for the National Petrochemical Co. and Saudi Kayan which announced net losses of SAR 42 mn ($11.2mn) and SAR 14.7 mn ($3.92mn), respectively. Petrochemical companies’ profitability is increasingly correlated to oil prices and global economic growth (vis-‡-vis energy demand), particularly in developed economies and emerging markets. Given that Asia’s economy is leading the global economic recovery, there are increasing expectations of rising demand for petrochemical products.

SABIC announced a surge in its FY-10 profits which rose to SAR 21.6 bn ($5.76bn) up from SAR 9.1bn ($2.43bn) for FY-09. This significant growth in net profit is mainly attributed to improvement in the prices of most petrochemical products and plastics in addition to improved operational performance, which led to increase the quantities produced and sold. Gross profit for FY-2010

witnessed a considerable growth of 70 per cent to SAR 48.54bn ($12.94 bn) while income from operations more than doubled to SAR 37.83bn ($10.1bn) compared to SAR 18.8bn ($5bn) for 2009.

Saudi Arabian Fertilizers Co (SAFCO) saw its bottom line grow by 79 per cent during 2010 to record SAR 3.24bn ($864mn) underpinned by the significant growth in revenues and improvement in margins.

Furthermore, four out of the fourteen listed petrochemical companies have succeeded to turn their losses into profits during 2010, particularly, YANSAB which reported a net profit of SAR 1.67bn ($445mn) versus a net loss of SAR 29.2mn ($7.8mn) in 2009 and Rabigh Refining & Petrochemical Co which was able to turn its massive losses of SAR 1.43bn ($381 mn) in 2009 to a net profit of SAR 209 mn ($55.73mn) in 2010. YANSAB’s significant growth in net profit is mainly attributed to the commencement of its commer-

cial operations in new plants.

First Quarter Earnings During Q1-11, companies announced continued impressive results except for the National Petrochemical, Nama Chemicals, and Saudi Kayan which announced net losses of SAR 10.5 mn ($2.8 mn), SAR 4.3 mn ($1.1 mn), and SAR 8.33 mn ($2.2 mn), respectively. SABIC increased its Q1-11 profits to SAR 7.7 bn ($2.1 bn) up from SAR 5.4 bn ($2.4 bn) a year earlier. This significant increase of 41.6 per cent is mainly attributable to the increase in production and sales volumes and improvement in sales prices for most of the products as well as improved operating performance in SABIC overseas affiliates. SABIC’s gross operating profit for Q1-11 witnessed a considerable growth of 26 per cent to SAR 15.43 bn ($4.1 bn) while income from operations also increased by 29 per cent to reach SAR 12.51 bn ($3.3 bn) compared to SAR 9.71 bn ($2.6 bn) for Q1-10.

The petrochemicals sector offers one of the most promising long term routes towards economic diversification in Saudi Arabia. The country’s reserves of oil and natural gas give it a substantial cost advantage over global competitors. The Saudi petrochemical sector will continue to expand, and is expected to become the primary center of global production over the long term.

The sector had been hit hard by the financial crisis and the associated collapse in global demand for industrial chemicals. However, its cost advantage is substantial and this should allow it to ride out, and indeed thrive in, an environment of overcapacity. In 2011, expectations of rising oil prices, renewed demand and better prices for petrochemical products is expected to have a positive impact on the sector’s overall profitability.

Saudi Banking Sector High Provisioning and Sluggish Credit Growth Weighed down on Profitability: The aggregate net profit of the Saudi listed banks witnessed a marginal drop in 2010 to SAR 21.98 bn ($5.86 bn), down from SAR 22.22 bn ($5.92bn) reported during 2009. This drop was mainly driven by the stagnant growth in credit and the elevation of credit risk that is estimated to have pushed provisions above the SAR 8bn mark ($2.13bn) during 2010. Recently, SAMA has urged Saudi banks to book more provisions against Saad Al Gosaibi Group.

BEIJING: Taobao’s employees attending the Chinese shoppers as they test the sofas inside the newly opened Taobao Mall in Beijing, China. China’s ecommerce giant is stepping up its heated rivalry with bricks-and-mortar retailers with the launch of a five-story home furnishings showroom in Beijing. —AP

Egypt climbs to new high, Gulf mixed MIDEAST STOCK MARKETS CAIRO/DUBAI: Egypt’s bourse hit an eight-week high after a non-violent weekend raised investors confidence yesterday and property stocks lifted UAE markets.

“We had fears something fierce would happen on Friday and nothing happened in terms of violence. Investors see it was smooth,” said Omar Ascar of Cairo Capital Securities.

Optimism that the government will resolve land bank issues in the real estate sector also boosted investor interest, traders said. Egypt’s index climbed 2.5 percent to its highest close since April 3, as the country’s biggest real estate firm Talaat Moustafa soared 9.9 percent and Palm Hills jumped 9.7 percent.

In Dubai, Emaar Properties gained 2 percent after its Saudi affiliate Emaar Economic City received a $1.33 billion loan from the kingdom’s finance ministry to speed up construction of a project.

Contractor Arabtec, which is active in Saudi Arabia, climbed 3.2 percent.

Dubai’s benchmark gained 0.7 percent and Abu Dhabi’s benchmark rose 0.4 percent. Aldar Properties rose 2.2 percent, while Sorouh Real Estate gained 1.6 percent.

Oman’s index neared a 22-month low, as Renaissance Services fell 3.7 percent. Company officials met with analysts on Tuesday and issued a bleak outlook for 2011, according to analysts, with some expecting the company to cancel a planned listing of its unit Topaz, which was postponed in March.

Muscat’s benchmark dropped 0.5 per-

cent to its lowest close since July 2009.

“We expect the index to stabilise at current levels, as the (technical) indicators are positive,” said Osama Ibrahim AlQinna, head of brokerage at Oman Arab Bank.

“Although investors remain cautious in this volatile environment, we have noticed that market volumes are strongly supported by bluechip stocks.” Qatar’s index ended 0.3 percent lower, edging back towards Wednesday’s one-month low after Qatari Mohamed Bin Hammam withdrew his candidacy for the post of FIFA president on Saturday, one day before he is due to face an ethics committee hearing into bribery allegations.

Investors said the corruption charges were causing a selling pressure in the market.

However, traders were optimistic as they look ahead for a June 21 MSCI announcement on a possible index upgrade for Qatar to emerging market status. “During these 3 weeks markets will come up again to 8,600 or above we’re waiting for the MSCI decision,” said Hani Girgis, assistant chief dealer at Dlala brokerage.

Kuwait’s index slipped 0.3 percent to hit a six-week low, as banks weighed and Zain fell 2 percent.

A weak global backdrop and the beginnings of a traditionally slow summer are negatively affecting the market, analysts said. Saudi Arabia’s index edged up to a fresh four-month high as the agriculture and food sector index rose 0.8 percent and the construction benchmark added 1.5 percent. —Reuters

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MONDAY, MAY 30, 2011

BUSINESS

KSE stocks remain bearish GLOBAL DAILY MARKET REPORT KUWAIT: Kuwait Stock Exchange (KSE) closed its first trading session last week on a lower note, continuing its downward trend for the 5th consecutive day.

Global General Index reached its lowest level since August 08, 2010. Investors prefer to stay away from the market and that is showing clearly through the declining trading activities. Volume was light and not exceeding the 100mn shares changing hands during the session.

Global General Index (GGI), market weighted, ended the day down by 0.77 percent, at 194.46 point. Market Capitalization was down for the day at KD31.89bn. On the other hand, KSE Price Index closed at 6,356.2 point, shedding 17.90 points (0.28 percent) to its previous close.

Market breadth During the session, 92 companies were traded.

Market breadth was skewed towards decliners as 37 equities retreated versus 22 that advanced. Trading activity was down this session. The trades conducted in the services sector. Total volume traded was down by 44.19 percent with 96.16mn shares changing hands at a total value of KD19.86mn (37.31 percent lower compared to the day before). The services sector was the volume leader yesterday, accounting for 42.82 percent of total shares. The same sector was the value leader, with 39.06 percent of total traded value. Kuwait Finance House (KFH) was the most active in terms of values of shares traded during Thursday session, with 5.74mn shares exchanged at an aggregate value of KD5.74mn.

In terms of top gainers, International Finance Company took the top spot for the day, adding 6.58 percent and closed at KD0.162. On the other hand, Kuwait Cable Vision Company shed 26.04 percent and closed at KD0.071, making it the biggest decliner in the market.

Sector-wise Market sectors were mainly negative with the Food Index being the only gainer for the day adding a marginal 0.04 percent to its value. Real Estate stocks spearheaded losers, with their index dropping by 1.28 percent. Mabanee Company and National Real Estate Company saw their share values depreciate by 2.33 percent and 2.94 percent, respectively.

Separately, National Bank of Kuwait (NBK) dropped 1.64 percent. The banking sector index was a notable decliner as well , edging 0.83 percent lower. Kuwait International Bank and Boubyan Bank closed down by 1.49 percent and 1.67 percent, respectively sending the Global Islamic Index down by 0.28 percent.

Elsewhere in the Services sector, shares of Agility

rose by 1.37 percent. But the gain was offset by a 1.96 percent drop in the equity price of the market’s heavy-weight, Zain sending the Global Services Index down by 1.18 percent. Zain’s stock was down by 1.96 percent by the end of the session.

Meanwhile, small cap stocks managed to eke out some gains, adding 0.28 percent their index, as measured by Global Small Cap (Low 10) Index. The drop was notable on the share price of Palms Agro Production Company which jumped up by 3.64 percent.

The Kuwait Stock Exchange data and indices team announced the launch, soon, of a new set of indices and a new classification of share into sectors to better meet international standards. Head of the team Sami Al-Mejil said this comes amid changes aiming to improve standards at the bourse and pointed out the first change would be a 15-stock blue-chips index, which would include the top 15 shares in terms of liquidity, market value, and standing in the new sector classifications. The new classification of sectors would include re-naming of existing sectors and there would be announcements on all new details and changes at the appropriate time, the official said.

Central Bank of Kuwait (CBK) yesterday approved

the request submitted by Kuwait China Investment Co to buy back or offload 10 percent maximum of its issued shares at approx. KWD4mn for further six months, as of the current approval expiry date.

Updating its previous announcement dated May 23, 2011 in which Alargan International Real Estate Co. said it was holding negotiations to sell 18.34 percent of its 48.34 percent stake in Alargan Homes Co. KSA and Alargan JSC - KSA, Kuwait Stock Exchange (KSE) announces that Alargan Homes has finalized inking a contract of selling 75 percent of a whollyowned development, at a total value of SAR394,612,102. Alargan International Real Estate Co has generated SAR40mn from this divestment, while the associate firm will keep its 25 percent stake. The selling agreement has the following condition. The project shall be delivered void of any mortgage or selling rights as well as personal rights like rentals within 30 days. The profit from this deal will be reported on the financial statements for the period ending on June 30, 2011.

The price of OPEC basket of twelve crudes stood at $109.83 a barrel on Thursday, compared with $107.99 the previous day, according to OPEC Secretariat calculations.

EU’s Rehn warns Greece over June payment: Report BERLIN: The EU will follow the IMF in blocking the June transfer of more Greek aid unless Athens does more to fix its public finances, economic affairs commissioner Olli Rehn was quoted as saying yesterday.

“We Europeans are setting the same conditions as the International Monetary Fund,” Germany’s Spiegel weekly quoted Rehn as saying in comments published in German. “ The situation is very serious.” He said the European Union would decide after examining the latest quar terly audit of Greek public finances by exper ts from the European Central Bank, the EU and IMF-which Spiegel said would include some “alarming” findings.

The audit will say that Athens is missing all budget promises made last year in return for an EU-IMF 110billion-euro ($156-billion) rescue, Spiegel reported, without saying where it got the information.

The IMF warned Greece on Thursday to firm up its broad financ-

ing plans and policy actions to be able to continue receiving bailout funds, calling for “assurances” on how Athens will fund its future.

Luxembourg Prime Minister JeanClaude Juncker, who heads the eurozone finance ministers, warned that the IMF may block the next 12-billion-euro instalment. He said the fifth tranche in a 110-billion-euro loan package could be hampered by IMF rules forbidding the lender of last resort to release funds without a 12-month guarantee of solvency.

On Friday, Greek political leaders failed to agree on further austerity measures but Prime Minister George Papandreou went on national television to say his government would “take the necessary measures.”

Greece was the first of three members of the 17-nation euro-zone to need a multi-billion-euro bailout.

Ireland and Portugal have since followed suit and markets fear that Spain might eventually need help too. —AFP

Peru mining union federation suspends today’s strike LIMA: Peru’s federation of mining unions suspended a nationwide strike scheduled to start today due to the country’s impending presidential election, the group said late on Saturday.

Peru is the world’s No. 2 copper and silver producer and is No. 6 in gold.

Workers planned to press for greater profit-sharing paid by companies, an earlier retirement age and a way to reopen the vast La Oroya smelter, which has been shut for nearly two years. “After an objective and responsible evaluation of the country’s special circumstances at this time and given t he e l e c t i on’s i m m i ne nce, i t w a s agreed that the indefinite general strike scheduled for today would be

suspended,” the federation said in a statement.

The federation’s two previous calls for a national walkout did not come to fruition because member unions could not agree on terms, with miners last downing their tools in a national strike in October 2009. Peruvians will vote on June 5 in a tight, run-off vote between left-wing former army officer Ollanta H um a l a a nd r i ght-w i ng l aw m a ke r Keiko Fujimori.

Both candidates support taxing the windfall profits of lucrative international mining firms to fund social programs in a country with 32 percent poverty despite one of the world’s fastest economic growth rates. —Reuters

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27 Indian developers showcase over 100 projects

HDFC holds annual homes fair in Kuwait Flats, villas, penthouses, plots on display

By Hussain Al-Qatari KUWAIT: The HDFC Kuwait organized its third annual India Homes Fair, an exclusive property exhibition for NonResident Indians at Hotel Ramada on May 27 and 28, 2011.

Around 27 leading developers exhibiting over 100 projects from 13 cities across India including Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai, Kochi and Pune amongst others participated in the exhibition.

Vidhu P Nair- Charge D’Affaires of the Indian Embassy, inaugurated the Fair. Gautam Bhagat, CEO- HDFC Realty was also present along with Ajay Sachdewa, head of the GCC region. Also present were Kapil Kapur, the head of the Kuwait branch and senior officer Fahad Jameel from HDFC. The event garnered the attention of a lot of families amongst the Indian population in Kuwait with almost 1200 families visiting the show over the two days. The clients were offered informative consultations with realtors and developers to speak about their potential interests.

“There is tremendous potential in Kuwait for investment in the Indian reality sector. The Indian economy has been witnessing a phenomenal growth and the reality sector has been one of the key drivers for this growth,” said Nair. The Charge D’Affaires added: “Kuwait houses a large number of Indians who have potential in investing in the realty sector.

The turnout for this year is big, making this a successful venture.”

Highlighting the issue of credit crunch, Nair said: “India has been one of the few countries around the world which has endured the political crisis. Despite the worldwide credit crunch, there were companies at the time making immense profit. This placed India as an anchor for economic growth globally.”

Ajay Sachdewa, the HDFC regional head noted that the realty sector in India has been witnessing an outstanding growth over the past six months especially. “The opportunities or investment are flourishing, and it has never been a better time than now for investing in this field. We saw great turnout for this event,” he noted.

The objective of the show was to provide a platform for home seekers to directly interact with a large pool of renowned developers under one roof, seek information on their established and upcoming projects which are HDFC approved and also seek assistance on HDFC’s home loan advisory services.

At HDFC’s India Homes Fair, the projects on display included varying options like flats, villas, penthouses, plots, and more. Customers were offered to choose from a wide range of properties starting with INR 20 lakh to premium properties up to INR 10 crores with sizes ranging between 400 sq. ft. to 6,000 sq. ft. In addition, one can get exclusive offers and value-added benefits during these two days of the exhibition.

A special dinner was hosted by HDFC for the developers in the cruise for their support and efforts in making the event a big success and special mementos were presented to them by Gautam Bhagat. The party also had a DJ playing popular Hindi movie songs and this was a good opportunity for all the participants, both the developers as well as HDFC staff to take time out from work and have a good time. This was also an opportunity for everyone to know others at an informal level. Most of the developers were extremely happy with the response that the Fair generated.

Experience with HDFC in Kuwait was excellent and it was the right time to move investors to India. One of the differentiating factors between other property fairs and those organized by HDFC is the brand pull factor. Footfalls at HDFC property fair are higher because of the trust, the expat community has in them and once people are drawn in, we get a much larger audience to pitch our projects to them, said Sudeep Bhatt from IREO.

KUWAIT: Vidhu P Nair, Charge D’Affaires of the Indian Embassy, inaugurates the dair. Gautam Bhagat, CEO- HDFC Realty, Ajay Sachdewa, head of the GCC region, Kapil Kapur, the head of the Kuwait branch and senior officer Fahad Jameel from HDFC, look on.

The pictures of HDFC Kuwait’s Homes Fair, an exclusive property exhibition for non-resident Indians at Hotel Ramada held on May 27 and 28, 2011.

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business

Italian firms look abroad as economy struggles ROME: Workers rioting in Italy’s historic shipyards this week are only the latest sign of a sense of national economic gloom that is pushing businesses to look abroad for growth and profits.

The riots over the announced closures of the Castellammare di Stabia and Sestri yards with the loss of 2,500 jobs coincided with a decidedly downbeat meeting of the Confindustria, Italy’s powerful employers’ federation. The conference addressed sluggish growth, high youth unemployment and a renewed sense of unease about Italy on euro-zone financial markets after ratings agency Standard & Poor’s downgraded the country’s credit outlook last weekend.

“Italy is immobile. We have to go for

international markets,” Stefania Brancaccio, owner of Coelmo, a medium-sized company that produces electricity generators near Naples, said on the sidelines of the meeting in Rome. Brancaccio complained that Italy’s technical schools are turning out engineers ill-equipped to use the computers needed for her business.

And the time required for any type of bureaucracy was far longer than in other markets in the Middle East and Asia where her company operates. Fiat and Chrysler chief executive Sergio Marchionne has stoked controversy in recent months with his critique of Italy’s low productivity and has suggested the bulk of his historic auto giant could move from its homeland.

UN atomic experts begin Malaysia rare earths visit KUALA LUMPUR: A team of UN atomic energy experts began a week-long visit to Malaysia yesterday to review the safety of a proposed Australian rare earths refinery that has drawn protests.

Following public concerns that radioactive waste from the plant could leak out and harm the environment, Malaysia has put the project by Australian miner Lynas on hold, pending the independent panel’s review.

A nine-member team led by a senior official from the International Atomic Energy Agency arrived past weekend to review the plant, which is under construction near the town of Kuantan in eastern Pahang state, said an official from the International Trade Ministry.

The team is meeting Malaysian government officials yesterday before travelling to eastern Malaysia today to meet residents and inspect the construction site for three days, he said. They are expected to present their final findings by end of June, the official said. The Lynas Advanced Materials Plant (LAMP) was scheduled to begin processing rare earths-used in high-tech products from iPods to missiles-in the third quarter of 2011.

But activists and residents say they fear radioactive waste produced by the plant would not be disposed of properly and could endanger them and the environment.

Vincent Jiam, a 40-year-old kindergarten teacher, who lives some 25 kilometers (15 miles) from the plant and has been campaigning against it, said he doubted the panel would give an unbiased review. “This is a body that is pro-nuclear advancement,” he told AFP. “It will be strange for them to be actually in favor of the people’s concerns.”

Pending the panel’s review, the government has said it will not issue a pre-operating license to Lynas and has barred imports of raw materials from Australia to be processed at the facility. A similar facility built by a Japanese firm in another part of Malaysia was forced to shut down in 1992 due to protests.

Lynas has insisted the plant poses no safety threats. It has said any waste would be placed in safe, reliable engineered storage cells to avoid any leakage. — AFP

“Can you blame him? There’s deadweight here. China and India are rising but we have remained blocked. He finds himself in a country that hasn’t grown, that isn’t competitive, where the transport system doesn’t work,” Brancaccio said.

Simone Santi from Leonardo Business Consulting, a Rome-based company which advises Italian firms wanting to invest in foreign markets, said: “Looking abroad is becoming a necessity for many companies, not just an opportunity.

“Construction companies, even mediumsized ones, are looking abroad because of the problems in the Italian market.

Contracts in Italy have dried up and the market is shrinking, they are in grave diffi-

culty,” Santi said. The trouble for Italy’s family-based business model is that many companies are reluctant to make major investments abroad because it would mean sending relatives to increasingly distant markets to be managers, he said.

“It’s mainly the large companies that are moving,” he said. Another problem for Italian companies in a globalised world, he said, was the lack of foreign managers on company boards-just two percent.

Confindustria chief Emma Marcegaglia, a steel industry executive, encouraged Italian exporters to look abroad beyond traditional markets in Europe and the United States, towards the fast-growing economies of Brazil, China and India. “We have to commit

to improving the level of internationalization of all our businesses,” Marcegaglia told the Confindustria conference, pointing out that just 1.4 percent of companies accounted for 50 percent of exports. She painted a bleak picture of the domestic economy, saying Italy had endured a “lost decade” of low growth and zero productivity increases.

“We have to move quickly,” she said, in a speech peppered with warnings about a situation she described as “difficult,” “dramatic” and “urgent.” She said the official data pointed to a dramatic decline with gross domestic product (GDP) growing by 45.2 percent in the 1970s, 26.9 percent in the 1980s and 17 percent in the 1990s-but just 2.5 percent in the past decade. — AFP

Containing Greek debt crisis remains top priority: Experts Europe may weigh new loans to Athens FRANKFURT: Europe has sur vived another week of Greece’s debt saga but must decide on new loans to Athens and take care that potential remedies do not kill the patient or its neighbors, analysts say.

“We need to limit as much as possible the amount of contagion that would arise from radical action on Greece,” Deutsche Bank economist Gilles Moec told AFP after days of what seemed sometimes like brinkmanship by European leaders.

He urged that Athens be allowed to make its case for a round of aid worth 12 billion euros ($17 billion) from the European Union and International Monetary Fund while countries like Ireland and Portugal work to “decouple from Greece and reduce market pressure.”

Investors had plenty to digest meanwhile, with warnings that the IMF might not approve its share of the aid, that the Netherlands would not approve further help in that case and that Greek bonds might no longer qualify as collateral for European Central Bank loans.

Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou warned the country will “most likely” go bankrupt without the next aid installment while Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou said “no wages, pensions or state obligations will be paid” without the money.

Greek finance ministry data shows a treasury bill worth 2.4 billion euros maturing on July 15. The EU, IMF and ECB are pressing Greece to step up a privatization program and get all political parties to approve more austerity and reform measures that have sparked violent protests but emergency talks called by the president on Friday failed to make

ATHENS: A protester sits in front of riot police guarding the Greek parliament during a demonstration against a new austerity package in Athens on May 26, 2011. Thousands of people assembled for second day in the capital’s central Syntagma Square, shouting and shaking their fists at the lawmakers inside the nearby parliament building. — AFP any headway.

A troika EU, IMF and ECB officials experts are in Greece now reviewing its progress on its May 2010 bailout program, and must report soon on whether to grant the next loan funds.

Jean-Claude Juncker, head of the Eurogroup of finance ministers, warned Thursday that the IMF might block its aid unless the Greek government can show it can remain solvent for the next 12 months.

