ON IP TI SC R SU B
SUNDAY, JUNE 26, 2011
Iran accuses West of sponsoring terrorism
New York becomes 6th state to legalize gay marriage
40 PAGES
NO: 15131
150 FILS
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www.kuwaittimes.net
RAJAB 24, 1432 AH
Media mogul Conrad sent back to prison
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With Gay hurt, Dix edges Gatlin
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Afghan hospital bombed; 60 killed
Max 45º Min 33º Low Tide 00:48 & 02:35 High Tide 07:05 & 08:50
Afghanistan’s worst attack for three years Netanyahu’s son maligns Muslims Terror has a religion? JERUSALEM: The Israeli prime minister’s 19-year-old son - a military spokesman - posted derisive comments about Arabs and Muslims on his Facebook page, drawing a slap on the wrist from his superiors and focusing new attention on the controversial first family. Earlier this year, Yair Netanyahu posted that Muslims “celebrate hate and death,” the Haaretz daily newspaper reported. In the same post, written after Palestinian assailants entered a West Bank settlement and stabbed five members of an Israeli family to death, he wrote that “terror has a religion and it is Islam.” The defamatory comments drew an immediate condemnation from the Palestinians, who are skeptical of his father Benjamin Netanyahu’s declared willingness to make the painful concessions necessary to give them a state. Yair Netanyahu also wrote that he hoped “there would never be” a Palestinian state, and two years prior, he ran a Facebook group of 23 people that had called for a boycott of Arab businesses and products. Continued on Page 13
Power grid change may disrupt clocks WASHINGTON: A yearlong experiment with America’s electric grid could mess up traffic lights, security systems and some computers and make plug-in clocks and appliances like programmable coffeemakers run up to 20 minutes fast. “A lot of people are going to have things break and they’re not going to know why,” said Demetrios Matsakis, head of the time service department at the US Naval Observatory, one of two official timekeeping agencies in the federal government. Since 1930, electric clocks have kept time based on the rate of the electrical current that powers them. If the current slips off its usual rate, clocks run a little fast or slow. Power companies now take steps to correct it and keep the frequency of the current and the time - as precise as possible. The group that oversees the US power grid is proposing an experiment that would allow more frequency variation than it does now without corrections, according to a company presentation obtained by The Associated Press. Officials say they want to try this to make the power supply more reliable, save money and reduce what may be needless efforts. The test is tentatively set to start in mid-July, but that could change. Continued on Page 13
TRIPOLI: Smoke billows from Tajura, a suburb of the Libyan capital Tripoli yesterday as three powerful explosions struck the eastern suburb, the site of a number of military installations. (Inset) Libyan children climb on top of a destroyed army tank. — AFP
NATO airstrike kills ‘15 Libyan civilians’ TRIPOLI: Libyan authorities yesterday accused NATO of killing 15 people in an airstrike that hit a restaurant and bakery in the east, though the alliance said there were no indications that civilians had died. It was the latest outcry from Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s government blaming NATO for killing civilians amid a four-month uprising that has sparked a civil war. NATO insists it does all it can to avoid such casualties. Meanwhile, rebel representatives said their fighters were coordinating around the country for the “zero hour” when their forces
would reach the capital of Tripoli. The rebels said they have been working to cut fuel supplies from Tunisian borders in an attempt to paralyze Gaddafi’s forces. Rebels also are making homemade bombs and trying to ferry other weapons to their comrades in Tripoli, a spokesman for an underground guerrilla group there said. Libya’s state news agency quoted a military official in Gaddafi’s forces as saying that NATO warplanes hit a number of civilian sites yesterday in the oil town of Brega, including a restaurant and a bakery. The official said 15 civilians were killed and 20 wounded
in the strike. The JANA news agency also claimed five civilians were killed Friday in Brega as well. A NATO official said alliance warplanes had hit several targets in the vicinity of Brega, but dismissed claims that the attacks had resulted in civilian casualties. “We have no indications of any civilian casualties in connection with these strikes,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media on the record. “What we know is that the buildings we hit were occupied and used by pro-Gaddafi Continued on Page 13
Saudi activists await verdicts 16 reformers charged with sedition
AMRITSAR: Indian artist Harwinder Singh Gill displays a sculpture of a man made from drug capsules on the eve of International Anti-Drugs Day in Amritsar yesterday. Gill used about eight thousands capsules for the sculpture. India has about 70 million drug users according to a 2010 report, the most common drugs being ganja, hashish, opium and heroin. — AFP
RIYADH: Some of 16 Saudi reform activists being tried on security and sedition charges may receive their verdicts next week after spending more than four years in detention, their law yer said yesterday. Most of the lawyers, professors and activists in the group were detained in 2007 after they met in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah to discuss reform in the conservative Muslim kingdom. “Some of the verdicts could come out on Tuesday or Wednesday,” lawyer Bassim Alim said. “There are basically two scenarios. The first is that they would be let out on the basis that they had already served enough time and the second is that they will get a few more years which will give time for the king to pardon them in due course,” Alim said. Among other offences, the defendants had been charged with attempting to seize power, incitement against the king, financing terrorism, electronic crimes, money laundering and trying to set up a political party in Saudi Arabia, where political groupings are banned. A Justice Ministry spokesman was not immediately available to comment.
