31 Oct

RI PT IO N BS C SU THE LEADING INDEPENDENT DAILY IN THE ARABIAN GULF

40 PAGES

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2010

In Turkey, celebrations highlight division PAGE 7

THULQIDA 23, 1431 AH

Indonesia volcano unleashes biggest blast yet

NO: 14896

Iran admits sanctions driving up costs PAGE 14

PAGE 14

150 FILS

Big three win but Man City slip again PAGE 20

Parcel bombs could have blown up jets Yemen arrests female suspect • Saudi Arabia tipped off United States

SANYA, China: Alexandria Mills of the US reacts after being crowned as the 2010 Miss World at the Beauty Crown Theatre in this southern Chinese resort town yesterday. — AFP (See Page 37)

DUBAI: Two suspected AlQaeda parcels from Yemen intercepted before reaching synagogues in Chicago contained powerful explosives that could have exploded, authorities in Dubai and London said yesterday, as Yemeni authorities arrested a suspect in the plot. British Prime Minister David Cameron said that af ter examination of the device found at East Midlands airport in central England, British authorities “believe that the device was designed to go off on the airplane”.

“There is no early evidence it was designed to take place over British soil but of course we cannot rule that out,” the prime minister told BBC television from Chequers, his country residence near London.

In Dubai, police said that the bomb found there Continued on Page 14

Bomb plot shows lax cargo security

Nigeria weapons came from Iran LAGOS: A weapons cache containing artillery rockets seized by Nigerian security agents at the West African nation’s busiest port originally came from Iran, an international shipping company said yesterday. The statement from CMA CGM, an international cargo shipper based in France, comes after Israeli officials accused Iran of trying to sneak the shipment into the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. By unloading the weapons in Nigeria, the

Israeli claim suggests Iran perhaps sought to truck the weapons through Africa to slide around an embargo now in place in Gaza.

Hussein Abdullahi, Iran’s ambassador to Nigeria, said there was no clear evidence linking his country to the shipment. The “different speculation doesn’t have any clear sources. At this time, we can’t judge on any of them,” Abdullahi told AP yesterday. “Sometimes they blame India, some-

times they blame Iran, sometimes they say the arms are going to Nigeria, sometimes they say they are going to Gambia. Now, they claim they are going to the Gaza Strip.

There is different speculation, but there is no clear evidence for (any) of them.”

The MV CMA CGM Everest picked up the 13 shipping containers from Bandar Abbas, a port in southern Iran, the company said.

Continued on Page 14

DUBAI: A combo of handout pictures shows the contents of a US-bound parcel displayed by police yesterday. — AFP

Riyadh invites Iraqis for government talks

ISA, Bahrain: Bahraini leftist and pan-Arab parliamentary candidate Munira Fakhro casts her ballot in the second round of legislative elections yesterday. — AFP

Bahraini female candidate hopes to boost MP powers MANAMA: Bahrain’s opposition stood to capture an unprecedented half of the seats yesterday in parliamentary polls which could also see a female candidate elected for the first time.

Bahrain held the first round of parliamentary elections last week, in which the main Shiite opposition group Wefaq won all 18 seats it contested in the 40-seat assembly. The island kingdom, home to the US Fifth Fleet, is ruled by the Sunni Al-Khalifa dynasty which is seen as a bulwark against the regional influence of Shiite power Iran

by Bahrain’s main allies Saudi Arabia and the United States.

The government introduced a new constitution and parliament elections a decade ago to quell unrest among majority Shiites in the 1990s; but many Shiites feel they have not gained

a greater say in the country’s affairs or better access to state jobs and services. Officials deny discrimination.

Munira Fakhro, from the secular Waad group, is running in one of two key second-round races, held in nine districts in which no candidate obtained a majority in the first round. If Fakhro and another Waad candidate win their seats, the opposition would for the first time hold half of all seats, paving the way for more questioning of the government on alleged corruption and the extent of the ruling family’s land ownership.

Wefaq and Waad would also team up in an attempt to expand limited powers of the parliament. Bills need to pass an upper house whose members are appointed by the king.

Continued on Page 14

RIYADH: Saudi King Abdullah invited Iraq’s political leaders yesterday to meet in Riyadh to try to resolve a deadlock over forming a new government, drawing a generally negative reaction in Baghdad. The king called on Iraqi leaders to meet in Riyadh after the Eid Al-Adha holiday “under the umbrella of the Arab League to seek a solution to the problem of forming a new government, which has taken too long”. The invitation did not specify a date, only saying the talks should take place following Eid, which falls on Nov 16, and after the haj pilgrimage to Makkah from Nov 14-18.

“Everyone knows that you are at a crossroads, and you must make all possible efforts to unite yourselves ... to surmount your differences and extinguish the flames of ugly sectarianism,” the king said in a statement published by the official SPA news agency. “We ... assure you of our full readiness to help you and support you in whatever resolution you agree upon in order to restore security and peace to the land of Mesopotamia,” he said.

In Baghdad, an MP close to Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki, who is seeking to keep his job, scorned the invitation. “This Saudi initiative is not positive, and that country does not have a role to play because it has not been neutral in recent years; it has always had a negative attitude toward (Maliki) and (his) State of Law” bloc, Sami Al-Askari said. “Had this invitation come from other countries, such as Jordan, Syria or even Turkey, it would have had a better chance of being well received.”

An MP for the Iraqiya bloc of former premier Iyad Allawi, who is jockeying to get back his old job, was also less than welcoming. “Saudi Arabia should have played a role to support Iraq a long time ago,” said Alia

Nussayef. “The initiative comes too late, now that negotiations are underway in Baghdad.” Mahmoud Othman, an independent Kurdish MP, said Iraqis should sort out their own problems. “We respect the proposition of the Saudi king, but the negotiations are now taking place between the political groups at the initiative of (Kurdish regional) president Massud Barzani,” he said. “We hope the crisis will be resolved before the feast of Adha, and if we do not find a solution between now and then, we will consider” the Saudi proposal.

Iraq has been without a government since a March 7 election in which Sunni-dominated Iraqiya bloc won 91 seats, followed by Maliki’s State of Law with 89. Despite intense back-room negotiations, neither side has been able to muster the 163 seats required for a majority in Iraq’s 325member parliament. Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia had backed Allawi against fellow Shiite Maliki, whom they had long seen as too close to regional arch-rival Iran, which is majority Shiite.

But Riyadh and other regional governments have grown concerned at the impasse and the effect it could have on Iraq’s overall stability in the wake of the scheduled total withdrawal of US combat troops at the end of next year. King Abdullah has spoken twice on the telephone with Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad after a long period in which the two had not communicated directly. The content of the talks has not been revealed, but analysts speculate that Iraq was one of the subjects covered. Yesterday, prospects for overcoming the stalemate diminished when a small Iraqi party said it had withdrawn from a Kurdish bloc that could play a key role in deciding the next prime minister. — AFP

LONDON: The discovery of US-bound mail bombs on cargo planes in England and Dubai reveals the danger posed by air shipping, which is governed by a patchwork of inconsistent controls that make packages a potential threat even to passenger jets, experts said yesterday. Most countries require parcels placed on passenger flights by international shipping companies to go through at least one security check. Methods include hand checks, sniffer dogs, X-ray machines and high-tech devices that can find traces of explosives on paper or cloth swabs.

But security protocols vary widely around the world.

Experts cautioned that cargo, even when loaded onto passenger planes, is sometimes lightly inspected or completely unexamined, particularly when it comes from countries without well-developed aviation security systems. The fact that at least two parcels containing explosives could be placed on cargo-only flights to England and Dubai, one in a FedEx shipment from Yemen, was a dramatic example of the risks, but the dangers have

been obvious for years, analysts said.

Britain’s Home Secretary Theresa May said the device discovered early Friday morning at England’s East Midlands Airport was potentially able to explode - and could have been used to bring down a plane. May said that the UK has banned the movement of all unaccompanied air freight originating from Yemen. France’s civil aviation authority also suspended air freight from Yemen.

One particular vulnerability in the system: trusted companies that regularly do business with freight shippers are allowed to ship parcels as “secure” cargo that is not automatically subjected to further checks. Even where rules are tight on paper, enforcement can be lax. A US government team that visited cargo sites around the world last year found a wide range of glaring defects, said John Shingleton, managing director of Handy Shipping Guide, an industry information service.

“They walked into a warehouse where supposedly secure cargo Continued on Page 14

2

NATIONAL

Sunday, October 31, 2010

Iraq optimistic of Kuwait ties Saudi King appeals to Iraqis KUWAIT: Official speaker of the Iraqi government, Dr Ali Al-Dabbash expressed optimism about the future of IraqiKuwaiti relations, reported AlAnba. He said that all matters and concerns between the two countries were on their way toward a final solution. He explained that shortly, borders will be fixed, the problems regarding farmers will be solved and that property owned

by Kuwaitis in Iraq will be returned. He concluded by saying that all of the problems between Kuwait and Iraq will be solved through the use of constructive dialogue and joint investments.

In another development, Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz appealed to Iraqis from across the political spectrum to restore their national unity. In his passionate appeal, carried by Saudi Press Agency (SPA) yesterday, the King said the political divisions of Iraq were a source of profound grief for him and the entire Muslim nation.

"This is an appeal from a man, who is zealous in supporting his nation and restoring the nation's dignity and pride, to Iraq which, though known for its religious, racial and cultural pluralism, used to enjoy tolerance and coexistence," the King said.

"The Muslim nation is faced with a flurry of crises that

dimmed every glimpse of hope and weakened the resolve to restore stability of the nation," he regretted. "Nevertheless, Iraq's dedicated politicians who are keen for the unity, security and stability of their country are required to offer more contributions and sacrifices in order to ensure better future for the nation. You are a nation with glorious history, rich civilization, integrity and dignity; this is an undeniable fact no one can doubt. You are required to assume your national and historic responsibility to add to the country's historical gains and build a bright future for the coming generation," the King stressed.

He invited President Jalal Talabani as well as all leaders of the political parties which contested the March legislative vote to visit Riyadh soon after the Hajj season and meet under the umbrella of the Arab League.

The planned meeting aims to break the deadlock which has remained in place since the last elections with the country failing to form a new government and "standing at a crucial crossroads," King Abdullah added. He renewed Saudi Arabia's desire to offer every possible help to the Iraqi leaders and back the implementation of any agreement they might reach during the meeting. — Agencies

CALIFORNIA: Kuwaiti Health Minister Hilal Al-Sayer (third left) poses with other officials during a visit to University of California, Los Angeles.

Kuwait seeks medical expertise from UCLA LOS ANGELES: Kuwaiti Health Minister Hilal Al-Sayer on Friday visited University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and discusses the means to develop cooperation between

Kuwait and the University's school of medicine.

A statement by the Kuwaiti Health delegation said that Al-Sayer met with Chief operating officer of the UCLA Medical Center and Hospital

KUWAIT: The Kuwait Petroleum Organization (KPO) has imported the second gasoline shipment to offset shortage in the local market due to the shutdown of two production units at Mina Al-Ahmadi refinery. Its capacity amounts to 460,000 barrels daily. Officials said that the two units were shut down around midOctober for maintenance work that will last for two weeks. Officials said that two consignment amounted to 25,000 tons each. More will be shipped in during November and December. It will buy one shipment that amounts to 25,000 tons at the beginning of October for delivery in November.

Hospital's intensive care unit. Another car accident on King Fahad Road left a 53year-old Indian expat with an injury to his spine. He was brought to Adan Hospital.

Meanwhile, a 37-year-old citizen suffered an injury to her head as a result of a car accident in Dhahr. She was admitted to Adan Hospital's intensive care unit.

Fights A 29-year-old Kuwaiti suffered cuts to his head after being involved in a fight between a number of youths in Jahra. He was brought to Jahra Hospital.

Meanwhile, an Egyptian was stabbed in the back during a fight in Salmiya. He was brought to Mubarak Hospital.

KUWAIT: The Kuwait International Airport (KIA) was placed on high alert after Kuwaiti authorities received warnings from the United States about a potentially fatal terrorist plot that targeted the area. More procedures to tighten security at the airport were taken since a more extensive searching process will be carried out for postal

packages as well as passengers and luggage.

Security officials at marine ports and land border checkpoints were also placed on high alert, while coordination with airports at neighboring countries was also achieved to exchange information about suspicious packages in preparation for any potential emergency landing cases, reported Al-

Qabas. These developments took place after two suspicious packages were found in two separate aircrafts that were bound to the US. Later, it was confirmed that the two packages contained explosive material, and investigations hinted that the plot resembled to similar previous ones executed by Al-Qaeda.

'No shortage of Kuwaiti firemen' KUWAIT: The Kuwait Fire Services Department (KFSD) has been receiving applications from Kuwaiti youngsters, a reflection of their 'eagerness' to participate in a demanding job that requires hard work and is risky. This statement was made by the

Accident at sea Two boats collided into each other on the sea near Khairan. As a result, a 21year-old citizen broke his right leg, a 28year-old citizen broke his right thigh and a 50-year-old Kuwaiti man suffered various injuries. The three were rushed to Adan Hospital for treatment.

Accidents A 43-year old Indian expat was critically injured while trying to cross fourth Ring Road. He suffered several broken limbs and a severe head wound. He was rushed to a nearby hospital. Meanwhile, a 21-year-old Kuwaiti man and a 21-yearold Kuwaiti woman were both injured and brought to Mubarak hospital following an accident on Gulf Road.

In an unrelated incident, a 27-year-old Kuwaiti woman seriously injured her hand in a car accident on Friday on King Fahad Road. She was admitted to Adan

to visit Kuwait and check on medical facilities such as Mubarak Al-Kabeer Hospital, exchanging their expertise on how to better develop medical services, noted the statement. — KUNA

High alert at airport

KPO imports gasoline

By Hanan Al-Saadoun

System Amir Dan Rubin and other officials, adding that Al-Sayer was briefed about the medical services provided by the UCLA hospital. An agreement was reached to send UCLA experts

Director General of the KFSD Maj Gen Jassem Al-Mansouri in an interview with Al-Rai TV. He asserted that the department does not suffer from a shortage in human resources. He also defended the decision to recruit women, asserting that their

work is restricted to searching places that are exclusive to women such as beauty salons and women's ceremonial halls to ensure safety measures.

They are not asked to take part in fire-fighting activities or rescue missions, reported

Al-Rai. While he noted that the response time has been shortened from seven to five minutes in four years, AlMansouri asserted on the importance of organizing spring camps so that firefighters can easily reach camp locations during emergency cases.

High ranking officers felicitated KUWAIT: The Acting Assistant Undersecretary Lt General Sheikh Ahmad Al-Abdullah Al-Khalifa honored criminal detectives' general directors. Lt General Sheikh Ali Al-Yousuf Al-Sabah and Director of Hawally Colonel Abdul Rahman Al-Suhail, his assistant Major

Waleed Al-Fadhel and Capt Abdulaziz Al Muttawa, First Lieutants Jamal Al Farj, Abdullah Al Shatti, and Abdullah Irshaid for their efforts to arrest the murderer of an Asian woman whose body was found on the roof of the exhibition hall at Mishref recently.

MP backs interior minister's grilling KUWAIT: A parliament member and potential chairman for the parliament's interior and defense committee indicated that the Minister of Interior is at fault for releasing two Iranian drug dealers, reported Al-Rai. He said that he will be among the first to support an interpellation against him concerning the issue and added that the minister's testimonies

during the investigation process were contradictory.

Speaking at an interview recently broadcasted on Al-Rai TV, MP Shuwaib Al-Muwaizri said that he asked Speaker of the National Assembly, Jassem AlKhorafi, to allow a reading of the original conviction report prepared by the committee during the previous term. The original

22 page report found the minister guilty, as opposed to the eight page report submitted by the committee's chairman at the time MP Askar Al-Enizy.

Meanwhile, Al-Muwaizri, an MP who supported the minister during his interpellation, addressed rumors claiming that he had a sudden change of heart against the minister when his son was denied recruitment to the police academy.

Muwaiziri described the rumors as "laughable," and noted that his son is only ten years old.

Moreover, he indicated that the accusers went so far as to claim that he was supporting another son whom he had from a secret second marriage and strongly fended off the allegations.

Meanwhile, a lawmaker recently indicated that he never doubted that his fellow MPs would vote to reinstate the temporary parliament committee to

study negative practices and alien influences in Kuwaiti society.

He said that this support reflects the conservative majority among parliament members who are interested in preserving the Islamic identity of the society.

When asked to comment on the success of stopping the Cabinet from dissolving the committee, MP Mohammad Hayef said that he had faith in his fellow MPs. He said he knew the committee was not at risk because a majority of MPs have an interest in "eliminating alien phenomena in our country." The committee member asserted that they will focus on the several issues they discussed during the previous term as well as table new topics.

Hayef, also a member of the parliament's human rights committee, said that the file on housemaids will be reprised and that all proposals and draft laws on that regard will be discussed.

Govt urged to finalize allowances KUWAIT: MP Hussein Al-Hurraiti called upon the government to finalize allowances for investigation departments, fatwa, legislation and legal departments at the municipality, reported Al-Anba. He pointed out that those administrations are of a judicial nature and that finalizing their allowances will positively reflect its neutrality.

Al-Hurraiti said that allowances for expert administration members have been approved and that the government said they will provide allowances to other administrations as well. He said that the allowances have been studied by the concerned committees and have been approved.

KUWAIT: One person was hurt in an accident that took place at the Fahaheel Road, during which a minibus flipped over following a collision. — Photos by Fouad Al-Shaikh

NATIONAL

Sunday, October 31, 2010

3

in the news Shuwaikh renovation KUWAIT: The Kuwait Municipality is currently reviewing a project to renovate the busy Shuwaikh area. Several international consultation agencies have been contacted, said Ahmad Al-Subaih, the Municipality's Managing Director. He was speaking in response to a proposal made by several Municipal Council members on activities that are allowed in industrial areas.

Meanwhile, Al-Subaih also indicated that studies are also in place to renovate all cross roads located at the Nuwaiseeb road, which will help address traffic jams, reported Al-Qabas. These clarifications were made in response to a proposal made by the Council's Chairman, Zaid Al-Azmi.

They want to propose building bridges across all crossroads between the Maghreb Highway and King Fahad road. Furthermore, AlSubaih answered a proposal made by member Abdullah Al-Enizi who called for a plan to re-organize Al-Waha by indicating that several bodies were contacted on the subject, including the Jahra governorate's Municipality, the Interior Ministry's General Traffic Department, and the Public Authority for Housing Welfare (PAHW).

Kuwait ambassador to Nigeria visits Cameron ABUJA: Kuwait's Ambassador to Nigeria Saad Abdullah Al-Assosi has presented his credentials as a non-resident Ambassador to the Republic of Cameroon. During an official visit to Cameroon, the Ambassador conveyed greetings of His Highness the Amir Sheikh Sabah AlAhmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, His Highness the Crown Prince and His Highness the Prime Minister to Cameroon's President Paul Biya. The Ambassador also expressed keenness to bolster ties and bilateral relations between the two countries on all fields.

During his visit, the Ambassador also met with Cameroon's Foreign minister and Cameroon's External Relations where he conveyed greetings on behalf of Kuwaiti Deputy Premier and Foreign Minister Sheikh Dr Mohammad Sabah AlSalem Al-Sabah. The meeting highlighted bilateral relations and ways to bolster them.

Brig Gen Mohammad Al-Sabr 'Online terrorism' seminar KUWAIT: Official spokesman of the Ministry of Interior and Head of its Security Media Department, Brig Gen Mohammad AlSabr, recently returned from Cairo. He took part in a seminar held to discuss online funding and to recruit terrorists through the Internet, which featured the attendance of various Arab experts. In a statement made following his arrival to Kuwait, Al-Sabr warned against several aspects by which the Internet can be abused for terrorism-related purposes, including finding information about locations and personalities online.

The worldwide web is used for communicationrelated purposes, reaching out to people that harbor radical ideologies through social networking sites and chat rooms, posting methods of creating bombs and carrying out suicidal missions through special websites set up for this purpose.