“There are specific IMF rules and one of those rules says that the IMF can only take action when the refinancing guarantee is given over 12 months,” Juncker said.

Juncker and others have said they

could consider extending the repayment period on Greek bonds, giving the government some breathing room, if officials showed they were getting to grips with the country’s problems.

Greece is under immense pressure owing to public debt that has swollen to 340 billion euros.

Athens benefits from an EU-IMF rescue plan worth 110 billion euros but analysts say it will need 60 billion euros more to make it through 2012, when it has a payments schedule of 66 billion euros according to Papaconstantinou. “ There are things that need to be done immediately,” Moec said. “The new loans to Greece, we need to have clarity on this, and probably also on an addi-

tional strategy” to reduce the debt.

Calls to extend the repayment schedule have met with a flat refusal from the ECB, which holds about 40 billion euros worth of Greek bonds and warns that a so-called “reprofiling” of the debt would cause investors to flee the country.

ECB chief economist Juergen Stark, governing board member Jens Wiedmann and others warn the central bank would no longer be able to accept Greek debt as collateral, a dire threat since that could push institutions into bankruptcy.

The Greek financial sector could collapse and “in a worst-case scenario, uncertainty about who was most exposed to Greece might even prompt the region’s interbank lending markets to seize up,” Capital Economics economist Ben May warned.

A similar situation was seen worldwide after the US investment bank Lehman Brothers collapsed in September 2008. “What’s more, a voluntary reprofiling may increase worries that other peripheral governments will try to restructure their debt too, rather than accept years of austerity,” spooking anyone who holds debt issued by bailed-out Ireland and Portugal, he added.

Moec discounted ECB warnings on Greek bonds however, saying: “There are limits to their position as long as what’s on the table is reasonable and not too disruptive from a global market point of view.

“The final costs for public finances throughout the euro-zone of letting Greece go would probably far exceed the cost of continuing with the program, provided there are some efforts from the Greeks” and participation by the private sector, he said. - AFP

Industry wobbles in Zimbabwe’s second city

SPAIN: A restaurant advertises a crisis menu in the Spnaish town of Torremolinos as financial markets remained skeptical that Spain can steer clear of the crisis until the country manages to finish its reform of the labor market.

ECB’s Paramo: Spain must complete labor reform MADRID: Financial markets will remain skeptical that Spain can steer clear of the crisis until the country manages to finish its reform of the labor market, a senior European Central Bank policymaker said in an interview.

“Markets are surprised that the government may not be capable of concluding a much needed labor reform ... Until we finish that reform we won’t see the end of market distrust,” said Jose Manuel Gonzalez-Paramo, Executive Board member of the ECB, in an interview in La Vanguardia newspaper yesterday.

Spain passed a labor reform last year, but labor unions, business leaders and the government have stalled over final parts of the process, including changes to the collective bargaining system whereby wages are fixed across entire sectors and linked to inflation. The government said on Friday it hoped to conclude a deal by June 6.

Gonzalez-Paramo also urged the government to finish off restructuring its financial system, and Spain’s autonomous regions to meet new tough deficit targets.

Spain’s economy is struggling to

recover at a decent rate and unemployment has surged to over 21 percent, leaving some investors to fear it will be the next euro zone member following Portugal to call for a bailout. GonzalezParamo said Spain was the master of its own destiny with its future dependent on necessary reforms.

He also argued against a potential restructuring of Greece’s debt, which many analysts see as inevitable. The country must meet its debt targets agreed with the EU and IMF. “Greece needs to fulfill the pact already in place. If after a year later there is part of it that hasn’t been met then it should take additional measures,’ he said.

“When people talk of restructuring its debt they are not aware of what it means.” The central bank has warned of dire consequences with effects worse than the fallout of Lehman Brothers if a restructuring took place.

He also urged Greece to make changes to its economic and tax models and to step up planned privatizations. ìGreece belongs to a club of advanced countries and with that comes demands,’ he said. — Reuters

BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe: Ravens squawk from the rooftop of a deserted building, once a top producer of animal feed that employed hundreds in Zimbabwe’s second city of Bulawayo.

Empty factories are now a common sight in Bulawayo’s industrial district as the economy struggles to recover from a decade-long crisis, with firms downsizing, closing or relocating to the capital for better opportunities. “Companies are closing here, Bulawayo needs money,” said Ruth Labode, who runs a textile mill.

“A banker openly told us that if they receive a loan application to fund a restaurant business from Bulawayo, they would not fund it.

“In Bulawayo, there are no prospects of having the project breaking even fast enough, when compared to other towns such as Mutare or Harare,” she said.

Planning ministry figures show that 87 companies closed in Bulawayo last year, including clothing, auto and construction firms. An unspecified number of others relocated to neighboring Botswana.

“Bulawayo today is a national crisis, a national crisis that manifests itself in the closure of companies resulting in poverty, high unemployment and low economic activity,” Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai told a recent rally in the southern city.

Besides the lack of cash, Bulawayo suffers from perennial water shortages common to arid southern Zimbabwe. “The problem with Bulawayo, besides the issues of water, is that there is no money circulating here,” Labode said.

Zimbabwe Stock Exchangelisted Apex Corporation said it plans to dispose of its loss-making All Metal Foundr y in Bulawayo, putting 200 jobs at risk, its chairman said.

“ We have decided to sell because its long-term viability is questionable,” company chairman Farai Rwodzi told AFP. “Although the gold mining sector, which uses the foundry is recovering, the technology at the company is old and unviable. That is why we are selling.”

Zimbabwe’s economy has begun recovering since the government abandoned the worthless local currency two years ago, allowing trade in US dollars and other major foreign currencies.

But most companies still operate at less than half their capacity due to funding woes, according to the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries.

Bulawayo mayor Thaba Moyo said he hopes to attract investors back to Bulawayo, partly by trying

to win over Zimbabweans who have moved abroad.

“Our aim is to reclaim our spot as an industrial hub of Zimbabwe,” he said. “We have to find new investors, as our economy was being run by big (business) people but they have left.”

Bulawayo needs to “go out, especially to South Africa, to go and meet our Zimbabweans in the diaspora to try and address them on the problems we are facing as a city,” he said.

“All we have to do is to get them back so that they take responsibilities and take over those companies that have either closed down or relocated.”

Hundreds of thousands of people, especially from southern Zimbabwe, have migrated to South Africa and Botswana in

search of greener pastures.

Uncertainty over new elections tipped for this year has scared off new investors who also worry about President Robert Mugabe’s threats to take over foreign firms.

But the main issue is finance, with banks only offering 90-day loans at rates of up to 45 percent, said economist Eric Bloch.

“Most businesses are undercapitalized. Those that have relocated, it’s because they have bigger operations in Harare,” he said.

“For example they have larger factories there so they are consolidating their operations. “The single biggest problem is lack of capital. Companies need longterm financing instead of the 90day loans they are being offered,” he said. — AFP

INDIA: French automobile maker Renault’s India Sales and Marketing vice president Len Curran poses during the launch of Renault Fluence car at the new showroom in Ahmedabad on May 28, 2011.

Curran told media persons that Renault targets to have 100 dealers across 75 cities in India by the end of 2012. —AFP

MONDAY, MAY 30, 2011

TECHNOLOGY

Phishing attacks on eBay fall by half MOSCOW: Kaspersky Lab announces the publication of its spam report for April 2011. Compared to the previous month the amount of spam in email traffic increased by 1.2 percentage points and averaged 80.8%. In the second half of April the average figure exceeded 83.6%, suggesting the share of unsolicited mail will continue to grow in the coming month.

Phishers losing interest in eBay In April, phishers seemed to lose interest in eBay with almost half as many of its users being attacked compared to the previous month. The subsequent drop of 4.2 percentage points saw eBay fall two places to 4th in the Top 10 rating of organizations most often targeted in phishing attacks.

PayPal was the undisputed leader of

April’s rating. However, the intensity of the attacks on this e-pay system has eased off slightly, with a drop of 6 percentage points compared to March.

Facebook and Santander moved up to 2nd and 3rd respectively, though the number of attacks on these organizations only increased slightly compared with March.

gifts, while the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton was accompanied with offers for souvenirs that included exact replicas of Kate’s engagement ring. Fortunately, the surge in malicious spam exploiting the “wedding of the year” theme that was predicted by antivirus vendors didn’t materialize.

Spam in the spotlight As is usual at this time of year, spammers exploited Easter to attract more attention to their mass mailings.

The sheer variety of Easter-themed spam messages was striking - from special weight loss offers to tablets for enhancing sexual potency. Mother’s Day, which is celebrated in many countries in early May, was reflected in numerous adverts for flowers and

Sources of spam In April, India and Brazil remained the most popular sources of spam, accounting for 12.76% and 7.15% of the total volume of spam respectively.

Russia continued its slide down the rating of most popular spam sources, being overtaken by South Korea whose contribution to global spam almost doubled compared with March’s figure.

Malware in mail traffic Of particular interest in April was the appearance of Packed.Win32.Katusha.n and TrojanDownloader.Win32.FraudLoad.hxv in the rating of malicious programs blocked by mail antivirus. Both malicious programs are linked to fake AV: the former is used to pack them while the latter downloads them to users’ computers. In April, malicious files were found in 3.65% of all emails, an increase of 0.43 percentage points compared with the previous month. The USA, Russia and the UK continued to occupy the top three places in the list of countries where malware was detected most frequently in mail traffic. There was an increase of 1.93 percentage points recorded in the USA, but the figure

for Russia decreased by 2.9 percentage points compared to March.

Spam rage The first ever case of spam driving someone mad was reported in the USA in April. New York resident Jeremy Clancy, 28, was so angry with the amount of spam he was receiving in his mail box and on his social network pages that he decided to hunt down his tormentors. Over the period of a week he tracked down 23 people whom he suspected of distributing unsolicited correspondence and in the evenings cut the Internet cables at their houses. On his eighth outing he was apprehended by the police. It was later disclosed that Clancy was suffering from a mental disorder.

Taiwan show to feature Apple tablet challengers World’s second-largest computer show

HAMPSHIRE: The Lockheed Martin/Boeing F-22 Raptor jet flies during an air display at the Farnborough International Airshow in Hampshire on July 20, 2010. US defense contractor Lockheed Martin confirmed late May 28, 2011 that it had detected “a significant and tenacious” attack on its information systems network. “Lockheed Martin detected a significant and tenacious attack on its information systems network,” said a company statement. The company’s information security team detected the attack almost immediately and took what is described as “aggressive actions” to protect all systems and data, the statement added. — AFP

Lockheed says thwarted ‘tenacious’ cyber attack WASHINGTON: Lockheed Martin Corp., the US government’s top information technology provider, said on Saturday it had thwarted “a significant and tenacious attack” on its information systems network a week ago but was still working to restore employee access.

No customer, program or employee personal data was compromised thanks to “almost immediate” protective action taken after the attack was detected May 21, Jennifer Whitlow, a company spokeswoman, said in an emailed statement.

She said the company, the world’s biggest aerospace company and the Pentagon’s No. 1 supplier by sales, was working around the clock to restore employee access to the targeted network while maintaining the highest security level.

The U.S. Defense Department said in statement late Saturday night that it was working with Lockheed to determine the scope of the attack.

The incident’s impact on the department is “minimal and we don’t expect any adverse effect,” Air Force Lieutenant Colonel April Cunningham said by email.

She declined to specify the nature of the impact, saying that as a matter of policy, the department does not not comment on operational matters.

The Department of Homeland Security, or DHS, said that it and the Defense Department had offered to help curb the risk from the incident.

Lockheed is the maker of the F-16, F-22 and F-35 fighter jets as well as warships and other multibillion-dollar arms systems sold worldwide.

There was no word on where the attack may have originated. Military contractors’ systems contain technical specifications on weapons under development as well as those currently in use.

The U.S. government has offered to help Lockheed analyze “available data in order to provide recommendations to mitigate further risk,” Chris Ortman, a DHS official, said in an e-mailed reply to a query from Reuters.

A person with direct knowledge told Reuters on Friday that unknown attackers had broken into sensitive networks of Lockheed and several other US military contractors.

Boeing Co and Northrop Grumman, the Pentagon’s No. 2 and No. 3 suppliers respectively, declined to discuss matters involving corporate security.

US officials may investigate a cyber

breach at a company’s request. DHS, the lead agency for securing federal civilian networks, can deploy a team to analyze infected systems, develop mitigation strategies, advise on efforts to restore service and make recommendations for improving overall network security.

Several top cybersecurity experts with extensive government dealings said they were in the dark about the origin of the attack.

“I think it tells us that DHS doesn’t know much about what’s going on either,” said Anup Ghosh, a former senior scientist at the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency who worked on securing military networks.

Ghosh, who now runs Invincea, a software security company, said there had been a string of intrusions against defense contractors, security companies and US government labs, including the U.S. Energy Department’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, since the start of this year.

These attacks typically were carried out through so-called “spear-phish” inducements to click on a certain link to web sites or through emailed attachments carrying malicious code.

Once so compromised, a computer can surreptitiously download other code that can log a victim’s key strokes, giving an attacker a path to potentially wide network access.

“Defense industrials is where our military technology secrets are,” Ghosh said in an email interview. “What’s happening here is nothing short of theft of a nation.”

The person with direct knowledge told Reuters on Friday that an intrusion at Lockheed was related to a recent breach of “SecurID” token authentication technology from EMC Corp’s EMC.N RSA security division.

Cyber intruders were reported in 2009 to have broken into computers holding data on Lockheed’s projected $380 billionplus F-35 fighter program, the Pentagon’s costliest arms purchase.

A series of once-secret US diplomatic cables released by the WikiLeaks website suggests that China has jumped ahead of the United States when it comes to cyber espionage.

More than 100 foreign intelligence organizations are trying to break into U.S. networks, Deputy U.S. Secretary of Defense William Lynn wrote in the journal Foreign Affairs last fall. Some already have the capacity to disrupt US information infrastructure, he wrote. — Reuters

TAIPEI: Computer manufacturers of all sizes and descriptions have been pushing to get a piece of the ever-expanding tablet market created by the launch of Apple’s iPad in April 2010.

The obsession with tablet computing will be on full display Tuesday as Computex, the world’s second-largest computer show, begins its annual five-day run in Taipei. The prominence of tablets underscores a dramatic shift under way in the personal computer industr y — and keenly felt in Taiwan, which is home to some of the world’s biggest PC manufacturers — as many consumers opt to buy a tablet rather than a new PC. Computex will feature more than 50 tablet models, said organizer Taipei Computer Association, with big names including Lenovo Group Ltd. and Toshiba Corp. having their products displayed.

Researchers have predicted slower growth in PC sales this year because of the rising consumer interest in tablets. Gar tner Research recently cut its sales growth forecast for global PC sales in 2011 from 15.9 percent to 10.5 percent. According to IHS iSuppli, world PC shipments declined 0.3 percent year-on-year to 8.1 million units in the first quarter of 2011, with sales by No. 3-ranked Acer plunging 20 percent.

Many analysts say it may take two or three years before mobile device software from Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. can catch up with iPads, which have thousands of applications for consumers to choose from.

That may mean a hard time for many PC makers in the short term.

Research company CDC says Apple Inc. had a 73 percent share of the tablet market in the last quarter of 2010. South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co. was a distant second with 17 percent. It said 2010 tablet sales totaled 18 million units. CDC expects Apple to account for 70-80 percent of 2011 tablet sales that it predicts will reach 50 million units.

Besides tablets, Computex will also feature corporate and home ser vers and other cloud-based computing equipment and services, a sector Taiwanese firms have recently entered to make up for shortfalls in PC sales.

The world’s top contract laptop

TAIPEI: Models show off products during a press conference held in Taipei on May 24 ahead of Computex, Asia’s largest IT trade fair. The question of how to get 3D technology into every living room and a tablet computer into every hand is set to dominate Asia’s largest IT fair which opens in Taiwan next week. —AFP manufacturer, Taiwan-based Quanta Computer Co., is among those producing servers for global firms such as Google.

Cloud computing involves running applications in web browsers.

The cloud allows users to store and retrieve data over the Internet whenever it is needed, instead of saving it on their own computers.

At least 10 of the tablet models to be shown at Computex are powered by Intel Corp.’s new Atom chip, the US technology giant’s first microprocessor designed for tablets. Intel has moved into the fast growing market now dominated by chips using designs by UKbased ARM Holdings. The new Atom “delivers improved video playback, fast Internet browsing and longer batter y life,” Navin Shenoy, general manager of Intel’s Asia-Pacific region, said in an emailed statement.

There is “a tremendous amount of experimentation going on in the industry,” Shenoy said. Tablets, which are more popular in mature markets, will not replace PCs, he said, noting the strong PC demand in Asia and emerging markets.

Taiwanese high-tech firms are also entering the mobile device market pressured by Apple, whose market

dominance — extending to the second generation iPad2 — has cut into their PC sales and dented the profits of some.

Taiwan’s top two PC vendors, Acer Inc. and AsusTek Computer Inc., are among those using Computex to display a range of touch-screen tablet computers.

Their tablets run on the Android operating system that Google distributes free to allow quick Web browsing or film viewing, or on Microsoft mobile software that mostly targets the commercial market.

Acer and AsusTek have promoted their tablets — Iconia Tab and Transformer among others — as having expandable memory slots, hoping to lure consumers with more storage needs.

The iPads don’t have built-in USB ports. In addition, the companies say their sleek devices can become full-fledged laptops when plugging them into a keyboard docking station for easy typing. In terms of tablet prices, Apple’s big orders give it a huge edge, while South Korean Samsung Electronics is able to bring costs down by making key components in house — an advantage denied local makers, said Simon Yang, an analyst with

Mix it: YouTube and Co as DJ jukebox

BRISBANE: In this photo released by Hill and Knowlton, a New York-based international public relations company, owner Immo Stroeher and his daughter and co-owner Cordula pose for a photo on the deck of Toranor PlanetSolar yacht after it arrived on its first Australian stopover at Riverside Centre Pontoon in Brisbane yesterday. — AP

Google’s Street View starts mapping India NEW DELHI: Internet giant Google launched its ambitious “Street View” project in India to provide detailed panoramic images of life in a country of 1.2 billion people.

The 360-degree photographic mapping service, which is already in operation in more than 25 countries, will begin gathering data in the southern city of Bangalore, a technology hub where many Internet firms are based.

Google said in a statement that infor-

mation collected by special cameras mounted on cars and tricycles would allow users around the world to access streetlevel imagery and explore the city.

“It will be as good as walking down the street from the comfort of your desktop or mobile device,” the firm said.

It did not give further details about its plans to expand the project across the vast nation, where cities and villages are often a chaotic jumble of traffic jams, buffalo carts and slums.

Taipei-based Topology Research Institute. So far, the Taiwanese company with the best success in selling mobile devices is HTC Corp.

The company manufactured the first handset based on the Android operating system in 2008. It has since marketed a wide range of smartphones to meet different tastes, and has recently introduced a movie viewing program called “HTC Watch.” HTC’s sales jumped to 9.7 million handsets in the first quarter, up from 3.3 million a year earlier. HTC’s first tablet, the 7-inch Flyer, sold well in pre-orders in Taiwan this month, vendors say. Its 16 gigabyte Wi-Fi version is priced at $499, the same as the 9.7-inch iPad. But HTC says its smaller-size device has an advantage, because it is lighter, and more manageable than the iPad. By contrast, Acer and AsusTek have pursued a low-price strategy.

Their Iconia Tab and Transformer models — despite having larger 10.1-inch screens — are priced at $450 to $500.

“Taiwanese companies are yet to become serious rivals to Apple,” said Yang. “They either price their tablets too high or sell them at a loss in order to become competitive.” — AP

Street View has proved hugely popular in other countries since its launch in the United States in 2007, but had also run into trouble with several governments concerned about privacy issues. “ We have got permission from the police, and are in touch with state and central governments,” said a Google spokeswoman. “We want to map all of Bangalore, but anyone can complain if they are unhappy about coverage.”

Google earlier this month said it would

appeal against a Swiss ruling ordering it to ensure that all people and cars pictured on Street View were unrecognisable.

France’s data privacy regulator imposed a record fine of 100,000 euros ($142,000) on Google in March for collecting private information while compiling photographs for the service.

Google has also agreed to delete private emails and passwords mistakenly picked up from wireless networks in Britain by its Street View cars. —AFP

BERLIN: It’s a late night kind of problem. The loudspeakers are blaring, the dancing crowd is out and sweating, and even the people with two left feet are swaying along. And then: no “Bad Romance” from Lady Gaga, no “Highway to Hell” from AC/DC in the CD or MP3 collection.

The well-prepared DJ may have brought along a PC with both an internet connection and a line out to the stereo set.

Then it’s easy to pull music off internet video portals to keep the party going.

YouTube, MyVideo, and Clipfish all feature troves of music to make even the biggest fans jealous. Throw in a projector and you can beam an MTV atmosphere straight into the party space. And unlike streaming services like Simfy, you don’t even need to register. One thing that’s needed beforehand is the right cable. It should have a 3.5 mm stereo mini-jack on one end and two cinch plugs on the other. It’s available for a few dollars in electronics stores. That should be sufficient for noisy party spaces.

“The current generation of laptops produces sound quality that’s not hard to live with,” says hi-fi expert Reinhard Paprotka from Stereoplay magazine. Higher sound quality requires a special type of sound card called an audio interface, connected to the computer via USB. These are available from 50 dollars. Unlike an old-school turntable, there’s no need for the DJ to actually stand at the computer. You simply set up a playlist for the computer to work through. That’s especially helpful early on as the guests are arriving.

Yet even the online portals have holes in their collections.

After all, the music labels aren’t willing to put all of their videos online. “The content providers can decide for themselves whether they want to show their videos or not,” says a spokesman from YouTube’s corporate parent, Google.—dpa

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Shuttle astronauts prepare to leave space station CAPE CANAVERAL: The shuttle Endeavour astronauts packed gear and prepared to leave the International Space Station yesterday, wrapping up a 12-day visit to complete construction of the US side of the orbital outpost.

The crew cleaned up from their four spacewalks and reinstalled the station’s upgraded air purification system, the last maintenance task on a long to-do list that included servicing the station’s cooling and power systems and extending the reach of its robotic crane.

Hatches between the shuttle and sta-

tion were to be closed at 6:56 a.m. EDT, with Endeavour ’s departure slated for 11:55 pm.

Landing is scheduled for early Wednesday at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where workers were preparing NASA’s last space shuttle to be rolled out to the launch pad. Atlantis and a crew of four are scheduled to close out the 30-year-old shuttle program with a final cargo run to the station in July.

“We’re really pleased to be able to help round out the program with the successful work that we’ve had up here,” Endeavour

lead spacewalker Drew Feustel said during an inflight interview.

“There’s one more flight after us and they’ll finish out the space shuttle program. We really believe that we’re ending on a very strong and positive note and looking forward to future opportunities,” he said. The United States is retiring its three space shuttles due to high operating costs and to free up funds to develop new spaceships that can carr y astronauts beyond the station’s 220-mile high orbit where the shuttles cannot go.

“Once the space shuttle retires we’re

going to lose a lot of capability of moving large payloads out in space, but then that opens the doors for new things that are going to come across the horizon,” said Endeavour’s pilot, Greg Johnson.

The primary goal of Endeavour’s flight, the 134th for NASA’s space shuttle program, was to deliver and install the $2 billion Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer particle detector, designed to study dark matter, antimatter and other high-energy phenomena that cannot be detected by telescopes. That job was accomplished shortly after Endeavour’s May 18 arrival at the

$100 billion space station, a project of 16 nations that has been under construction since 1998.