In May, Judge Saleh bin Ali Al-Ojairy fell out with Alim, who is defending all but one of the 16 activists, and banned him from access to the court and direct contac t with his clients. “( The judge) denied me entr y into the cour t to defend my clients, I am currently still their legal representative and preparing all documentation out of court for them to personally hand in to the judge,” said Alim. “I communicate with my clients ... through their family visits. The families convey their messages to me and I reply. It’s been a very difficult situation,” he said, adding that no other law yer had agreed to defend the activists due to the sensitivity of the case. Saudi Arabia, a major US ally and the world’s top oil exporter, is an absolute monarchy that tolerates no dissent. Activists say thousands of people are held in Saudi prisons without charge or access to lawyers despite a law that limits detention without trial to six months. “This case has not been objective, People already realize the travesty of the procedures and the charges,” said Alim. — Reuters
PULI ALAM: A huge car bomb at a hospital yesterday killed 60 in Afghanistan’s worst attack for three years, days after US President Barack Obama said 10,000 US forces would leave the country this year. The brazen suicide attack in Logar province, about 75 kilometers south of the capital Kabul, killed women and children and also wounded 120. As an eyewitness described horrific scenes of victims on fire following the blast in the usually safe Azra district, officials described the attack as “unprecedented” in the neardecade-long Afghan war. “Sixty of our countrymen including children, women, youths and men... have been martyred and 120 others including health workers have been injured,” the ministry of public health said in a statement. “This inhumane act is unprecedented in the history of the conflict in our country and targeted a place where wounds are healed and patients receive treatment.” Din Mohammad Darwaish, the Logar provincial spokesman, said the blast-which took place close to Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan-was a suicide car bombing. The Taleban denied it was behind the attack, which completely destroyed the building. Spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said: “We condemn this attack on a hospital... whoever has done this wants to defame the Taleban.” One man who lives near the hospital, Abdul Rahman said that he lost seven relatives in the explosion. “Seven members of my family including three women and two children went to that hospital this morning,” he said, through tears. “I was at home, then I heard a big explosion. When I rushed to the site, I saw many dead and injured people. “Many of them were burning, on fire. There were body parts everywhere. My family is dead, I can’t find them, they are under the rubble.” The huge blast caused the highest death toll in Afghanistan since a July 2008 car bomb attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul killed more than 60 people. It came at the end of a week when Obama announced that 33,000 US forces would leave Afghanistan by the end of next summer. All foreign combat forces are due to pull out of the country by the end of 2014. There are currently up to 150,000 foreign forces in Afghanistan, including about 99,000 from the US. Some analysts fear that Afghan security forces may struggle to contain the insurgency, which has hit record levels of violence, as withdrawals begin. Afghan President Hamid Karzai condemned the attack as “savage and ignorant” in a statement released by his office. It came as Karzai told a counterterrorism summit in Tehran that militancy was on the rise in both his country and the region. “Not only has Afghanistan not yet achieved peace and security but terrorism is expanding and threatening more than ever Afghanistan and the region,” he told the opening session. The two-day summit is being attended by the heads of state of six regional countries, including Afghan neighbors Iran and Pakistan. The blast in Logar is the second major attack in Afghanistan in two days. On Friday, 10 people were killed by a bicycle bomb which went off in a busy bazaar in Khad Abad district of the northern province of Kunduz. Militants in Afghanistan frequently target the Afghan police and other government employees as well as foreign forces in their near decade-long insurgency. But civilians are the biggest casualties in the war, with 2,777 killed last year, according to the United Nations. — AFP