This is in addition to gaining funds from donators through illegal operations.

Kuwait concerned over recruitment at the UN UNITED NATIONS: Kuwait voiced concern over the failure of nationals of 12 countries, including the Gulf country, to get jobs at the United Nations even though they are efficient and highly qualified. Delivering his country's speech at a UN general assembly financial meeting late Friday, Kuwait's first secretary Abdullah Turkey said that the international organization's senior administrative jobs, which are subject to geographical distribution, should not be monopolized by certain countries. The number of the countries which have no staff at different UN agencies are 12 nations, including Kuwait, he said, lamenting that fervent efforts by Kuwait, along with other nations, to have their efficient nationals recruited at the organization's functional levels have been unsuccessful. He even blasted excuses by the organization's human resource department to turn down some recruitment applications as "inadequate".

Therefore, he urged the UN Secretariat General to do its duty by ensuring full balance and transparency in the recruitment process, and to take fair geographical distribution into consideration, he added. However, the Kuwaiti diplomat reiterated his country's support for ongoing UN reforms, called by all member states.

MPs want bank to fund projects KUWAIT: While the Cabinet and members of the parliament's financial and economic committee are currently working on a way to fund the development plan's projects, a group of MPs made a proposal of their own, reported Al-Rai. The Development and Reform Bloc proposed a draft law signed by thirty MPs, among which were members of the Popular Action Bloc. The draft law proposes establishing a Kuwaiti shareholding company - the Development Bank of Kuwait - to provide all the necessary funding for the major projects. The draft law indicates that the bank should be established with a KD1 billion capital and that the government should own 40 percent of its shares. Citizens would be entitled to a similar share percentage while a maximum of 20 percent of the shares will be sold to local banks in public auctions.

The MPs who support the draft law think that the new bank could also serve as a long term strategic option for future projects.

OIC discusses food security KHARTOUM: The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) in a ministerial session held discussions focusing on the issue of food security in Islamic nations.

Heading the Kuwaiti delegation attending the event was Public Authority for Agricultural Affairs and Fish Resources (PAAAFR) DirectorGeneral Jasim Al-Bader. In a keynote speech, Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir invited participants to adopt a policy on agriculture, food security and rural development in addition to agreeing to a proposal on the formation of a permanent committee for agricultural development and food security. AlBashir said his country was ready to host the headquarters of such a committee and provide all assistance for it to achieve its aims. He indicated that according to international numbers, there are 1.02 billion people around the world suffering from food shortage, and that hundreds of millions of these live in Islamic countries. The OIC Secretary General Ekmeleddine Ihsanoglu noted that the best to way to achieve economic growth in any nation was to improve its agricultural sector, thus providing food and job opportunities. He also said the OIC had organized and held a number of functions on the expert level on the issue, calling on member nations to take note of these meetings in issuing recommendations and proposals.

kuwait digest

The Cabinet's test

By Ali Al-Kandari he speech which His Highness the Amir delivered during the inaugural session of the Parliament's new term, was comprehensive and addressed all the negative situations and problems that we face in Kuwait. While he asserted on the importance of maintaining democratic order, commitment to laws and Constitution, and each authority should stay within the boundaries of their own jurisdiction. HH the Amir reiterated that developing human resources is the main goal in the country's development process. It is given top priority over construction and spending.

"Our greatest hope is to realize that a younger generation is prepared to hold the responsibilities bestowed as per the requirements of the future with regard to their country's progress. They will also be able to pass on the torch to the following generations," HH's speech read. The fact that our younger generation is the country's true wealth, cannot be argued. Therefore, they deserve to be provided with the best environment in which they can seek knowledge and advancement.

At the same time, it will be protected by our social mores and religious teachings. By exploiting all possibilities for their benefit, our young men and women can face the challenges ahead to push the country's development process forward. HH the Amir deserves credit for being able to diagnose all points of error and tension in our country, while placing the best solutions for them. Development is achieved by investing in human resources, rather than in building tall towers. Youngsters are our hope for the development process' progress. A commitment to laws and the Constitution is essential to achieve this goal.

HH's speech further asserted on the importance of pacification and tackling tension whether political, religious, sectarian or tribal, while also pointing out on the need to maintain national unity in light of the turbulent situation in the region. Today, the Cabinet faces the challenge of applying the recommendations mentioned in HH's speech. For this goal, His Highness the Prime Minister should order the formation of a special committee that will study the Amir's speech to outline practical measures by which the recommendations mentioned can be fulfilled through a timeline. Or else, the Cabinet should bear full responsibility should a delay happen in fulfilling the wishes of HH the Amir that calls for Kuwait's better future. — Al-Qabas.

T

Cabinet's error-ridden tactics, process exposed Analysts seek answers KUWAIT: While the Parliament has resumed operations following a controversial inauguration session, speculations are still doing the rounds on actions taken by the Cabinet during the voting process - either on panel formation, or selection of the Parliament's secretary. Analysts are still seeking answers on who gained upper hand on the political scene based on the results of the inauguration session. In the meantime, while analyzing the Cabinet's stance during the voting process for the Parliament's secretarial post, it is clear that a divide existed.

MP Ali Al-Rashid, known to be a strong supporter of His Highness the Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser Al-Mohammad Al-Sabah, won the secretarial post after garnering 35 votes, while the other candidate MP Dulaihi Al-Hajri also considered a pro-Cabinet MP but is more known for his support to the Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Sabah came up shortly with only 27 votes. This indicates that a clear division existed between pro-Cabinet MPs. They are divided in their

support between HH the Premier and his deputy.

Information that leaked before the opening session suggested that the Cabinet had divided its team into two - each comprising seven members and supports one of the two proCabinet candidates to the Parliament's secretary post.

However, reports indicate that this tactic was changed when HH the PM asserted that voting be done freely. One side consisted of Al-Fahad, Roudhan Al-Roudhan, Cabinet Affairs Minister, Mohammad Al-Busairi Communications and Parliament Affairs Minister, and Badr AlShuraian, Minister of Electricity and Water who voted for AlHajri. The remaining ten ministers voted for Al-Rashid. (The Kuwaiti Cabinet consists of sixteen members. HH the PM abstained from voting, while Mohammad Al-Afasi, Social Affairs and Labor Minister was not present at the session as he is still recovering from healthrelated complications).

Regarding the voting process to form the Parliament's permanent committees, reports suggest that the Cabinet has resort-

ed to tactics according that focus support on MPs Yousuf AlZalzalah, Ahmad Al-Saadoun, Mohammad Al-Mutair and Khalid Al-Sultan for membership at the financial and economic committee. At the same time, he ignored support to Khalaf AlDumaitheer and pro-Cabinet MP Rola Dashti, believing that they are most likely to gain enough support without Cabinet interference. This tactic proved to be a failure, however, as Dashti failed to gain enough support to return to the panel. Meanwhile, it was evident that the Cabinet did not focus on supporting certain MPs that sought membership at other panels, either due to lack of a pro-Cabinet MPs running for membership - such as the case with the interior and defense committee, or due to lack of interest in the panel in general the educational and public facilities committees for instance.

Meanwhile, the Cabinet found itself in an unsavory position, when tactics they plotted to foil the reformation of certain temporary committees were exposed.

Information indicated that the Cabinet would instruct certain MPs to leave the hall during the

voting process with regard certain panels that do not wish to be reformed. And while the 'prayer break' tactic - in which some MPs left to perform the Asr (afternoon) prayer - seems to have worked to foil the reformation of the youths and sports committee, the Cabinet failed to use the same tactic during other panels' voting process. This has made them appear as if the sports panel was the only committee that the Cabinet did not wish to see re-constituted. The reasons behind the failure was not disclosed, while officials indicate that the tactic was used for other panels before they were dissolved the last minute.

If there is one conclusion that could be taken out, many spectators believe that what happened during the voting process proves that the Cabinet has many keys within the Parliament through which they can decide who wins or who fails, reported Al-Qabas.

Furthermore, this conclusion rejects the government's allegations that accused MPs of lack of cooperation. In reality, the conflict took place due to disagreements that arose between Cabinet members.

kuwait digest

Hajj visa violations

By Fawziya Al-Sabah he Saudi Ambassador to Kuwait, Dr Abdul-Aziz AlFayez, during a recent interview said that Hajj and umra visas are issued free of charge. He also warned that there are agencies out there attempting to scam pilgrims by charging them for their visas, a clear violation of one of the holiest rituals in the Muslim faith. He asserted that the embassy will not hesitate to inform Kuwaiti authorities should such violators be discovered. The ambassador's statements came at a significant time, when the Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs should be taking serious measures against those who sell visas; a trend that has only been able to increase in light of the ministry's administrative corruption.

How does this manipulation occur? Each year the ministry assigns a fixed number of non-Kuwaiti pilgrims that each campaigning agency can take during the Hajj season.

For example, let's say that an agency is only allowed to take ten non-Kuwaiti pilgrims per trip and are thus provided a maximum of ten visas from the Saudi embassy for those pilgrims. What tends to happen is that some agencies sell these visas to other agencies that have already been given their allotted amount of visas so that they can accommodate more non-Kuwaiti pilgrims.

Some expatriates in Kuwait were asked to pay as much as KD 500 for a pilgrim's visa after they were informed that the agency has reached their capacity of non-Kuwaiti pilgrims.

The question here is why doesn't the ministry stop this illegal activity. Some may ask how the ministry can find out which agencies are involved in such an illegal activity but the answer is simple. All ministry officials have to do is to look in the records of all the agencies they gave non-Kuwaiti pilgrim visas to and see which of them recruited less than the maximum number of non-Kuwaiti pilgrims. They can also find violating agencies by determining which of them offered services for expatriates but exceeded the maximum number of visas allocated to them. — Al-Rai

T

kuwait digest

Strikes are back Dr Badr Al-Daihani he strikes by poor marginal laborers are back. They demand that their basic human rights, particularly regarding receiving their monthly salaries on regular basis, be met as their cruel companies withhold their payment for months, even though it is a clear violation of the labor law. The strikes are back after a long break in waiting for the government to deliver on promises that were made more than once, particularly two years ago, when strikes became violent in Jleeb Al-Shuyoukh. At the time the government promised to solve the problem, but it has only become bigger year after year.

The government's response has only been to deal with the strikes as a potential security risk. This seems to be the case because the problem has been solved without really addressing the main cause of the problem. The return of this problem has proved that the government's current policy has failed miserably. It is necessary to come up with a new policy, one that addresses the flaws in the country's population structure. Will we see a deep rooted change in the government's policy that works within the general framework of the development plan or will things remain as they are? — Al-Jarida

T

Hafith Al-Ajmi (right) seen in The Hague

Kuwaiti envoy submits credentials to Queen Beatrix THE HAGUE: Hafith Al-Ajmi handed-in his credentials to Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands as the new Kuwaiti Ambassador to the country. A statement by the Kuwaiti Embassy in The Hague said that Beatrix asked the Kuwaiti diplo-

mat to convey her greetings to the Kuwaiti leadership headed by His Highness the Amir Sheikh Sabah AlAhmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah.

The statement also indicated that the meeting focused on means to bolster

bilateral relations on all possible domains. Al-Ajmi affirmed, on his part, the strong relations between Kuwait and the Netherlands, hoping that he would do his best to further boost bilateral relations. — KUNA

50 infiltrators caught in Oman MUSCAT: Omani security forces have arrested as many as 50 infiltrators attempting to enter the country illegally. The infiltrators, who are of Asian and African nationalities, were collared in Muscat and Dhofar governorates and several other Omani areas, the Omani police

said in a release yesterday.

They will be investigated immediately for finding out reasons for their attempt to infiltrate into the country illegally, the policy added. In 2009, over 1,300 infiltrators were arrested while trying to enter the country for work. — KUNA

4

NATIONAL

Sunday, October 31, 2010

Minister of Interior under fire

over release of two Iranians Iranians' lawyer holds press conference, declares clients' innocence

By Nawara Fattahova KUWAIT: The issue regarding two Iranian citizens who were released from prison instead of being deported has been a much discussed issue recently, with some MPs threatening to grill the Minister of Interior over the controversy. Yesterday, the two Iranians' attorney, Riyad AlSanea, held a press conference at his Diwaniya in Keifan to go over some of the facts about the case. According to Al-Sanea, one of the MPs accused the two Iranian expats of committing crimes that were already investigated by the Ministry of Interior and that their responsibility for the crimes were denied.

"The MP got himself busy with this issue instead of doing his duty in Parliament. He has tried using the case of these two Iranians to settle his personal differences with the Minister of Interior," said Al-Sanea. "I respect the freedom of expression and of the press, but the MP's statement is a violation against me. It's my duty to defend my clients as far as their rights are protected by the law.

The MP said that my actions were illegal and I refute such an allegation," he added.

According to the law, AlSanea demanded that the

Riyad Al-Sanea responsible authorities investigate the Iranians. "This is correct legal procedure," he noted.

"Any attorney would follow the same procedure with his client regardless of his nationality. The Ministry of Interior accepted this request and found that there was no evidence of the accusation. It was then decided that they should not be deported," he noted. "The MP went too far when he accused my clients of being drug dealers," he continued. "The Ministry of Interior found my clients inno-

cent and decided to cancel the deportation order. With his statements the MP also insulted Kuwait's Iranian community."

Sanea added that the MP attempted to get documents from the Ministry of Interior illegally instead of first contacting the Ministry through the parliament. "The MP got these documents from an officer working in the Ministry of Interior who is supposed to keep it secret," the lawyer pointed out. "This act is considered a crime according to article

no 15 of the Constitution." To cancel an expat's deportation is the sovereign right of the Minister of Interior. "When the two Iranians submitted a petition to the Ministry to cancel their deportation, this was a totally legal act and the Ministry carried out their investigation.

They were found innocent and the minister has the right to cancel the decision to have them deported," he explained.

Al-Sanea further explained that the whole incident was the result of a domestic dispute between one of the accused Iranians and his wife. The wife, who was working on the election campaign of the MP, had a problem with her husband and reported that he was selling drugs. After they were arrested it was discovered that they were in fact innocent of any charges.

While Al-Sanea didn't mention the name of the MP he was referring to during his press conference he did announce that the wife of one of the Iranians filed a case against MP Musallam Al-Barrak for KD 5,001 in moral compensation.

Two additional cases were filed with the public prosecutor against Musallam Al-Barrak for providing false information and against an unknown officer at the Ministry of Interior for providing documents illegally.

Committee to discuss KCCI amendments KUWAIT: Chairman of the parliamentary finance committee, MP Dr Yousuf AlZalzalah said the committee's members are ready to discuss any amendments or increases on the items of the Kuwait Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) Law. He said that the committees members are ready to discuss the law in an expanded manner with the government, reported Al-Watan. He said that the committee wants to issue the law in a civilized man-

ner because it will remain for many years to come. Al-Zalzalah said the law is included on the National Assembly's agenda and that the assembly has the right to act on it or introduce parliamentary amendments to it for discussion with the government.

He said, that if the proposal is returned to the committee from the assembly it will be discussed quickly because the law is ready and prepared to be adjusted. AlZalzalah said there is nothing preventing

the issuance of a KCCI law during the current parliamentary term as there is no opposition and the government asked for it. He said that if the government members ask to attend the committee meetings they will be welcome, and that it is the right of concerned ministers to attend, even without an invitation. He said that KCCI members asked to meet with the committee and that the committee is open to all opinions. He added that the final decision is up to the parliament.

KUWAIT: The Ambassador of Austria Marian A Wrba hosted a reception at his residence on Tuesday evening on the occasion of the Austrian National Day. Dignitaries, diplomats and media representatives attended the function. — Photos by Joseph Shagra

in the news New bedoon authority KUWAIT: The Central Authority of the Bedoon will be announced in the next few months following its approval by the National Assembly, reported Al-Anba.

An official source at the Ministry of Interior said that the new authority will be in charge of issuing decisions concerning the bedoon as well as preparing a list of those who deserve citizenship.

The source added that the chairman of the authority will mostly likely not be military and that the position would be equivalent to that of a minister or at least an undersecretary. Following the authority's formation, it is expected that a decision will be made to cancel the executive committee for dealing with the bedoon.

Teachers will always be supported: MoE The Minister of Education Dr Moudhi AlHomoud said that she would always extend her support to teachers. They deserve all the necessary support and appreciation for their efforts in the teaching field, she said, reported Al-Anba.

Responding to a question about financial allowance's approval for teachers in view of class hours' extension, she replied that the joint committee in charge are studying this subject. "I will support any recommendation including paying such allowances, and shall revert it to undersecretary council so that appropriate action can be taken, " the minister added.

Hajj delegation in Saudi The Director of Hajj administration at the Ministry of Awqaf Roumi AlRoumi announced the departure of a Hajj delegation to Saudi Arabia on Tuesday. It includes officials from the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Awqaf, Ministry of Information and the Ministry of Interior. He pointed out that the delegation will help resolve all Kuwaiti 'hajis' problems, reported Al-Anba.

Discussions will be held to facilitate easier Hajj travel and receive complaints. AlRoumi said that reports about increasing the Hajj visa fee is groundless, emphasizing that visa are granted free of charge from the government of Saudi Arabia.

Arab League meet CAIRO: The Arab League's permanent representatives are set to hold a consultative meeting today chaired by Secretary General Amr Moussa to look into developing the system of Arab joint action. The diplomats will discuss all matters related to a document on the issue, Director of the Secretary General's office Hisham Yousif said yesterday. At requests of some Arab states for a consensus instead of division, Yousif said that it was natural for there to be steps taken in the path of harmony. This is the way it has been done since the 2001 Arab Summit tasked the Secretary General with developing the joint action system, he said.

Many issues were agreed upon this way, he added, like the Arab Transitional Parliament and the Arab Peace and Security Council, among others. Meanwhile, Arab League welcomed yesterday the United Nations General Secretariat call for a nuclear weapons free-zone in the Middle East, called for by Egypt on behalf of Arab countries. Arab League envoy in charge of the nuclear issue, Wael Al-Asad said that the League has succeeded in passing two decisions, the Middle

East free-zone and another calling on Israel to join antinuclear conventions. Both decisions gained majority votes, including the latter, while Israel and the US both attempted to impede its passing. Al-Asad called on Arabs to be united at all times in their stances.

'Hajj Rites' daily programs on air JEDDAH: A daily TV educational program titled "Hajj Rites" will be aired as of today on 30 satellite channels to explain Hajj rituals and rules to pilgrims, Saudi Press Agency (SPA) said yesterday. Adviser at the Saudi Ministry for Islamic Affairs, Endowment, Dawa and Guidance Talal Al-Aqeel said in a statement to SPA that the televised program focuses on important issues that pilgrims have to grapple with. He added that the program aims at consolidating a new concept on the educational programs in what makes Hajj data a general knowledge accessible for all through this mass media. The program will also display a set of reports, TV documentaries, reportages related to Hajj rituals and rules. The airing of the 75-minute program will start tomorrow as of 7:45 pm.

kuwait digest

A disastrous book exhibition

By Salah Al-Elaj do not know the secret behind the timing of the recent book exhibition that was under-promoted. It was not even announced in a fitting manner.

Many book exhibitions have been announced for 34 years just so that readers and schools are prepared for it.

I do not even know the secret behind its beginning and end, just before salaries are deposited in banks! I know that many who wanted to attend the book exhibition, take their children along, either to buy books or to get their children accustomed to or train them to read. However, their timing is not right and the budget does not allow it! It appears as if organizers have been keen on it, in a well-studied manner, driving away children from the treasures of

I

Diplomatic Studies Institute delegation visits KISR KUWAIT: A delegation from the Kuwaiti Diplomatic Studies Institute headed by the General Director of the Institute Abdul Aziz Al-Sharekh organized a visit to Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research (KISR) to get acquainted with the laboratories of institutes and research activities. The delegation consists of 59 persons. A press release from KISR indicated that the deputy director of KISR Dr Nader Al-Awadi delivered a lecture on the role of KISR on supporting national economy and growth. It displayed the institute's activities in research and the achievements made locally, regionally and internationally. He explained that KISR concentrates on a long-run strategy that concentrates on human resources. The press release added that Al-Awadhi has emphasized on the necessity of international cooperation and the exchange of experts between government organization and private sector, which will be positively reflected on scientific research in Kuwait, pointing to the role of diplomats in raising Kuwait's name at an international level — KUNA

knowledge. It was held during 'deliberate' fatal time.