Atlantis will be delivering a year’s worth of supplies to the station. NASA is turning over US cargo runs to two companies, Space Exploration Technologies and Orbital Sciences Corp., and hopes commercial flights will be available to ferry station crew members as well within four or five years. In the interim, Russia will provide space taxi services, at a cost of more than $50 million a seat. Russia, Europe and Japan also fly cargo ships. — Reuters

AIDS, a tale of tragedy and hope The 30 years war

This image provided by NASA shows the Soyuz capsule attached to the International Space Station, backdropped by the blackness of space and the curve of Earth, taken Friday by astronaut Ron Garan. — AP

Germany hunts source of deadly E. coli bacteria BERLIN: Germany said yesterday it was pulling out all the stops to locate the exact source of an outbreak of E. coli bacteria poisoning blamed for 10 deaths, which authorities suspect may have originated in Spain.

“Until experts in Germany and Spain are able to positively identify the source of the pathogen, general warnings about vegetables remain valid,” Consumer Affairs Minister Ilse Aigner told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper.

“The relevant authorities are doing all they can to clear this up, nationally and internationally.”

The European Commission said on Friday that organic cucumbers from southern Spain have been confirmed as a source of the outbreak of enterohaemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC) poisoning.

Germany ’s national disease institute, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), has said two deaths were from haemolytic uraemic syndrome (HUS), a disease caused by EHEC that can lead to bloody diarrhoea and serious liver damage.

But there are eight other suspected HUS deaths, and the RKI has said that close to 300 people have contracted the disease in recent weeks.

Normally about 60 people in Germany a year contract HUS. Spanish authorities said Saturday they had introduced restrictions on two distributors.

Andalusia’s regional council said suspect batches had been withdrawn pending tests, results of which are due today.

But the European Commission said a batch of cucumbers originating either in The Netherlands or in Denmark, and traded in Germany, was also under investigation.

The deaths included four fatalities announced on Saturday in the northern state of SchleswigHolstein and in Hamburg, including three women in their 80s and a fourth in her 30s. Nine of those who have died so far are women.

The epicentre of the outbreak has been in northern Germany, with more than 1,000 people suspected of being infected, reports said. Several are said to be fighting for their lives.

Hospitals in the city of Hamburg, where more than 400 people are believed to have been infected with EHEC, were said to be overwhelmed and sending patients to clinics elsewhere.

In nearby Luebeck, a spokesman for the university hospital, where some 20 suspected HUS cases were being treated and where one patient has died, told AFP that staff were “close to exhaustion.”

Sweden has reported 25 E. coli cases, of whom 10 developed HUS, according to the European Commission. Denmark reported seven E. coli cases (including three HUS) while Britain counted three cases (two HUS).

More cases have been reported in France, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Austria, where authorities ordered organic cucumbers, tomatoes and aubergines delivered from Germany but grown in Spain withdrawn in 33 shops.

Denmark’s veterinary and food products agency said Friday it had found contaminated cucumbers from Spain in the stocks of two wholesalers in the west of the country and ordered them withdrawn.

The Czech Republic has imported a batch of tainted organic cucumbers from Spain, the CTK news agency said Saturday, citing the country’s agriculture and food inspection authority SZPI. The Stockholm-based European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) said Friday that all of these cases involved people who had recently been in northern Germany. — AFP

PARIS: On June 5, 1981, American epidemiologists reported a baffling event: Five young gay men in Los Angeles, all previously healthy, had fallen ill with pneumonia. Two had died.

They would be the first casualties of a new virus which has now claimed more lives than a world war.

Nearly 30 million people have been killed by acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) and more than 33 million others have the virus that causes it.

A disease that began as a medical curiosity has spread across the world, its tentacles reaching into every corner of society.

Death, sickness and stigma are the hallmarks of its tale. But so are dazzling medical exploits, unexpected solidarity and smashed taboos.

“AIDS has changed the world, without any doubt,” Michel Sidibe, executive director of UNAIDS, said ahead of the UN’s June 8-10 high-level AIDS forum in New York.

“We have been able to break a conspiracy of silence,” he said. “And a new social compact has been created between the north and the south, which has never happened before with any disease of this kind.”

The early years of the AIDS war are a dark chapter of fear, ignorance and homophobia.

But the term “gay plague” swiftly faded when it was found AIDS could also be contracted through blood transfusion and heterosexual intercourse and from an infected mother to her unborn child.

Mercifully, the fight against AIDS began almost instantly, thanks to gay groups who lobbied for research funds in the United States and campaigned against stigma and for safe sex.

As swiftly as 1983, French doctors pinpointed the cause: a pathogen which became known as the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).

Transmitted in semen, vaginal secretions, breast milk or blood, HIV hijacks key immune cells to reproduce itself,

MANILA: Filipinos gather around a quilt made by persons with HIV and AIDS during a ceremony to mark the 27th International AIDS Candlelight Memorial at the Department of Foreign Affairs headquarters in suburban Manila, Philippines on Thursday. In a statement issued by the United Nations Development Program, about 1,585 overseas Filipino workers have been recorded since March this year at the National HIV Registry of the Department of Health. — AP destroying the cell in the process.

After about half a dozen years that can be symptom-free, the immune system becomes so weak that the body becomes fatally exposed to TB, pneumonia and other opportune microbes.

Identifying HIV led to a test to help identify those infected and weed out contaminated blood samples.

It also unleashed optimism that in a couple of years a vaccine would be found, just as it had been found for smallpox and polio.

But the world is still waiting. The virus has so far eluded the vaccine engineers, for it comes with a slippery sugary coating and an astonishing ability to mutate.

With no vaccine, cure or treatment in sight, the death toll from AIDS mounted nightmarishly in the 1980s and 90s.

Newspaper headlines remembered the actors, rock stars and sporting heroes

Rock Hudson, Freddy Mercury, Arthur Ashe-but the millions of non-celebrity victims went unrecorded.

“I walked into the women’s ward for general medicine. The women were all wasted, emaciated and dying,” Peter Piot, Sidibe’s predecessor, recalled of his grim experience as a doctor in Africa in 1983.

“I said to myself, ‘Oh my God, this is a catastrophe!’ It was a moment of realisation. It changed my life.”

In 1996 came the great news: the first effective anti-HIV drugs were available at last.

The “cocktail” represses HIV to below detectable levels, although it is not a cure and can have hefty side-effects.

As their immune system miraculously rebounded, people who had literally been under a death sentence returned to life. But the previous drugs were so expensive that for half a dozen years,

only rich countries could afford them.

The charge to help stricken poor nations was led by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, US President George W. Bush and Bill Gates.

Today, more than five million people in low- and middle-income have grasped the lifeline, but 10 million more await treatment, according to UNAIDS. By 2015 — when the UN has set a target of “zero new infections, zero discrimination and zero deaths”-it will be 13 million.

There lies a dilemma: The more lives that are saved, the more money that is needed, for the drugs have to be taken every day for the rest of one’s life.

By 2015, an additional six billion dollars will be needed, which points to the need for innovative financing and help from China and other emerging giants.

“We have got to stop the transmission of the virus, otherwise it is impossible, impossible to conceive of treating your way out of the epidemic or even treating all the people who need to be treated,” said Seth Berkley, head of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI). A campaign is underway in Africa to promote male circumcision, found to reduce the infection risk to men by twothirds.

Even more dramatic is a new study, conducted among heterosexual couples, that says anti-HIV drugs, if taken early to treat an infected person, can reduce the risk of viral transmission to a non-infected partner by 96 percent.

Other exciting work-but still experimental-points to progress in devising HIV-thwarting vaginal and anal gels.

Even so, “unless there is a game changer like a vaccine, there probably will still be one million new infections a year in 2031,” said Piot, now director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

“If there is more expansion of access to treatment, that rate will maybe slow down. But AIDS will not have disappeared.” — AFP

Science can’t design away tornadoes’ deadly threat WASHINGTON: Storm science has greatly improved tornado warnings in recent years. But if that’s led anyone into a sense of security, that feeling has taken a beating in recent weeks.

Super Outbreak 2011, on April 25-28, killed more than 300 people in the South and Midwest. Less than a month later, a devastating tornado took more than 120 lives around Joplin, Missouri. This now could be the deadliest year for tornadoes since 1950, based on an assessment of National Weather Service figures.

This despite warnings of as much as 20 minutes, thanks to improved weather radar installed across the country in the 1990s. Before that, tornado warnings often weren’t issued until a twister was sighted on the ground. Scientists see a variety of factors that helped make this year’s twisters deadlier — from La Nina to public complacency, from global warming to urban sprawl. “We thought for the longest time physical science could get us by ... that we could design out of disaster,” said meteorology professor Walker Ashley of Northern Illinois University. Now scientists are finding they need to take human nature into account.

What is clear is that certain factors add to the risk of death.

The most vulnerable folks are those living in mobile homes and houses without basements.

For a variety of reasons, a lot of homes don’t have basements.

Twisters occurring on weekends — like the Joplin tornado — and at night tend to be greater killers because they catch people at home. At night, twisters are harder to see and sleeping people may not hear a warning.

Those less likely to be killed in a storm tend to be more educated and to have a plan in place beforehand. In Sedalia, Missouri, 30-year-old Sean McCabe had

the right idea when the tornado struck, heading to the basement. He said the storm shoved him down the final flight of steps. He had scrapes and cuts on his hands, wrists, back and feet. Blood was visible in the house, and much of the roof of the house was gone. “I saw little debris and then I saw big debris, and I’m like OK, let’s go,” said McCabe.

Having a plan was a lifesaver for Tuscaloosa’s LaRocca Nursing Home in Alabama. As the storm howled, four dozen residents massed in the hallways as trees crashed down and a cloud of dust rained upon them. When the dust settled, the staff realized their drills had paid off. Not one patient was killed, and the worst injury among them was a bruise.

Hundreds have not been so lucky. The death toll reported Saturday by the city of Joplin stands at 139, which if correct puts this year’s tornado death toll at 520 — exceeding the previous highest recorded death toll in a single year of 519 in 1953. But Missouri state officials counted 126 dead, a discrepancy that left unclear whether 2011 has yet set the modern record for tornado fatalities.

There were deadlier storms before 1950, but those counts were based on estimates and not on precise figures The National Weather Service said 58 tornadoes touched down in Alabama on April 27, killing 238 people in that state alone and injuring thousands. Scores died in other states from twisters spawned by the same storm system. Put together, emergency management officials say the twisters left a path of destruction 10 miles (16 kilometers) wide and 610 miles (980 kilometers) long, or about as far as a drive from Birmingham to Columbus, Ohio. Statewide, Alabama officials estimate there

was enough debris to stack a football field a mile high with rubble. Contributing to the massive loss of life is the growth of urban areas, suggested Marshall Shepherd, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Georgia.

“Historically, the central business districts of cities have not been hit that frequently,” he explained. But as you increase the land area covered by homes and businesses, he said, “you’re increasing the size of the dartboard.” An expanding population does increase exposure to the danger, agreed Ashley, who fears deaths could begin to rise in the future as a result of sprawl and more people living in vulnerable residences such as mobile homes. If the Tuscaloosa and Joplin tornadoes had each been a few miles to the south,

on farmland, little would be heard about them, Ashley said, but when extremely violent tornadoes mingle with urban sprawl “you’re going to have a disaster.” “I hope this will be an outlier year, very much like Katrina was to hurricanes,” he said in a telephone interview from a field trip to chase tornadoes. But no one can guarantee that, and weather experts are becoming increasingly concerned about how people respond to tornado warnings.

“A lot of it is complacency,” Ashley said. “The population seems to be becoming desensitized to nature. I don’t know why.” Studies have shown that 15 to 20 minutes is the most effective amount of warning time, and longer warning times can increase deaths. Weather experts aren’t sure why, but wor-

ry that people think that if a twister hasn’t appeared in a certain amount of time, it must have been a false alarm.

Yet a long-track tornado can be on the ground for 30 miles (48 kilometers). “If you have a basement, you don’t need 20 minutes warning, but if you are in a mobile home park you may need more than 20 minutes to find a shelter,” commented Alan W. Black, a University of Georgia doctoral student and co-author with Ashley of a recent study of tornado and wind fatalities.

Jerry Brotzge, a research scientist at the Center for Analysis & Prediction of Storms, University of Oklahoma, said many people who hear warnings will look outside to see if they can see the tornado _ “they need some kind of confirmation, they want to see it.” — AP

MEDELLIN: Women wash their hands after their performance during the International Day of Action for Women’s Health yesterday, in Medellin, Antioquia department, Colombia. Hundreds of women protested claiming for the construction of a clinic for women and urgent action on their health and basic rights. — AFP

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health & science

UNICEF discloses vaccine prices for first time TRENTON: UNICEF is for the first time publicizing what drugmakers charge it for vaccines, as the world’s biggest buyer of lifesaving immunizations aims to spark price competition in the face of rising costs. On Friday, UNICEF posted on its website the actual prices that it has paid individual drugmakers for 16 vaccines purchased over the last decade. It’s a move that a few Western pharmaceutical companies don’t support. Novartis AG and Merck & Co., which only sells one of its many children’s vaccines to UNICEF, both declined to have their prices published.

UNICEF said it will continue to disclose pricing of future vaccine deals, with the hope that the transparency will push drugmakers to cut prices and thus allow the organization to vaccinate more children and save more lives.

“Transparency will also help foster a competitive, diverse supplier base,” said Shanelle Hall, director of UNICEF’s supply division. She noted that it also will help UNICEF’s partners and those governments that buy vaccines on their own to make more informed decisions in price

negotiations with drugmakers.

UNICEF last year spent $757 million to provide 2.5 billion doses of vaccines to 99 countries, reaching an estimated 58 percent of the world’s children.

Its price list shows significant disparity, with Western drugmakers often charging UNICEF double what companies in India and Indonesia do. Just as striking is the steady rise in prices in the last decade, with the cost of vaccines against measles, polio and tetanus roughly doubling between 2001 and 2010. Prices of a few vaccines have remained flat or declined as additional competitors entered the market. There’s also a huge spread in prices among various vaccines.

As might be expected, shots that have been around for some time and those vaccines made by multiple companies cost just pennies per dose, such as tetanus and tuberculosis shots and oral polio vaccine. But a combination shot for immunization against diptheria, tetanus, whooping cough, hepatitis B and haemophilus influenza can run UNICEF $3 or more per dose. The dual vaccine against 10 or more strains of pneumococ-

Say bye to obesity

cal disease, which causes ear infections and meningitis, costs $3.50 a shot. And some of the vaccines require more than one booster shot, adding to the cost. The cost is partly justified by the complex manufacturing process used to make combination vaccines. And UNICEF still pays far less than the $71 and $114 per dose, respectively, that is charged in the US for those two vaccines. But given that the organization’s mission is to immunize entire populations of at-risk children, any savings means more can be vaccinated.

British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline PLC said in a statement that it “always offers UNICEF our vaccines at our lowest price as they are targeted at the people who need them the most, but are least able to pay. We welcome UNICEF’s move to publish retrospective prices for tenders and hope that this will help inform decisions for future vaccine procurement.” Messages left with other Western vaccine makers seek ing comment weren’t immediately returned Saturday afternoon.

Daniel Berman, deputy director of the Doctors Without Borders Campaign for

Essential Medicines, called the new price disclosures “a real step forward.” “By getting access to these prices, buyers will be able to take advantage of the increasing capacity of emerging countries to develop and produce quality vaccines at significantly lower costs,” he said in a statement. He added that GAVI, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, “should flex its purchasing muscles to encourage manufacturers” to produce vaccines that don’t require refrigeration and can be administered through patches or liquids, rather than needles. GAVI, which is supported by contributions from developed nations and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is the primary funder of vaccines purchased by UNICEF. Helen Evans, interim CEO of the GAVI Alliance, said in a joint statement with UNICEF that GAVI “strongly believes in timely, transparent and accurate information on pricing.” Many of the largest global pharmaceutical companies — most recently Johnson & Johnson — have jumped into the vaccine business in recent years to diversify revenue as many of their blockbuster pills are facing generic competi-

tion. Vaccines are all but immune from generic competition in developed countries, and some newer shots, such as Pfizer Inc.’s Prevnar pneumococcal vaccine, now bring in billions of dollars in revenue each year.

Those big companies are looking to less-developed countries for future sales growth, and vaccines against crippling and deadly childhood diseases are costeffective purchases for countries with small health budgets. AIDS groups and advocates for affordable health care in developing countries have campaigned for years for big pharmaceutical companies to sell their patented medicines to those countries at drastically reduced prices, or to allow generic drug makers in countries such as India to do so. They’ve had some success, so UNICEF’s new price plan is a logical strategy.

UNICEF’s Hall said the organization hopes to expand the transparency initiative to other essential products that it buys for children. UNICEF supports child health and nutrition, good water and sanitation, and quality basic education for boys and girls across the globe. — AP

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MONDAY, MAY 30, 2011

W H AT ’ S O N Announcements ‘Mahakte Lamhe’ Indian Cultural Society (ICS) presents “Mahakte Lamhe” with Udit Narayan with Deepa Narayan.

Another attraction of the evening will be reality shows fame Neha Chouhan & Nayan Rathod on 10th June 2011 Friday at Auditorium Kamil Al Rays, American International School, near Police Station Maidan Hawally Kuwait at 7.30 pm sharp. The Chief Guest for the event will be Vidhu P Nair Charge d” Affaires Embassy of India, Kuwait and the guest of honor will be prominent personalities from Kuwait.

For details contact: 97690035, 66568147, 94450833, 97270386, 97286577, 67030839, and 99757214 Email ics.kuwait@gmail.com BAIA Summer Camp now open for registrations 2011 ON STAGE summer camp from 19 June to 06 July. Last year High School Musical, this year Camp Rock, Tangled, Cars...many more! From Page to Stage in just 3 weeks, through costume design, technicals, acting, singing, dance, music, make-up, film and lighting. Create a fabulous performance ON STAGE. Discounts available if registered before 01 June. Call 60052087 or mail administrator@baia.com.kw. Full details of all events and courses are available on www.baia.com.kw

GUST honors CS students for academic excellence

T

he Gulf University for Science and Technology (GUST) arranged a ceremony to honor students in the Computer Science (CS) Department for their academic excellence and achievements. The event was hosted by Dr Imad Moukadem, Head of the CS Department and organized by Ms Sarah Bargal. Dr. Ali Ansari, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences gave a speech at the event discussing the idea of “1,000 years of lost Muslim contributions to science and mathematics.” He added how “history had forgotten the many great Muslim minds of the period referred to as the Dark Ages in Europe,

but they were anything but the dark ages for Muslims. In fact, this was their golden era of science andmathematics.”

The ceremony was also honored by the presence of Dr. Robert Cook, Vice President for Academic affairs, Dr. Ali AlKandari: Dean of Admission and Registration, Dr. Issam El-Moughrabi, MBA Director, Dr. Mohammed Shariff, Head of the Accounting Department and all CS faculty members.

Dr Imad Moukadem said:”Honors are bestowed as recognition of outstanding academic achievement and as a means to further encourage sound scholars.

They are awarded to undergraduate

students attaining the required proficiency. Each year, GUST CS undergraduates who earn outstanding grades are recognized by inclusion on the CS department honors list.” This list is compiled during the spring semester. To be included, a student must reach the junior or senior level scoring a GPA of 3.5 and above. This year, the CS department is honoring the following students: Monzer Khammash, Shough AlFadhli, Momina Ahmad, Dana Shbeeb, Abdulraheem Taha, Anfal Al-Twayan, Munirah Al-Subaie, Nayfah Al-Mutairi, Mohammad Zayed, Layla Al-Rashidi, AbdulwahabRuwaie.

“This year,” he added, “the department is delighted to celebrate the 1st (Amna Al-Marshad, Anwar Al-Farhan, Dalal Al-Bader, Mariam Khalil) and 2nd (Ahmad Ismaeel, RaedKraiz) positions among 22 teams in the first National Robotics Competition in Kuwait.” GUST students also won the 3rd position (Abdulraheem Taha, Moemina Ahmad, Monzer Khamash) in the Gulf ACM programming competition organized by the University of Sharjah.

Dr Moukadem congratulatedall the above students and thanked their families and friends for their constant support.

ACK emphasises ‘Project based learning’

Movenpick Hotel & Resort offers hot deals for summer ‘Together we can’

M

ovenpick Hotel & Resort Al Bida’a Kuwait starts its yearly sales blitz today. In the true style of the resort, the team working together will cover all major locations in Kuwait over the next three days. Team members from all departments are involved as they prove once again that “together we can”!

The 50 Movenpick Hotel & Resort Al Bida’a branded bodies will be a welcome sight to the many office workers labouring away at their desks. In their action groups the team will visit offices city wide and ensure a lasting impression.

Among all the fun it will be a great exercise in relationship building and something which new Director of Sales and Marketing, Mohamed Ibrahim, wants to see more of, “It is important to stay present in the city’s mind, and it is also great for our team to be in direct contact with the customer.”

From June 1st until August 28th Movenpick Hotel & Resort Al Bida’a is

offering refreshing summer packages and appealing conference packages that will keep you chilled even when picking up the bill. A choice of eclectic venues, modern amenities, professional planning and impeccable service ensure everyone meets with success.

The hotel has launched recently an awesome package available throughout the summer.

This special promotion will entitle guests to a 25% discount on room rates as well as plenty of complimentary kids activities to keep the little ones busy. “ We are lucky to have such a great team of people at the hotel, and wish them all the best as they reintroduce the hotel facilities and offers to the diverse population in Kuwait”, said Gary Moran, General Manager of the Movenpick Hotel & Resort Al Bida’a Kuwait.

So watch out as teams of young and energetic staff members knock on your door, they will be sure to make you an offer you cannot refuse!!

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s a component of the vocational system at the Australian College of Kuwait, semester two Civil Engineering students went on a site visit to the infamous Jaber Al Ahmed Hospital project, which is said to be the largest hospital in the Middle East thus far. The main objective of this site visit was for students to experience the nature of their studies and become familiar with the latest developments in the construction industry.This will assist them in understanding basic construction elements and relevant standards, codes and regulations for the design and construction of lowrise buildings in Kuwait; it will also allow them to acknowledge the relevant authorities involved in the approval of buildings and services. Moreover, it will allow them to see the different materials and equipment used on construction sites.

Engineer Ali Nadoom, Project Manager of Jaber Al Abdullah Hospital, welcomed the ACK students and took them on a tour of the site. Along the way, he shared his knowledge and expertise and answered all their questions.

The site visit to Jaber Al Abdullah Hospital was beneficial for ACK students in a sense that it portrayed the practical side of the Civil Engineering field and provided students with training. ACK continuously assures that both its Business and Engineering students receive practical training to parallel their fields of study. At ACK the emphasis is placed on “Project Based Learning” which combines understanding concepts via hands-on applications of theories. It is a teaching and learning model that emphasizes studentcentered instruction by assigning projects. This involves innovative curriculum development and instructional approach that allows students to engage learning experiences in real-world projects through which they develop and apply knowledge. The ability to critically appraise viewpoints and designs, to collect and analyze data, to develop an argument in a logical form and to participate in discussion and debate with other students and teachers is an excellent way to learn. This process at ACK ensures active learning experience to students rather than a passive one.

Metropolitan visits St James Mar Thoma Church

TDP organizes mini-mahanadu

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ravasaandhra Telugu Desam Party, Kuwait organized mini Mahanadu on the occasion of TDP founder President late NT Rama Rao’s 88th birth anniversary last Friday in Hawally. The program began with Pravasandhra TDP Kuwait, President Mulaka Subbarayudu garlanded photos of the founder President NT Rama Rao and cake cutting celebration with dozens of Telugu people and followers of TDP who is living in Kuwait.

Meanwhile the organizers demanded that the centre bestow the Bharat Ratna, the highest civilian award of the country, to the former chief minister for his contributions to the Andhra Pradesh state, particularly film industry.

They also praised NTR had created a new

wave in the politics of state with his commitment to work towards uplifting backward and poor people. “No one can forget his services to Telugu cinema industry and his life history is a role model and inspiration to future generations.”

All speakers called upon party workers to work for fulfilling the late leader’s dreams.

They also charged the Congress government of mortgaging the Telugu people’s pride and alleged that suicides of farmers have increased during its stint in power.

Pravasandhra TDP officials Perugu Srinu, Peram Ramana, Pidikiti Srinivas Chowdary, Prakash, Nageswara, S Prasd, Polarapu Babu Naidu, TLKS President Mohan, Koduri Venkat Siva Rao, Malepati Suresh Babu Naidu took lead part in this event.

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ur Metropolitan His Grace The Most Rev. Dr Joseph Mar Thoma Metropolitan visited St. James Mar Thoma Church, Kuwait on May 24. The Vicar Rev. A. Y. Varughese and the Kaisthana Samithi members gave a warm welcome to the Thirumeni.

Thirumeni spent his valuable time with the Kaisthana Samithi members and also blessed the Choir Audition Program of the Church. We wish our sincere gratitude to His Grace Mar Thoma Metropolitan for his visit to our Church and attending other Church related programs in Kuwait.

Ahmadi Music Group The Ahmadi Music Group, directed by Richard Bushman, is delighted to announce the forthcoming production of The Desert Song by Siegmund Romberg and Oscar Hammerstein. Fully-staged, with costumes, dancing, professional soloists, a cast of around fifty people and a full symphony orchestra, this will be a wonderful opportunity to experience an evening of musical theatre in the stunning new Performing Arts Centre at The English School Salmiya. Tuesday 31 May, Preview Performance for students. Wednesday 1 June, Black-tie Gala Opening Performance followed by Buffet Supper. Thursday 2 June, Performance. Friday 3 June, Performance. All performances start at 7pm at The English School, Salmiya. Emailing invitations@ahmadimusicgroup.com AWARE Arabic course The AWARE management is glad to inform you that Summer 2 Arabic language courses will begin on June 12 until July 21, 2011. AWARE Arabic language courses are designed with the expat in mind. The environment is relaxed & courses are designed for those wanting to learn Arabic for travel, cultural understanding, and conducting business or simply to become more involved in the community. We cater to teachers, travelers and those working in the private business sector.

AWARE Arabic courses highlights: Introductory to Level 4 Arabic language basics; Ccmbine language learning with cultural insights; taught in multi-nationality group settings ; and provides opportunities to interact with Western expatriates and native Kuwaitis/Arabs. For more information and/or registration, call 25335260/80 ext 105 or 0 or log onto: www.aware.com.kw

Chemmanur International Jewellers’ golden draw winner, Midhatwasi, membership No. 5974, receives gold chain with pendant from sales officer Zainul Abideen.

Kala Mathrubhaasha Samithi formed

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erala Art Lovers Association (Kala, Kuwait) formed the Mathrubhaasha Samithi at Kala Centre for the smooth execution of this year’s Free Malayalam Education Program. The meeting was presided by Kala president Sam Pynummood.

The crowd approved the Samithi in which P.K. Janardhanan was selected as General Convenor, R ajan Kulak k ada and Sathar Kunnil as Joint Convenors followed by the Advisory Committee members who were selected from well known Kuwait Malayalees who are social thinkers having diverse views including John Mathew, Reghunathan Nair, Malayil Moosakoya, Chessil Ramapuram, Joseph Thankachan, Dr. Rajesh, Aziz Thikkodi, Abdul Fathah, John Arts, Joy Mundakkat, Jyothidas, Mohandas, Shijo Philip, Sajeev M. George, Jacob Mathew, Babuji Batheri, T.V. Hikmath, R.Ramesh, Habeeb Rahman, Salam Kalanad , Krishnakumar, Joseph Panicker, J.Albert, Chandramohan Kanoor and V.M. John.

As decided by the samithi, the free Malayalam education program will be inaugurated during the Mega program on June 3rd at Indian Central School, Abbasiya in which National Award winning Indian film director and Cinematographer, Shaji N. Karun will be the chief guest .The inaugural ceremony will begin at 9.30 A.M. Musical event led by famous Malayalam play back singer Gayathri Ashokan and his team will be the main attraction of the day. Entrance will be free for all, General Secretary R. Naganathan added to the media. For more details, kindly contact 66656642, 97817100 or 24317875.

Write to us Send to What’s On upcoming events, birthdays or celebrations by email: local@kuwaittimes.net Fax: 24835619 / 20

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MONDAY, MAY 30, 2011

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Embassy

BSK geography students visit Kuwait Towers

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ear 6 Geography students from The British School of Kuwait visited Kuwait Towers as part of their settlement curriculum. It proved to be the ideal location to gain a sound visual of the entire central business district of Kuwait City and the surrounding area.

During the trip students drew an urban transect of the city, completed a simple traffic count and drew field sketches. They also took as many photos as possible to relish the excellent visibility. I have never been to Kuwait Towers and had such good views said Ashwan Sirish.

The fieldwork marks the end of a busy year for Year 6 students before their examinations begin. It also enhances the geography fieldwork opportunities on offer at BSK as each Y613 student must complete some type of fieldwork as part of their studies.

Information EMBASSY OF ARGENTINA In order to inform that 23rd of October 2011, will be Argentine national election where all Argentinean citizen residents permanently in Kuwait can vote only if they are registered at the Electoral Register of the Argentine Embassy. The procedure of inscription is for free and will be end on 25 of April 2011. To register it is necessary that Argentinean citizens should come personally at the Argentinean Embassy (Block 6, street 42, villa 57, Mishref) and present the DNI and four personal photos (size 4x4, face should be front on white background).

For further information, contact us on 25379211.

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One more milestone in the walk of Frontliners thundering success

EMBASSY OF AUSTRALIA The Embassy encourages all Australians to register their presence in Kuwait through Smartraveller Online (see link below).

Australians who are registered are asked to update their details. The information provided will assist us in contacting you in an emergency. www.smartraveller.gov.au Kuwait citizens can apply for and receive visit visas to Australia online at www.immi.gov.au. This usually takes two working days. All others visa applications are handled by the Australian Visa Application Centre Tel. 22971110.

Witnessing and certifying documents are by appointment only, please contact the Embassy on 2232 2422.

The Australian Embassy is open from 8.00am to 4.00pm, Sunday to Thursday.

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EMBASSY OF BRITAIN The Visa Application Centre (VAC) will be closed on the same dates above. The opening hours of the Visa Application Centre are 0930 - 1630 Application forms remain available online from the UKBAs’ website: www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk or from the Visa Application Centre’s website: www.vfs-ukkw.com. And also, from the UK Visa Application Centre located at: 4B, First Floor, Al Banwan Building (Burgan Bank Branch Office Building), Al Qibla area, opposite Central Bank of Kuwait, Kuwait City. For any further inquiries, please contact the Visa Application Centre: Website: www.vfs-uk-kw.com E-mail:info@vfs-uk-kw.com Telephone:22971170. The Consular Section will also be closed on the same dates.

For information on the British Embassy services, visit the British Embassy website: www.ukinkuwait.fco.gov.uk ■■■■■■■

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he Frontliners - Part 15 book was released by “Padma Shri” D R Kaarthikeyan IPS in a glittering show of music & dance on 27th May 2011 at AlJeel Al-Jadeed School, Hawally.

The book, compiled by writer N.C.Mohandoss, founder of the Frontliners Association, Kuwait, focused on environmental aspects and contains articles and valuable information on a host of issues and tips to individuals to the way they can contribute to preserve environment.

While “Padma Shri” D.R.Kaarthikeyan IPS, formerDirector, CBI and Director General, National Human Rights Commission, India was the Chief Guest. The bookrelease function of Frontliners had many dignitaries and a fully-packed audience with thundering hall of enthusiastic, supporters and well-wishers of Frontliners. Among those who graced the occasion were Vidhu P. Nair, Charge d’affaires, Embassy of India, Kuwait, Mrs Wajdan Al Oqab, General Secretary of the Kuwait Environment Protection Society, Aalia Al-Shaalan, “climate change’ campaign, Kuwait, Hilal Al-Sayer and Dr Saleha Al Moosa.

Anis Ahmed, President, Frontliners welcomed the gathering. Laks- Advisor, Frontliners gave a brief description of the welfareactivities carried out by the Frontliners team for the past 15 years. Mohandoss,

EMBASSY OF CANADA The Embassy of Canada is located at Villa 24, AlMutawakel St., Block 4 in Da’aiyah. Please visit our website at www.Kuwait.gc.ca.

Canada offers a registration service for all Canadians travelling or living abroad. This service is provided so that Consular Officials can contact and assist Canadians in an emergency in a foreign country, such as a natural disaster or civil unrest, or inform Canadians of a family emergency at home. The Embassy of Canada encourages all Canadian Citizens to register online through the Government of Canada Travel Website at www.voyage.gc.ca. 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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Founder, Frontliner, spoke about the worker-welfare activities undertaken by Frontliners under excellent leadership of K.Mathi, General Secretary. Singaravelu, VicePresident introduced the chief guest. The dignitaries, guests and sponsors were presented with garlands, bouquets and mementos.

Kaarthikeyan appreciated the NRIs in Kuwait for toiling in a foreign country far away from India to facilitate the betterment of the lives of their families. He requested them to continue to help others who are less-fortunate and needy.

He stressed that this could be done by everyone, irrespective

of their current status of income and wealth, albeit in different scales. He drove home the message that “Nothing is impossible” by mentioning about the way the daunting and apparently impossible task of investigation of the murder of Rajiv Gandhi was successfully completed by his team in a record time. He gave real-life examples of how to be content and thankful to God for the facilities we have rather than complain about things we do not have.

Dr. Wajdan appreciated Frontliners for selecting ‘Environment’ as the topic for their current book and noted

that the huge gathering for the function is a proof of the concern of the people to save the environment and a bright indication of success in doing so.

Aaalia of the Kuwait Climate Change Campaign sought the support of the public for spreading awareness about the environmental challenges faced by Kuwait and assist in solving the same.

The programme was studded with enthralling performances from popular singers, cine and TV artistes - Sai Ram, Narendra - Deepa, Raj Kamal Latha Rao. The local “Sangamam” troupe kept the evening lively with fantastic

performance by young kinds to senior singers and dancers with the local singers Ganegesh, Ganesh & Swathi.

The compering by Kandanathan, Abilasha and Ann Tissa maintained excellent rapport with the audience. They themselves became stars in the evening.

Joseph Panicker proposed vote-of-thanks to the guests, sponsors and audience. The meticulous preparations done by the organising committee Lakshman, Arumugam, Mariappan & Anita the entire evening was a memorable and enjoyable one. Frontliners team could count it as one more feather in their cap!

Voice celebrates Viswakala

EMBASSY OF GERMANY The Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Kuwait wishes to announce that as of 1 May 2011, the external service provider Al Qabas Assurex is operating a Visa Application Centre in support of the German Embassy. Short-term visa applications for travels to Germany (e.g. for tourism, visits, business) are to be submitted to the service provider Al Qabas who for your convenience will ensure that all relevant documents are included in your application. Your personal appearance at the Application Centre is not required. Address of the Visa Application Centre: Al Qabas Assurex Sanabel Tower (Al-Babtain) Mezzanine (M3) opposite Sharq Mall Kuwait 22924444 Fax: 22924442 Further information are available on the following websites: www.kuwait.diplo.de www.qavisa.com ■■■■■■■

EMBASSY OF ITALY The Embassy of I taly will be closed Thursday, 2nd June 2011, on the occasion of the National Day of the Italian Republic.

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EMBASSY OF INDIA Embassy of India, Kuwait, would like to inform that application forms for passport/visa services and labour contracts that are on its website, www.indembkwt.org, have been upgraded to include the facility for online data entry. Affidavit forms on the Embassy website have had this facility since May 6, 2009.

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EMBASSY OF KENYA 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 NIGERIA The Nigerian embassy has moved its office to Mishref. Block 3, Street 7, House 4. For enquires please call 25379541. Fax25387719. Email- nigeriakuwait@yahoo.com or nigeriankuwait@yahoo.co.uk

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Jack and Jill group rhyme competition

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ursery rhymes have a long tradition in any kindergarten school. Adults still remember the short verses their parents and teachers have taught them when they were children. Research suggests that hearing, learning and reciting nursery rhymes can help young children take their first step towards becoming proficient readers. The LKG children of Jack and Jill Bhavans had a fantastic morning of rhymes in the group rhyme competition. In their own fascinating and playful way the children experienced not only the joy of words but phonemic awareness as well. They enthralled their teachers and friends with their articulation and memory skills while reciting rhymes.

iswakarma Organisation for Ideal Career and Education ( VOICE Kuwait) celebrated its 6th anniversary “Viswakala -2011” at Carmel School, Khaitan with various cultural programs.

Former secretary general Lok Sabha P.D.T Achary inaugurated the function and made inaugural speech. Voice Kuwait President P.G.Binu made presidential speech. Baluchandran gave souvenir to Varghese Puthukulangara and made souvenir release.

K.Chandramohanan, Baiju Vijayan, Baluchandran, Varghese Puthukulangara etc, gave the felicitation speech.

Famous playback singers Raghesh Brahmanand and Saritha Rajeev sang

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different film songs and students from different dance schools taught by Krishna Prakash, Sarthitha Rajan & Sindhu Madu Raj performed classical, semi-classical, cinematic & western dance. K.Shajan co-ordinate the event.

P.C.Sukumaran made welcome speech and Reghunadan Achari gave the vote of thanks.

EMBASSY OF PERU With the growing interest shown by Kuwaiti citizens and/or foreign residents in Kuwait for going for vacation and tourism to Peru and/or with the purpose of doing business over there, The Embassy of Peru in Kuwait did the effort and obtained as a temporary and immediate solution - till the opening of the consular section of Diplomatic Mission of Peru in Kuwait City - that the consular section of the Embassy of Peru in Qatar will attend those requests of granting such visas. Working hours: 9 am till 2 pm or call +974-4491-5944, Fax: +974-4491-5940 E-mail: arestegui.cj@gmail.com

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TV PROGRAMS

00:45 Untamed And Uncut 01:40 Dogs 101 02:35 Queens Of The Savannah 03:30 Life Of Mammals 04:25 Into The Pride 05:20 Last Chance Highway 06:10 Must Love Cats 07:00 Meerkat Manor 07:25 The Really Wild Show 07:50 Growing Up...

08:40 Breed All About It 09:10 Dogs/Cats/Pets 101 10:05 Michaela’s Animal Road Trip 11:00 Animal Precinct 11:55 Wildlife SOS 12:20 Wildlife SOS International 12:50 Animal Cops South Africa 13:45 RSPCA: On The Frontline 14:10 Vet On The Loose 14:40 South Georgia: Life Under The Furious 50 15:30 Animal Battlegrounds 16:00 The Really Wild Show 16:30 Natural Born Hunters 17:00 All New Planet’s Funniest Animals 17:25 Animal Crackers 18:20 Karina: Wild On Safari 19:15 Michaela’s Animal Road Trip 20:10 Dogs/Cats/Pets 101 21:05 Into The Pride 22:00 Mutant Planet 22:55 Your Worst Animal Nightmares 23:50 China’s Last Elephants

00:15 One Foot In The Grave 00:45 The Weakest Link 01:30 Ray Mears’ Northern Wilderness 02:25 The Weakest Link 03:10 New Tricks 04:00 Last Of The Summer Wine 04:35 Me Too 04:55 Tweenies 05:15 Teletubbies 05:40 Bobinogs 05:55 Me Too 06:15 Tweenies 06:35 Teletubbies 07:00 Me Too 07:20 Tweenies 07:40 Teletubbies 08:05 Bobinogs 08:20 Me Too 08:40 Tweenies 09:00 Teletubbies 09:25 Bobinogs 09:40 Last Of The Summer Wine 10:40 The Weakest Link 11:25 Monarch Of The Glen 12:20 Doctors 12:50 One Foot In The Grave 13:20 Ray Mears’ Northern Wilderness 14:10 Last Of The Summer Wine 15:45 Monarch Of The Glen 16:35 The Weakest Link 17:20 Doctors 17:50 One Foot In The Grave 18:20 Ray Mears’ Northern Wilderness 19:10 Monarch Of The Glen 20:00 The Weakest Link 20:45 Doctors 21:15 Eastenders 21:45 Holby City 22:40 New Tricks 23:30 Live At The Apollo

00:40 Come Dine With Me 02:20 Perfect Day 03:10 New Scandinavian Cooking 05:45 New Scandinavian Cooking With Andreas Viestad 07:15 Cooked 07:55 Colin And Justin’s Home Show 08:40 Chuck’s Day Off 10:10 The Hairy Bikers’ Cookbook 10:35 Antiques Roadshow 11:30 Masterchef: The Professionals 13:00 The Hairy Bikers’ Cookbook 13:25 Antiques Roadshow 14:15 Cash In The Attic

15:00 15:45 16:40 18:10 19:00 19:50 20:35 21:20

Bargain Hunt Come Dine With Me Masterchef: The Professionals James Martin’s Brittany Antiques Roadshow Cash In The Attic Bargain Hunt Come Dine With Me

00:00 BBC World News 00:10 World Features 00:30 Horizons 01:00 BBC World News 01:30 Asia Business Report 01:45 Asia Today 02:00 BBC World News 02:10 World Features 02:30 Our World 03:00 BBC World News 03:10 World Features 03:30 India Business Report 04:00 BBC World News 04:30 Asia Business Report 04:45 Asia Today 05:00 BBC World News 05:30 Asia Business Report 05:45 Asia Today 06:00 BBC World News 06:30 Hardtalk 07:00 BBC World News 07:30 World Business Report 07:45 BBC World News 08:30 World Business Report 08:45 BBC World News 09:30 World Business Report 09:45 Sport Today 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 World Business Report 10:45 Sport Today 11:00 BBC World News 11:30 Hardtalk 12:00 BBC World News 12:30 World Business Report 12:45 Sport Today 13:00 BBC World News 13:30 World Business Report 13:45 Sport Today 14:00 GMT With George Alagiah 15:00 BBC World News 15:30 World Business Report 15:45 Sport Today 16:00 Impact With Mishal Husain 17:30 World Business Report 17:45 Sport Today 18:00 BBC World News 18:30 Hardtalk 19:00 The Hub With Nik Gowing 20:30 World Business Report 20:45 Sport Today 21:00 World News Today With Zeinab Badawi 22:30 World Business Report 22:45 Sport Today 23:00 BBC World News America 23:30 Hardtalk

00:20 00:45 01:10 01:35 02:00 02:25 02:50 03:15 03:40 04:05 04:30 04:55 05:20 05:45 06:10 06:35 07:00 07:10 07:20 07:35 08:00 08:20 09:10 09:35 10:00 10:25 10:50 11:15 11:40

Imagination Movers Higglytown Heroes Special Agent OSO Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Handy Manny Little Einsteins Jo Jo’s Circus Lazytown Jungle Junction Imagination Movers Higglytown Heroes Special Agent OSO Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Handy Manny Little Einsteins Jo Jo’s Circus Timmy Time Timmy Time Jungle Junction Jo Jo’s Circus Jo Jo’s Circus Handy Manny Handy Manny Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Imagination Movers Imagination Movers Jo Jo’s Circus

12:05 12:25 12:50 13:15 13:40 14:05 14:30 14:45 15:10 15:35 15:55 16:20 16:45 17:10 17:35 18:00 18:50 19:10 19:35 20:00 20:25 20:50 21:15 21:40 22:05 22:25 22:50 23:15

Jo Jo’s Circus Handy Manny Handy Manny Higglytown Heroes Higglytown Heroes Lazytown Handy Manny Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Jo Jo’s Circus Jo Jo’s Circus Jungle Junction Jungle Junction Special Agent OSO Handy Manny Handy Manny Handy Manny Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Handy Manny Jo Jo’s Circus Jo Jo’s Circus Lazytown Lazytown Jungle Junction Jungle Junction

00:05 Cow And Chicken 00:30 Cramp Twins 00:55 George Of The Jungle 01:20 Adventure Time 01:45 Eliot Kid 02:10 Ed, Edd N Eddy 02:35 Ben 10: Alien Force 03:00 The Powerpuff Girls 03:15 Chowder 03:40 The Secret Saturdays 04:05 My Gym Partner’s A Monkey 04:30 Ben 10: Alien Force 04:55 Best Ed 05:20 Skunk Fu! 05:45 Cramp Twins 06:10 Eliot Kid 06:35 The Marvelous Misadventures Of Flapjack 07:00 Codename: Kids Next Door 07:25 Cow And Chicken 07:50 Angelo Rules 08:05 Cartoon Network Dance Club 08:15 Foster’s Home For Imaginary Friends 08:40 Ben 10: Alien Force 09:05 The Secret Saturdays 09:30 Batman: The Brave And The Bold 09:55 The Powerpuff Girls 10:20 Robotboy 10:30 Hero 108 10:55 Ben 10 11:20 Chowder 11:45 The Marvelous Misadventures Of Flapjack 12:10 Camp Lazlo 12:35 George Of The Jungle 13:00 Foster’s Home For Imaginary Friends 13:25 Codename: Kids Next Door 13:50 Ben 10 14:15 My Gym Partner’s A Monkey 14:40 Squirrel Boy 15:05 Eliot Kid 15:35 Ed, Edd N Eddy 16:00 Cow And Chicken 16:25 Chop Socky Chooks 16:50 Skunk Fu! 17:15 Chowder 17:40 Best Ed 18:05 Hero 108 18:30 Cartoon Network Dance Club 18:40 The Marvelous Misadventures Of Flapjack 18:55 Batman: The Brave And The Bold 19:20 Ben 10: Alien Force 19:45 The Secret Saturdays 20:10 Bakugan Battle Brawlers 20:35 Fantastic Four: World’s Greatest Heroes 21:00 The Powerpuff Girls 21:25 Ed, Edd N Eddy 21:50 Robotboy 22:00 Camp Lazlo 22:25 Hero 108 22:50 Ben 10 23:15 Bakugan Battle Brawlers 23:40 Chowder

THE ALPHABET KILLER ON OSN ACTION HD

00:40 01:35 02:30 03:25 04:20 04:50 05:15 06:05 07:00 07:50 08:45 09:10 09:40 10:30 10:55 11:25 12:20 13:15 14:10 15:05 16:00 16:55 17:50 18:45 19:10 19:40 20:05 20:35 21:00 21:55 22:50 23:45

Worst-Case Scenario Mythbusters Extreme Engineering 7 Huge Moves How Do They Do It? How Stuff’s Made Worst-Case Scenario Mighty Ships Mega Builders American Chopper How Stuff’s Made How Do They Do It? Mythbusters Cake Boss Border Security Motor City Motors Ultimate Survival Mythbusters LA Ink Dirty Jobs Motor City Motors Mythbusters Man vs Fish With Matt Watson Cake Boss Border Security Time Warp How Stuff’s Made How Do They Do It? Gold Rush: Alaska Airplane Repo Swords: Life On The Line Man vs Fish With Matt Watson

00:30 Sci-Trek 01:20 The Gadget Show 02:10 What’s That About?