If the goal was to make it a disaster, and repel publishers by wiping out Kuwait's pioneering role as the cradle of the most important book exhibition in the Middle East, so that another Gulf country can take the first place!

Congratulations! It appears as if you have succeeded. This is evidenced by the number of visitors who I still do not know.

How did 150,000 visitors turn out, unless the number includes the books on the shelves? So, in short, and to keep journalists and newspapers' away from you and your exhibitions along with the way they are governed, I believe that you must respect the country first. This can be done by making next year's book exhibition at the same time perfume and

gifts exhibitions are held. This coincides with the time salaries are deposited into bank accounts.

It is not realistic that the most important cultural exhibition in the Middle East and the largest ever, where publishing houses fight to have the honor of participating in, is treated this way. This is especially true of timing! I hope that the justification is not worse than the guilt of your timing itself.

This conflicts with the timing of the most prestigious exhibition in the Middle East with other less important ones. If, for the sake of argument, this is not an 'organizational' mistake, and it is not deliberate, then this means you do not deserve to be managers of an exhibition. I hope, that your names will not ever be reconsidered in the future.

NATIONAL

Sunday, October 31, 2010

Maid commits suicide KUWAIT: An Asian maid killed herself in her sponsors’ home in Thahar by burning herself to death, reported Al-Rai. Investigators responded to the scene of the incident after receiving a phone call from a family informing them that they discovered the maid’s burnt body in her room. An investigation revealed that the victim used kerosene to light herself on fire. When questioned, the family indicated that they noticed the maid’s unstable condition after she received a phone call from home.

Road mishap A 13-year-old was killed after he fell out of his father’s moving vehicle on Subbiya Road, reported Al-Watan. The youth was pulled under the vehicle and killed immediately. Paramedics pronounced him dead upon their arrival.

Heart attack An Egyptian died as a result of a severe heart attack while at a coffee shop in Salmiya, reported Al-Watan.

The 56-year-old fell to the ground as soon as he first started smoking from a hookah. A preliminary examination revealed that the man stopped breathing soon after suffering a heart attack.

Theft foiled An attempt by four thieves to rob a home in Roudha was thwarted by five young men who responded to calls for help by a youth who discovered strangers in his home, reported Al-Watan. The five young men were able to capture one of the thieves while his accomplices escaped in a pickup truck. When questioned, the 18-year-old thief admitted that they intended to steal the motorcycle that he just sold to one of the home owners. Authorities are searching for the thief’s accomplices.

Suicide attempt A 24-year-old citizen was saved by paramedics after he attempted to kill himself by cutting his wrists, neck and various other parts of his body with a razor, reported AlWatan. He was brought to Mubarak Hospital where they were able to stabilize his condition. Preparations were made to admit the young man to a psychiatric hospital when

his condition is more stable.

Alcohol possession Two Asian men were arrested in Salmiya for being in possession of alcohol, reported Al-Watan. The two were arrested after their vehicle drew attention from police for being parked suspiciously.

A search of their vehicle revealed that they were in possession of 20 bottles of liquor. They were referred to the proper authorities.

Meanwhile, a taxi driver was held for questioning after two liquor bottles were found inside his vehicle, reported AlAnba. The Indian driver was arrested when police discovered the bottles after he was pulled over. When questioned, he explained that a drunk man left the bottles in his vehicle on the way from Hawally to Surra. When asked why he did not inform authorities as soon as he found the bottles he admitted planning to resell the bottles. He was held for further questioning.

In an unrelated incident, a woman arrested was for walking half-naked in Abu Hulaifa while being heavily intoxicated, reported Al-Anba. The woman was apprehended by authorities and, when questioned, admitted to have spent the evening at a late night party with her friends. She was held for further questioning.

Lawbreakers nabbed Farwaniya police arrested 125 lawbreakers of various nationalities during a campaign in the area, reported AlWatan. Those arrested were found either violating residency laws or being wanted for previous offenses. They were referred to the proper authorities.

5

70 tons of rotten meat hits market KUWAIT: More than 70 tons of spoiled meat has made its way to the market again, reported Al-Rai. According to an official source from the Kuwait Municipality, a supplier deliberately sold 70,398 kilograms of oxen meat to the local market before testing results could be confirmed, knowing full well that the meat was unfit for human consumption. When authorities were instructed to seize the shipment they discovered that it had

already been sold to local restaurants, hotels and butcher shops.

The municipality source who spoke on the condition of anonymity blamed the lack of strict penalties that are imposed against violators for repeated incidents.

Suppliers have a history of selling the meat, even though it is illegal, because they know the potential profit is higher than the penalties they are forced to pay.

The official explained that the same sup-

plier committed similar violations, after which he was fined KD1,000 and a warehouse he owned in Shuwaikh was shutdown.

The source noted that the business owner was able to resume his activity through the other warehouses he owns.

To solve the problem, the official stressed that stricter measures need to be taken against violators, such as having their whole business shutdown.

CAIRO: Some of the delegates seen during the 43rd general assembly of the Arab Air Carriers Organization (AACO).

Kuwait ready for IIFME-2010 International Invention Fair kicks off on Nov 7 KUWAIT: President of Kuwait University (KU) Dr Anwar AlYatama said the Third International Invention Fair of the Middle East (IIFME-2010), slated for November 7 - 9, 2010 would provide the Kuwaiti young inventors with a chance to get in line with the world’s latest technological and scientific achievements. “The kind sponsorship of the event by His Highness the Amir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber AlSabah shows HH the Amir’s care for inventors,” Dr AlYatama told reporters.

“The Amir has a long record in backing the creative inventors and encouraging them to contribute to the country’s scientific advancement. His care is self-evident in the kind honoring of the KU teachers and scholars and the instructions for launching Sabah Al-Ahmad Center for Care for the Innovators and Skilled - an affiliate of Kuwait Foundation for Advancement of Sciences (KFAS),” he said. Dr Al-Yatama expressed confidence that the IIFME-2010 would give a strong impetus to the Kuwaiti inventors to add to the previous achievements and keep flying the country’s flag in internation-

al forums.

He thanked the Kuwait Science Club (KSC) for its efforts made under its Chairman Iyad Al-Kharafi to organize the fair in collaboration with the International Geneva Convention. Meanwhile, deputy chairman of the organizing committee and KSC SecretaryGeneral Eng Ahmad AlManfouhi said his committee has set the stage for the grand regional gathering.

“More than 300 male and female volunteers are working with KSC personnel around the clock to ensure the success of the three-day event and the welfare of participants,” he pointed out. Al-Manfouhi highlighted the Arab countries’ need to keep in line with the scientific and technological achievements worldwide with a view to promoting their socio-economic development. The IIFME-2010 will bring together more than 150 inventors from 40 Middle Eastern and other countries; it will provide a platform for the participants not only to display their new achievements but also to network and hold consultations on commercialization and intellectual property rights.—KUNA

KAC participates in AACO meeting Infectious diseases KUWAIT: Kuwait Airways Corporation (KAC) took part in the meetings of the 43rd general assembly of the Arab Air Carriers Organization (AACO) that was recently held in Cairo and reviewed topics like environment, air policies and joint ventures. The KAC delegation was led by the KAC chairman and managing director Hamad Abdullatif Al-Falah and included Training and Development Department Director Lafi Al-Dhafiri, Deputy Director of Planning and International Affairs Department Saud AlMekhizam. The delegation also includes Director of the Operational Safety and Emergency Bureau Kamel Al-Awadhi, Head of Orders, Contracts and Operational Services Group Mohammed Al-Munir and Planning Assistant Director for bilateral and

commercial agreements Habib Ashour.

A statement made by the institution said that the general assembly discussed a report made by the executive committee, the organization’s highest authority that is made up of chairmen of the member air operators, that reviewed the most important topics covering environment, air policies, joint ventures and the air operators’ membership in the relevant international organizations along with making necessary recommendations. It also made clear that the meeting reviewed the reports submitted by AACO’s committees as KAC chairs three of these committees in current session, namely training committee, fuel committee and environment committee.

Meanwhile, the chairmen of various

committees submitted reports on the achievements made in the past session and the future projects aiming to develop the partnership between the air carriers as well as the ways of reducing expenditure and improving services.

The meetings also talked about holding a forum including captains of airline industry as well as discussing the issue of environment which is paid great attention by the airline industry which blazed a trail in improving climate conditions and combating greenhouse gas emissions. Finally, the meeting accredited the AACO balance sheet along with its next year budget and chose the Emirati city of Abu Dhabi as the venue of AACO general assembly upcoming meeting. — KUNA

awareness campaign KUWAIT: The Ministry of Health (MoH) has recently begun an awareness campaign through its public health departments at each medical zone, on guarding against infectious diseases that usually spread during winter. Citizens and residents should take precautionary measures against respiratory diseases such as the flu, reported Al-Rai. This announcement was made by public health specialist at the

Jahra hospital, Dr Abdurrahman Lutfi. He said that the campaign was launched as per the instructions of Dr Fatima Al-Saeidi, Head of the Public Health Department. He noted that the campaign includes sending messages to parents on measures that children should take to avoid contamination, as well as print posters and brochures to be distributed across local health centers.

NATIONAL

6

Sunday, October 31, 2010

134,000 students to receive meals KUWAIT: The Ministry of Education will start providing meals for 134,000 elementary school students throughout the six gover-

norates at a cost of KD 59,000 over the next three years.

A number of education area directors said that the schools are ready

to start this project and that the Minister of Education is expected to tour a number of the schools to ensure that meal distribution is

being carried out smoothly. School director of the Ahmadi area, Talaq Al-Haim, said that the area’s 55 schools are ready to distribute

meals to students.

He added that the Ahmadi area was the first to start distributing meals to students last Tuesday at

the Ibn Majid School and that administrators from other schools visited the school to observe how they distributed meals to students. —KUNA

NBK discusses its strategy for 2020 International Advisory Board members meet KUWAIT: The International Advisory Board of the National Bank of Kuwait (NBK) held a meeting in London this past weekend in which they discussed the latest economic and geopolitical developments in the world, and the effect of the world economy’s recovery from financial crisis on Kuwait and the region. The meeting was headed by former British Prime Minister Sir John Major, and attended by leading international experts in

finance and economy, including CEO of the BEMKO International Co Dr Mohammad Al-Aryan, and former CEO of the Citigroup William Rhodes, as well as top advisor at the Morgan Stanly Bank Sir David Walker, former president of the Barclays Bank Matthew Barrett, and Deputy Chairman and Managing Director of the Singapore Sovereign Wealth Fund, Tony Tan. The meeting further discussed the

NBK’s strategy for the year 2020, and its plans for expansion and reinforcement of its regional presence. It further featured presentation for future expectations on Kuwait’s economy, and the economy of the region as a whole. NBK’s advisory board is the first of its kind in the Middle East, and includes membership of twenty-two top leading activists in politics economy, business and strategy from around the world.

NBK organizes tour for students KUWAIT: The National Bank of Kuwait (NBK) recently hosted a group of students from the English School-Fahaheel, who toured the bank’s head office to learn firsthand about the banking industry and the day-to-day work environment at the various departments. NBK Public Relations team, who received the visiting group of students and treated them to a familiarization tour of the various departments, including the main banking hall, said that the guests showed great interest with the broad-spectrum of

NBK financial and banking products and services and were particularly inquisitive about the NBK Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).

Commenting on the conclusion of the visit, the students expressed their sincere thanks for NBK and the opportunity they have been given to gain a better understanding of the banking job and get a personal insight about NBK and the career field in general. Organizing frequent visits for students and providing regular support

and sponsorship for educational institutions and activities in Kuwait had always been a major component of NBK’s social responsibility and strong commitment towards the greater community in general and the young generation in particular.

Such commitment had been manifested through providing job opportunities for new graduates and the organization of the annual Summer Internship training and recruitment Program for Al-Azraq account young holders.

KUWAIT: The IDP Education held an open day yesterday from 5:00pm - 9:00pm. The event also included a lecture of Carl A Herrin from Global Education Solutions.—Photos by Joseph Shagra

Cardiovascular problems account for 2.8 percent of Kuwait diseases Healthy, balanced food prevent diseases KUWAIT: The cardiovascular diseases account for 2.8 percent of the total ailments that Kuwaiti people suffer from, a Health Ministry official said yesterday.

Family Medicine Specialist Dr Anwaar AlNajar said in a statement to the press on the occasion of marking the World Food Day that such diseases are on the increase due to the faulty eating habits. Al-Najar added that sound, healthy and balanced food containing main nutritional substances helps prevent or inhibits the development of diseases, making clear

that the kind of food may negatively affect people when it comes to further increasing the development of a given disease or its spiraling out of control.

Consequently, there is a special importance attached to taking other food categories including milk and dairy products, bread, cereals, meat and especially white meat, she explained, noting the healthy benefits of drinking a considerable quantity of water. Further, there are many diseases developing out of obesity and unhealthy food like hypertension which

accounts for 10.8 percent of diseases in Kuwait, while diabetes represents 16.7 percent of the total diseases diagnosed, she said. She concluded by saying that, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) statistics, there are more than 42 million children worldwide under five-year old who suffer from overweight, and so they prone to develop diabetes and cardiovascular diseases at an early age as children’s obesity is one of the public health problems in the 21st century. —KUNA

Dear citizens and residents,

Safe driving reflects the quality of your traffic awareness.

With compliments of the Interior Ministry’s Security Media Department

INTERNATIONAL

Sunday, October 31, 2010

7

Turkish army chiefs shun ceremony over headscarf

HRW calls for probe into Kurd journalist’s killing

Celebrations highlight division in Turkey ANKARA: On Turkey’s anniversary celebrations, all eyes were on the head of the president’s wife. In a gesture that strikes at the heart of a wrenching debate over secularism and piety, Hayrunnisa Gul wore an Islamic headscarf at a reception Friday marking the founding of modern Turkey by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk - whose secular principles are revered

by the nation’s traditional establishment with almost religious fervor. Across town, at around the same time, the military which sees itself as the guardian of Ataturk’s legacy - held its own Republic Day fete in a scheduling conflict symbolic of the divide between the elected, Islamic-leaning government and opponents who fear secular ideals are in peril.

ANKARA: Turkish President Abdullah Gul (center) and his wife Hayrunnisa Gul (right) welcome guests before a reception at the Cankaya presidential palace after ceremonies marking the 87th anniversary of the Turkish Republic, Friday, Oct 29, 2010. —AP

in the news Iraqi coffee shop bombing kills 30 BAQUBA: The death toll from a suicide bombing at a coffee house in central Iraq’s restive Diyala province has risen to 30, a medical official said yesterday, making the deadliest attack in October. Friday night’s bombing in the town of Balad Ruz also wounded 68 people, according to Ahmed Alwan, a doctor at the general hospital of Baquba, the provincial capital of Diyala. “The final toll from Friday’s bombing is 30 dead and 68 wounded. All the dead are men, but the wounded include three women and two children,” Alwan said. Balad Ruz police chief Major Ahmed al-Tamimi had given on Friday a toll of 25 dead and 70 wounded “when a suicide bomber detonated a belt filled with explosives at a coffee house in the centre of the city.” Suicide bombings across Iraq have fallen since 2008 when Diyala province was an Al-Qaeda stronghold.

Although the militants have lost ground, the province remains one of the most restive since

the 2003 US-led invasion. Friday’s attack took place in a region with a Kurdish Shiite majority.

Egypt police shoot dead Sudanese migrant EL-ARISH: Egyptian border guards shot dead a Sudanese migrant who was trying to slip across the frontier into Israel yesterday, a security official said. The official said the 28year-old was shot in the head after the guards traded fire with smugglers who accompanied several migrants early in the morning. Two Sudanese migrants in the group were arrested and the others fled with the smugglers. The New York-based group Human Rights Watch this month urged Egypt to stop shooting migrants, saying its security forces have killed at least 85 migrants trying to cross into Israel since 2007. Egypt, which holds the rotating chair of the United Nations refugee agency’s governing body, says its police fire warning shots in the air.

Al-Jazeera condemns Morocco over suspension of service Morocco says 2 terror cells dismantled DUBAI: Al-Jazeera condemned yesterday a decision by Morocco to suspend the pan-Arab television network’s operations in the northern African country, saying the move would not affect its editorial line. Morocco’s government said Friday it suspended the Qatar-based satellite channel’s operations and withdrew accreditation for its staff after “numerous failures” that went against the “rules of serious and responsible journalism.” “Al-Jazeera has denounced the suspension of the network’s operations in Morocco,” the network said on its English-language website, citing an Al-Jazeera statement.

“The closure of its bureau in the capital, Rabat, would not change the network’s editorial guidelines,” it said. “Al-Jazeera assured that its coverage of Morocco was always based on professionalism, balance and accuracy, and said it would continue its coverage to serve the interests of viewers in line with journalistic values.”

Communications Minister Khalid Naciri said Friday that action was taken against Al-Jazeera because its “refusal to be objective and impartial systematically tarnishes Morocco’s image. “We reproach this channel for ignoring the main principles and transmitting a caricature of Moroccan reality,” he told AFP. A government official who declined to be named said the authorities took exception “to the way Al-Jazeera handles the issues of Islamists and Western Sahara.”

More than 2,000 Islamists have been arrested and sentenced in Morocco since the Casablanca

bombings of May 16, 2003, when more than 40 people were killed in an attack by Islamist extremists. A former Spanish colony, Western Sahara was annexed by Morocco after settlers withdrew in 1975. The move was violently opposed by separatist Polisario guerrillas until the United Nations brokered a ceasefire in 1991.

Meanwhile, two terrorist cells with links to Al-Qaeda have been dismantled and their members detained, the Moroccan Interior Ministry said in a statement yesterday. The cells were made up of nine people, including a Yemeni national who’s sought by that country and two people who’d already been convicted on terror charges, the statement said.

One of the cells was aimed at recruiting extremists to send to Iraq and was apparently in contact with groups in Al-Qaeda’s network, the statement said. The other, called the “Front of the Saharawi Jihad,” was plotting terrorist acts, the statement said. It was headed by a supporter of the Polisario Front, a rebel group seeking the disputed Western Sahara territory’s independence from Morocco, the statement said. It did say when or where the cells had been dismantled. The nine suspects are in detention pending an investigation and will be brought before the courts, the statement said. Morocco has dismantled some 70 alleged terrorist cells and tried about 3,000 suspects since 2003 - when terror attacks in Casablanca killed 45 people. —Agencies

The maroon attire of President Abdullah Gul’s wife as she greeted guests at the pink-walled presidential palace may have struck outsiders as trivial, and it was not the first time she had done so. But for people on both sides of the philosophical split, the sight of an Islamic headscarf at the palace where Ataturk once lived, and which is seen as a symbol of the secular bedrock of Turkey’s constitution, was a highly emotive sign of changing times. The reception marking the 87th anniversary of Turkey’s establishment also amounted to a coming out party for the president’s wife, who normally wears a headscarf and has mostly kept a low profile since her husband got the job in 2007 despite a warning from the military that his election would endanger secularism, stirring fears of a coup.

It was also a measure of how Muslim Turkey is changing under devout civilian leaders who have stripped the generals of much of their political power.

“It’s just another sign of this very long transition. There are deep-rooted fears, suspicions, in society and they tend to spill over into politics,” said Gulnur Aybet, a professor of international relations at the Izmir University of Economics in Turkey and a senior lecturer at the University of Kent in Britain.

The headscarf is an explosive issue in Turkey, where government supporters view it as an essential emblem of piety, and opponents see it as an ominous symbol of political Islam.