03:00 Colony 04:45 Weird Or What?

05:40 How Stuff’s Made 06:10 The Future Of...

07:00 Scrapheap Challenge 07:55 Head Rush 07:58 Sci-Fi Science 08:25 Weird Connections 08:55 Bad Universe 09:45 The Gadget Show 10:35 How Stuff Works 11:25 Green Wheels 11:50 Scrapheap Challenge 12:40 One Step Beyond 13:05 Engineered 13:55 Nextworld 14:45 Kings Of Construction 15:35 The Gadget Show 16:00 Head Rush 16:03 Sci-Fi Science 16:30 Weird Connections 17:00 Brainiac 17:50 Through The Wormhole With Morgan Freeman 18:40 Mighty Ships 19:30 Futurecar 20:20 Weird Connections 20:45 How Stuff’s Made 21:10 The Gadget Show 22:00 Mighty Ships 22:50 Futurecar 23:40 Colony

HD 00:05 Unwrapped 00:30 Diners, Drive-Ins And Dives 00:55 Unwrapped 01:45 Candy Convention 02:35 Diners, Drive-Ins And Dives 03:25 Guy’s Big Bite 04:15 Good Eats - Special 04:40 Unwrapped 05:05 Ten Dollar Dinners 05:30 Paula’s Best Dishes 05:50 Paula’s Party 06:35 Barefoot Contessa - Back To Basics 07:00 Chopped 07:50 Guy’s Big Bite 08:15 Boy Meets Grill 08:40 Good Deal With Dave Lieberman 09:05 Ten Dollar Dinners 09:30 Paula’s Best Dishes 09:55 Barefoot Contessa - Back To Basics 10:20 Diners, Drive-Ins And Dives 10:45 Throwdown With Bobby Flay 11:10 Unwrapped 11:35 Paula’s Party 12:25 Good Eats - Special 12:50 Paula’s Best Dishes 13:15 Grill It! With Bobby Flay 13:40 Ultimate Recipe Showdown 14:30 Diners, Drive-Ins And Dives 14:55 Unwrapped 15:20 Boy Meets Grill 15:45 Chopped 16:35 Guy’s Big Bite 17:00 Barefoot Contessa - Back To Basics 17:25 Good Deal With Dave Lieberman 17:50 Ten Dollar Dinners 18:15 Paula’s Party 19:05 Grill It! With Bobby Flay 19:30 Food Network Challenge 20:20 Paula’s Party 21:10 Good Eats - Special 22:00 Grill It! With Bobby Flay

00:20 01:10 02:00 02:45 03:35 04:25 05:15 06:00 06:20 07:05 07:30 07:55 08:20 08:35 09:00 09:25 09:50 10:10 10:35 10:50 11:15 11:35 12:00 12:25 12:45 13:10 13:30 13:55 14:20 14:40 14:55 15:20

Replacements Fairly Odd Parents A Kind Of Magic Stitch Kim Possible Emperors New School Stitch Emperors New School Phineas And Ferb Suite Life On Deck Fish Hooks Good Luck Charlie Fairly Odd Parents Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Handy Manny Special Agent Oso Jungle Junction Imagination Movers Phineas And Ferb Suite Life On Deck Wizards Of Waverly Place Good Luck Charlie Shake It Up Fairly Odd Parents Phineas And Ferb Hannah Montana Sonny With A Chance Wizards Of Waverly Place Suite Life On Deck Have A Laugh Good Luck Charlie Fish Hooks

15:40 16:00 16:25 16:45 17:10 17:35 18:00 18:25 18:45 19:10 19:35 20:00 20:25 20:50 21:12 21:15 21:35 22:00 22:25 22:50 23:15 23:35

Kim Possible Hannah Montana Sonny With A Chance Jonas LA Fish Hooks Wizards Of Waverly Place Hannah Montana Forever Suite Life On Deck Phineas And Ferb Good Luck Charlie Wizards Of Waverly Place Sonny With A Chance Jake And Blake Hannah Montana Have A Laugh Phineas And Ferb Fairly Odd Parents Replacements Hannah Montana Sonny With A Chance Wizards Of Waverly Place Jonas LA

06:00 Kid Vs Kat 06:20 Kick Buttowski 06:40 Pokemon 07:05 Phineas & Ferb 07:30 Phineas And Ferb 07:40 Phineas & Ferb 08:05 American Dragon 08:30 Kick Buttowski 08:50 Phineas And Ferb 09:00 Zeke & Luther 09:50 I’m In The Band 10:15 The Super Hero Squad Show 10:40 Suite Life On Deck 11:30 Pair Of Kings 11:55 Phineas & Ferb 12:45 Kid Vs Kat 13:50 The Suite Life Of Zack & Cody 14:40 Zeke & Luther 15:05 Suite Life On Deck 15:35 Kick Buttowski 16:00 I’m In The Band 16:25 Suite Life On Deck 16:50 Zeke & Luther 17:40 Phineas & Ferb 18:30 Escape From Scorpion Island (Cema) 18:55 Pokemon 19:20 American Dragon 19:45 Aaron Stone 20:15 Kid Vs Kat 20:40 Phineas & Ferb 21:05 I’m In The Band 21:30 Zeke & Luther 21:50 Phineas And Ferb 22:00 The Suite Life Of Zack & Cody 22:20 The Super Hero Squad Show

BLUES BROTHERS 2000 ON OSN MOVIES HD

00:00 Long Way Down 01:00 Cruise Ship Diaries 02:00 Banged Up Abroad 03:00 Departures 04:00 Don’t Tell My Mother 04:30 Amazing Adventure of A Nobody 05:00 Meet The Amish 06:00 Long Way Down 07:00 Cruise Ship Diaries 00:25 Style Star 08:00 Banged Up Abroad 01:25 E!es 09:00 Departures 02:20 E! Investigates 10:00 Pressure Cook 04:10 Sexiest 10:30 David Rocco’s Dolce Vita 05:05 Reality Hell 11:00 Food Lovers Guide To The 05:30 Wildest TV Show Moments Planet 06:00 30 Most Outrageous Celebrity 11:30 Exploring The Vine Feuds 12:00 Market Values 07:50 Behind The Scenes 13:00 Departures 08:20 E! News 14:00 Don’t Tell My Mother 09:15 Giuliana And Bill 15:00 By Any Means 10:15 20 Acts Of Love Gone Wrong 16:00 Pressure Cook 12:05 Extreme Close-Up 16:30 David Rocco’s Dolce Vita 12:35 Fashion Police 17:00 Food Lovers Guide To The 13:05 Kendra Planet 14:05 Keeping Up With The 17:30 Exploring The Vine Kardashians 18:00 Market Values 14:35 15 Unforgettable Hollywood 19:00 Departures Tragedies 20:00 Don’t Tell My Mother 16:25 Behind The Scenes 21:00 By Any Means 16:55 Kimora: Life In The Fab Lane 22:00 Pressure Cook 17:55 Holly’s World 22:30 David Rocco’s Dolce Vita 18:55 Kendra 23:00 Food Lovers Guide To The 19:55 E!es Planet 20:55 Chelsea Lately 23:30 Exploring The Vine 21:25 Kourtney And Kim Take New York 22:25 Style Star 22:55 Fashion Police 23:25 Keeping Up With The 00:00 Diary Of The Dead-18 02:00 Green Street 2: Stand Your Kardashians 23:55 Kourtney And Khloe Take Miami Ground-18 04:00 The Alphabet Killer-PG15 06:00 Face Off-PG15 08:15 Along Came A Spider-PG15 10:00 Air Force One-PG15 12:00 The Taking Of Pelham 123-18 00:15 Gumball 3000: 2008 14:00 Along Came A Spider-PG15 01:30 Fantasy Factory 16:00 Darkness Falls-PG15 02:20 Eds Up 18:00 The Taking Of Pelham 123-18 04:50 Lucas Oil Motocross 20:00 Signs-PG15 Championships 2009 22:00 Notorious-18 06:30 Ride Guide Mountainbike 2008 08:00 Quattro Events 2009 08:25 Winter Dew Tour 09/10 10:55 X Games Heroes 00:00 Cougar Town 11:45 Glutton For Punishment 00:30 The Daily Show With Jon 12:35 Fantasy Factory Stewart 13:25 Mantracker 01:00 The Colbert Report 14:15 World Combat League 01:30 South Park 15:05 X Games Heroes 02:00 Saturday Night Live 15:55 Glutton For Punishment 03:00 Just Shoot Me 16:45 Quattro Events 2009 03:30 30 Rock 17:10 Winter Dew Tour 09/10 04:00 South Park 19:40 Mantracker 04:30 The Tonight Show With Jay 20:30 Fantasy Factory Leno 21:20 Cape Epic 05:30 Will And Grace 22:10 World Combat League 06:00 Yes Dear 23:00 Man’s Work 06:30 The Drew Carey Show 07:00 Late Night With Jimmy Fallon 08:00 Tyler Perry’s House Of Payne 08:30 Dharma And Greg 00:30 The Will: Family Secrets 09:00 Just Shoot Me 09:30 Will And Grace Revealed 10:00 Yes Dear 01:20 Ripped From The Headlines 10:30 Seinfeld 02:10 Deadly Women 11:00 The Drew Carey Show 03:00 I Almost Got Away With It 03:50 The Will: Family Secrets 11:30 The Tonight Show With Jay Leno Revealed 04:45 Ghosthunters 12:30 Dharma And Greg 05:15 True Crime With Aphrodite 13:00 Tyler Perry’s House Of Payne Jones 13:30 Will And Grace 06:10 Mystery Diagnosis 14:00 Yes Dear 07:00 Forensic Detectives 14:30 30 Rock 07:50 On The Run 15:00 Two And A Half Men 08:40 Diagnosis: Unknown 15:30 The Daily Show With Jon 09:30 Real Emergency Calls Stewart 10:20 The Will: Family Secrets 16:00 The Colbert Report Revealed 16:30 The Drew Carey Show 11:10 FBI Files 17:00 Late Night With Jimmy Fallon 12:00 On The Case With Paula Zahn 18:00 Just Shoot Me 12:50 Disappeared 18:30 Tyler Perry’s House Of Payne 13:40 Diagnosis: Unknown 19:00 Seinfeld 14:30 Real Emergency Calls 20:00 The League 15:20 The Will: Family Secrets 20:30 It’s Always Sunny In Revealed Philadelphia 16:10 Forensic Detectives 21:00 The Daily Show Global Edition 17:00 On The Run 21:30 The Colbert Report Global 17:50 FBI Files Edition 18:40 Diagnosis: Unknown 22:00 Bill Maher... But Im Not Wrong 19:30 Real Emergency Calls 23:30 The League 19:55 Real Emergency Calls

01:00 XXX-PG15 03:00 The Alphabet Killer-PG15 05:00 Blindness-18 07:00 Annihilation Earth-PG15 09:00 Harry Potter And The HalfBlood Prince-PG15 11:30 Surrogates-PG15 13:00 The Three Musketeers-PG15 14:45 Harry Potter And The HalfBlood Prince-PG15 17:15 The Order-PG15 19:00 Zombieland-18 21:00 The Cottage-18 23:00 Killshot-18

00:00 02:00 04:00 06:00 08:00 10:00 12:00 14:00 16:00 18:00 20:00 22:00

Bustin’ Loose-PG15 The Last Supper-PG15 Four Christmases-PG15 Paper Heart-PG15 The Frighteners-PG15 Who’s Your Caddy?-PG15 Shorts-PG 17 Again-PG15 Bustin’ Loose-PG15 The Break-Up Artist-PG15 Malibu’s Most Wanted-PG15 The Ugly Truth-PG15

01:00 Whatever-18 03:00 Blues Brothers 2000-PG15 05:15 Le Premier Jour Du Reste De Ta Vie-PG15 07:15 Stevie-PG15 09:00 Sticks And Stones-PG 11:00 A Shine Of Rainbows-PG15 13:00 Skellig-PG15 15:00 Creation-PG15 17:00 The Secret Lives Of Second Wives-PG15 19:00 Make It Funky!-PG15 21:00 PVC-1-PG15 23:00 The Wrestler-18

00:15 Homeward Bound II: Lost In San Francisco-FAM 02:15 Pete’s Dragon-PG 04:30 Pollyworld-FAM 06:15 Planet 51-PG 08:00 Christmas In New York-PG 10:00 Homeward Bound II: Lost In San Francisco-FAM 12:00 Time Kid-FAM 14:00 Planet 51-PG 16:00 Monsters Inc-FAM 18:00 The Archies In Jugman-FAM 20:00 Little Match Girl-PG 22:00 Time Kid-FAM 23:45 Monsters Inc-FAM

00:15 A Fork In The Road-PG15 02:00 First Strike-PG15 04:00 Flicka 2-PG15 06:00 Elle: A Modern Day Cinderella Tale-PG15 08:00 Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel-PG15 10:00 My Son, My Son, What Have You Done?-PG15 12:00 First Strike-PG15 14:00 Morning Light-PG 16:00 Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel-PG15 18:00 Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time-PG15 20:00 All Good Things-18 22:00 Cop Out-PG15

01:00 Mobil 1 The Grid 01:30 Premier League Darts 05:00 NRL Premiership 07:00 Weber Cup Bowling 08:00 European PGA Tour 12:30 ICC Cricket World 13:00 Live Test Cricket 20:00 European PGA Highlights 21:00 IRB Sevens

Tour

01:00 03:30 05:30 06:30 07:00 08:00 11:00 11:30 12:00 14:00 14:30 15:30 16:00 18:00 19:00 20:00 20:30

AFL Premiership Super 15 Trans World Sport Futbol Mundial Golfing World IRB Sevens World Series Futbol Mundial NRL Full Time Live NRL Premiership World Hockey Weber Cup Bowling Futbol Mundial NRL Premiership AFL Highlights Golfing World World Hockey Live Super League

00:00 01:00 03:00 06:00 07:00 08:00 08:30 09:30 10:00 12:00 13:00 15:00 16:00 17:00 20:00 21:00

UFC The Ultimate Fighter WWE SmackDown UFC 130 UFC Unleashed WWE Bottom Line Superstock Powerboat Series City Centre Races Sports Adventure V8 Supercars Championship WWE Vintage Collection WWE SmackDown City Centre Races UFC 130 Prelims UFC 130 UFC The Ultimate Fighter UFC Wired

00:00 Top 10 01:00 Fashion Avenue 01:55 Big Boutique 02:25 How Do I Look?

03:20 Whose Wedding Is It Anyway?

04:15 Married Away 05:10 Homes With Style 05:35 Area 06:05 Clean House 07:00 Big Boutique 08:00 Homes With Style 08:30 Homes With Style 09:00 Fashion Avenue 09:25 Fashion Avenue 09:55 How Do I Look?

10:50 Whose Wedding Is It Anyway?

11:50 Clean House: Search For The Messiest...

12:50 Clean House 13:45 Top 10 14:15 Mel B: It’s A Scary World 14:45 Jerseylicious 15:40 Ruby 16:35 Giuliana And Bill 18:25 Ruby 19:25 Big Boutique 19:50 Fashion Avenue 20:20 Clean House 21:15 Top 10 21:40 Top 10 22:10 Clean House Comes Clean 22:35 Clean House Comes Clean 23:05 Bridalplasty

00:30 01:20 02:10 03:00 03:55 04:50 05:40 06:30 07:20 08:10 09:00 09:55 10:50 11:40 12:30 13:20 14:10 15:00 15:55 16:50 17:40 18:30 19:20 20:10 21:55

The Universe Dead Men’s Secrets Irt: Deadliest Roads Ancient Wonders Clash Of The Gods Egypt: Land Of The Gods Dogfights The Universe Dead Men’s Secrets Irt: Deadliest Roads Ancient Wonders Clash Of The Gods Egypt: Land Of The Gods Dogfights The Universe Dead Men’s Secrets Irt: Deadliest Roads Ancient Wonders Clash Of The Gods Egypt: Land Of The Gods Dogfights The Universe Dead Men’s Secrets Irt: Deadliest Roads Pawn Stars

Classifieds MONDAY, MAY 30, 2011

Personal Trainer

ACCOMMODATION To-let, one semi furnished spacious room with attached mini room consisting of toilet, for decent couple or executive bachelors in a flat in Bneid AlGhar. Please call: 60046720 for detail and viewing.

(C 3398)

Are ski helmets necessary?

Some ski areas require young skiers to wear helmets, but it’s unclear whether everyone should use them.

Sharing accommodation available for decent Indian bachelors or small family with Mangalorean family two bedroom window A/C, Bldg opposite Rashid Hospital, Shara Amman, Salmiya.

Contact: 55995437. (C 3399) 30-5-2011

Known benefits A helmet can prevent some kinds of head injuries in low- or moderate-speed accidents: t Lacerations t Eye injuries t Concussion, a sign of potentially serious brain injury

Limits of protection

Sharing accommodation available in Abbassiya near United Indian School in a central A/C new building with double bedroom double bathroom, hall, kitchen flat with Keralite Christian family, preference for couples or working ladies.

Contact: 66273165.

(C 3397) 29-5-2011 A fully furnished two bedroom two bathroom central A/C flat available for two months (July-Aug) for families on visit, rent KD 205.

Contact: 67797042 or 66674242. (C 3389)

t Can’t prevent death or serious injury in high-speed accidents, especially collisions with trees t Not designed to protect people in ski racing and trick snowboarding t Designed to protect the head in one accident; snowboarders often wipe out many times, and repeated impacts break down a helmet’s structure

One big master bedroom with attached bathroom available from 1st June immediately for one or two executive bachelor in new building C-AC. Sat and kitchen facility W&E free, near Shara Amman street, opp Appolo hospital Salmiya. Call 99761807.

(C 3393) 28-5-2011 SITUATION VACANT

Are bicycle helmets enough?

Live -in housemaid required for an Indian family in Salwa, sponsorship can be arranged, call after 5pm 97205370/ 99786848.

(C 3396)

No; laboratories that test helmets’ impact resistance have lower standards for bike helmets than for ski helmets © 2011 MCT Source: U.S. Consumer Product Safety Administration, Snell Memorial Foundation, Ski magazine, ASTM Intl.

A small Kuwaiti family is looking to hire a cook.

Requirements: Must be Christian and fluent in

English.

Call 99199020. (C 3395) 29-5-2011 Need driver for house.

Contact: 97600588. Fax: 25755751. (C 3388) 26-5-2011

FOR SALE Expat family leaving: Household items for sale.

For items pics and price: http://www.tiny.cc/lpa36 or call: 66042205. (C 3400) 30-5-2011 Nissan Pathfinder 2003 model, black color, km 153,000, 4WD, CD, alloy wheels, very good condition, interested please call 60435876, price KD 2,550.

(C 3391) Nissan Pathfiner 2004

model, 3.5 cc, white color, 6 cylinder, 4WD, excellent condition, km 125,000, price KD 2650, registration up to June 2012. Contact: 55602671.

(C 3390) Mazda Zoom 3, golden color, 2007 model, full automatic + CD, original paint, price KD 1,600. Mob: 55323839.

(C 3394) 28-5-2011

MATRIMONIAL Marriage proposals are invited for a Jacobite Christian girl (Engineer, 26 yrs, 150cm, fair, B/B in Kwt) employed in MNC in Kuwait, from parents of professionally qualified boys (Jacobite, Orthodox or Marthoma) employed in India or abroad (preferably

in Middle East). Kindly respond with details to mprop9@gmail.com (C 3382)

abroad. Please Email: alexandarjon@yahoo.com (C 3385)

Proposals invited for Marthoma boy, 35 yrs, ht 167cm, wt 80, hotel management, settled in Thiruvanandapuram, working in Kuwait MOH Chef (private firm), family status, seeking alliance from girls working in Kuwait or

CHANGE OF NAME I Muthukumar, holder of Indian Passport No. F1371132 here by change my name to MUTHU MOHAMED. (C 3386) 26-5-2011

DIAL 161 FOR AIRPORT INFORMATION In case you are not travelling, your proper cancellation of bookings will help other passengers to use seats Arrival Flights on Monday 30/5/2011 Route

Airlines

Flt

JZR THY ETH UAE DHX ETD FDB GFA QTR JZR FCX JZR KAC JZR BAW KAC KAC FDB KAC KAC KAC KAC UAE QTR ABY ETD GFA MEA JZR IRC MSR RBG KAC KAC MSR UAL RJA FDB OMA SVA KAC

205 772 620 853 370 305 67 211 138 503 201 555 412 531 157 206 302 53 352 284 362 344 855 132 125 301 213 404 165 6521 623 3557 618 672 610 982 640 57 645 500 788

DAMASCUS ISTANBUL ADDIS ABABA DUBAI BAHRAIN ABU DHABI DUBAI BAHRAIN DOHA LUXOR DUBAI ALEXANDRIA MANILA / BANGKOK ASSIUT LONDON ISLAMABAD MUMBAI DUBAI COCHIN DHAKA COLOMBO CHENNAI DUBAI DOHA SHARJAH ABU DHABI BAHRAIN BEIRUT DUBAI LAMERD SOHAG ALEXANDRIA DOHA DUBAI CAIRO WASHINGTON DC DULLES AMMAN DUBAI MUSCAT JEDDAH JEDDAH

Time 0:25 1:15 1:45 2:25 2:55 2:55 3:10 3:15 3:20 5:15 5:25 6:10 6:15 6:20 6:30 7:15 7:50 7:55 8:05 8:10 8:20 8:20 8:25 9:00 9:10 9:30 9:35 10:55 11:10 11:20 12:10 12:55 12:55 13:15 13:20 13:30 13:35 13:50 14:00 14:30 15:00

JZR QTR KAC KAC KNE KAC MLR ETD UAE GFA SVA JZR JZR ABY JZR ALK KAC KAC KAC KAC KAC KAC KAC AIC JAI FDB OMA JZR VOS MEA KAC DHX KLM UAE GFA QTR UAL JZR TAR JZR MSR DLH JZR PIA

257 134 546 550 745 118 403 303 857 215 510 777 239 127 213 227 104 542 786 744 614 774 674 575 572 61 647 179 81 402 552 372 445 859 217 136 981 135 327 185 612 636 539 239

BEIRUT DOHA ALEXANDRIA SOHAG JEDDAH NEW YORK COLOMBO / DUBAI ABU DHABI DUBAI BAHRAIN RIYADH JEDDAH AMMAN SHARJAH DEIREZZOR COLOMBO / DUBAI LONDON CAIRO JEDDAH DAMMAM BAHRAIN RIYADH DUBAI CHENNAI / GOA MUMBAI DUBAI MUSCAT DUBAI BAGHDAD BEIRUT DAMASCUS BAHRAIN AMSTERDAM DUBAI BAHRAIN DOHA BAHRAIN BAHRAIN TUNIS DUBAI CAIRO FRANKFURT CAIRO SIALKOT

15:10 15:15 15:30 15:35 15:35 16:15 16:40 16:50 16:55 17:15 17:20 17:25 17:35 17:40 17:50 18:00 18:35 18:50 19:00 19:15 19:20 19:25 19:25 19:30 19:35 20:00 20:10 20:10 20:15 20:15 20:45 21:00 21:05 21:15 21:25 21:35 22:00 22:10 22:15 22:35 22:50 23:00 23:30 23:55