Female students and civil servants are barred from wearing it in schools and offices, but many universities have relaxed the ban under a government that says the rules deprive devout women of the right to jobs and education.

The debate touches on broader issues about the direction of conflicted yet increasingly confident Turkey, a regional power and NATO member that asserts its outreach to Iran and harsh criticism of Israel do not mean it is turning away from Cold War-era alliances with the West. Turkey, struggling to join the European Union, has become a freer, richer place during the 8-year tenure of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, but he has been unable to shake a minority’s suspicions that he is steering the country toward an Islamic way of life.

The internal tensions have eased to the point where Gul is only now comfortable holding a single Republic Day reception with his wife in attendance. To skirt confrontation on past Republic Days, he held two receptions - a midday one at which military officers and other VIPs gathered without wives, and one in the evening, during which women in headscarves were commonly seen, and which the secular elites normally shunned. This time around, a scheduling conflict stirred speculation that hardline secularists were searching for an excuse to send regrets to the president. The military held a reception at 7 pm on Friday.

The president’s celebration began at 7:30 pm, and the generals didn’t make the trip to Cankaya Kosku, as the palace is called in Turkish. —AP

GAZA CITY: A bridesmaid stands in a cart during a mass wedding held for the men wounded and made disabled during the 22-day offence by Israel yesterday. —AFP

Court orders lifting of Turkey YouTube ban ANKARA: A Turkish court yesterday ordered the lifting of a three-year ban on Internet video website YouTube, media reports said, but thousands of other sites are still blocked. Access to YouTube was barred in September 2007 by a court in Sivas, eastern Turkey, after an individual complained of clips disrespectful to the revered founder of the modern state, Mustafa Kemal Atataturk.

The ban was extended on different occasions by media authorities, the most recently in June, prompting a complaint from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe at Turkey’s wholesale censorship of websites. NTV television channel said the court in Ankara had lifted the YouTube ban yesterday because the offending videos had been removed.

Before the ban YouTube was the fifth most popular site in Turkey, according to date bank Alkexa Internet. On June 4 Turkey also blocked access to more than 30 Google sites, which Transport Minister Binali Yildirim said had been reconfigured to enable Internet users to access YouTube. The minister also said that Turkey had fined YouTube 15.6 million euros (21 million dollars) for never paying taxes in Turkey in spite of earnings made from advertising.

Turkey’s President Abdullah Gul has however come out against censorship of the Internet and called for a revision of Turkish laws. Blocked sites tend to be those relating to sensitive subjects of “national dignity”, including Ataturk, the army and minorities such as the Kurds. —AFP

BAGHDAD: Human Rights Watch called yesterday for a transparent probe into the death of a journalist who was killed after writing an article scathing of Iraqi Kurdish president Massud Barzani. “Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government needs to ensure an independent and transparent enquiry into the killing of journalist Sardasht Osman in May 2010, that will lead to the identification and prosecution of all those responsible,” the New York-based rights group said.

Osman, 22, was kidnapped on May 4 in the regional capital Arbil, and his corpse was found a day later in the restive northern city of Mosul with a single bullet to the head. He had written articles critical of Barzani’s rule, but an investigative committee formed by the Iraqi Kurdish leader said in September that Osman was killed because of his ties to a militant group. “This secret investigation into Sardasht Osman’s murder is exactly the opposite of what’s needed,” HRW’s Joe Stork said in the statement.

“The Kurdistan government needs to get to the bottom of this killing with an open and independent inquiry that will include looking into allegations of government involvement,” Stork said. HRW said Osman’s family and supporters had been threatened by government forces and Kurdish party members after speaking out against the findings of the official probe, which also was condemned by international rights groups and local Kurdish journalists. —AFP

INTERNATIONAL

8

Sunday, October 31, 2010

Tanzania presidential candidates stage final rallies before polls Prez Kikwete expected to win again

DAR ES SALAAM: A supporter of Tanzanian opposition party, Civic United Front (CUF) wears small flags of the presidential candidate Ibrahim Lipumba during his rally ahead of general presidential elections today. —AFP

Khadr could learn his sentence today US NAVAL BASE AT GUANTANAMO BAY: Canadian war crimes detainee Omar Khadr, who has been portrayed by the prosecution as a “dangerous extremist” and pleaded guilty in front of a special military tribunal, could learn his sentence as early as today. The 24-year Canadian, who was captured in Afghanistan when he was 15, pleaded guilty Monday to murder in violation of the laws of war, providing material assistance to a terrorist organization and espionage.

Khadr, who has already spent eight years at a prison camp at this US naval base, admitted his responsibility for hurling a grenade that killed sergeant Christopher Speer in Afghanistan in 2002 and told his widow that he was sorry. The military jury is now focusing on his possible punishment that theoretically could include life in prison. But in reality, according to military law, Khadr will

serve the shorter of the two sentencesone issued by the jury and one called for by his plea agreement with the US government.

According to media reports, the plea agreement with prosecutors calls for him to serve eight more years in prison, seven of them in Canada, unless the sevenmember military jury hands down a lesser sentence. With the plea deal, Khadr escapes a possible life prison term and the US government avoids a long and controversial trial of a detainee portrayed by his supporters as a child soldier.

A high-level UN official wrote to the tribunal Monday, urging it not punish the man, arguing he was too young at the time sergeant Speer was killed. Military Judge Colonel Patrick Parrish suspended the trial Friday to allow the two sides to prepare their closing arguments before the jury begins its deliberations. Canadian

Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s conservative government has steadfastly refused to seek Khadr’s repatriation despite criticism from opposition lawmakers.

Ottawa on Monday would not comment on Khadr’s guilty plea, describing it only as “a judicial procedure between Mr Khadr and the American government.”

Born in Toronto to a family with strong ties to Al-Qaeda, Khadr last month celebrated his 24th birthday in his cell. His Egyptian-born father, who Omar Khadr reportedly said was part of Osama bin Laden’s inner circle, was killed in a shootout in October 2003 with Pakistani forces. His sister Zaynab and brother Abdullah have been investigated for alleged ties to Al-Qaeda, and another brother, Abdurahman, has admitted on Canadian television that he and some of his siblings were trained by Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. —AFP

Bosnian war rapes still an open wound, 15 years later SARAJEVO: Enisa Salcinovic knows a lot about sports. From basketball to rugby, she easily names top players and teams because watching matches is the only thing that does not trigger painful memories.TV sports, six different daily pills and an exhausting job as a cleaning lady have become the 55-year-old widow’s mechanism for coping with her horrific 40-day ordeal of imprisonment, rape and torture during Bosnia’s 1992-95 war.

The nightmare began in late June 1992 when a former colleague of Salcinovic’s husband Nusret started tormenting her after Nusret was taken prisoner

by Serbs.

Salcinovic, whose husband was killed by Serbs in 1992, is one of at least 20,000 mostly Muslim Bosnian women whom government officials say suffered sexual abuse during the bloody inter-ethnic conflict.

These atrocities, along with similar torture in the 1990s in Rwanda and west Africa, prompted the UN Security Council to adopt a groundbreaking resolution 10 years ago on Sunday. The first to address the impact of war on women, Resolution 1325 calls on all parties to take special measures to protect women and girls from sexual violence and rape in conflict situations. In Bosnia, the spotlight was recently thrown back on the gruesome torture by the directing debut of Hollywood megastar Angelina Jolie, who in October started filming a love story set during the Bosnian war.

Reports that the storyline included rape not only opened old wounds but also divided victims’ groups-exposing unease that wartime suffering was being exploited for political influence.

In Salcinovic’s hometown of Foca, Serb soldiers and paramilitaries detained, raped and tortured hundreds of Muslim women for months during the war in what the media dubbed “rape camps”. One of the most notorious sites was the Partizan sports hall, right above the

VISEGRAD: A file photo shows UNHCR goodwill ambassador Angelina Jolie (left) and Brad Pitt (third left in foreground), visiting Bosnian Muslim refugee Sabina Karman (second left) and her four children in the village of Medjedja, 70 kilometers (43 miles) east of Sarajevo. —AFP police station. After assaulting her at home for a period, Salcinovic’ tormentor took her there.

“The soldiers were coming in, taking girls and women in and out, sometimes raping them there,” she said of the Partizan hall. Finally in August the women were bussed out, deported to neighboring Montenegro and later to Macedonia or Serbia. Salcinovic and her two daughters who were nine and eight-years-old at the time-spent the next 12 years in various refugee camps before coming to Sarajevo in 2003. She was among first to break a taboo about wartime rapes and speak out publicly.

Today, she heads the Association of Concentration Camp Torture Survivors (ACCTS) of Sarajevo area, helping other women to cope with the trauma and move on.

Her campaigning, along with that of other associations and non-governmental organiza-

tions, forced the government of Bosnia’s Muslim-Croat Federation-one of two semiindependent post-war entities along with the Serb-run Republika Srpska-to adopt a law in 2008 recognizing women’s status as war victims. This status ensure victims a a monthly financial aid of 260 euros (360 dollars) and easier access to health care. In the Republika Srpska, survivors have had a much harder time getting recognition, with only one commission to asses both veterans and civilian victims.

“One commission deals with potential perpetrators of the crimes and their victims,” Bosnian ombudswoman Jasminka Dzumhur said. A coalition of NGOs is working with the UN Population Fund (UNPFA) and Bosnia’s Ministry for Human Rights and Refugees to create an overall strategy to give women survivors equal status across the country. But everybody-survivors, NGOs, officials

and doctors-agree that this is only one small step in an extremely slow and painful recovery process for the women.

According to UNPFA, 80 percent of the survivors still experience psychological and physical symptoms. “Those women mostly suffer from a chronic post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as well as from depression,” said Dubravka Salcic Dizdarevic, a doctor at a Sarajevo hospital and a leading Bosnian psychotherapist. “They have nightmares, flashbacks and feel shame and guilt,” she said.

“Many suffered multiple trauma as their husbands were killed, they were raped and then forced to flee leaving all their possessions behind”. Despite her coping strategies, Salcinovic said there are still days when she cannot face getting up in the morning. “Sometimes, when I am alone at home, I find myself staring at television screen but not watching it,” she said. “I am in Foca in 1992.” —AFP

DAR ES SALAAM: Throngs of supporters yesterday turned out in Tanzania’s economic capital for President Jakaya Kikwete’s final campaign rally on the eve of general elections he is expected to win. Thousands of party followers dressed in green and yellow T-shirts waved miniature ruling party flags, chanted campaign songs and shouted slogans at a rally venue in the seaside capital.

The 60-year-old Kikwete, seeking a second and final term, received a rousing welcome at the venue, waving from a convoy of four-wheel drive vehicles as the enthusiastic crowd surged forward.

He has pledged to boost education, health and infrastructure in this east African country, where many live in poverty, depending mainly on subsistence agriculture.

However, his opponents have derided his pledges saying that under the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM Revolution Party) Tanzanians have remained poor since the 1961 independence. “Fifty years ago CCM founders spoke about (eliminating) poverty. Fifty years on CCM is still speaking about it. Do you want to speak about poverty in 50 years time?” challenged a leader of the opposition Civic United Front (CUF) during a rally on Thursday.

CUF presidential candidate Ibrahim Lipumba also criticized Kikwete’s pledges.

“In 2005 CCM made promises... during these campaigns Kikwete is not speaking about those unfulfilled pledges. He is making more promises,” Lipumba told a charged crowd at the same rally. Tanzania has nonetheless enjoyed political stability, unlike its neighbors Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo that have been plagued by unrest.

Local media have described the run up to this year’s elections as the most vibrant since the country re-introduced multi-party politics in 1992. Opposition parties also held final rallies in other regions of the vast country.

Kikwete is now facing five opposition candidates after a sixth withdrew in the last minute because his name was misspelled on the ballot, but none presents any critical challenge. The CUF and another opposition party, CHADEMA, have also accused Kikwete’s party of planning to rig Sunday’s polls, with one CHADEMA official claiming that at least four million fake ballots had been distributed across the country. But Kikwete said on Friday it would be difficult to steal votes because all parties would be represented at every polling stations to ensure transparency.

The incumbent remains well ahead of his opponents in opinion polls this month, one of which suggested he would win with 71 percent and another with 61 percent.

On Tanznaia’s semiautonomous Zanzibar island, where the race looks much closer, supporters of the two top presidential candidates also gathered for the last-day rallies. Veteran opposition leader Seif Sharif Hamad of the CUF and his ruling party rival Ali Mohamed Shein of the CCM are headed for a tight race for Zanzibar’s presidency. Supporters of both candidates had already began decorating streets with their party colors and flags in anticipation of victory. Zanzibar has repeatedly been rocked by political violence.

In July it adopted a powersharing constitution under which the poll winner and the runner up will form a unity government to avoid recurrence of unrest. The Indian Ocean archipelago, a famous tourist destination, consists of three islets of Unguja, Pemba and Mafia. The third falls under the mainland’s administration. —AFP

ABIDJAN: Ivory Coast’s President and candidate in the upcoming presidential election Laurent Gbagbo supporters pose during a rally at Felix Houphouet-Boigny stadium. —AFP

Ivory Coast readies for much delayed presidential election ABIDJAN: Ivory Coast prepared yesterday for a presidential election that has been postponed six times in five years and is seen as a chance to turn the page on political turmoil and vicious civil war. About 5.7 million people are eligible to vote in the election beginning today with three main candidates on the list-President Laurent Gbagbo, former prime minister Alassane Ouattara and ex-president Henri Konan Bedie. “Can I count on you?” the incumbent Gbagbo demanded of tens of thousands of his supporters at a rally in the main stadium in Abidjan on the final day of campaigning on Friday.

“We will rehabilitate politics and when we are finished, never again will an Ivorian take up arms,” he told the crowd that included people wearing his campaign colors of white and blue and was watched by a heavy police presence. Ouattara wrapped up his campaign travelling on the back of a truck for several hours in a “peace parade” in Abidjan, the country’s economic capital, as his supporters brandished placards reading “Goodbye Gbagbo”. The third candidate, Bedie, held his final rally in Grand Lahou, a coastal city west of Abidjan, where he urged his supporters to make the right choice. “I am a leader, I’ve led this country and I am here to lead it again,” Bedie said, according to a transcript of his speech given to AFP. Gbagbo, a strongman who was elected in 2000 and remains in power despite his mandate ending in 2005, declared Friday a national holiday to allow voters to collect ID and polling cards. “I came here (on Thursday) from my village to collect my things. I am ready to spend all day in the queue to collect my papers,” said 47-year-old Rachel Bogui. The country’s telecommunications authority announced meanwhile that text messaging would be suspended from Sunday to Tuesday for the vote, but it did not give an explanation.

Thousands of troops were being deployed across

the country to ensure security for the poll, although campaigning has largely gone peacefully. Once hailed as a model of west African stability, the country has drifted through years of political unrest, squandering gains made during the “Ivorian miracle” brought about by “father of the nation”, President Felix Houphouet-Boigny, ruler from independence from France in 1960 to his death in 1993.After a decade in power, 65-year-old Gbagbo is hoping to secure fresh legitimacy at home and abroad.

Bedie, who succeeded Houphouet-Boigny, is seeking a comeback after being overthrown in the country’s first military coup in 1999. And Ouattara, a 68-year-old former prime minister, has a score to settle after being excluded from the elections in 2000 amid questions over his Ivorian nationality. After the first military putsch in 1999, a foiled coup against Gbagbo in 2002 escalated into a full-scale civil war in which thousands were killed. The country is divided in two, with UN and French peacekeepers patrolling the buffer zone between the north, held by the former New Forces rebels, and Gbagbo’s governmentcontrolled south.

But despite occasional deadly outbreaks of violence, a March 2007 peace accord has held and a disarmament program has meant that areas of the north have gradually returned to government control. The vote is being closely watched by the international community. “The Ivorian government, the candidates, their supporters and all political actors have an obligation to ensure that the long-delayed presidential elections are held in a peaceful and transparent manner,” US President Barack Obama said in a statement this week. UN envoy Choi Young-jin said that all candidates should accept the results. “For my part, I will take all steps necessary to safeguard the verdict of the ballot box, in line with the mandate of certification that has been confided in me by the Security Council,” he said. —AFP

Niger set to vote on new constitution after coup DAKAR: Niger votes today on a new and progressive constitution - but critics question the vote’s significance in a country under the rule of a squabbling military council that took power by force earlier this year. The West African nation was rocked in February by a military coup that deposed President Mamadou Tandja after he stayed in office months past his legal mandate.

The uniformed men stormed the presidential palace with a hail of gunfire in broad daylight and kidnapped Tandja. They later said they took control of the nation of 15 million in order to restore democratic rule. In the months since, the junta has followed a familiar pattern set by previous juntas of infighting and coup allegations. Earlier this month, the ruling council removed and arrested four top leaders and charged them with plotting a coup.

Junta chief Gen Djibou Salou had promised to hold elections

before the end of the year, but the date of the proposed vote has since been pushed back several times. For some in the desert nation, the new constitution, which aims to reduce presidential power and increase transparency, represents a new contract between the people and their government. But others see it as part of a cycle of coups, countercoups and political maneuvering.

The 187-article document also includes what could be seen as direct swipes at Tandja, who remains under house arrest in Niamey. The original draft of the new constitution required presidential candidates to be between the ages of 35 and 70 and limited candidates to two presidential terms of five years. Tandja, 72, pushed through a constitution last year that removed term limits. The proposed constitution was recently amended to remove the age ceiling.

“The referendum speaks of a new accord between the govern-

ment and the governed,” said Souley Adji, a political professor at the University of Niamey. “It’s a new era of democracy. The people must know that there is a change and that this change comes from the people themselves.” Moussa Tchangari, head of a civil association in Niger, called the new constitution a positive step. But he said he’s not convinced it will end Niger’s political instability.

“This is not the last coup d’etat,” Tchangari said. “That’s for sure. There are other military men who are hungry for power.

When they have the opportunity to take power, they’ll grab it.”

William Miles, a professor of political science at Northeastern University who has lived in Niger and written extensively on the region, also noted that with so many regimes moving through office - each passing its own constitution -the new document is not as hallowed as its name suggests. —AP

Prosecutors doubt Vatican money-laundering pledges VATICAN CITY: The Vatican bank has taken steps to satisfy tough EU and international norms on money laundering and terror financing after being confronted with an unprecedented crackdown by Italian prosecutors, The Associated Press has learned. In recent weeks the bank has made written and in-person pledges to pass anti-money laundering legislation, report and investigate suspicious transactions, identify customers to law enforcement and create a special compliance authority.

Prosecutors, though, aren’t buying any of it. They claim that even as the bank was making such overtures, it broke the law by trying to transfer money without identifying the sender or recipient, or what the money was being used for. Italian prosecutors have placed bank chairman Ettore Gotti Tedeschi and his deputy Paolo Cipriani under investigation and financial police seized §23 million (US$30 million) from a Vatican bank account on Sept 21. The Vatican has reacted furiously, insisting that the omission of data was just a “misunderstanding” that could be easily clarified. It tried to get the seizure lifted, but the court refused.

Now the Vatican has finally given its commitments to some of the key institutions involved in the fight against money laundering, officials at the institutions told the AP. Vatican bank officials in recent weeks made a written commitment to the Financial Action Task Force - the Paris-based policymaking body that develops anti-money laundering and anti-terror financing legislation - to do whatever is necessary to come into compliance with its norms, a senior FATF official

familiar with the negotiations told The Associated Press on Friday. The FATF requires the Vatican to pass legislation making money-laundering a crime; to establish an entity to report suspicious transactions and then investigate them; and to pass legislation requiring that the bank identify its customers properly and make that information available to law enforcement agencies, the official said.

Separately, on Oct 15, Vatican bank officials met with European Commission officials and agreed that Pope Benedict XVI would act to bring into Vatican law EU directives on money laundering that are required of euro-zone countries, said Amadeu Altafaj i Tardio, spokesman for European Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs Olli Rehn. The bank, formally known as the Institute for Religious Works, also pledged to establish a compliance “authority” headed by a senior Vatican cardinal on Jan. 1 to implement the anti-money laundering legislation, he said. The authority will be the contact for all EU and international agencies working to fight money-laundering. Vatican bank officials also had two meetings starting in the spring of this year with officials from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development to learn how to get on the “white list,” of countries that share tax information to crack down on tax havens, said Jeffrey Owens, head of tax issues at the OECD. To join the OECD’s club, the Vatican must first make a formal commitment to transparency and exchange of financial information and then take part in peer review sessions. —AP

INTERNATIONAL

Sunday, October 31, 2010

9

Brazil’s Rousseff sails through final TV debate Rousseff regains momentum RIO DE J ANEIRO: Brazilian ruling party candidate Dilma Rousseff cruised through the final television debate w ith her presidential rival on Friday as another poll show ed her heading for a convincing w in in today’s runoff election. Opposition candidate J ose Serra had a last chance to w in over undecided voters on Brazil’s most-w atched channel, but he opted not to go on the attack in a debate that had no heated exchanges betw een the candidates. The debate on Globo television w as in a “tow n hall” format w ith the candidates discussing questions from undecided voters, leaving little room for Serra to corner the former chief of staff of outgoing President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

WASHINGTON: People gather for the Rally To Restore Sanity And/Or Fear on the National Mall yesterday. Comedians Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert were scheduled to hold the rally. — AFP

Amid bitter US campaign, Liberals plead for sanity WASHINGTON: Liberal US funnymen Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert held a mass rally in Washington yesterday billed as an antidote to the ugly political mood polarizing America in the run-up to mid-term elections.

The Rally to Restore Sanity and the March to Keep Fear Alive are expected to draw over 100,000 participants to the National Mall in Washington, just three days before Americans go to the polls at the end of a bitter election campaign.

Although the organizers insist it is non-political, many see the rally as a liberal response to the ultra-conservative Tea Party movement, which has held events across America to oppose what it views as growing government intrusion. Right-wing radio talk show host Glenn Beck appalled liberals in August when he hosted a rally “to restore honor” on the anniversary and at the site, on the Mall, of Martin Luther King’s famous “I have a dream” speech. At least 80,000 people-hundreds of thousands according to organizers-turned out to Beck’s rally to show their opposition to President Barack Obama and what they call his administration’s big government or “socialist” policies.

Two weeks later, Stewart and Colbert, considered two of the funniest men in America thanks to their primetime political satire shows on Comedy Central, announced twin rallies on the Mall which were later combined into one. The name “The Rally to Restore Sanity” is an unabashed dig at Beck’s event. The rally’s focus will be on “the ugliness of political debate: the Hitler comparisons, the head-stomping, the conspiracy theories, the assumption that your opponent is also your enemy and must always be assumed to be acting in bad faith,” James Poniewozik said in an article in Time Magazine.

He was referring to posters at Tea Party rallies depicting Obama as Adolf Hitler and a recent incident at a campaign event in Kentucky when a liberal activist was pushed to the ground and stepped on by a Tea Party supporter. Eileen Robinson wrote on the rally’s Facebook page that she will be carrying a sign on the Mall that reads: “I’m a pro-life Democrat but I’m pretty sure that doesn’t make me Hitler.” Barbara Benagh was flying in from Boston for the rally. “After months of depressing displays we can’t wait to see other sane people and feel better,” she said on the rally’s Facebook page.

The event has become “an assertion of left-wing values” not seen since January 2009, when some 1.5 million people overflowed the Mall for Obama’s inauguration, Anna Fifield wrote in London’s Financial Times. A quarter of a million people from around the United States, Canada and central America have said on the rally’s Facebook pages that they are coming to Washington for the three-hour event, which begins at noon (1600 GMT). Newspapers have tried to draw the organizers of the rally into a competition with the Tea Party on numbers, but a spokeswoman for Comedy Central refused to take the bait, telling AFP jokingly: “As for projected attendance numbers, we’re saying 400 million.”

Manuel Diaz flew in from Nicaragua for the rally.

Geneva Kantner said on Facebook Friday that she was catching a midnight flight from Seattle, on the west coast, to come to the rally. James Cuizon arrived from Hawaii Friday evening. Mike Carpick said the 30-floor hotel he was staying in was full, with almost everyone in town for the rally. Patty Dreyer, who flew in Friday evening from Minnesota, said her flight and hotel were both full of ralliers.—AFP

Obama slams ‘cocky’ Republicans CHARLOTTESVILLE: US President Barack Obama slammed “cocky” Republicans as he launched a last-ditch weekend campaign to stave off a humiliating defeat for his Democrats in midterm elections. Obama, who spent the day Friday dealing with a cargo plane terror scare, headlined an earsplitting evening rally in Virginia, on the eve of a four-state tour to shore up Democrats wobbling ahead of Tuesday’s congressional polls. Republicans are tipped to seize the House of Representatives and pare back the Democratic majority in the Senate in the election, which could roadblock Obama’s presidency two years after voters gave him a mandate for change.

But Obama beseeched Americans to confound the polls and accused his political foes of plotting to revive the policies that got America into its worst economic “mess” since the 1930s Great Depression. “They are feeling kind of cocky right now ... the Republican leader in the House said this is not a time to compromise,” Obama said, opening fresh hostilities with John Boehner, who is likely to be Speaker if Republicans win.

Obama also seized on a comment by Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell that his party’s

CHARLOTTESVILLE: President Barack Obama greets the crowd during a rally for Rep Tom Perriello, D-Va, Friday, Oct 29, 2010, at the Charlottesville Pavilion. — AP top priority in the new Congress would be to help the eventual Republican party presidential candidate in 2012. “The Republican leader of the Senate said that his main goal for the next two years, his top priority, is to beat me in the election,” Obama said. “He didn’t say ‘my top priority is to create jobs’ ... he is already thinking about the next election and this one is

not over yet.” “That’s what’s wrong with Washington ... that’s the kind of cynicism that we are fighting against.” Obama’s event amounted to a last-ditch rescue mission for Virginia congressman Tom Perriello who may lose his job on Tuesday after backing some of the president’s sweeping reforms on which the public has soured. —AFP

As she has throughout the campaign, Rousseff repeatedly stressed Brazil’s huge economic strides under Lula, the wildly popular former union boss who hand-picked her to succeed him. “The economy is growing, people are going up in the world, 28 million Brazilians have left poverty and I’ll bring the remaining 20 million out of poverty,” said Rousseff, the candidate of the left-leaning Workers’ Party.

Rousseff, a 62-year-old career bureaucrat, leads Serra by a comfortable double-digit margin and is on track to become the first woman to be elected Brazil’s president, opinion polls show. A Datafolha survey released on Friday showed her holding steady with a 10point lead. Rousseff had 50 percent of voter support compared to Serra’s 40 percent. The previous Datafolha poll on Tuesday showed Rousseff leading Serra by 49 percent to 38 percent.

Former Sao Paulo state Governor Serra has failed to convincingly win any of the debates so far as Rousseff has fended off his attacks on her lack of experience and alleged involvement in graft scandals.

The Globo debate has been a closely watched event in Brazilian presidential races since 1989, when a poor performance by Lula in his first run for the top job tipped the election in favor of Fernando Collor.

Serra used the debate to push his argument that Brazil should be doing better and is facing growing barriers to its growth, such as an expensive currency, a high tax burden and decrepit infrastructure. Barring a major corruption scandal, which seems unlikely so close to election day, or a huge collective opinion poll error, the former leftist militant Rousseff appears certain to win.

Commanding lead Rousseff would have a 12point lead, with 56 percent versus 44 percent for Serra, once blank and void ballots are excluded, as they are on election day, the new Datafolha poll showed. Voting is mandatory in Brazil, but some leave their ballots blank to show dissatisfaction with the candidates.

Rousseff has regained momentum after a drop in support several weeks ago caused by doubts about her religious beliefs and her alleged involvement in corruption scandals.

Such concerns probably deprived her of an outright victory in the election’s first round on Oct 3. She has since steered the discussion back to the eight years of strong economic growth under Lula. If she wins, Rousseff is expected to continue Lula’s mix of market-friendly policies and social programs while expanding the role of the state in some areas of the economy. Datafolha surveyed 4,205 people on Thursday for the poll, which had a margin of error of 2 percentage points. Five percent plan to submit blank votes or not vote for either candidate, while 4 percent were undecided. — Reuters

Campaign season of gaffes in US WASHINGTON: Lessons learned by US political candidates this year: Know thy Constitution.

Don’t tell Hispanics they look Asian. Pay special attention to what you say when you are in front of cameras. Which you almost always are. Expect your chitchat to go viral. And, really, try your best to stay out of court. Now relax. Be yourself - if you dare.

This is the year of the neophyte in American politics. Anti-incumbent sentiment in general and the ultraconservative tea party movement in particular have brought fresh faces forward, many naive about the brutalities of a modern campaign.

The result: a rash of impolitic politics - gaffes, raw rhetoric, unsettling theories that are recycled mercilessly by opponents’ campaign ads as well as on cable TV and in blogs.

In Delaware, Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell got tangled in the US Constitution’s First Amendment, appearing unaware it separates religion and government. The constitution’s Second Amendment, which guarantees the right to bear arms, caused grief for fellow Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle in Nevada. Angle entertained the notion of “Second Amendment

remedies” - that would be a call to arms - if government isn’t brought to heel. Frank Caprio, Democratic candidate for Rhode Island governor, did not, as has been widely reported, tell President Barack Obama to shove it after the president declined to endorse him. He told Obama to “really shove it.”

It’s been messy watching outsiders trying to claw their way in. Candidates rewarded in the primaries for speaking their minds and upending convention have sought safe harbor from their earlier selves. Angle has backed away from calling unemployment insurance “spoilage” and the fund for BP oil spill victims “a slush fund.” She denies she ever favored an end to the Social Security federal pension program or veterans’ benefits, although she previously said she did.

Her aside to Hispanic high school students that “some of you look a little more Asian to me” showed why political consultants cringe at spontaneous remarks and why candidates stop making them.

Similarly, Democratic Rep Bobby Bright, a first-term congressman from Alabama who has spent much of the campaign dissociating himself

from Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, might have regretted saying Pelosi “may get sick and die” before he has to vote on her speakership again. California Republican Senate candidate Carly Fiorina regretted “the whole situation” when a live mike caught her calling opponent Barbara Boxer’s hairdo “so yesterday.” The goof was almost quaint, grounded in a technology that’s been around long enough to trip up Ronald Reagan and countered by Boxer with humor instead of the modern assault weapon, an attack ad. (Reagan joked about bombing Russia in a 1984 sound check into a live mike.)

To be sure, candidates of all backgrounds have stepped into problems of their own making during the long campaign. Rich candidates who live in fancy houses have thrown stones at opponents who live in fancy houses. Senate candidates Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, and Mark Kirk, Republican of Illinois, exaggerated their military records. The experienced Harry Reid, Senate majority leader and Angle’s Nevada opponent, cast himself as a savior of epic proportions, remarking that “but for me, we’d be in a worldwide depression.” —AP

RIO DE JANEIRO: Jose Serra, presidential candidate of the Brazilian Social Democracy Party, PSDB (left) greets Workers Party presidential candidate Dilma Rousseff at the start of a live televised presidential candidate debate, Friday Oct 29, 2010. — AP

10

INTERNATIONAL

Sunday, October 31, 2010

Maldives apologizes to couple over ‘hate’ wedding ceremony COLOMBO: The Maldivian government has apologised to a European couple abused as “swine” and “infidels” during what was supposed to be a romantic renewal of wedding vows in the Indian Ocean archipelago. The Maldivian ambassador in Geneva conveyed to the couple the government’s “profound and heartfelt apologies,” the government said yesterday.

“Ambassador Iruthisham Adam from the Maldives embassy in Geneva personally telephoned the couple, who asked to remain anonymous, on Friday to extend the government’s profound and heartfelt apologies,” a statement said. A video of the ceremony said to have taken place on October 11, during which the hapless couple were taunted and subjected to insulting and

religious-tinged abuse, was posted on YouTube two weeks later.

The video has sparked fears for the country’s tourism-dependent economy. The Vilu Reef hotel initially identified the victims as Swiss but a senior tourism source in the Maldives told AFP they were French. Maldivian authorities declined to confirm their nationality. However, Maldivian Foreign Minister Ahmed Shaheed said soon after the video was posted on YouTube that he was expressing his “intense regret” to European authorities. The Foreign Ministry will also be writing to its counterparts in Europe “to offer our intense regret”, Shaheed said in a statement. “I informed the couple the entire

country is deeply shocked and saddened by what has happened,” the president’s office quoted the Maldivian ambassador in Geneva as saying.

“The Maldives is renowned for its warm hospitality and this incident has brought great shame upon our tourism industry and our country.” Maldivian President Mohamed Nasheed also said he was sorry over the incident and called for new measures to regulate wedding ceremonies in the upmarket tourist destination. Maldivian police have arrested the hotel employee who conducted the ceremony and used profanities throughout the renewal of wedding vows by the couple, who paid 1,300 dollars for the event.

“We have started investigations and are treating

this as a very serious matter,” police spokesman Ahmed Shiyam told AFP by telephone from the capital island Male. He said the two men were taken before a magistrate who ordered them detained for five days. Both are being held at a Male police station, he added. British comic Russell Brand and US pop star Katy Perry are the latest celebrities to head to the Indian Ocean nation for a honeymoon after tying the knot in India last weekend. “All tourist hotels without exception will be required to follow the new guidelines which will be issued shortly,” the president’s office said. The Vilu Reef hotel said it was “unforgivable” that a staff member had read out the sexual and religious slurs in the Dhivehi language,

and apologized for his conduct.

“Your marriage is not a valid one. You are not the kind of people who can have a valid marriage. One of you is an infidel. The other, too, is an infidel and, we have reason to believe, an atheist.” The wife, wearing a white dress and carrying a bouquet, and her husband smile shyly through the ceremony. In front of a table decorated with incense sticks, the English-speaking couple bow their heads in prayer through the torrent of accusations, curses and swearing. The Islamic republic of the Maldives, a nation of palm-fringed islands scattered in the Indian Ocean, is one of the world’s most exclusive honeymoon destinations and its economy relies heavily on tourism. — AFP

2 Koreas hold reunions for war-split families Foreign media not allowed to cover historic event SEOUL: Hundreds of Korean family members separated for more than half a century by the Korean War embraced each other in tearful reunions yesterday, a day after troops exchanged gunfire in the Demilitarized Zone dividing the countries. “I thought you w ere dead. Mother missed you so much,” 61-year-old South Korean Lee Mingw an told his 90-year-old North Korean father, Ri J ong Ryol, according to pool

reports by local reporters. “I did not forget (you) every single day for the past 60 years,” Ri replied to his son, w ho w as 100 days old w hen they w ere separated during the w ar. Foreign media w ere not allow ed to cover the reunions. Lee w as among 436 South Koreans w ho traveled by bus to North Korea’s Diamond Mountain resort yesterday to take part in the three-day reunions w ith about 100 North Korean relatives.

SEOUL: South Korean Kim Rye-jung, 96 (left) hugs her North Korean daughter Woo Jung Hye during the Separated Family Reunion Meeting at Diamond Mountain yesterday. — AP

Clinton urges calm after China-Japan row at meet HANOI: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton yesterday joined an Asia-Pacific summit where she weighed into the issue of maritime disputes, which have triggered a serious rift between China and Japan. Hopes that Asia’s big powers would begin to heal their twomonth feud, centered on resourcerich East China Sea islands, dominated the talks in Vietnam’s capital where the row erupted again on Friday. On a day of conflicting messages Japan initially said their foreign ministers had made a promising start with an agreement to improve ties, but China then angrily accused its rival of making false statements.

Hopes for a formal meeting between Japan’s Prime Minister Naoto Kan and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao evaporated, but the pair held brief discussions on the East Asia Summit sidelines yesterday, Japan said. “They will continue making efforts on promoting a strategic, mutually beneficial relationship,” Japan’s deputy chief cabinet secretary Tetsuro Fukuyama told reporters. “They also said that they will have an opportunity to talk longer in future,” he said. “They shared an understanding that it was disappointing the bilateral summit did not take place this time.”

Japan and China have been feuding since the September 8 arrest of a Chinese trawler captain after a collision with Japanese coastguard vessels near the disputed East China Sea island chain. China had on Friday also hit out at Clinton’s remarks this week that the islands, known as the Diaoyus in China and Senkakus in Japan, fall within the scope of the US-Japan security alliance. “The Chinese government and people will never accept any word or deed that includes the Diaoyu Islands within the scope of the US-Japan Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said.

However, Clinton told the summit yesterday that maritime rows should be settled by international law, in defiance of China’s call to handle them directly with its neighbors’. “The United States has a

national interest in the freedom of navigation and unimpeded lawful commerce,” she said, repeating a US stand in the presence of China’s premier Wen. “And when disputes arise over maritime territory, we are committed to resolving them peacefully based on customary international law.” But she also sounded a softer note, saying she was encouraged by China’s steps to enter into discussions with the Southeast Asian bloc about a legally enforceable code of conduct on South China Sea disputes where some have claims.

Clinton also said she had “assurances” from her Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi on China’s policy toward exports of rare earth minerals, which Beijing has been accused of restricting. The East Asia Summit is a forum for dialogue on strategic, political and economic issues involving the 10-member Southeast Asian bloc as well as Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand. The meeting was also expected to tackle the issue of “currency wars” and the

resulting heavy capital inflows that risk destabilizing emerging Asian economies.

The Asian Development Bank chief warned in Hanoi on yesterday that emerging economies must carefully manage the inflow of hot money, and avoid remedies that could create further problems.

“Authorities are watching asset prices and exchange rates carefully, with several beginning to use well-targeted capital controls to limit speculation,” said Haruhiko Kuroda. “Care must be taken, however, not to create distortions.”

The United States and Russia were to be formally invited to join the 16 members of the East Asia Summit at its annual gathering, in what analysts say is a blow to Chinese attempts to diminish US influence in the region. US membership is seen as part of its strategic return to Southeast Asia to balance China’s growing influence in the region, where Beijing’s more aggressive stance in recent times has unnerved its smaller neighbors. — AFP

HANOI: US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton (left) talks with Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard on the sidelines of the 17th summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Hanoi yesterday. — AFP

in the news Typhoon Chaba churns tow ards eastern J apan TOKYO: A typhoon churned towards eastern Japan yesterday, the country’s meteorological agency said, issuing an alert over strong winds and high waves in the region. Typhoon Chaba, which means hibiscus in Thai, was some 250 kilometers (155 miles) southwest of Tokyo, packing winds of up to 162 kilometers per hour near its centre, said the agency. It was moving northeast off Japan’s Pacific coast at a speed of 45 kilometers per hour, on course to affect the Tokyo region late yesterday, the agency said.

Airline companies have cancelled at least 34 domestic and 16 international flights because of strong winds, public broadcaster NHK reported. The agency said the typhoon may make landfall in eastern Japan, warning residents in the region “to be on alert over strong winds, high waves, thunderstorms and floods on low-lying land.” There were no immediate reports of damage or casualties because of the typhoon. On Friday, more than 250 residents were evacuated to public halls and schools, while 19 flights were cancelled on the Amami islands, 1,300 kilometers southwest of Tokyo, as the typhoon bore down on the far-southern islands.

Thailand arrests 61 Lankan migrants BANGKOK: Thai authorities have arrested 61 Tamil migrants from Sri Lanka, police said yesterday, in the second such crackdown in recent weeks. After a tip-off, 114 people were rounded up in the southern province of Songkhla on Thursday, but some were freed because they were able to present valid travel documents.

“The 61 were arrested and charged for overstaying their visas, illegal entry or not going through proper channels,” said Colonel Phutthipong Musikkul, commander of Songkhla immigration police. “It’s likely that these people wanted to go to a third country,” Phutthipong said, without elaborating. Earlier this month Thai authorities said they were holding for possible deportation 128 Tamil migrants arrested in Bangkok, including some who had registered with the United Nations as asylum seekers. Some reports suggested they hoped to travel to Canada, whose government welcomed news of their arrest. Almost 500 Tamil refugees arrived in Canada in August aboard a cargo ship which reportedly spent 90 days traveling from Thailand before police boarded it in Canadian waters and piloted it ashore in western Canada. Sri Lanka’s crackdown on the Tamil Tigers, which ended a lengthy civil war last year, has resulted in a flood of people seeking asylum in other countries.