Departur AXB DLH KLM BBC AIC PIA AFG THY ETH UAE FDB DHX ETD QTR JZR GFA BAW KAC FDB KAC JZR KAC KAC KAC UAE ABY QTR ETD GFA KAC MEA KAC JZR JZR JZR IRC KAC MSR KAC RBG MSR RJA FDB

Depurture Flights on Monday 30/5/2011 Flt Route 390 KOZHIKODE 637 FRANKFURT 447 AMSTERDAM 46 DHAKA 982 AHMEDABAD / CHENNAI 206 PESHAWER / LAHORE 406 DUBAI / KABUL 773 ISTANBUL 620 BAHRAIN / ADDIS ABABA 854 DUBAI 68 DUBAI 371 BAHRAIN 306 ABU DHABI 139 DOHA 164 DUBAI 212 BAHRAIN 156 LONDON 545 ALEXANDRIA 54 DUBAI 671 DUBAI 256 BEIRUT 787 JEDDAH 549 SOHAG 617 DOHA 856 DUBAI 126 SHARJAH 133 DOHA 302 ABU DHABI 214 BAHRAIN 165 ROME / PARIS 405 BEIRUT 541 CAIRO 776 JEDDAH 212 DEIREZZOR 238 AMMAN 6522 LAMERD 103 LONDON 624 SOHAG 785 JEDDAH 3558 SOHAG / ALEXANDRIA 611 CAIRO 641 AMMAN 58 DUBAI

Time 0:25 0:40 0:55 1:00 1:05 1:10 2:00 2:15 2:30 3:45 3:50 3:55 4:05 5:00 6:55 7:10 8:25 8:35 8:40 9:00 9:10 9:15 9:20 9:35 9:40 9:50 10:00 10:15 10:20 11:45 11:55 12:00 12:00 12:05 12:10 12:20 12:30 13:10 13:30 13:35 14:20 14:30 14:35

Directorate General of Civil Aviation Home Page (www.kuwait-airport.com.kw)

UAL OMA KAC KAC SVA JZR KAC QTR KAC KNE KAC JZR VOS ETD MLR UAE GFA ABY JZR JZR SVA ALK JZR KAC JAI FDB JZR KAC KAC OMA MEA DHX KLM UAE GFA FCX QTR KAC KAC TAR JZR JZR KAC UAL MSR

982 646 673 551 501 178 773 135 613 746 743 538 82 304 404 858 216 128 184 266 511 228 134 283 571 62 528 331 351 648 403 373 445 860 218 102 137 301 205 327 554 504 411 981 613

BAHRAIN MUSCAT DUBAI DAMASCUS JEDDAH DUBAI RIYADH DOHA BAHRAIN JEDDAH DAMMAM CAIRO BAGHDAD ABU DHABI DUBAI / COLOMBO DUBAI BAHRAIN SHARJAH DUBAI BEIRUT RIYADH DUBAI / COLOMBO BAHRAIN DHAKA MUMBAI DUBAI ASSIUT TRIVANDRUM COCHIN MUSCAT BEIRUT BAHRAIN BAHRAIN / AMSTERDAM DUBAI BAHRAIN BAHRAIN DOHA MUMBAI ISLAMABAD DUBAI / TUNIS ALEXANDRIA LUXOR BANGKOK / MANILA WASHINGTON DC DULLES CAIRO

14:45 15:00 15:10 15:25 15:45 16:00 16:05 16:15 16:20 16:20 16:25 16:40 17:00 17:35 17:40 18:05 18:15 18:20 18:25 18:30 18:35 19:10 19:10 20:00 20:35 20:40 20:50 21:00 21:05 21:10 21:15 22:00 22:05 22:25 22:30 22:30 22:35 22:45 22:55 23:05 23:10 23:35 23:40 23:40 23:50

34

MONDAY, MAY 30, 2011

s ta rs CROSSWORD 333

CALVIN & HOBBES

STAR TRACK Aries (March 21-April 19) This is one of the best days this week. Although you are predominantly interested in personal harmony and emotional security, there is more ambition in you than there has been of late. You may find yourself plotting a path to the most beneficial and profitable business plan today. Decision making at this time may depend on your recognizing progress. Because you work efficiently, in cooperation with others, you achieve even bigger and more encompassing goals than would be possible on your own. At home this evening, you may be more passive, taking some time to rebuild your energies. You enjoy supporting your family and usually have a great deal of fun when involved with a group type of interaction. Future party plans are in the making.

Taurus (April 20-May 20)

POOCH CAFE ACROSS 1. One of several parallel sloping beams that support a roof.

5. (Old Testament) The second patriarch.

10. Electronic equipment that provides visual images of varying electrical quantities.

13. Evergreen trees and shrubs having oily one-seeded fruits.

14. A small faint zodiacal constellation in the southern hemisphere.

15. An accidental happening.

16. Someone who works (or provides workers) during a strike.

17. Cubes of meat marinated and cooked on a skewer usually with vegetables.

18. (informal) Of the highest quality.

19. Food mixtures either arranged on a plate or tossed and served with a moist dressing.

21. A brittle gray crystalline element that is a semiconducting metalloid (resembling silicon) used in transistors.

22. A member of the Nahuatl people who established an empire in Mexico that was overthrown by Cortes in 1519.

24. A characteristic state or mode of living.

26. Measuring instrument in which the echo of a pulse of microwave radiation is used to detect and locate distant objects.

33. Title for a civil or military leader (especially in Turkey).

34. The blood group whose red cells carry both the A and B antigens.

36. A soft silvery metallic element of the alkali earth group.

37. (of a young animal) Abandoned by its mother and raised by hand.

38. A tricycle (usually propelled by pedalling).

40. The cry made by sheep.

41. Regional and archaic.

44. Having the leading position or higher score in a contest.

48. Of or relating to the stomach and intestines.

49. A colorless and odorless inert gas.

50. The 3 goddesses of fate or destiny.

55. Something hard to endure.

58. A plant hormone promoting elongation of stems and roots.

59. An artificial language that is a revision and simplification of Esperanto.

60. Naked freshwater or marine or parasitic protozoa that form temporary pseudopods for feeding and locomotion.

62. A mature blood cell that contains hemoglobin to carry oxygen to the bodily tissues.

63. A broad flat muscle on either side of the back.

64. Foul with waste matter.

65. The basic unit of money in Albania.

DOWN 1. (of persons) Highest in rank or authority or office.

2. Type genus of the Alcidae comprising solely the razorbill.

3. (archaic or Scottish) Faithful and true.

4. An esoteric or occult matter that is traditionally secret.

5. A kind of person.

6. The action of an armed force that surrounds a fortified place and isolates it while continuing to attack.

7. A French abbot.

8. A constellation in the southern hemisphere near Telescopium and Norma.

9. An esoteric or occult matter that is traditionally secret.

10. An informal conversation.

11. Any competition.

12. An organization of countries formed in 1961 to agree on a common policy for the sale of petroleum.

20. English theoretical physicist who applied relativity theory to quantum mechanics and predicted the existence of antimatter and the positron (1902-1984).

23. A bluish-white lustrous metallic element.

25. An anti-TNF compound (trade name Arava) that is given orally.

27. How long something has existed.

28. An informal term for a father.

29. A unit of magnetomotive force equal to 0.7958 ampereturns.

30. A Chadic language spoken south of Lake Chad.

31. The sixth month of the civil year.

32. No longer having or seeming to have or expecting to have life.

35. Having undesirable or negative qualities.

39. Small tropical American tree bearing edible plumlike fruit.

42. Cheap showy jewelry or ornament or clothing.

43. A period marked by distinctive character or reckoned from a fixed point or event.

45. A member of a seafaring group of North American Indians who lived on the Pacific coast of British Columbia and southwestern Alaska.

46. A plant disease caused by the ergot fungus.

47. A unit of elastance equal to the reciprocal of a farad.

51. A small cake leavened with yeast.

52. Cause a floating log to rotate by treading.

53. A very young child (birth to 1 year) who has not yet begun to walk or talk.

54. Noisy talk.

56. Having a toe or toes of a specified kind.

57. A former agency (from 1946 to 1974) that was responsible for research into atomic energy and its peacetime uses in the United States.

61. Informal terms for a mother.

Yesterday’s Solution

You are in a planning mood and are very clearheaded and able to view any difficulties or perhaps you intend to find the easiest path for a group of young hikers. Go ahead and make the decisions that take you forward.

You can see the road ahead and will make the right choices regardless of the subject matter. Whatever you are doing, you can expect a little boost, some sort of extra support or recognition from those around you. You are good at concentrating on the issues at hand and determining your priorities—sometimes through difficult choices.

You are a good mentor. Focus your energies on a few specific areas. You could push forward successfully with your plans. Romance is in the picture later today. A harmonious relationship is long lasting.

Gemini (May 21-June 20) You may feel like you are going to fall on your face trying to prove a point this morning. Back away for a while and make your ideas known again when you have the facts and statistics that others can see. Your presentation is correct but needs better support. Eventually, you will see a satisfaction with the results of your efforts. While your confidence and energies are high, a creative project could begin. New ways to advertise or to sell to the public is a fun project you attempt with successful outcomes. There is something special about contributing to the welfare of another and that is what you endeavor to do this afternoon—help another. This might include charity but more than likely will involve a neighbor. You may want to share a vegetable garden.

Cancer (June 21-July 22)

NON SEQUITUR

Your mind is stimulated and there is great wit at hand today. Your inclination and ability to solve complex problems and puzzles amaze others. If you are able to channel this mental energy productively, you will accomplish much. You display an urge to be recognized by your peers and may find yourself heading up a decoration or entertainment committee. Your disposition is open and welcomes all you meet. You enjoy every moment of finding the right foods or right entertainment for others. If the project you take on is only as simple as a backyard party, everyone will enjoy the results of your effort. A little networking would be good if you need help. Interactions with the opposite sex are both stimulating and delightful this evening.

Leo (July 23-August 22)

ZITS

There could be some hesitancy with regard to decision making today. Challenges at this time will require your patience. Take your time when making important choices or decisions and stay as flexible as possible.

This is not the best time to make any concrete decisions about any personal matters.

A mate or relative may have a need for your energies today. You feel good about being helpful when called upon. Get outside for a while in the afternoon—perhaps walking to a music store or bookstore. Read something funny; merge your sense of humor into the afternoon and express your sense of humor. Focus is easier to come by when the pressures are relaxed. Create fun this evening. You might have fun with a friend tonight in the telling of stories.

Virgo (August 23-September 22) You are usually full of enthusiasm and creative energy. You never seem intimidated by failure and will rise above any problems that may come your way. You tend to have a quick wit and can get things done quickly.

Your creative energy is expressed through your business and private affairs, giving you an edge over others. Be aware of your need to dominate and tread carefully within a love relationship. There is a chance to understand those around you and to have a special time with someone you love. Your sensibility may cause you to shy away from someone today for fear of getting hurt. However, your sensitive nature will actually help you succeed. General good feelings and a sense of harmony make this a happy time.

Libra (September 23-October 22)

MOTHER GOOSE AND GRIMM

While others could get on your nerves today, patience and a willingness to accomplish your chores will get you through the morning unscathed. This afternoon would afford you time to read, go to a movie, pull weeds or perhaps bicycle ride through the park with a friend. Most people want to have a feeling of importance—how do you get your feeling of importance? This achievement of self-importance may be the topic of discussion. Create an opportunity for everyone in your little home to contribute some thought along this line and you will help yourself and others to move in positive ways. Learn and teach others to evaluate what is important and what is unnecessary. Enjoy joint participation in a game or fun activity tonight.

Scorpio (October 23-November 21) You have an increased desire now to succeed in everything you set out to achieve. There is a feeling that anything is possible if you set your sights high enough. There is optimism, faith and an urge to take all sorts of chances. You are appreciated for your ability to find the crux of a problem and get things accomplished. Others value your ability to make practical decisions concerning group issues. Today is a good time to plan on how you will plot your path to that higher paying job or how to gain the recognition you have earned. You are apt to spend a great deal of time with co-workers and people apart from work. This may involve a volunteer organization that is looking for financial aid. Everything reveals you at your best this evening.

Sagittarius (November 22-December 21) This is a very lucky day for making plans or decisions and finding your way through just about any scenario. If you need it, good advice from an older person is available. There is optimism, faith and a tendency to put your good ideas out for others to digest. This is a time of exploring new places to live or creating that garden you were wanting to plant. You have fun organizing things and this afternoon you may decide to re-organize a large area of your living quarters. You could be seen by others as just the person to be put in charge of some project requiring a conservative mind—a wedding or some other celebration. You attract favorable communication through your own self-confidence. Relax and enjoy some quiet time tonight.

Capricorn (December 22-January 19) High energy this morning could find you burning yourself out towards the afternoon. You could become carried away under pressure and make mistakes you may regret. Pace yourself today if at all possible. Perhaps this is not the best time to joke around or have a big lunch with your friends. A light lunch and a brisk walk will have you feeling good and ready to return to completing the items on your list. This is a good time to accomplish just about anything you set your mind to accomplish. You will find that many people appreciate your viewpoint.

This evening seems to have agreeable energies surrounding your choice of activities.

Later, you may be able to enjoy a bit of exercise with friends. You may enjoy some reading or a relaxed evening meal.

Yesterday’s Solution Aquarius (January 20- February 18) This is one of your challenging days. However, others will give you encouragement and are willing to lend a helping hand if things get stressful. This could mean that today is the day for the big garage sale or the swim meet or any other group interaction. Some sort of temporary obstacle could appear making everyone feel a bit frustrated—rain, perhaps. Some project could be put on hold making everyone jump through hoops to find an alternate path. Satisfaction is as close as the phone. You are achievement oriented and may have difficulty understanding any interruptions but you will be pleased with the outcome of this day. You find ways to get your goals met, regardless of whatever occurs in the process.

Satisfying sighs end this day.

Pisces (February 19-March 20)

Word Sleuth Solution

Reading the news or hearing some news report causes in-depth discussions to arise around the table this morning. Probing conversations find you at your mental best. You have a feeling that with the right amount of persuasion, coupled with the necessary knowledge and financial backing, you could succeed at anything. Today you toss a few ideas around with your friends or your mate. The results run more in your favor than you thought they would—congratulations. Now it is your turn to work out the details. This could be anything from a new project to rearranging the furniture. Your analytical abilities are good and you appear in control of your life. Now could be the time to make arrangements for a special date—perhaps flowers.

A

y

e niv rsar n

MONDAY, MAY 30, 2011

Years

i n f o r m at i o n FIRE BRIGADE

STATE ST TATE T OF KUW K KUWAIT WA AIT

Tel.: T el.: 161 e

DIRECTORA DIRECTORATE AT TE GENE GENERAL ERAL OF CIVIL A AVIATION V VIA AT TION METEOROLOGICAL DEP D DEPARTMENT PA ARTMENT

112

DA AY: Y Sunday DAY:

WWW .MET.GOV V..KW W WWW.MET.GOV.KW

29/05/2011 29/05/201 1

Ministry of Interior

Ext.: 2627 262 27 - 2630

Fax: 24348714

Issue T ime Time

07:00

Expected Weather Weather for the Next 24 4 Hours Hot wi with ith light north westerly to lig light ght variable wind, with speed d of 06 - 20 km/h

BY Y DA DAY: AY:

website: www.moi.gov.kw Relatively moderate Relativ vely hot with light variable wind w changing to light to mo oderate south westerly wind, with speed of 06 - 26 km/h km m/h

NIGHT:: BY Y NIGHT

For labor-related inquiries and complaints: Call MSAL hotline 128

No Current Warnings Warnin a gs

WARNING W A ARNING STATION ST TATION T

Hospitals Sabah Hospital

24812000

MAX. EXP EXP. P.

MIN.. REC.

KUW WA AIT CITY KUWAIT

43 °C

32 °C

KUW WA AIT AIRPORT AIRPOR RT KUWAIT

44 °C

28 °C

41 °C C

29 °C C

Amiri Hospital

22450005

NUW WA AISEEB NUWAISEEB

Maternity Hospital

24843100

WAFRA A WAFRA

43 °C

28 °C

Mubarak Al-Kabir Hospital

25312700

SALMI

45 °C

26 °C

Chest Hospital

24849400

ABDAL LY ABDALY

45 °C

27 °C

Farwaniya Hospital

24892010

ALIY YA AH JAL ALIYAH

43 °C

25 °C

Adan Hospital

23940620

FAILAKA A FAILAKA

42 °C

27 °C

Ibn Sina Hospital

24840300

POR RT AHMADI PORT

41 °C

33 °C

Al-Razi Hospital

24846000

M UMM AL-MARADEM

36 °C

30 °C

Physiotherapy Hospital

24874330/9

WARBA A A - BUBYAN BUBY YA AN WARBA

43 °C

27 °C

Clinics

SFC. CHAR CHART T

29/05/201 1 0000 UTC 29/05/2011

4732263

Roudha

22517733

DAY DA AY

DATE DA AT TE

Adhaliya

22517144

Monday

30/05

hot

Khaldiya

24848075

Tuesday Tuesday

31/05

hot

Keifan

24849807

Weednesday Wednesday

01/06

du ust hot + raising dust

Shamiya

24848913

Thursday

02/06

du ust hot + blowing dust

Shuwaikh

24814507

Abdullah Salim

22549134

Al-Nuzha

Temperatures Temperratures WEA WEATHER AT THER

PRAYER PR RA AY YER TIMES

Wind Wind Speed

MIN.

Wind Wind Direction Direction

45 °C

30 °C

VRB-SE

06 - 26 km/h

46 °C

32 °C

NW-N NW-N

15 - 40 km/h

47 °C

33 °C

NW

20 - 45 km/h

47 °C

34 °C

NW

20 - 40 km/h

MAX.

RECORDED D YESTERDAY YESTERDA AY AT AT KUW KUWAIT WA AIT T AIRPORT AIRPORT

Fajr

03:17

MAX. MA AX. Temp.

Temp.

43 °C

22526804

Sunrise S i

04 50 04:50

MIN. Temp.

MI IN T IN. emp.

26 °C

Industrial Shuwaikh

24814764

Zuhr

11:45 11:45

MAX. RH M

26 %

Al-Khadissiya

22515088

Asr

15:20

MIN. RH M

07 %

Dasmah

22532265

Sunset

18:41

MAX. Wind MA AX. W ind

N 57 km/h

Isha

20:11 20:11

TOTAL RAINFALL T OT TA AL L RAI INF FA ALL L IN 24 HR.

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

22418714

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

POLICE STATION

4 DA DAYS AY YS FORECAST

Rabiya

Al-Madena

un nless otherwise stated.

All times are local time unless

Al-Madena Police Station Al-Murqab Police Station Al-Daiya Police Station Al-Fayha’a Police Station Al-Qadissiya Police Station Al-Nugra Police Station Al-Salmiya Police Station Al-Dasma Police Station

22434064 22435865 22544200 22547133 22515277 22616662 25714406 22530801

THE PUBLIC AUTHORITY FOR CIVIL INFORMATION Automated enquiry about the Civil ID card is 1889988

00 mm

29/05/1 1 02:57 UTC 29/05/11

V1.00

T1.06

PHARMACIES

AIRLINES

ON 24 HRS DUTY GOVERNORATE

PHARMACY

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

Hawally

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

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 Indian Airlines Oman Air Turkish Airlines Aeroflot

22433377 177 22924455 22414400 22423888 22425747 22434940 22420002/9 22418064/5/6 22433388 22425635 22430224 22425566 22438184 22424444 22421578 22421516 22426306 22423073 22422493 22421044 22414427 22416474 22452977/8 22417901/ 2433141 22456700 22958787 22453820/1 22404838/9

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 Psychologists /Psychotherapists

Paediatricians

Plastic Surgeons Dr. Mohammad Al-Khalaf

22547272

Dr. Abd Al-Aziz Al-Rashed

Dr. Abdal-Redha Lari

22617700

Dr. Zahra Qabazard

Dr. Abdel Quttainah

25625030/60

Family Doctor Dr Divya Damodar

23729596/23729581

Psychiatrists Dr. Esam Al-Ansari

22635047

Dr Eisa M. Al-Balhan

INTERNATIONAL CALLS

22613623/0

Gynaecologists & Obstetricians DrAdrian arbe

23729596/23729581

Dr. Verginia s.Marin

2572-6666 ext 8321

Endocrinologist 25340300

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)

Dr Anil Thomas

3729596/3729581 22641071/2

22655539

Dr. Majeda Khalefa Aliytami

25343406

Dr. Anesah Al-Rasheed

22562226

Dr. Ahmad Al-Khooly

25739272

Dr. Abidallah Al-Amer

22561444

Dr. Salem soso

22618787

Dr. Faysal Al-Fozan

22619557

Dr. Abdallateef Al-Katrash

22525888

Dr. Amer Zawaz Al-Amer

22610044

Dr. Abidallah Al-Duweisan

25653755

Dr. Mohammad Yousef Basher

25327148

Dr. Bader Al-Ansari

25620111

Neurologists

Dr. Adnan Ebil

22639939

Dr. Sohal Najem Al-Shemeri

25633324

Dr. Mousa Khadada

22666300

Dr. Jasem Mola Hassan

25345875

Gastrologists

25728004

Dr. Nadem Al-Ghabra

25355515

Dr. Sami Aman

22636464

Dr. Mobarak Aldoub

24726446

Dr. Mohammad Al-Shamaly

25322030

Dr Nasser Behbehani

25654300/3

Dr. Foad Abidallah Al-Ali

22633135

Soor Center Tel: 2290-1677 Fax: 2290 1688

info@soorcenter.com www.soorcenter.com

Dr. Kamal Al-Shomr 25329924 Physiotherapists & VD Dr. Deyaa Shehab

25722291 22666288

Rheumatologists:

Dr. Fozeya Ali Al-Qatan

Dr. Latefa Al-Duweisan

Dr. Ahmad Al-Ansari 25658888

Dr. Musaed Faraj Khamees

Dentists

Internists, Chest & Heart

25339330

25655535

Dr. Shamah Al-Matar

General Surgeons

Dr. Abd Al-Naser Al-Othman

Dr. Naif Al-Mutawa, Ph.D. 2290-1677 Susannah-Joy Schuilenberg, M.A. 2290-1677

Dr. Adel Al-Awadi

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

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

Central African 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

00236 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

36

MONDAY, MAY 30, 2011

lifestyle

Pitt to marry Jolie soon?

G O S S I P

Take That

kick off Progress Live tour

ake That kicked off their Progress Live 2011 tour in spectacular fashion. The ‘Never Forget’ group opened their European tour at the Stadium of Light in Sunderland, Northern England, with a huge stage set including an 18 meter tall bionic man prop, acrobats and stage performers climbing a towering wall of water. The band initially appearing as a quartet with Gary Barlow, Mark Owen, Jason Orange and Howard

T

Donald performing ‘Rule The World’, ‘Greatest Day’, ‘Hold Up A Light’, ‘Patience’ and ‘Shine’. Returning member of the group Robbie Williams then appeared to perform a selection of his solo hits including ‘Let Me Entertain You’, ‘Rock DJ’, and ‘Angels’. The full five piece group were then reunited onstage to play their first full set in 15 years. Robbie told the crowd: “20 years in the making, 15 years in the waiting, five years deliberating. Ladies

and gentlemen, the That That show. I’m very proud to be a part of it all again.” The band then performed a selection of classic tracks from their 90s period including ‘Million Love Songs’, ‘Babe’, ‘Everything Changes’ and ‘Back For Good’. The stage production reportedly cost £15 million to produce and featured 31 performers and nine costume changes for the band.