The event is the first in a two-part series of reunions. On Wednesday, about 200 North Koreans are to begin similar three-day reunions with their South Korean relatives at the same resort. Millions of Korean families were separated after the Korean peninsula’s division in 1945 and the 1950-53 Korean War. The reunions are emotional for Koreans, as most participants are elderly and are eager to see loved ones before they die.

More than 20,800 family members have had brief reunions in face-to-face meetings or by video since a landmark inter-Korean summit in 2000. There are no mail, telephone or e-mail exchanges between ordinary citizens across the heavily fortified border. The North Koreans told their South Korean relatives that they have led a “worthwhile life,” saying all North Koreans “have formed a big harmonious family under the care of leader Kim Jong Il,” North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency reported.

North Korea proposed the reunions - the first in more than a year - in an apparent conciliatory move after tensions flared over the sinking of a South Korean warship. An international investigation concluded that a North Korean torpedo sank the ship, killing 46 South Korean sailors. North Korea, however, denies involvement.

North Korea has also freed the crew of a South Korean fishing boat seized in August. In an apparent response to its overtures, South Korea sent 5,000 tons of rice to North Korea this past week as part of 10 billion won ($8.5 million) in pledged flood aid.

However, in an abrupt reversal Friday of the apparent thaw in tensions, North Korea fired two rounds at a South Korean guard post in the Demilitarized Zone and South Korean troops immediately fired back. No injuries were reported, and the reason for the attack was unclear. The shooting came just hours after North Korea threatened to retaliate for South Korea’s refusal last week to hold military talks.

The US-led UN Command which oversees the armistice that ended the Korean War - is considering launching an investigation of the incident, a command official said on condition of anonymity because a final decision had not been made. The exchange highlighted the security challenges South Korea faces as it prepares to host next month’s Group of 20 summit in Seoul, just 30 miles (50 kilometers) from the border.

US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton asked China on yesterday to use its influence with North Korea to keep it from taking any provocative actions ahead of the summit. Clinton made the request to Chinese Foreign Minster Yang Jiechi on the sidelines of a summit of East Asian leaders in Vietnam.

Communist North Korea has a track record of provocations against South Korea at times of internal change, external pressure or when world attention is focused on Seoul. In 1987, a year before Seoul hosted the Summer Olympics, North Korean agents planted a bomb on a South Korean plane, killing all 115 people on board. In 2002, when South Korea was jointly hosting soccer’s World Cup along with Japan, a North Korean naval boat sank a South Korean patrol vessel near their disputed western sea border. — AP

SIKAKAP: A young girl who survived Monday’s tsunami sits at a hospital in Mentawai Islands. — AP

Storms cripple tsunami aid to Indonesia islands MENTAWAI ISLANDS: A group of private aid workers battled fierce swells and driving rain that kept most craft on shore, managing to deliver food and other supplies to desperate survivors on the islands hardest hit by a tsunami that killed at least 413 people. Government agencies pulled back boats and helicopters Friday that had been ferrying aid to the most distant corners of the Mentawai islands and resorted to airdropping boxes of aid from planes. On a borrowed 75-foot (24-meter) cruiser, aid workers faced rough seas and sheets of rain - plus miserable seasickness - to bring noodles, sardines and sleeping mats to villages that have not received any help since Monday’s earthquake. In one village, most people were still huddling in a church in the hills, too afraid to come down even to get the aid.

Dozens of injured survivors of the tsunami, meanwhile, languished at an overwhelmed hospital. They lay on mats or the bare floor as rainwater dripped onto them from holes in the ceiling and intravenous tubes hung from plastic ropes strung from the rafters. “We need doctors, specialists,” nurse Anputra said at the tiny hospital in Pagai Utara - one of the four main islands in the Mentawai chain slammed by tsunami, which was triggered by a 7.7-magnitude earthquake.

Inside the tiny hospital, a man cradled his screaming son as staff tended to the child’s broken arm. The 35-year-old described how his two other young children were ripped from his embrace by the towering wave and sucked out to sea.

Health workers also cared for a newly orphaned 2-month-old boy found in a storm drain.

The infant, with cuts on his face, blinked sleepily in a crib. Hospital workers named him Imanual Tegar. Tegar means “tough” in Indonesian. The toll from the earthquake and the tsunami it spawned rose to 413 on Saturday as officials found more bodies, and 163 people were still missing and feared swept out to sea, said Suryadi, a Crisis Center official.

He said 23,000 survivors on the islands are homeless. Many were sorely in need of help, which the government was struggling to deliver.

While tons of aid has reached the islands’ main towns, many farther-flung villages are accessible only by foot or sea because roads are too old or damaged for large trucks. Storms, however, have made the waters too dangerous for small boats, West Sumatra Gov Irwan Prayitno told reporters. Even when seas calm, another official said the government hasn’t been able to gather enough boats to address the scale of the disaster, making do with just a few dozen wooden boats with outboard motors. Despite the challenges, a group of 50 private aid workers did set out by sea in a 75-foot (24-meter) vessel Friday for villages along the southern coast of South Pagai. Soon after the wave-breaking boat set out, it became apparent why other vessels had been kept back. Nearly all the 50 relief workers on board were ill from the pounding waves and the deck had to be

hosed off at one point to clear vomit.

Still, the mission was able to bring the first help to the village of Limu, where dozens of houses were destroyed, some swept off their foundations, and dead chickens littered the shoreline.

Villagers eagerly grabbed the boxes of sardines and noodles and the sleeping mats the workers delivered, though many were too terrified to come down to the beach. There were no deaths in Limu, but one person was injured.

Government teams also delivered food mostly instant noodles - by dropping it out of Hercules planes. Local television footage showed survivors running to pick up the boxes. Four days after the tsunami crashed into the Mentawai islands off Sumatra, details of survivors’ misery and new accounts of the terrifying moments when the wave struck were still trickling out from the area, which was cut off by rough seas for nearly two days after the tsunami. A group of surfers told of watching in horror as a roaring wall of water crossed a lagoon and slammed into their three-story thatch-roofed resort.

The power of the wave shook the building so hard they feared it would collapse.

All 27 people at the resort survived - five of them by clinging to trees.

“It was noise and chaos. You can hear the water coming, coming, coming,” Chilean surfer and videographer Sebastian Carvallo said. “And then before the second wave hit the building, everyone was, like, screaming and when the wave hit the building, you could only hear people praying.” Carvallo said at least two of the waves were at least 16 feet (five meters) high. Early reports said there was only one wave 10 feet (three meters) high, but several witnesses have since described one or several taller than that. Hundreds of miles (kilometers) from the tsunami zone, meanwhile, a volcano on the island of Java that killed 35 people this week erupted five more times Friday, sending searing clouds of ash cascading down its slopes. No more casualties were reported as the number of refugees swelled to 47,000.

The number of dead from the two disasters, which struck within 24 hours of each other, has now reached 443.

Officials said two more people died of burns from Tuesday’s initial blast, bringing the volcano’s death toll to 35. At least 47,000 people who live around Mount Merapi are staying in government camps or with friends and relatives, the National Disaster Management Agency said. The volcano’s activity appeared to be easing pressure behind a lava dome that has formed in the crater, said Safari Dwiyono, a scientist who has been monitoring Merapi for 15 years. “If the energy continues to release little by little like this, it reduces the chances of having a bigger, powerful eruption,” he said. Residents from Kinahrejo, Ngrangkah, and Kaliadem - villages that were devastated in Tuesday’s blast - crammed into refugee camps. Officials brought cows, buffalo and goats down the mountain so that villagers wouldn’t try to go home to check on their livestock. — AP

11

INTERNATIONAL

Sunday, October 31, 2010

Afghan president condemns US-Russia drugs operation KABUL: Afghan President Hamid Karzai reacted with fury yesterday to the first joint US-Russian anti-drugs operation in the war-torn country, saying it happened without permission and violated Afghan sovereignty. “No organization or institution has the right to carry out such military operations inside the territory of our country without permission and agreement from the Islamic Government of Afghanistan,” a statement from his office said.

“Afghanistan condemns this act by NATO and announces that such unilateral operations are a clear violation of Afghan sovereignty as well as international law, and any repetition will be met by the required reaction from our side.”

The statement said Karzai had ordered the ministries of defense and interior to investigate the operation, which took place late Thursday in the eastern province of Nangahar, and to report back to

Afghanistan says US-Russia raid violated sovereignty him by Saturday night. A Russian official however said Karzai was “misinformed” in saying the operation went ahead without permission from Afghan authorities. The representative in Kabul of the Russian anti-drugs service, Alexey Milovanov, told AFP it was an Afghan operation. “It was an operation conducted by the Afghan ministry of interior, not by us,” said Milovanov.

“We have simply acted as advisers, according to an agreement between our two countries permitting the presence of Russian advisers during a drug raid.” He said that four Russian anti-drug officials were present at the operation. Russian media on Friday quoted the head of Russia’s anti-drugs ser-

vice, Viktor Ivanov, as saying that Afghan officials had been involved in the raid. Russia frequently criticizes what it describes as the inadequate anti-drug policies of United States and NATO forces in Afghanistan, which it says lead to an increased flow of drugs into Russia through Central Asia.

Ivanov travelled to Washington last week to discuss co-operation in fighting drug trafficking, and accused the United States of failing to destroy heroin laboratories and crack down on poppy-growing landowners. Russian drug control authorities have estimated that 30,000 Russians died in 2009 from using Afghan heroin, and that a million have died in the past decade. NATO chief Anders Fogh

16 dead as Indian ferry sinks KOLKATA: Rescuers were battling to find survivors yesterday after an overcrowded ferry capsized and sank in a river in eastern India, leaving at least 16 people dead and 70 others missing, police said. Indian coastguard and navy personnel were diving into the cold waters to search for victims of the ferry accident, which took place as the overcrowded vessel faced strong waves last morning, police said. “Fishing boats have fished out 16 bodies from the waters of the turbulent river,” senior West Bengal state police officer Surojit Karpurokayastha told AFP. “Seventy people are still missing,” the police officer added. The vessel, which was carrying around 150 people, capsized in a river in the Sundarbans mangrove forest, 120 kilometers (75 miles) south of Kolkata, capital of the Indian state of West Bengal, police said. The boat had the capacity to carry just 60 passengers, officials said, but was badly overloaded. The victims, who were mainly farmers and fishermen, were returning from a huge Muslim religious function when the accident occurred.

The ferry was one of five vessels making their way to

Kakdwip from Khejuri in impoverished West Bengal state when the ship sank in the Muriganga River off Ghoramara Island.

“The boat was badly overcrowded and the vessel sank after a giant wave slapped the side of the vessel,” West Bengal civil defence minister Srikumar Mukherjee told AFP. Fishermen plucked over 60 survivors from the waters while four managed to swim to safety, police said.

Many were recovering in hospital. “The river’s strong current is hampering the search operation,” Mukherjee said. Anxious relatives were keeping a vigil for news of their loved ones.

Darkness was also making it harder to find the victims but Mukherjee promised that the search would continue into the night. Rescuers erected floodlights on the river’s banks to make the search easier, but authorities feared that many of the victims had been swept away by the current. Boat accidents are common in the South Asian subcontinent due to lax safety standards and overloading. A similar ferry accident occurred in the same river in September, leaving two dozen people dead. — AFP

Afghanistan police training improves, delivers results KABUL: On a dusty shooting range still dotted with rusting husks of Soviet tanks, Afghanistan police recruits fire off three machine-gun rounds, stop, advance, and then fire at the targets again-or at least most of them do. For Italian police trainer Lieutenant Colonel Massimo Deiana, even that equals progress for Afghan forces who will eventually take the lead from foreign troops in the fight against insurgents as Western leaders mull timelines for pulling their troops out. “Before they would line up just firing 50, 100 rounds and finish,” Deiana said. “Now we are starting to see results.”

Building up Afghanistan’s police and army is being watched keenly in Washington and Brussels as Western forces look to hand over security to Afghan troops, a transition US President Barack Obama says will start from July 2011, when he plans to start pulling out some US troops if Afghan forces are ready. President Hamid Karzai wants Afghan forces to take full security responsibility from 2014, a proposal NATO believes could be endorsed at its Lisbon summit next month-depending on security on the ground and on Afghan readiness.

NATO trainers say they are making slow progress as they rebuild military institutions, often almost from scratch, and try to forge a more professional officer class, all while fighting a growing insurgency. Recruits at the national police training centre outside Kabul show advances in basic training but also illustrate the realities NATO instructors face bringing them up to par. Italian carabinieri took over training at the base a year ago. They give recruits at least six weeks of training in basic police work and elementary combat courses, with more time for officers and the civil order police.

On a recent training session, recruits ran through riot shield techniques and baton strikes, as well as role-playing a roadside bomb blast. Inside a classroom, two Italians instructed Afghan officers on to how to lead a patrol in an urban area. Six weeks is too short, but better than nothing, trainers say. For many, though, policing starts with a penlearning to read and write. “We are at the very beginning, we have been here one year, and we’ve made progress,” said Italian General Carmelo Burgio. “We started at zero, no literacy, no NCO training, no shooting training. Now they can face the situation better than before.” Long seen by

WASHINGTON: Army Sgt Raymond Baker, of Clarksville, watches as his 11-month-old daughter Mia holds on to his Purple Heart which he just received during a ceremony at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Baker was injured while conducting an Air Assault Mission when his unit was ambushed near Konar Province, Afghanistan. — AP Afghans as inept and corrupt, the national police lagged behind training of the Afghanistan National Army, which was the focus of foreign instruction efforts after U.S.-backed Afghan forces toppled the Taleban in late 2001. NATO’s plan calls for Afghan armed forces to be built up to 300,000 soldiers and police by November next year — 134,000 of those police. That means quantity for now often takes priority over quality, trainers say. —Reuters

Nepal’s former king hits comeback trail

KATHMANDU: In this photograph, former Nepalese King Gyanendra Shah performs a ritual during a worshiping ceremony of the Hindu goddess Banglamukhi at a temple. — AFP

KATHMANDU: Legend has it that when Nepal’s first king invaded what was to become the capital, Kathmandu, he did so during the autumn festival period, confident its inhabitants would be caught unprepared. In recent weeks, some Nepalese have been wondering whether his descendant deposed king Gyanendra Shahmight not have the same sort of idea. Gyanendra stepped down from the throne in June 2008 when the country’s parliament voted to abolish Nepal’s 240-year-old Hindu monarchy, transforming the country into a secular republic. In the two years that followed his removal from the throne Gyanendra kept a low profile, rarely speaking to the media and confining himself to his hunting lodge on the outskirts of Kathmandu. But in recent weeks the erstwhile monarch and his son, former crown prince Paras Shah, have appeared at a series of engagements, raising speculation that the family may be eyeing a return to public life. During this month’s Dashain festival, the most important of the year in majorityHindu Nepal, Gyanendra visited

more than 10 temples across the country in just two days.

The 63-year-old former king, traditionally revered as an incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu, was greeted wherever he went with chants of “long live our king” and “our king, our country, dearer than our soul”. Most observers agree that a return to power is unlikely-by the time Gyanendra left the throne, the monarchy was highly unpopular in Nepal, where millions live below the poverty line. He acceded to power in 2001 after a palace massacre in which most of the royal family died at the hands of the former crown prince, who then turned his gun on himself.

Gyanendra became deeply disliked when he seized direct control of the nation in 2005, claiming mainstream parties had failed to tackle a Maoist insurgency and were corrupt. But analysts say the current political crisis-Nepal has been without a fully functioning government since the prime minister stepped down in June-may be fuelling nostalgia for the relative stability of the monarchy. —AFP

Rasmussen is due to visit Russia next week for talks on deepening Russian cooperation on Afghanistan, his spokesman said. Rasmussen plans to meet President Dmitry Medvedev on November 5 to see if the two sides can “move forward” on a NATO request for Moscow to provide around 20 helicopters to Afghan forces, said spokesman James Appathurai.

Russia already assists in the training of counternarcotics officials outside Moscow to combat the Afghan heroin trade. “There will be work to see if we can enhance our cooperation in training counternarcotics officials,” Appathurai added. Afghanistan produces about 90 percent of the world’s opium in

an industry estimated to be worth almost three billion dollars a year, which helps fund the Taleban-led insurgency. Afghanistan produced an estimated 3,600 tons of opium this year, almost 50 percent of the 2009 output, the UN said in a recent report, but added that the value of the opium rose by 38 percent at the farm gate.

A report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime put the value of opium output at five percent of Afghanistan’s gross domestic product (GDP) this year, and said this was more than six times the value of the country’s wheat crop. The Taleban, who have been waging war for almost nine years, are believed to get much of their funding from Afghanistan’s drug production. Their presence in parts of the south-particularly the central Helmand valley where much of Afghanistan’s poppy is grown-is directly linked to cultivation and distribution of opium and heroin. — AFP

80 Taleban dead in failed attack on NATO outpost Insurgents launch attack using rocket-propelled grenades KHOST: An Afghan official said yesterday that 80 Taleban insurgents w ere killed during a failed attack on a NATO combat outpost near the border w ith Pakistan. “Fresh information that w e received from intelligence sources show s that 80 Taleban have been killed. The bodies of the militants w ere left A statement from NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said the insurgents launched the attack at 1.30 am (2200 GMT Friday) “from all directions” using rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and small arms fire. Five ISAF soldiers were injured, it said, adding that they kept fighting. “The coalition forces called for air weapons team and close-air support during the engagement. A coalition aircraft engaged an insurgent firing position with three precisionguided munitions,” it said.

“The air weapons team also engaged a large number of insurgents near the outpost,” it said, adding: “Initial operational reporting indicates more than 30 insurgents were killed in the failed attack on the outpost.” The proximity of the combat post to the border hints at the possibility the insurgents had crossed from Pakistan, where the Taleban’s leadership council is believed to be based. The insurgency in Afghanistan is now in its 10th year since the Taleban’s regime was overthrown in the US-led invasion in late 2001.

Remote border regions have proved particularly volatile in recent years. In October last year, eight US soldiers were killed and 22 wounded after their tiny combat outposts in Nuristan province, also bordering Pakistan, were attacked by an estimated 300 insurgents.

The militants swept down a hillside from a mosque and a village and fought for hours before being repelled by airstrikes, in one of the most dramatic incidents of the war.

US forces later withdrew from the region, and their bases were quickly taken over by the Taleban. The United States and NATO have more than 150,000 troops in Afghanistan fighting the war, which is concentrated in the south and east of the country, with the Taleban believed to be reinforcing with fighters from Pakistan.

The fight has intensified as an extra 30,000 troops from the United State and a further 10,000 from NATO have deployed, mainly to southern Helmand and Kandahar provinces, in a key push against the Taleban in their heartland.

NATO said yesterday that two of its soldiers died in separate attacks in the south-one was killed in an insurgent attack on Friday, the other in a similar incident yesterday. The nationalities of the soldiers were not revealed, according to policy. An AFP tally based on that kept by icasualties.org puts the total number of foreign soldiers to die in the war this year at 609, compared to 521 for 2009. — AFP

on the battlefield,” said Mukhlis Afghan, spokesman for the governor of eastern Paktika province. NATO said earlier that 30 Taleban had been killed as international troops repelled an attack on the outpost in Barmal district, w hich sits on the border of Pakistan’s law less North Waziristan tribal area.