Lady

rad Pitt has hinted he may marry Angelina Jolie soon. The actor - who raises Maddox, nine, Pax, seven, Zahara, six, and biological kids Shiloh, five, and twins Knox and Vivienne, two - with Angelina admitted the couple’s brood are putting pressure on them to tie the knot. He told USA Weekend magazine: “The kids ask about marriage. It’s meaning more and more to them. So it’s something we’ve got to look at.” Brad, 47, started dating Angelina, 35, in 2005 shortly after he split from first wife Jennifer Aniston.

Angelina has been twice married, to actors Johnny Lee Miller and Billy Bob Thornton. Despite their large family, Brad insists he and his ‘Tomb Raider’ star partner get plenty of opportunity for intimate time, and don’t like to hide it from their children. He added: “We tell the kids, ‘Mom and Dad are going off to kiss.’ They go, ‘Eww, gross!’ But we demand it.” The ‘Tree of Life’ actor also tries to give his children as much of a normal upbringing as they possibly can, considering their parents are huge film stars. He said: “Angie and I do everything we can to carve out some semblance of normalcy for them, to recreate the kinds of moments that were special for us.

“It’s not unusual for the kids to be covered in paint. We have mud fights. It’s chaos from morning until the lights go out “We’re hunted. Our kids have to live behind a gate. Outside, there are people with cameras. But I’ll take the trade-off.”

B

Gaga still feels like a loser ady Gaga still “wakes up and feels like a loser”. The ‘Born This Way’ hitmaker who was named the most influential celebrity in the world earlier this month - explained being bullied throughout her teenage years will stay with her for her “whole life” and she will never feel like she has made it. She said: “Being bullied stays with you your whole life, and no matter how many people are screaming your name or how many number one hits you have, you can still wake up and feel like a loser.”

Gaga real name Stefani Germanotta admitted her songwriting also forces her to pour “salt, arsenic and poison” into the wounds of her-

L

Willis

plays the lamest hitman ruce Willis plays the “lamest hitman in the world” in ‘Looper’. The ‘Die Hard’ star plays a contract killer, or Looper, in the new time-travel thriller - in which his character executes people before they technically exist - but director Rian Johnson warns that doesn’t mean it’s a glamorous role. He said: “In truth, a Looper is more of a garbage man. They have the lamest hitman job in the world. Calling a Looper a hitman makes it romantic.” Explaining the film’s time-travel theme a little further, the director - whose previous credits include ‘Brick’ and ‘The Brothers Bloom’ explained the concept will be “very illegal” in the movie, but only in the future. He added: “In the film time travel won’t have been invented yet, but 30 years down the line from that it definitely will be - and when it is it’s going to be very illegal. “It will also be difficult to dispose of a body, so criminals will have to go back in time and assemble a team of assassins, called Loopers.

“They kidnap the guy, zap him back 30 years and the Looper shoots them dead. Its’ the perfect crime! The Looper kills someone who doesn’t technical exist yet, so that person vanishes from the future.” The film will also see Bruce and Joseph Gordon Levitt playing the same character in different times. ‘Looper’ is set for release in 2012.

childhood, but ultimately it can be a healing experience. She added to Time Out magazine: “There were a lot of bullies. You have to open the wound and pour salt and arsenic and poison into that wound and you must get out a needle and poke and prod then sew it back up again. “And when I’m handed a beat that sounds amazing, that beat is the scissors, and then I cut the wound I’ve just sewn up, and I go back in. I go back in and ask myself the same questions again and again and again, ‘Why am I here?’”

Cole

will receive her full ‘The X Factor’ fee

B

Rosie osie Huntington-Whiteley used to be called “kipper lips’ at school. The model-turnedactress - voted sexiest woman in top 100 lists by both FHM and Maxim magazines this year - used to be bullied by girls teasing her for her large lips and small chest. She told the News Of The World newspaper: “I was really teased about the way I looked at school. I got teased because of my lips. I got called lips - because I had big lips but no breasts. And then I was called kipper lips.” Rosie was also physically threatened by the group of girls, who she likens to the populargirl clique in Lindsay Lohan movie ‘Mean Girls’. She added: “There was this big group of girls who were the local answer to Mean Girls and they would storm the bathrooms shouting

R

Carter

was ‘crippled’ by fight scene

elena Bonham Carter was “crippled” by her duelling scene in ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2’. The actress, who plays evil witch Bellatrix Lesrange in the film series, fought against Julie Walters’ character Molly Weasley so hard in their pivotal final moments, they were both aching afterward. She said: “You should warm up before sword fighting, that’s what Julie and I found out when we were duelling with each other. We were crippled after that scene! “Duelling going backward on a table is

H

tricky, without falling off. Which, of course, I did!”

The duel was a source of amusement for the film’s cast and crew too, especially because they were watching the two characters go from being friends to mortal enemies every time the cameras rolled. Mark Williams, who plays Arthur Weasley, told Empire magazine: “They could’ve sold tickets for filming that scene. They were chatting one minute and cutting each other to bits the next. It was brilliant!”

teased at school ‘I’m going to get you Lips. See you on the school bus.” Rosie rose above the bullying to get her break as a model when she was 17 which has now led to her replacing Megan Fox as the leading lady in new ‘Transformers’ movie, ‘Dark of the Moon’. While she is excited about the role, Rosie is also prepared for any critics. She said: “I’m not here to win a popularity contest.

I’m here to work and have a career.

Let the haters hate. I’m ready for the criticism.”

heryl Cole will receive her full £1.2 million fee for appearing on the US version of ‘The X Factor’. Despite being sacked earlier last week after just four days on the show’s judging panel, Cheryl will take home full pay for the series, even though she is unlikely to appear in the final version of the show. Cheryl was said to be “shocked and stunned” at the news she was being let go by the Fox network which makes the show, who reportedly cited a “lack of chemistry” with fellow judge Paula Abdul as their reason. ‘The X Factor’ boss Simon Cowell who brought the 27-year-old singer to the US for the show - has broken his silence on the matter, saying, “I feel guilty.” He also insisted his “hands were tied” by network executives at Fox. A source close to the TV mogul told The Sun newspaper: “He loves Cheryl and did everything in his power to get her on US TV. “But channel chiefs just weren’t happy. It was a necessary evil and he feels terribly guilty about it.”

Cheryl is believed to have been replaced by Nicole Scherzinger on the judging panel of the talent show, which also includes Simon and LA. Reid. Cheryl is now locked in negotiations about a possible return to the UK version of the show, although sources say she is asking for a much higher fee. —Bang Showbiz

C

A

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e niv rsar n

MONDAY, MAY 30, 2011

lifestyle

Years

M U S I C

&

M O V I E S

Portrait of a

young singer

on the cusp of stardom

(Left) Tenor Nelson Hebo sings in a concert with prominent and rising opera stars at the Church of the Heavenly Rest in New York.

(Right) Angolan tenor Nelson Hebo, 26, holds a passport photo of his late mother, Maria, and a photo of himself in performance, in his dorm room at the Hartt School of Music.

T

his is the world Nelson Hebo was born into: a world of poverty and violence and disease, where soldiers dragged young men from streets at rifle-point, where gunfire shattered the night, where he was lucky to eat one meal a day.Older brothers disappeared during the civil war. Other siblings died of tuberculosis, rampant in the streets of Luanda, Angola’s capital city. But the skinny kid with the big smile found a unique escape. Over and over the boy would play a tape of the Three Tenors _ a gift from someone who had heard him sing in church. He would lose himself in the beauty of arias he could not begin to understand.

“O Sole Mio.” “Nessun dorma.” “De’ miei bollenti spiriti.” Nelson would scribble out the words phonetically. And then he would sing along, mimicking Luciano Pavarotti and Placido Domingo in the tiny adobe house he shared with his parents and siblings.

His family thought the boy, the second youngest of 15, was mad. But everyone could hear the beauty in his voice. At Mass, worshippers would weep when Nelson sang “Ave Maria.” The boy grew into a handsome young man with a magnetic personality. Now 26, his voice still makes listeners weep. But his world has utterly changed. Nelson’s journey has been an odyssey as dramatic and surreal as any opera, sweeping him from the war-ravaged streets of Luanda to the universities and opera houses of Europe and America. And yet, in a sense, it is a journey that is just beginning.

On Sept 21, 2000, his 16th birthday, Nelson

Hebo met the man who would change his life forever. At the time, Nelson was his family’s main breadwinner, singing in churches and small clubs, using his paltry earnings to pay for food and medicine. That is where Alfonso Barragues stumbled upon him, as the 32-yearold Spaniard, a human rights officer with the United Nations, was relaxing in a music hall with friends. At first Barragues, a lifelong opera lover, didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the scrawny kid in an oversized white suit butchering the songs he loved. And yet he was moved to invite Nelson to his house in the UN compound a few days later.

In the living room Barragues played a tape of Pavoratti singing “Una furtiva lagrima” from the opera “L’elisir d’amore.” “Oh that is very beautiful,” Nelson said. He hummed some notes, and then, to Barragues’ astonishment, he began to sing-clear and pure and pitchperfect. “That is when I knew I had to help this boy,” Barragues says. “I didn’t know how, or where it would take me. But I knew I had to try.” Barragues drove Nelson all over the city, introducing him to opera-loving friends and diplomats. The reaction was always the same: spellbound shock at such a powerful voice exploding from such a small frame. Barragues’ friends urged caution. Nelson is a simple boy, they said. What are you thinking, filling his head with dreams?

Barragues worried, too. But increasingly he grew more certain. There was something special about Nelson, more than his voice. It was a warm, engaging energy mixed with a kind of

spiritual joy and wisdom that seemed far greater than his years. He would do whatever it took to help him.

The day Nelson left Angola was one of the saddest of his life. His elderly parents clung to him, as if they knew they were hugging him for the last time. It was June 2001. A few days earlier Barragues had called excitedly from Madrid. He had managed to secure two audi-

tions for Nelson, one with the Royal Conservatory of Music and the other with Carlos III University of Madrid. Singers from all over the world would be vying for the spots.

Barragues barely recognized the emaciated figure who stepped off the plane. Sick with early stage tuberculosis, Nelson’s face was gaunt, his head bald. Barragues’ heart sank.

The auditions were in a week. How could

Tenor Nelson Hebo sings in a concert with established and rising opera stars at the Church of the Heavenly Rest in New York.

Spoken-word musician Gil Scott-Heron dies in NYC M

Gil Scott-Heron

Colombian singer Shakira performs during the 10th edition of the Mawazine international music festival ‘World Rythms’ in Rabat on May 28, 2011. — AFP

usician Gil Scott-Heron, who helped lay the groundwork for rap by fusing minimalistic percussion, political expression and spoken-word poetry on songs such as “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” but saw his brilliance undermined by a years-long drug addiction, has died at age 62. A friend, Doris C Nolan, who answered the telephone listed for his Manhattan recording company, said he died Friday afternoon at St Luke’s Hospital after becoming sick upon returning from a trip to Europe.

“We’re all sort of shattered,” she said.

Scott-Heron was known for work that reflected the fury of black America in the post-civil rights era and also spoke to the social and political disparities in the country. His songs often had incendiary titles— “Home is Where the Hatred Is” or “Whitey on the Moon” —and through spoken word and song he tapped the frustration of the masses.

Yet much of his life also was defined by his battle with crack cocaine, which led to time in jail. In a 2008 interview with New York magazine, he said he had been living with HIV for years, but he still continued to perform and put out music; his last album, which came out this year, was a collaboration with artist Jamie xx, “We’re Still Here,” a reworking of ScottHeron’s acclaimed “I’m New Here,” which was released in 2010.

He also was still smoking crack, as detailed in a New Yorker article last year. “Ten to fifteen minutes of this, I don’t have pain,” he said. “I could have had an operation a few years ago, but there was an 8 percent chance of paralysis. I tried the painkillers, but after a couple of weeks I felt like a piece of furniture. It makes you feel like you don’t want to do anything. This I can quit anytime I’m ready.” Scott-Heron’s influence on rap was such that he sometimes was referred to as the Godfather of Rap, a title he rejected.

“If there was any individual initiative that I was responsible for it might have been that there was music in certain poems of mine, with complete progression and repeating ‘hooks,’ which made them more like songs than just recitations with percussion,” he wrote in the introduction to his 1990 collection of poems, “Now and Then.” He referred to his signature mix of percussion, politics and performed poetry as bluesology or Third World music. But then he said it was simply “black music or black American music.” “Because black Americans are now a tremendously diverse essence of all the places we’ve come from and the music and rhythms we brought with us,” he wrote.

Nevertheless, his influence on generations of rappers has been demonstrated through sampling of his recordings by artists, including Kanye West, who closes out the last track of his latest album with a long excerpt of Scott-Heron’s “Who Will Survive in America.” Politically outspoken rapper Michael Franti said in a statement Saturday that ScottHeron’s talent was his ability to “make us think about the world in a different way, laugh hysterically about the ironies of American culture, anger at the hypocrisy of our political system, all to a beat that kept us on the dance floor, with a voice and flow that kept you waiting with anticipation for the next phrase.”

Scott-Heron recorded the song that would make him famous, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” which critiqued mass media, for the album “125th and Lenox” in Harlem in the 1970s. He followed up that recording with more than a dozen albums, initially collaborating with musician Brian Jackson. Throughout his musical career, he took on political issues of his time, including apartheid in South Africa and nuclear arms. He had been shaped by the politics of the 1960s and black literature, especially the Harlem Renaissance. Scott-Heron was born in Chicago on April 1, 1949. He was raised in Jackson, Tennessee, and in New York before attending college at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania.

Before turning to music, he was a novelist, at age 19, with the publication of “The Vulture,” a murder mystery. He also was the author of “The Nigger Factory,” a social satire.—AP

Nelson possibly sing in this condition? Nelson knew how. He thought of his parents, of the sisters who were sick and the brother who had coughed up blood before dying in front of him. He thought of all the other young men in Angola who could only dream of such an opportunity. He sang with such passion the judges cheered. And so began what Nelson calls the “crazy time” of his life, an immersion in a country and culture and way of life so different from the one he had left that there were times he wondered if it was all a dream.

There was early inspiration. Placido Domingo happened to be performing in Madrid at the time. Friends of Barragues arranged an introduction. Trembling, the young tenor sang “Una furtiva lagrima” as his hero accompanied him on piano.

“You have a beautiful voice,” Domingo told him. “You need to study hard to develop it.” In Angola, Nelson had belted out songs with abandon. In Spain, he would learn to pace his voice, not push it. He would learn the language of opera: bel canto, tessitura, passagio.

Nelson has an easygoing nature and an infectious sense of joy. He made friends on the soccer field, in coffee shops and dance clubs.

He charmed the public relations people at the Teatro Royal into slipping him opera tickets whenever they had a free seat. He sang for the king. When Barragues returned to Madrid a year later for the annual university concert, he could hardly believe the poised young man who strode on stage in a tuxedo as the audience chanted “Nelson! Nelson!” —AP

No let-up for perpetual music maker Quincy Jones

A

fter a frenetic career as producer to Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, Michael Jackson and many other music legends, 78-year-old Quincy Jones refuses to slow down and has just signed up for a new project in the Arab world.

“I’m 78 and I’ve still got a lot of energy and I want to do what my dreams are, which is to see people come together across the barriers,” Jones said in an interview in the Moroccan capital Rabat where he appeared in the Mawazine music festival. He scoffs at a question as to whether age and past medical woes, such as a serious cerebral aneurysm he suffered in 1974, might encourage him to ease up.

“Not at all. I’ll slow down when I die,” he said.

As a performer, Jones was already touring North Africa and other parts of the world in the 1950s with some of the biggest names of jazz including Lionel Hampton and Dizzy Gillespie. He arranged Quincy Jones Sinatra’s “Fly Me to the Moon” and produced Michael Jackson’s album “Thriller” and the 1985 “We are the World” recording for African famine relief. Watching the star-studded 1990 documentary “Listen Up: The Lives of Quincy Jones” today, one is struck by how many of the music legends linked to Jones have since died.

“Sinatra, Ray Charles, Billy Eckstine, Ella Fitzgerald- all gone,” Jones said before adding the name of film director Sidney Lumet and others.

“How do you think I feel? I’ve lost 188 friends, man, in less than 15 years.” “It hurts,” the veteran producer, musician and arranger continued. “It just doesn’t stop.” Doctors have long told Jones to reduce his workload. “I know, I don’t care. I like what I am doing,” he said.

Riffing on his past Like a master jazz improviser able to draw on thousands of musical phrases, Jones, with the slightest association, is well prepared to roll out a remarkable array of genial anecdotes about a lifetime of adventures with music legends. A mention of Italy prompts him to show off his much cherished ring from Frank Sinatra. India sparks him to tell of meeting sitarist Ravi Shankar in 1956, after which he recalls that Shankar is father to singer Norah Jones. A reference to Serbia inspires him to show off a few words in Serbian, including one off-color one that causes him much amusement.

In one of his latest projects, Jones, who has won 27 Grammy Awards, has launched a joint venture to promote music in North Africa and the Middle East in which musicians from different cultures will work together. They are also recording a new song to raise funds for regional scholarships. A musician from the besieged Libyan town of Misrata made a visit to Rabat this week for the project. On Sunday, Jones was also set to appear at a memorial concert in Marrakesh after an attack there killed 17 people a month ago.

“More and more when you get older you do exactly what you believe in with the people that you love and trust and admire,” he told Reuters. “That’s where I am now, which allows me to do what I feel and give back what I feel, whatever I want to do.” Jones says he feels an affinity for Arabs as they have often suffered from prejudice like American blacks. “People have preconceived concepts of you just on your appearance. That’s sad,” he said. “My two least favorite words are ‘you people.” I hate that word.” —Reuters

MONDAY, MAY 30, 2011

lifestyle

US jewelry designer remakes herself in Mexican exile

When things were down for Cheryl Finnegan she moved from Illinois to the Mexican artist colony town of San Miguel de Allende and pursued a hidden desire to design jewelry.

A photo shows a layered look with multiple necklaces.

T

he bad stuff sometimes comes in waves. The company axes you. The divorce happens. Life loses its charm. What to do? If you are Cheryl Finnegan, you take your savings and move to a quaint artists’ community in Mexico. You wash away anxiety with yoga, then follow a hidden passion to design jewelry. You take inspiration from Mexico’s patron saint.

The jewelry becomes hot. Your company grows wildly.

Names such as Britney Spears, Madonna and Maria Shriver discover your creations.

You buy multiple homes. An eccentric artist enters your life. You find love again. That’s what happened to Finnegan, a redheaded Irish-American from near Peoria, Ill., whose rise in the design world has left her head spinning. Her recent life embodies the axiom that if you receive a blow-or several-get up and try again. Sometimes things get better. Remain open to inspiration.

Finnegan, 49, is the founder and creative spark behind Virgins Saints & Angels (VSA), a boutique jewelry house that operates out of a colonial building on a cobblestone street in the central Mexico expat community of San Miguel de Allende. Her intricate artisan jewelry is characterized by folk-art protective images of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the Sacred Heart, St Benedict and goddesses with deep spiritual essences.

Her work is instantly recognizable for its ornate design.

Asked to describe it, Finnegan paused: “What I like to say is, ‘It’s Celtic meets Gothic meets Mexico.’ “ The list of celebrities and sports stars who wear Virgins Saints & Angels belt buckles, rings, necklaces and pendants is endless. Age and race are no boundaries. “Miley Cyrus wears my things, and Maria Shriver wears my things,” she said, referring to the 18-year-old singer and the 55-year-old author and former first lady of California. So do Madonna, Kelly Osbourne, Eva Longoria, Beyonce, Paris Hilton, singer Tim McGraw and soccer star David Beckham.

“Do you remember that guy Dennis Rodman?” she asked, referring to the former NBA star. “He came into a trunk show with about five of his girlfriends, and they mobbed me.” Finnegan now sells in 240 outlets around the United States, usually in boutiques and couture jewelry stores. They are stores such as Swag, a Dallas venue that specializes in edgy designer jewelry.

“She uses a lot of spiritual images in her pieces, and people love that,” said owner Lisa Alfieri. “People collect her jewelry. They don’t just buy one piece.” Alfieri said Virgins Saints & Angels had become “a phenomenon,” and that Finnegan’s jewelry has “gone off the charts” in sales.

Among the 8,000 to 10,000 expats, mostly Americans, who make up about a tenth of San Miguel de Allende’s population, Finnegan might seem someone unlikely to attain huge success. After all, she admits that her Spanish ability is poor. But Finnegan’s uncanny sense of branding and the innate force behind spiritual images helped to propel her to the forefront of jewelry design.

It all began with an “Eat Pray Love” moment back in 1999. She was living in San Francisco, married to an automobile industry executive on the fast track.

They’d met at Loyola University in Chicago and she’d followed him to the West Coast. Finnegan had a great job herself, traveling widely to spot trends for Levi Strauss & Co. They led a life of affluence, black-tie events and fancy dinners. “We had box seats at the opera,” she recalled over tea. “We were very into the social scene.” But her marriage had lost its spark, and

Real These ascots from Brittons in Columbia, South Carolina, range from $60 to over $100.

out all these special colors,” she said. She had five designs and chose the brand name Zarzamora, the alliterative Spanish word for blackberry. Her bags closed with a key chain made of resin, usually in funky colors such as chartreuse and Mexican rose.

“When I started getting more requests for my key chains, I thought, hmmm, this is kind of interesting,” she said. “The keychain became a belt buckle-the Virgin surrounded by Swarovski crystals.”

The crystal-studded belt buckles became hot.

Britney Spears was spotted with one on her honeymoon in Montecito, Calif., in 2004, and paparazzi splashed photos everywhere. Finn, as she calls herself, had begun her wild ride.

She changed the name of her company. “People said, ‘Oh, it should be Virgins Saints & Demons.’ I said, ‘No, it’s all about good,’ “ Finnegan said. Her business boomed, and today it has 12 full-time employees and six contractors, all women, some single mothers, spread between Mexico and the United States. “I am a women-led and -run company,” she said.

Her jewelry contains surprising combinations of metal, paper, glass, resin and Swarovski crystals. Most pieces have a sacred heart logo and a tag with a whimsical saying. And most of the products bear a spiritual motif.

Debbie Baldini, a former colleague at Levi Strauss who now is the president of Cambria Cove, an online retailer of specialty gifts, said the spiritual images and symbols of the jewelry really clicked with customers.

Somehow Finnegan’s own spirit seemed to come through her creations. “Her jewelry is a reflection of her and her life and the beauty that she has found

A photo shows one of Cheryl Finnegan’s jewelry a ‘four virgins’ ring. —MCT photos Cheryl Finnegan profile Name: Cheryl Finnegan, founder, Virgins Saints & Angels.

Age: 49.

Childhood home: Chillicothe, Ill. Education: Loyola University, Chicago. Studied marketing.

Family: One daughter, 6-year-old Tallulah. Recently married Mexican artist Jaime Shelley Tovar.

Prior work history: Image consultant, Levi Strauss, San Francisco.

Clients: According to VSA, celebrities spotted wearing Finnegan’s designs include Miley Cyrus, Maria Shriver, Kelly Osbourne, Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, the Kardashian sisters, Tim McGraw, Faith Hill, Lourdes & Madonna, Steven Tyler, David Beckham, The Rock, Danica McKellar, Nicole Miller, Eva Longoria, Usher, John Galliano, Mickey Rourke, Reba McEntire and Beyonce.

Honors: Recently was inducted into the Council of Fashion Designers of America.

Quote: “I am a women-led and -run company.”

A photo shows one of Cheryl Finnegan’s jewelry a gold-plated cuff. when a new president arrived at Levi’s and closed her department, she hit a crossroads.

“There was something missing,” she said. “One day, I sat there and thought, ‘What is my passion? What is going on in my life?’ “ She added: “I was on the edge of the cliff. I knew I had to jump and I was scared.” At age 39, she came to San Miguel de Allende, met some hippie friends, hung out in hot springs, met the father of her 6-year-old daughter, Tallulah, and traveled far and wide. Her creative spirit, spurred by

Mexico, bubbled up. “I was an artist at heart but I didn’t know that,” she said, adding that she found inspiration from such features as the wrought-iron balconies of Mexico City, images of the iconic Virgin of Guadalupe and the finery of rural people entering churches. Saints enchanted her. So did the wild colors of Mexican street markets, including the plastic bags of shoppers.

She tried her hand at specialty plastic bags for the US market. “Here I was-the gringa loca-and I picked

down in Mexico,” Baldini said.

Three years ago, British fashion designer John Galliano paid her an extraordinary tribute. “He wore my belt buckle down the runway in his Paris show. My sales rep called to tell me and we were both crying. It was huge for me to have a fashion designer wear one of my pieces on the biggest day of his life.” Finnegan has clearly summoned the power of goddesses within. “We’re riding the waves with the big guys and they’re just now looking over to see us,” she said.

men wear ascots for a feeling of freedom O

ne would assume that an inaugural gathering would be an odd choice for a man to make a fashion statement. But political consultant Jeffrey Sewell picked an accessory-a handmade necktie-that made him stand out like a Democratic-voting usher at a Republican convention. He wore an ascot to Gov Mark Sanford’s second inauguration bash in January. “I had best friends begging me, ‘Do not do it,’” he said. Once a requirement to claim-or suggest-nobility status, the ascot has become an accouterment for the daring, or

some might say, the confused and off-kilter.

“My wife, Vee, was like ‘I don’t know if you can wear that,” Sewell said of the particular formal, silk ascot that was mentioned in political blogs and this newspaper. “I thought that was very keen that someone would pick up on that.” Ascots, the narrow neckbands with pointed wings, once were reserved for proper morning dress of England’s noble society.

The tie’s name refers to Royal Ascot, an English version of the Kentucky Derby, where elegance and socializing is more important than the horse racing.

(Sound familiar?) Any man knows that a necktie can be constricting, like wearing a barber’s cape through several meetings, a long lunch and two commutes.

But an ascot gives open-collar freedom and a notso-subtle look of individuality. In this flip-flop generation, dress codes for men-pre-ripped jeans with perfectly distressed creases that cost $300 but look like a rummage sale find-are contrived and conformist. And that’s not saying anything about Air Jordans and boxy, tent-like white T-shirts. The Southern dress code-khaki pants, white collared shirt, blue blazer and, of course, boat shoes-is even more uniforming.

Though a uniform does seem a better choice than, say, going to the post office in Nike sneakers, Adidas ankle socks, carpenter jean shorts and a Vans T-shirt.

Almost out of necessity, Bill Stubbs, a retired commercial real estate agent, chose the ascot look

about five years ago. “I lost 90 pounds and I had nothing in my closet that fit at all,” he said. “Literally, I had to rebuild my wardrobe, so I wanted to do something different.” Stubbs, 59, who doesn’t wear ascots until the temperature dips below 80 degrees, pairs his with blazers and crew neck sweaters. He is fond of the traditional ascot: a scarf knotted around the neck, which invokes an image of aviators coolly navigating a high-altitude dogfight.

Ascots, as Stubbs pointed out, are for men who aren’t afraid of widening their fashion palate. A lot of men in this jeans and T-shirt fashion era-and women, for that matter-might see the ascot and men’s neckwear as effeminate. “Which is utterly ridiculous,” Stubbs said. * John Wayne, an unquestioned man’s man, wore bandannas around his neck while corralling the West. * Speed Racer, the racing champ coming to big screens in 2008, wears a neckerchief. * The quietly volatile Michael Corleone, everyone’s favorite don B.T.S. (Before Tony Soprano) wore an ascot. * And Kanye West, in his “Can’t Tell Me Nothing” video, sports an oversized scarf.

Though not endorsed in Esquire’s latest Big Black Book volume, men who know fashion-like Andre 3000, a former Esquire best-dressed man honoree-

are comfortable in an ascot. Ascots are beholden to an age when people rarely went out except in their Sunday best. “I’m still young enough to remember when people got dressed up for ball games and to get on airplanes,” said Sewell, 40, who wore a goldish ascot to the Oct. 4 University of South Carolina-Kentucky game. “Everybody looked good. You should always look your best.” In addition, the ascot is easier to knot than a conventional tie and more of a statement than-sorry, Fonzworth Bentley-a bow tie.

It’s for a man of indefatigable confidence; a man who doesn’t need his wife, girlfriend or mother to dress him; a man who knows what he wants in his outfits. (Let’s go ahead and add men who refer to their clothes as ensembles or outfits, too.)

“I’ll do anything not to wear a regular tie,” said Sewell, who has been wearing ascots for almost 10 years. “To match a tie with a blazer, that’s work.” —MCT

MONDAY, MAY 30, 2011

lifestyle

Yosemite National Park swift water rescue rangers practice in the raging Merced River in Yosemite National park.

Record snow makes spectacular Yosemite waterfalls

W

Lynne Bousie of Scotland and James Ayres of England pose in front of Yosemite Falls while Simon Finch of Wales makes their photo in Yosemite National park. —AP

ater, water everywhere-and it’s a spectacular sight. Record Sierra snowfall over the winter now means record snow melt as temperatures rise, swelling Yosemite National Park’s iconic waterfalls, streams and rivers to their most turbulent level in years. Yosemite Falls, the nation’s tallest, is spewing enough water to fill a gasoline tanker truck every two seconds. The force of water at Bridalveil Falls across the valley kicks up a mist that clouds the meadow below. It means that until the peak melt around mid-June, visitors will experience more treacherous beauty in Yosemite than even the travel brochures promise. “Breathtaking, that’s what it is,” said Lynne Bousie of Scotland, who stopped to pose for a photograph at the spot where the paved trail to Yosemite Falls makes a turn and the first full view of its entire 2,425-foot (739-meter) drop comes into view.

Water cascading from the many signature falls that cut across Yosemite’s granite walls (as well as countless unnamed ones that spout only in peak years like this) is swelling the Merced River. For the next few months the roar of violently churning water will drown out all other

background noise in the park. “Some falls that you can see now don’t have names and aren’t even on the map,” said park spokeswoman Kari Cobb. Already the frigid, 40-degree Fahrenheit (5-degree Celsius) river that drains Yosemite Valley’s snowmelt is flowing at more than 1,600 cubic feet (45 cubic meters) per second, carrying people and objects away at more than 10 mph (16 kph).

“That’s infinitely more powerful than anyone can imagine,” said Moose Mutlow, coordinator of Yosemite’s swift water rescue program, which began practicing for the season on Thursday.

“You can’t keep up with someone if the water is that fast and you’re running and dodging trees.”

Even minor creeks and streams are flowing hard, which has forced closure of a few campsites.

Because of the mild spring, the danger of flooding has been reduced. Thanks to a snowpack twice as deep as usual park officials say the ephemeral falls like Yosemite that dry up in early summer will still by flowing into August. For the first time in a long time record melt and the peak visitor season are falling on the same weekend.

Yosemite Valley was carved eons ago by the

ebb and flow of glaciers over many ice ages. The sheer 3,000-foot (900-meter) granite cliffs drain multiple watersheds, each sending a cascade of water into Yosemite Valley. Some flow for only a few weeks-or in dry years not at all. It’s a dangerous beauty both in its force and in the allure that draws some people near. Rangers warn visitors to keep a safe distance and to be mindful the water makes granite boulders slippery.

Two people died earlier this month in accidents that might have been attributed to the water. One visitor slipped and fell below Yosemite Falls, where raging water sends a wet shroud over trails and rocks. Another fell into the Merced River, where he swiftly was carried about 150 yards (137 meters) and lodged under a rock. It is presumed he drowned. Only three of Yosemite’s dozens of waterfalls can be counted on to flow all year-Bridalveil, Vernal and Nevada, and the last two require a steep hike.

For a few more weeks, however, even those without the stamina for long walks can experience something rare and special. “We are very lucky the timing was right,” said James Ayres of England as he gazed at Yosemite Falls. “This is incredible.”—AP

At 84, he’s still the

‘guardian angel’ of Route 66 J

File: Angel Delgadillo sits in his barber shop in Seligman.

Angel Delgadillo pedals past his souvenir store and barber shop.

The sun sets in Seligman, Ariz. —AP photos

ust after lunchtime in a town that is a monument to yesteryear, an old man is cruising down Route 66 using an eight-speed bicycle.

He is tidily dressed in khaki slacks, a navy polo and a baseball cap that protects a mostly threadbare crown, save for a few strands of silvery white. At 84 years old, he has an ever-so-slight hunch, a crinkled forehead and hearing aids in both ears. Angel Delgadillo does not look like a rock star. And yet ...

Two tour buses are parked along the nation’s most historic byway, and dozens of adoring fans await: Leather-clad Harley riders. A Parisian wearing a Route 66 tee. Norwegians wanting to shake his hand. Japanese tourists who literally “ooh” and “ahh” as their Angel nears. All along the sidewalk, Nikons are ready-and this unassuming gentleman is mobbed the moment he parks his bike.

The fans clutch Route 66 license plates as Delgadillo flashes a toothy grin and says, over and over, “Cheese, cheese, cheese, cheese, cheeeeeese.” In the midst of this surreal scene comes a question: Are these camera-toting, guidebook-grasping 66 buffs here for the legendary road-or for the now-legendary man who helped to save it?

“This guy here ... every time I get a chance I come in and shake his hand,” says one of these many admirers, Jerry Stinson, who plans to someday retire along Route 66 and open a business — “because of you,” he tells Delgadillo as they pose for a picture. They call him many things: The Father of the Mother Road. The Guardian Angel of Route 66. Sometimes, simply, The Ambassador.

His story has been related in travel guides, even on a website for a Route 66 association in the Czech Republic. He and his town were the inspiration for the animated film “Cars,” but he has inspired many others, too, with a vigor that age hasn’t diminished-a passion for the road he grew up on, and old with.

Telling this tale has become his life’s work, and he does it without prompting. How he was born right on Route 66 back when Seligman was a railroad town ferrying explorers West. How he followed in his father’s footsteps and became a barber, opening his own shop and pool hall along

File photo shows tourists have their photo taken with Angel Delgadillo outside his souvenir store and barber shop.

Route 66. How he was a witness to history: the land in Arizona and counts the days until retireDust Bowl migration, the transport of equipment ment brings him permanently to Route 66. “He IS during World War II. And how he saw it all the inspiration,” Stinson says.

Today, Seligman thrives because of the many change on Sept. 22, 1978 — the day Interstate 40 replaced Route 66 as the main thoroughfare Route 66-themed businesses. Delgadillo has long-since retired as a barber, and two of his four through northern Arizona.

“Can you imagine how it was?” says Delgadillo, children run the gift shop now. They try to keep whose eyes widen as if recounting this for the their father at home when possible, only because very first time. “Golly Moses. At first it was so sad, they know that once he sets foot in the store visiand then I got so angry. Everybody just forgot tors will occupy him for hours. “ They just don’t happen upon Seligman about us.” His own place in history was cemented nine years later when he became a driving force because they got lost and got off the freeway. behind the formation of the Historic Route 66 They’re here for a reason,” says daughter Mirna.

Association of Arizona, which lobbied the state to “And that reason is to see my dad.” But Delgadillo dedicate the road as “Historic Route 66.” Highway can’t stay away. As he says: “Can you imagine getsigns were erected, the association launched an ting out of bed into a recliner? You die young.” annual “Fun Run” of classic cars, tourists and Besides, his life has always been intertwined with media began converging _ and Seligman was this road. Route 66 was commissioned on Nov 11, reborn. More historic associations followed in 1926, and Delgadillo was born in a house alongother Route 66 states. It was the beginning of side the road just five months later.

And so he wakes early, has breakfast with his the Route 66 revival, and also Delgadillo’s own.

He and his wife, Vilma, opened a souvenir store wife and rides his bicycle over to help open the next to the barber shop peddling Route 66 keep- store. He goes home at noon for lunch, and then sakes to the many visitors that began finding often returns to the store before taking an afterSeligman-looking not just for kitsch but for histo- noon siesta. Sometimes, of course, the nap must ry. In Delgadillo, they found an emphatic racon- wait, and a weekday afternoon in May is one of those times. The larger tour buses have departed, teur.

“People want to taste the road-the sights, the but smaller vans and several campers remain. smells, the sounds. And he’s there to hold your Outside of the gift shop, a Japanese tour director hand,” says Lorrie Fleming of Vancouver, British whom Delgadillo knows well waits with several Columbia, who first met Delgadillo in 1994 and vacationers. For tour groups, Seligman and has returned to Seligman every year since for the Delgadillo’s Route 66 Gift Shop are popular stops annual Fun Run. “You can’t get that on Facebook, on routes to the Grand Canyon, Zion National what Angel gives you. He reaches his arms out to Park and Bryce Canyon. They have become wonders unto themselves. you.

“Konnichiwa,” Delgadillo greets the group in “That concrete has to have a vein to still pump blood, and he’s the life of the road.” In 1996, Japanese before settling onto a bench outside of Fleming founded the Canadian Route 66 his store. Two-by-two, the tourists approach, sitAssociation-and she credits Delgadillo. So does ting on either side of him with big smiles.

Emily Priddy, an ex-newspaper editor who says “Cheese, cheese, cheese, cheese, cheeeeeese,” he she became involved in Route 66 preservation- says. As two finish, two more sit down. After a few even writing a guidebook for children-because of minutes, he begins to take leave, but yet another him. And Jerry Stinson, who’s already bought fan approaches. —AP

Portrait of a young singer on the cusp of stardom

MONDAY, MAY 30, 2011

37 mothers adopt life-like dolls

Plastic heads and limbs of ‘reborn babies’, dolls which are made to look just like real babies, are displayed at the reborn babies fair in Brentwood, east of London.

(Left) ‘Reborn babies’, dolls are displayed at the reborn babies fair. —AP photos

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US museums walk tightrope after China arrest

Turkishsuccess family story,

one of few in Germany

US

museums are facing delicate choices as they strive to meet a growing interest in China, cooperating with counterparts across the Pacific despite alarm over the detention of top artist Ai Weiwei. Directors of museums across the United States said in interviews that they found a strong public appetite for work from China, with Americans eager to see everything from ancient treasures to modern art from the rising Asian power.

But the US art world has also led calls to free Ai. One of China’s most provocative artists, Ai had been begrudgingly tolerated but was seized in April and accused of tax evasion as Beijing mounts a sweeping crackdown on dissent.

The Milwaukee Art Museum on June 11 opens a major exhibition of Chinese art that features more than 90 objects-many long hidden from public viewmade for the 18th-century Qianlong emperor and kept inside the Forbidden City. The exhibition is a collaboration with China’s Palace Museum, which worked with the Peabody Essex Museum in Massachusetts on the three-stop tour that also stopped at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Dan Keegan, director of the Milwaukee Art Museum, said his institution’s “Summer of China” was aimed at the general public and would include discussions touching on many aspects of Chinese art and culture-including Ai’s case.

Keegan said he considered the museum to be a “forum for public understanding rather than a platform for academic protest.” “The museum’s role is to build bridges, not walls. In this country, conversation is better than self-censorship,” he said. A very different dilemma is facing the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, which recently decided to acquire work by Ai-two chairs crafted from solid marble-that it now has on temporary license. Director Hugh Davies said the museum was recently told by the shipping intermediary that the chairs-which are on display and popular among visitors needed to be returned to China.

“It might just be a bureaucratic snafu, but I would guess it probably isn’t,” Davies said. “It’s our intention to keep these chairs and we will fight vigorously with that goal in mind. But we also don’t want to do anything that would deepen Ai Weiwei’s problems or lengthen his incarceration, so we have to tread very carefully,” he said. Davies said the chairs showed “exquisite craftsmanship” and hailed Ai as a historic figure in art. “This is the equivalent of Andy Warhol or Jasper Johns being arrested without charges and then being accused of tax evasion or something like that,” Davies said. Ai’s best-known works include “Sunflower Seeds,” an exhibition at London’s Tate Modern of millions of seemingly identical but in fact unique minisculptures. —AFP

An employee prepares a doener kebab sandwich in the Hasir Restaurant.

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urkish-born Germans, whose fathers or grandfathers began arriving in Germany 50 years ago, still find it hard to move up the social ladder and success stories are few. But one such exception is that of the Aygun family of Berlin. Mehmet Aygun arrived from the Black Sea coast in the 1970s at a time when Germany’s economic boom attracted tens of thousands of low-skilled immigrants, mostly from Turkey. But instead of working in a factory, Mehmet opened a fast-food restaurant in the Berlin district of Kreuzberg, a working-class area which soon turned into a Turkish hub, slap up against the Wall then dividing East from West Berlin.

Family lore has it he was the first to dream up the doner kebab-a snack in which wafer-thin strips of meat from a spit are placed in open pitta bread, with salad and lashings of sauce.This staple of students and late-night revelers has since become a German favorite, as popular as the homegrown currywurst (sausage sprinkled with curry powder).

“There are now more than 15,000 kebab shops in Germany, employing some 74,000 people,” according to Tarkan Tasyumruk, president of the Association of Turkish Doner Producers in Europe (ATDID).

In Germany, with a population of some 82 million, some two million doner kebabs are eaten daily, according to ATDID. For the Aygun family, the humble doner proved a gold mine. “We serve kebabs 24 hours a day,” says 28-yearold Aylin Arslaw who runs one of their restaurants in Berlin. The Aygun family now own six kebab restaurants in Berlin, and have branched out into the hotel business, creating a chain called “Titanic”-a name hard to forget-with pictures of the luxury liner which met an icy death in 1912 displayed in every bedroom.” The secret of the family’s success-work, and more work,” says Aytac Aygun, 24, one of Mehmet’s sons, who rarely saw his father at weekends as he was growing up.

“That and the fact that the family sticks together”, including those who stayed in Turkey, says Aytac who now runs the family’s first Berlin hotel. The Ayguns have five more hotels in Turkey, including a 600-room establishment in Antalya, on the Mediterranean. In summer, the place is full of German tourists; in winter it is home to German football teams who go there for training.

Next year, they plan opening a five-star hotel in the German capital. Aytac believes that any immigrant can make it in Germany. “This country is full of possibilities,” he says. The young man considers Berlin “home”, but he carries a Turkish passport and has no intention of asking for a German one. “I don’t see the point,” he says. In Germany, some 15.6 million people are foreigners or foreign-born, a ratio of about one in five. The Turkish community exceeds 2.5 million, with 180,000 living in Berlin, the largest Turkish community outside Turkey. But for many, integration has proved difficult. And even second and third-generation Turks born in Germany sometimes find it hard to break out from a background of poverty.

For ethnic Germans and ethnic Turks, “opportunities and education are still not yet equal”, according to Yunus Ulusoy from the Centre for Turkish Studies and Research into Integration. “Young people with an immigration background are strongly handicapped when it comes to deciding which vocational training they will get, especially when they have low school grades,” Ulusoy said in a study. Some 30 percent of students of Turkish origin do not have a school leaving certificate, and just 14 percent pass their final secondary school examinations, according to another study by the Berlin Institute for Population and Development.—AFP

eighing five kilos (11 pounds), with perfectly combed hair and eyes closed in sleep, Abby looks like a baby girl. But she is a doll, adopted by a grieving mother to help come to terms with the loss of a child. “She reminds me of my daughter as an infant,” said Eve Hasty, a 57-year-old American who bought Abby from a British company for 300 dollars (210 euros). The retired driver who lives in Oklahoma lost her daughter to leukaemia when she only seven.

She has a surviving son in his 30s who has provided her with an eight-year-old granddaughter, but she finds the doll-which she acquired in 2009, three decades after losing her daughter-comforting. “I just get a type of serenity about me when I hold her, I change her clothes,” she told AFP. Hasty has bought Abby a wardrobe full of outfits, including a tiny pair of Nike trainers that she could never have afforded to give her children. “When my daughter was born, money was tight, we had a budget. This time, I could be extravagant. I went shopping like you would have thought I was having triplets. That was therapeutic,” she said.

Her case is far from unique. Nikki Hunn, the 35year-old British designer who created Abby, said most of her clients are collectors. But she has made half a dozen “reborn babies” for bereaved mothers as the trend, which began in the United States, moved to Britain and Australia, but is creeping elsewhere. As the niche market grew, a professional association, the International Reborn Doll Artists, was created in 2005 to promote “cutting edge” techniques in the craft of creating these uncannily life-like creatures. The IRDA has drawn up its own code of ethics, which includes “speaking honorably of every doll that has been sculpted, manufactured or reborn”, according to its website.

It also holds annual conventions, the next one in California in June. Not all reborns are custom-made.

Today, hundreds can be found for sale on websites like eBay-including different ethnic models and even a reborn baby orangutang-with starting bids that can run up to 800 and 900, even 3000 dollars. Creating each doll is painstaking work, but the results are astonishing. The plastic limbs come as close as is possible to human flesh, filled with beads to ensure the required weight. The ‘skin’ is colored at the cheeks and eyes are made puffy like those of newborn babies.

Nails are drawn onto tiny fingers, thin strands of mohair are sewn into the scalp and a glistening touch of saliva at the mouth completes the effect. The dolls are disturbingly real, and that’s the intention. One client even gave Hunn a picture of a baby to copy. “I had a couple of comments: ‘Oh my God, they look so realistic’, ‘Get that thing away from me, they creep me out’,” Hasty admitted. But she finds this offensive, saying: “I take it personally, it’s like being told your child is creepy.” She rarely takes Abby outside her home, except to show her to friends who have never seen her before.

“The majority of people just have reborns to hold or display in a crib, cot or pram” at home, Hunn told AFP at a trade show for the dolls in Brentwood, outside London. However, she says some women do take them outside and even on holiday abroad, “maybe because they are somewhere unknown”.

Psychologists are divided on the benefits of such substitutes. Ingrid Collins, a consultant psychologist at the London Medical Centre, says a fake baby “could create more problems then it solves”. “When you have mourned the death of the child, what do you do? Do you bury it again?” she told AFP. “If people naturally want to care for something and if they have a lot of love to give and no baby to give it to, there are lots of living souls who do need that love and attention.”

But Sandra Wheatley, a psychologist specializing in family issues, says a “reborn baby” could be helpful as a “physical tool to help them mourn the one that they have lost”. “It allows them to adjust slowly at their own pace to a situation that they do not want to be in,” she said.

“The use of the doll as a transitional tool could be a very healthy thing, as long as it does not go on too long.” Hasty says she is well aware of what Abby is. “I am not confused, I don’t think she is real,” she said. But she stressed: “To me she is not a doll, she is so much more. I don’t have to worry about her dying. I know she is not going to get sick and die. It takes such a pressure off.” — AFP