HEART: An Afghan girl, affected by Cutaneous leishmaniasis, withers with pain as she is injected by a doctor at a free specialized clinic for Leishmaniasis supported by World Health Organization (WHO) at the border town of Islam Qala yesterday. An outbreak of the tropical disease caused by sand fly bites that leaves disfiguring skin sores has hit Afghanistan, health officials said. The disease threatens 13 million people in Afghanistan, the World Health Organization said, and many impoverished Afghan victims can’t afford the medication to treat it. — AP

The First Lady of Indian photojournalism reminisces NEW DELHI: The epic, emotional intensity of India’s independence is given a candid, intimate twist in a retrospective in New Delhi of the work of the country’s first woman photojournalist. Homai Vyarawalla’s unguarded and even tender pictures of independence icons like Mahatma Gandhi, Sardar Patel and, above all, India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, reflect a level of media access unthinkable in the security-obsessed modern era. For Vyarawalla, now 96, the period she documented surrounding India’s independence in 1947 was one of great personal excitement and hope as the country broke free of British rule and rallied around the Nehruvian ideal of “unity in diversity.”

By the 1970s, however, the sense of optimism had dwindled in the face of rampant corruption and factionalism and Vyarawalla hung up her Rolleiflex after three decades of pioneering work. “Homai shared the hope of the leaders of that era,” said Sabeena Gadihoke, curator of the exhibition at the National Museum of Modern Art. “But she became disillusioned with politics because of the corruption and the problems that quickly emerged after independence,” Gadihoke told AFP. Vyarawalla was born to a Parsi family in the western state of Gujarat in 1913.

She started experimenting with photography when she was 16, encouraged by her friend and husband-to-be, Maneckshaw, who used to sell his own photos to the press.

The first photographs she sold were published under her husband’s name, but Vyarawalla insists that her gender was never a major barrier to earning a living in what was then an almost totally male-dominated profession. “In those days, there was no bias against women,” she wrote in an essay published in Open magazine just weeks before the opening of the retrospective. “Nobody thought about gender and what was a proper occupation for a woman. If we wanted to fight a war, we could.

“So, my decision to take up photography was not met with resistance in any circle,” she said. Her photographs were first published in magazines like the Bombay Chronicle and the Illustrated Weekly of India, and focused on daily life in Bombay (now Mumbai) where she had graduated from the JJ School of Arts. “Photography paid better than my painting at the time,” she said. In 1942, she moved with her husband to New Delhi to work for the Far Eastern Bureau of British Information Services, and it was there, as a witness to the final tumultuous years of British colonial rule, that she began the work that would make her name.

The photos exhibited in Delhi are a striking mix of the general and the particular, from a sweeping shot of India’s first Republic Day in 1950 to a close-up of a smiling, handsome Nehru lighting a cigarette for the wife of the British ambassador. The photogenic Nehru was a popular subject, although Vyarawalla insists she never sought any sort of personal friendship with him or the many other indepen-

dence-era icons she snapped. “I did not know these people as such,” she said. “My constant endeavor was to maintain a distance from the subjects of my photographs, while capturing them in unique situations. I was never over-awed by them.” In the years after independence, she documented India’s emergence on the international arena, with visits by Marshal Tito, Ho Chi Minh and Jackie Kennedy.

There are also smiling images of a young Dalai Lama on a visit in 1956, three years before he would eventually flee his homeland for a life of permanent exile in India. Her only professional regret was her absence from one of the seminal events in India’s modern history. On January 30, 1948, she was setting out to cover a prayer meeting by Mahatma Gandhi, but her husband came up with a domestic problem and she decided to stay home. Hours later, Gandhi was assassinated. — AFP

VADODARA: In this photograph, Indian photographer Homai Vyarawalla poses with her Rolleiflex camera at her home. — AFP

OPINION

12

Sunday, October 31, 2010

THE LEADING INDEPENDENT DAILY IN THE ARABIAN GULF ESTABLISHED 1961

Founder and Publisher

YOUSUF S. ALYAN Editor-in-Chief

ABD AL-RAHMAN ALYAN EDITORIAL : 24833199-24833358-24833432 ADVERTISING : 24835616/7 FAX : 24835620/1 CIRCULATION : 24833199 Extn. 163 ACCOUNTS : 24835619 COMMERCIAL : 24835618 P.O.Box 1301 Safat,13014 Kuwait.

E MAIL :info@kuwaittimes.net Website: www.kuwaittimes.net

issues

The GOP and the deepening divide

By Dr James J Zogby he partisan divide on issues related to Arabs and Muslims has become disturbingly wide. For example, when, in a recent poll, we asked American voters whether they had favorable or unfavorable attitudes toward Arabs and Muslims, the results were shocking.

Attitudes towards Arabs: Democrats - 57 percent favorable, 30 percent unfavorable; Republicans - 28 percent favorable, 66 percent unfavorable.Attitudes towards Muslims: Democrats - 54 percent favorable, 34 percent unfavorable; Republicans - 12 percent favorable, 85 percent unfavorable.

These were but part of a broader survey of American attitudes conducted by Zogby international, and released by the Arab American Institute.

The poll’s other findings were equally troubling, with the answers to question after question yielding the same patterned response. For example, “Is Islam a religion of peace?” - 62 percent of Democrats say that it is, while 79 percent of Republicans say it is not.

What has happened to the “Grand Old Party” of George H W Bush and James Baker?For one, the GOP has become captive of several groups that now dominate the party’s base and have transformed its thinking.The “religious right” and its “end of days” preachers like Pat Robertson, William Hagee and Gary Bauer, presently constitute almost 40 percent of Republican voters. This group’s emphasis on the divinely ordained battle between the forces of “good” (i.e. the Christian West and Israel) and the forces of “evil” (Islam and the Arabs) has logically given rise to anti-Muslim prejudice.

Then there are the Christian right’s ideological cousins, the neo-conservatives, who share an identical Manichaean and apocalyptic world view, though with a secular twist. And into the mix must be thrown Islamophobic right-wing radio and TV commentators like O’Reilly, Beck, Limbaugh, Savage and company, who daily spew their poison across the airwaves.

The combination produces a lethal brew that is dangerous not only for the intolerance it has created, but the sense of certitude and self-righteousness it projects. This too comes through in our polling. When we ask Americans, in separate questions, whether they “know enough about Islam and Muslims (or Arab countries and people) or need to know more”, among Democrats, 68 percent say they would “like to know more” about Islam, with 80 percent wanting “to know more” about the Arab World. In answer to the same questions, 71 percent and 58 percent of Republicans say they “know enough” and “don’t want to learn more”.

There have been policy implications to this intolerance.

In the days following President Obama’s historic speech in Cairo that was designed to

T

rebuild tattered ties with the Arab and Muslim Worlds, I appeared on a number of television programs debating Republican operatives like Liz Cheney and former Senator George Allen. Speaking from the same talking points they criticized the President, accusing him of demonstrating weakness and selling America short in order to curry favor with Muslims. Such stridency has only served to deepen the partisan divide. When asked whether they approve or disapprove of the White House’s outreach efforts to Arabs and Muslims, 82 percent of Democrats approve while 73 percent of Republicans disapprove. This split is manifested in other behaviors.

Especially relevant here are the conclusions of two additional studies released this month by the AAI. The first of these is a Congressional Scorecard for 2009-2010 which evaluates the voting records of all 435 Members of Congress on 20 different pieces of legislation or Congressional actions on a range of foreign or domestic policy concerns important to Arab and Muslim Americans. The study finds over 60 Members all Democrats and not a single Republican - with excellent records on these issues.

The second of these AAI studies recorded and rated the comments made by all elected officials and candidates for federal or state-wide posts regarding the Park 51 controversy.With a few exceptions, Democrats were largely supportive of not only the project but, more broadly, of the rights of Muslims. The GOP side was the reverse. OnlyNew York Mayor Mike Bloomberg (an independent), Governors Crist (Florida) and Christie (New Jersey), and Congressman Ron Paul were supportive, with most others in the Republican Party not only opposing the Islamic center but indulging in shameful anti-Muslim rhetoric often echoing right-wing bloggers and radio personalities.

More disturbing were reports that some GOP congressional candidates who had initially made more supportive statements were forced by party leaders to retract them and fall in line with their strategy of making the “Ground Zero mosque” a wedge issue to use against Democrats in the fall elections.

Whether simply exploiting insecurity and fear of Arabs and Muslims in a crude effort to win votes - tactics that worked so well for Republicans in the post9/11 environment, or mixing these national security concerns with good old fashioned xenophobia, with a touch of Islamophobia, to infuse their supporters with intensity -it’s a dangerous game with worrisome consequences. And with the GOP poised to wield even greater influence after this election, I believe that those who place value in the need to promote greater understanding have every reason to be concerned.

NOTE: Dr James J Zogby is the President of the Arab American Institute.

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

For Egypt investors, growth trumps political risks

By Tom Pfeiffer prightly economic growth is keeping foreign investors upbeat on Egypt, outweighing uncertainty over the future leadership and concerns that soaring food prices could cause unrest. Inflows of foreign cash to stocks and treasury bills seem to be holding firm before a parliamentary vote next month and a presidential poll next year, although a currency wobble suggests the central bank may be building reserves as a precaution. No one doubts President Hosni Mubarak’s ruling party will dominate both races, but the polls are being watched to see how much space is given to the opposition and, more crucially, whether the 82-year-old president seeks another term. If he does not, there is no obvious successor.

Stock and money markets may face some political headwinds in the weeks and months ahead, but a gloomy global outlook makes Egypt’s 5.1 percent growth in 2009/10 and official forecasts for 6 percent this financial year too

S

attractive for many to ignore. In September, a Reuters poll of economists forecast growth of 5.5 percent in the year ending June 2011. The head of the Egyptian Exchange, Khaled Serry Sayam, told the Reuters Middle East Investment Summit that foreign investors were still net buyers of Egyptian stocks.

Investors face red tape and ropey infrastructure but benefit from being next to Europe and a middle class that is spending more and cheap labour in the country of 78 million, helping draw investment in export-related industries and consumer products. “The growth story is intact from my point of view,” said Sebastien Henin, a vicepresident at The National Investor in Abu Dhabi, which manages $120 million across the region. Egyptian listed companies were undervalued, trading at nine times their average expected earnings compared to 11 times for emerging markets as a whole, he said.

Reflecting the confidence, Sweden’s Electrolux this month agreed in principle to buy Olympic Group, the biggest appliance maker in the Middle East

and North Africa. “That is a possible sign of change in that the consumer market in Egypt is taken seriously and secondly they will be able to use Egypt as a manufacturing base to export from,” Angus Blair, head of research at investment bank Beltone Financial, said. Foreign direct investment dipped 16 percent in 2009/10 to $6.8 billion, but analysts mainly blame a global retreat from emerging markets, not concerns about Egypt, for that fall.

Direct investors with their longer term view seem likely to look beyond the political uncertainty, confident there will be no U-turn in the trend of economic liberalisation implemented since 2004 even if the pace slows in any political transition. “Portfolio investments can be far more volatile. For sure, if the newsflow is poor in coming months due to these elections, if we have a kind of verbal war between candidates ... probably we could have some volatility on the market,” Henin said.

Net foreign holdings of Egyptian Tbills soared to $8.3 billion in April from $530.4 million in December last year,

then rose to $9.2 billion in mid-October until a market sell-off, according to Ministry of Finance data cited by J P Morgan. J P Morgan blamed the recent T-bill sell-off for a sudden drop in the Egypt’s pound in the past week, after months of stability. The pound reached a five-year low of 5.774 against the dollar on Tuesday, its lowest since July 2005. Some analysts said the central bank may have let it slip to help exporters but may also be gathering more dollars to defend the currency against pre-election volatility if needed. Beltone’s Blair said the weakness was unusual given emerging market currencies were in demand. He said the slide might be driven by Egyptians, who are so accustomed to three decades of Mubarak’s rule that the prospect of any change is unnerving. “I think (the pound’s fall) is from domestic pressure, not external pressure, as many global investors actually like the overall economic picture in Egypt,” he said. Mubarak, in power since 1981, has not said if he will run for office again. Officials suggest he will if he can. But rumours about his health have

recurred since he had surgery in March, even though he has now returned to a full work schedule. If he does not run, many believe his son Gamal, 46, could be next or a candidate with military experience. John Sfakianakis, MENA region chief economist for Credit Agricole, said price rises not politics may be a bigger worry. “If people...don’t have money to buy food, that is a far more serious issue than purely the issue of succession, political discord and the November elections,” he said. Inflation has remained stubbornly above 10 percent but food prices have risen a dizzying 22 percent, hurting the poor most in a country where, according to the United Nations, about 20 percent of the population live on less than $1 a day. Price rises and subsidised bread shortages in 2008 led to clashes with police. Determined to stop a repeat, the government was swift to reassure Egyptians that bread supplies would not be affected by the latest global wheat price spike. It also raced to refill its stores after a drought hit its Russian supplier. — Reuters

Saudi seen edging cautiously into Afghan talks

By Ulf Laessing audi Arabia is being drawn into efforts to reach a settlement to the Afghan war, despite its reluctance to become too embroiled with Islamist militants it once backed, diplomats and analysts say. But they say Saudi Arabia would be unwilling to formally mediate in any peace talks. Like other countries involved, it wants Afghans to take the lead with outside players acting more as facilitators.

“Everybody has a very bad experience in their efforts to mediate between Afghans,” said a senior diplomat in Kabul. “It’s very simple, if you try to mediate between them, both sides will push their luck and it will fall, believe me it will fall. The third party cannot hold it,” he said.

Saudi Arabia has made no public comment on an appeal from Kabul to help mediate in talks with insurgents to try to bring an end to the nine-year war in Afghanistan. But analysts and diplomats say the kingdom, which hosted secret talks with the Taleban in Makkah in 2008, is expected to come under pressure from the United States to help Washington find an exit strategy from an increasingly unpopular war.

Saudi Arabia enjoys considerable influence over the Muslim world both because of its authority as home to Islam’s holiest sites and its hefty financial clout from oil earnings. “There is a lot of pressure on the Saudis from the US to help mediate in Afghanistan,” said one western diplomat in Riyadh.

Official sources say that for the first time all the main parties involved, from the government to insurgents, from Washington to Pakistan, are seriously considering ways to reach a peace deal.

They have cited Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates as potential intermediaries, along with Pakistan, in what are as yet very preliminary “talks about talks”. “Saudi

S

Afghan men feed pigeons in front of the Shah-Do-Shamshira Mosque in Kabul on Oct 27, 2010. —AFP Arabia, UAE, Pakistan can make the right kind of noises saying: ‘we support it’ and I think that will make a difference,” said the diplomat in Kabul. One source with knowledge of talks about Afghanistan said Riyadh might be more willing to help than before since peace efforts now have the backing of Washington - missing in 2008.

Saudi Arabia, along with Pakistan and the United States, backed Islamist insurgents fighting the Soviets in the 1980s, and later become one of only three countries to recognise the Taliban government that ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. But it is reluctant to become too closely asso-

ciated with peace talks after working hard to shake off any public perception of links to Islamist militancy. Fifteen of the 19 men involved in the Sept 11, 2001, attacks on the United States were from Saudi Arabia, and Al-Qaeda shares the kingdom’s fundamentalist Wahhabi interpretation of Islam.

Diplomats say Western visitors have been lobbying the kingdom since last year to help mediate but it remains wary after the 2008 talks came to nothing. “The Saudis might intermediate but they want to hear from the Afghan factions first in public that they are serious about talks this time,” said a senior Western diplomat.

“They don’t want to put their reputation at risk by backing a peace project that may not work.” Afghan diplomats say they hope Riyadh will get involved. “Saudi Arabia has a major role and we hope in Afghanistan that Saudi plays an important role as it did in the past in Afghanistan and in other countries,” said Said Anwarshah Ghaffari, Afghanistan’s charge d’affaires in Riyadh.

“The kingdom has its weight in the Islamic world and we look at it as our older brother,” he said.

Former intelligence chief Prince Turki Al-Faisal, who has dealt with the Taliban before, last week cited recon-

ciliation efforts in the past as a sign of Saudi support for Afghanistan, but he gave no hint about revisiting the talks.

Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal said in January the Taliban must deny sanctuary to Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden before the kingdom would act as mediator. Militants using the AlQaeda name began launching attacks on Saudi Arabia in 2003. Riyadh froze its ties with the Taleban in 1998 over their refusal to hand over bin Laden who had been stripped of Saudi citizenship for activities against the ruling Al Saud family.

Diplomats and analysts say Saudi Arabia will be heavily influenced by the approach of Pakistan, with which it shares close military and intelligence cooperation.

“If Pakistan supports peace talks then the Saudis will help but they don’t want to get too involved,” said Haroun Mir, an Afghan analyst. Pakistan is keen for a peace settlement in Afghanistan to end a war which it sees as increasing instability at home, though it is also anxious to curb the influence of rival India. At the same time Sunni Saudi Arabia has to balance out the influence of Shiite Iran, its main rival in the Middle East and a powerful Afghan neighbour. “I think Saudi Arabia should get more involved in Afghanistan. If we don’t do it then others will,” said prominent Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

But Saudi Arabia’s rivalry with Iran could also mean that Tehran would look askance at any Saudi role in helping mediate. Dubai based political analyst Theodore Karasik said it was significant that Saudi King Abdullah had spoken several times to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over the past few weeks to discuss regional issues. Asked whether Iran and Saudi Arabia could reach an understanding on Afghanistan, he said: “It’s possible.” —Reuters

ANALYSIS

Sunday, October 31, 2010

13

Parcel explosives reflect low-tech trend by Qaeda

By Phil Stewart

T

he use of parcels containing explosive materials against US targets matches a growing trend

by Al-Qaeda and its allies toward lowinvestment, high-impact attacks difficult for intelligence agencies to detect.

Two US-bound packages from Yemen containing explosive material were intercepted in Britain and Dubai on Friday, and US officials said Al-Qaeda’s Yemen-based affiliate was top of the list of possible suspects.

Parcel bombs, which ‘Unabomber’ Ted Kaczynski used to terrify Americans in the 1980s and 1990s, pale in comparison to the horrifying spectacle of hijacked jets ramming into the Pentagon and New York’s World Trade Center on Sept 11, 2001. But US officials and intelligence analysts say AlQaeda is increasingly drawn to less sophisticated attacks that require less communication and, in turn, are harder to spot. They also generate a tremendous amount of attention, even when unsuccessful - this time just ahead of heated US congressional elections on Tuesday.

“There are indications that AlQaeda and its affiliates are growing less attached to the kinds of spectacular attacks they once seemed to prefer,” a US official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity. “They’re looking more and more to less sophisticated, less costly, and perhaps less detectable operations.” The package scare caused broad disruptions on Friday, with the US scrambling fighter

A Yemeni man holds an envelope as he comes out of a branch of the US package delivery firm UPS followed by a news television crew in Sanaa yesterday. — AFP jets to accompany a passenger jet and mobilizing explosive experts to search cargo planes.

President Barack Obama addressed the nation, acknowledging what he saw as a “credible terrorist threat” using packages to target two Jewish places of

worship in Chicago. Yemen-based AlQaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and one of its leading figures - American-born Muslim cleric Anwar Al-Awlaki increasingly have become priority US targets since the group took responsibility for a failed plot to blow up a US

passenger jet on Christmas Day last year. Awlaki has also been tied to an Army psychiatrist charged with killing 13 soldiers in a Nov 2009 shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas - another simpler, “soft-target” attack.

Analysts say part of the draw to lit-

erally mail-in an attack to the United States is the potentially disruptive impact it could have on commerce. One of the packages was mailed via UPS and the other through Fedex. Paul Pillar, a former CIA officer, noted militants may be coming to the realization US authorities simply cannot search all inbound mail or cargo.

“Just as a matter of scale, (it is) impossible to do comprehensive inspections of everything,” Pillar said.

“So we should not be surprised that terrorist thinking of ways to cause harm within the United States would explore this as one of many possible channels.”

White House counter-terrorism advisor John Brennan said Al-Qaeda has attempted to “adapt” to US security measures in the wake of the Sept 11 attacks, which have largely focused on commercial - not cargo - aircraft.

“Clearly they are looking for vulnerabilities in our system and take advantage of those vulnerabilities,” Brennan said, adding that AQAP was “the most active operational franchise” of AlQaeda outside its Pakistan and Afghan traditional base. Bruce Hoffman, a counter-terrorism expert and director of Georgetown University’s security studies program, called the attacks a possible form of “terrorism theater” meant to create fear and anxiety ahead of Tuesday’s congressional election. “It certainly fits into terrorist groups’ strategy to overwhelm us with a variety of different threats at different levels,” Hoffman said. —Reuters

Al-Qaeda fishes for Turks seeking jihad

By Simon Cameron-Moore

T

urks have been bit part players in Al-Qaeda’s global jihad, but a recent security scare in Europe pointed to a small but growing number in Germany and Turkey who have joined militant ranks in Pakistan. Muslims from many parts of the Islamic World went to Pakistan during the jihad to end the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s. There may be nothing new about Turks taking that path, but recent obituaries on jihadi websites and tales of the exploits of Turkish jihadis have been eye-catching.

“Turkey serves as a gateway for Al-Qaeda, through which it channels both funds and recruits for operations abroad,” said Tim Williams of Stirling Assynt, a political and terrorist risk consultancy in London. “The growing number of Turks appearing in the Af-Pak theatre...(is) evidence of that.” Turks returning from Afghanistan were involved in the Nov 2003 bombings that killed 57 people in Istanbul and wounded hundreds more in a series of attacks that targeted the British consulate, an HSBC bank and two synagogues.

“I am concerned about increased

radicalisation among Turkish youth not just in Turkey but also in Europe,” said Zeyno Baran, a scholar at Washington’s Hudson Institute.

An more critical focus on Israel and the West by some sections of the media has hardened attitudes in a society that is becoming more conservative, more Islamic, according to Baran. “That propaganda has a powerful impact on the youth, some of whom seem to be joining the militant ranks in Af-Pak region.”

Surveys by Washington’s Pew Research Center show Turks share similar levels of antipathy toward the United States as Egyptians, Pakistanis and Palestinians. Gareth Jenkins, an Istanbul based security analyst noted a proliferation of jihadi websites with Turkish language pages over the past couple of years.

With an overwhelmingly Muslim population of 75 million, and a large diaspora, particularly in Germany, it is natural that Islamist militant groups should try to make inroads.

Turkey, with its democratic foundation and orientation towards the West, is not a natural breeding ground for Islamic militancy. Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s brand of religious conservatism, while opening the door to the Islamic Middle

East, gives no quarter to the likes of Al-Qaeda. If militancy is growing, it remains at least for now on the fringe. Israel’s Gaza offensive two years ago fuelled sympathy for militant causes among some, analysts say. “The Israeli incursion into Gaza in 2008 had a profound effect, leading to increased recruitment of Turks by Al-Qaeda and allied groups,” Williams said. “We believe that the numbers increased dramatically in the wake of that operation.”

It is a touchy issue for NATO’s only Muslim member. Turkish troops serve in non-combat roles in Afghanistan. Officials are guarded about the presence of Turkish militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

They say nationalities of the martyrs named on jihadi websites are unconfirmed. But arrests back in Turkey show the authorities are vigilant. In January, police detained more than 120 Al-Qaeda suspects in raids mostly in east and central Anatolia, though barely any details emerged from those arrests. Then last week, police arrested a maths student from a university in the western city of Izmir who was in contact with a Turkish militant described as the head of Al-Qaeda’s Aegean cell and who is now fighting in Afghanistan

and Pakistan.

Student Abdulkadir Kucuk’s extra-curricular studies involved bomb-making and devising computer programs to jam flight signals for drone aircraft used by NATO forces in Afghanistan. Four other suspected fundraisers for the cause were detained too. They were later freed pending trial, but in a follow up operation this week police in Istanbul rounded up a dozen more. A senior Turkish security official told Reuters that all the Turks who have joined Al-Qaeda’s ranks in AfghanistanPakistan belong to one group. He went on to name its chief as well as a commander, Zekeriya, whom Kucuk was caught emailing. “Their leader is named Ebuzer, the leader of all Turks in Al-Qaeda. Zekeriya is another high-ranking leader of Turks there,” he said.

The Washington-based Jamestown Foundation identifies Ebuzer as Serdar Erbashi, a veteran of the second Chechen war, who, it says, had headed Al-Qaeda’s cell in Ankara. The Turkish official didn’t name the group, but a Pakistani security officer in Peshawar, the main city in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province, identified it as Taifatul Mansura, a Quranic refer-

ence meaning “Assembly of the Victorious”. Based in North Waziristan, a Pakistani tribal region known as a hotbed of Al-Qaeda and Taliban activity, Taifatul Mansura’s profile has risen over the past year on jihadi websites and anti-terrorism blogsites. The Pakistani security official says its ranks have been depleted by clashes and drone missile attacks, and a splinter group broke off a few months ago. The faction appeared to emerge out of the Ittehad-e-Islami, or Islamic Jihad Union (IJU).

The ISU is itself a by-product of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), a Central Asian jihadi movement that has forged ties with AlQaeda and actively recruits in Europe. Jihadis who do not fit easily into South Asian or Arab militant camps gravitate to groups like Taifatul Mansura which, according to the Pakistani official, is made up of Turkic-language speaking Central Asians, as well as Turks and European Muslims, notably from Germany. “It is a motley crowd out there in the North (Waziristan),” the Pakistani security official told Reuters. “There are people from virtually everywhere, including the Turks.” — Reuters

Cholera, tensions contaminate Haiti path to polls

By Joseph Guyler Delva

A

post-earthquake cholera epidemic, fears of political violence and vote credibility questions are clouding Haiti’s path to elections next month seen as crucial for stability in the Western Hemisphere’s poorest nation. Electoral officials still say the presidential and legislative polls will go ahead as scheduled on Nov 28, despite the cholera outbreak which has killed more than 290 people and sickened more than 4,000 since last week, triggering a major multinational treatment and prevention operation.

“On November 28, at 6 am, the polls will open,” Pierre-Louis Opont, director general of Haiti’s Provisional Electoral Council, told Reuters. But one presidential candidate has said that if the epidemic of the deadly diarrhea disease reaches national proportions, the polls should be postponed. The epidemic’s unusually high death rate was slowing however, the World Health Organization said. But even before the cholera outbreak triggered Haiti’s latest national emergency following the devastating Jan 12 earthquake, doubts had emerged over whether the polls could deliver a credible, legitimate new leadership for the disaster-and turmoilprone Caribbean nation.

Next month’s vote will elect a successor to President Rene Preval, a new 99-member parliament and 11 new members of the 30-seat Senate, choosing leaders to steer Haiti’s recovery from the crippling quake that wrecked the capital Port-au-Prince and killed more than a quarter of a million people.

These may be the most important elections in Haiti’s history, the Brusselsbased think tank, International Crisis Group, said in a report released on Wednesday that saw a “thorny path toward polling day”.

Fears of campaign violence have increased after an attack late on Monday by suspected armed bandits on a bus carrying journalists to a rally by leading presidential candidate Jacques-

Women walk along the banks of the Artibonite river, whose waters are believed to be the source of Haiti’s cholera outbreak, during the weekly market at Pont-Sonde, 120 km north of Port-au-Prince, on Oct 27, 2010. — AFP Edouard Alexis in northern Haiti. The bus driver was killed and police said they later killed one of the attackers.

Besides the disruptive cholera epidemic, Haiti’s polarizing politics and lack of public confidence in the electoral authorities, who are seen favoring outgoing president Preval and his proteges, are already challenging the credibility of the elections.

“Haiti’s population needs to see significant steps in the next month, so that all eligible citizens can vote, their ballots are counted, and their choice of the next government accelerates a reconstruction that improves their lives and their families’ future,” the International Crisis Group said. “If the elections fail on these fronts, it is all

too likely that stability will suffer, the investments the economy needs will dry up, and the humanitarian crisis will deepen,” the organization added.

The United Nations, which maintains a 12,000-strong peacekeeping force in Haiti, has said it can guarantee security for the elections, which will also be closely observed by the Organization of American States and other groups. But UN officials express concerns about reports of arms entering Haiti and being distributed to political activists. With frustration and uncertainty about the future running high among destitute earthquake survivors, more than one million of whom are living in crowded tent camps in the capital now menaced by the cholera

epidemic, the International Crisis Group said social unrest remained a real threat. “Recovery has stalled at the relief stage, donors have been slow to make good many of their pledges, and what achievements there have been have not been well communicated to the victims, who have little confidence about what comes next,” it said.

Popular fears about the outbreak of cholera, a disease absent from Haiti for decades, also exacerbated tensions. A group of stone-throwing local residents, apparently fearful of contagion, demonstrated violently on Tuesday against a cholera treatment center being set up by the medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) in Saint-Marc in the main central

Artibonite outbreak region, MSF and local media said. On Monday at Dajabon on the Haiti-Dominican Republic border, UN peacekeepers fired into the air to prevent Haitians from crossing over to a farmers’ market which had been suspended as a health precaution by Dominican authorities, media in the Dominican Republic reported.

With 19 candidates approved for the Haitian presidential contest, after the exclusion on eligibility grounds of 15 others, including popular HaitianAmerican hip hop star Wyclef Jean, there appeared to be no clear favorite for the job.

International Crisis Group said the candidates’ list covered a wide range of opinion, including supporters of exiled former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. It saw no presidential candidate likely to win outright in the initial Nov 28 round. Besides Alexis, 63, a former two-time prime minister, another visible frontrunner is Jude Celestin, a 48-year-old engineer and candidate for Preval’s ruling Inite platform. Also running is opposition figure Mirlande Manigat, 69, a former First Lady. Known Aristide supporters on the ballot include notary Jean-Henri Ceant, 54, and former minister Yves Cristalin, 41, backed by members of Aristide’s Fanmi Lavalas party that was barred from the polls by electoral authorities. Preval denies accusations of meddling in the poll process.

The close race raised the prospect of a disputed contest, International Crisis Group said, which could even delay the holding of a second round of voting, provisionally scheduled for Jan. 16, days after the 1st anniversary of the earthquake. “Credible elections should create the context for successful reconstruction, which in turn is required to bolster the democratic process,” the Crisis Group said. “With only weeks remaining before the vote, however, none of the above is certain of delivery,” it added. — Reuters

focus

Defenders, attackers probe Stuxnet secrets

By Peter Apps

N

o one may ever know for sure who built computer worm Stuxnet or why, but now it is out there it could prove as big a game changer for industrial system security as the Sept 11 attacks were for aviation. Others compare it to the first atomic blast - a first clear real-world demonstration of something long thought possible that makes it easier and more likely for others to follow.

Since its discovery this summer, spy agencies, security experts, hackers and others perhaps including militants have been scrutinising Stuxnet to learn and exploit its secrets.

Most analysts agree it was probably built by one or more nation states to target a particular industrial facility, most likely Iran’s nuclear program, reprogramming its own control systems to inflict physical damage.

Proving that is a different matter altogether. But those who have studied it closely say it is by far one of the most sophisticated attacks able to target the key control systems at the heart of almost all modern infrastructure, from nuclear plants and refineries to transportation and traffic.

“There’s still a lot we don’t understand about Stuxnet,” said Joel Langill, one of the authors of a new report into the worm from US-based group of experts the Cyber Security Forum Initiative (CSFI). “But what we do know is it’s a very significant step forward from anything we’ve seen before.

Understanding Stuxnet and how it operates is important to learning how to defend against the threat.” If Stuxnet was released by a Western spy agency to damage Iran, Langill said, they could ultimately regret the decision. “Having it out there certainly makes it easier for someone else to produce something similar,” he said.

A host of nations including the United States, China, Russia and Britain are pouring more resources into cyber warfare, viewing it as key to their national security. Whilst the most sensitive systems such as nuclear power plants usually have protection advice from national security agencies, private firms operating utility, refinery and manufacturing plants get less support. Corrupting their programming could still kill, and even the suspicion of infection could force a system shutdown.

“Stuxnet will live on - it will be the zombie of our nightmares,” blogged German expert Ralph Langner, one of the first to identify it. “It provides a blueprint for aggressive attacks on control systems that can be applied generically.” A handful of firms dominate the infrastructure control system market: Emerson and Honeywell from the US, Britain’s Invensys, Germany’s Siemens, Switzerland’s ABB and Japan’s Yokogawa. Windows software tends to underpin almost all systems, with all seen likely to have previously undiscovered “zero day” vulnerabilities.

Stuxnet exploited at least

four separate zero day vulnerabilities, a sign of its complexity it is rare for even two to be targeted at the same time. Those particular holes are now being closed with software patches, but meanwhile Stuxnet has quietly copied and sent itself around the world. Most users it passed through would never have noticed. It would have uploaded itself, scanned their system, found it was not in its target and moved on, meanwhile sending data back to its creator via now-blocked websites in Denmark and Malaysia.

The target itself was likely kept separate from the Internet for security, but it would have entered the system through an infected USB stick before taking control. “Stuxnet does a lot of things we haven’t seen before,” said CSFI’s Langill, an oil sector cyber security consultant for Houston-based ENGlobal. “It is able to conceal itself within the system. It is able to reprogram code and then conceal (that).”

Experts always knew a Stuxnet-like attack was possible. But no one had seen an apparently working version until this summer. By then, it had already been circulating since 2009, apparently updated by its creators sometime this year. Iranian officials say the worm infected some computers at its Bushehr nuclear plant but deny it delayed start-up. If it did real damage, few expect Tehran - or any other victim - ever to admit it. Israel’s intelligence services are widely suspected, but few expect them to come forward either.

But as well as representing a technical breakthrough in its own right, Stuxnet relied on lax security systems - unchanged default passwords and poor control around the use of pin drives.

The 911 attacks prompted an immediate tightening of security measures around the world to make simply hijacking aircraft more difficult - measures that arguably should already have been in place. Some argue Stuxnet should have a similar effect. “You need a security program that looks at not only one or two security controls but a comprehensive defence in depth strategy,” said Langill. “There are a whole lot of things you can do - some very simple.

Complacency is the real problem.”

The good news, experts say, is that designing attacks this sophisticated - even with the original worm to work from remains fiendishly difficult, certainly much more so than hijacking an airliner with a box cutter. As well as understanding how to create the worm, any attacker needs to have deep knowledge of the system they target. “I’d compare it more to the first detonation of an atomic bomb (than 911),” said Alastair Newton, former policy lead for cyber warfare at Britain’s foreign office and now chief political analyst for Japanese bank Nomura. “As the North Koreans keep proving, 65 years later it’s still not an easy thing to replicate even though many of the instructions are out there on the Internet.”—Reuters

Stakes rise with Guinea gamble

By Saliou Samb

A

move by Guinean authorities to hold a delayed presidential run-off today marks an attempt to contain rising ethnic tensions in the West African country but could store up trouble for later. The landmark vote, meant to end nearly two years of military rule, has been repeatedly postponed since the first round in June amid outbursts of violence between rival political camps and a lack of adequate preparation. The newlyappointed electoral commission chief surprised observers on Tuesday by proposing to hold the vote on Oct 31 - a move widely seen as a bid to stifle rising conflict and the potential for a new military coup.

“There are clearly dangers in allowing this impasse to continue,” said Chris Melville, senior associate at Menas Associates, a London-based consultancy watching Guinea and its large bauxite and iron ore mining sector. But the attempt to rush the vote could lead to a chaotic election aftermath in a country that has drawn billions of dollars in investment from firms like Rio

Tinto and Vale. Junta leader General Sekouba Konate has yet to ratify the date and one candidate, ex-premier Cellou Dallein Diallo, said the date was premature - raising worries that his supporters would vigorously contest the outcome if he lost.

Diallo took 43.69 percent in June’s first round, relying on support from his ethnic Peul, who make up about 40 percent of the country. Veteran opposition leader Alpha Conde, one of the Malinke who make up about 35 percent of the country and have tended to enjoy political power since independence, took 18.25 percent of the first round. But Diallo’s lead may not be as strong as it appears. Diallo said on Tuesday that recent ethnic clashes in regions that favour Conde had displaced large numbers of his supporters and no measures had yet been taken to ensure they could vote. Conde has burnished his support with alliances with defeated first-round candidates Papa Koly Kourouma and JeanMarc Telliano - both of whom did well in the large Guinea Forestiere region - and has strong support in Malinke stronghold Haute Guinea. — Reuters

NEWS

14

Sunday, October 31, 2010

Iran admits sanctions are driving up costs

UMBULHARJO, Indonesia: Indonesian special forces evacuate an elderly woman who refuses to leave her home during an evacuation after a new violent volcanic explosion yesterday. — AFP

Volatile Indonesia volcano unleashes biggest blast yet MOUNT MERAPI, Indonesia: Clouds of gray ash rumbled down the slopes of Indonesia’s most volatile volcano yesterday in its most powerful eruption of a deadly week, prompting soldiers to force reluctant villagers to evacuate amid fears of a larger blast. On the other side of the archipelago, storms again prevented aid deliveries to increasingly desperate survivors of a tsunami - including a teenage girl with an open chest wound - that killed 413 people in the Mentawai islands. Relief workers found some comfort, however, when the number of missing dropped by half to 163 as searchers discovered more survivors and villagers who had fled to the hills returned home.

The simultaneous catastrophes have severely tested the emergency response network. Indonesia lies in the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” a cluster of fault lines prone to earthquakes and volcanic activity. Mount Merapi, which sprang back to life early this week, unleashed a terrifying 21-minute eruption early yesterday, followed by more than 350 volcanic tremors and 33 ash bursts, said Surono, chief of the Center for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation.

The latest spewing of the notoriously unpredictable volcano forced the temporary closure of an airport and claimed another life, bringing the death toll this week to 36.

At least 47,000 people have fled the mountain’s wrath, according to the National Disaster Management Agency.

Government camps well away from the base were overflowing with refugees, including most of the 11,000 people who live on the mountain’s fertile slopes. They were told yesterday, with signs the danger level was climbing, that they should expect to stay for three more weeks. Despite such warnings, many people have returned to

their land to check on precious crops and livestock. The new eruption triggered a chaotic pre-dawn exit, killing a 44-year-old woman who was fleeing by motorcycle, said Rusdiyanto, head of disaster management office in the main city of Yogyakarta.

For the first time yesterday, more than 2,000 troops were called in to help keep villagers clear of the mountain. Camouflaged soldiers stood guard in front of ash-covered homes and local television showed one woman who refused evacuation orders being carried away as she screamed in protest. Still, the villagers may be later allowed to go back for a few hours a day if the volcano appears to be calm, said Djarot Nugroho, head of the Central Java disaster management agency, adding that they must return to the camps immediately if a new alarm is raised. “Once the sirens go off, no excuse, everyone has to get back to the camps,” he said.

The eruption temporarily forced the closure of the airport in Yogyakarta, 20 km south of the volcano, because of poor visibility and heavy ash on the south of the runway, said Naelendra, an airport official.

Despite earlier hopes that Merapi’s activity might be waning, scientists warned Saturday the worst may be yet to come.

High-pressure gas appeared to be building up behind a newly formed thick magna dome in the crater, “setting the stage, potentially, for a more explosive eruption”, said Subandrio, who heads the nearby volcanology center. “It’s a bad sign,” he said.

In the tsunami zone, where more than 23,000 people have been displaced, government agencies were forced to pull back boats and helicopters that had been ferrying noodles, sardines and sleeping mats to the most distant corners of the Mentawai islands because of stormy weather and rough seas. The death toll climbed to 413

yesterday, but officials halved the number of missing people after a total of 135 people were found by searchers or returned home after fleeing to the hills.

Volunteer searcher Patigor Siahaan said three children - aged 6, 7 and 8 - were discovered in the rubble of their collapsed house, where their parents died. Most of the others were found in small groups.

Rescue workers had hoped to airdrop aid using a plane and four helicopters Saturday, but storms made it too dangerous, said Ade Edward, an official with the provincial disaster management agency. He said navy ships on their way to the devastated area had been halted by six-meter waves and were stranded in the port of Padang on Sumatra, one of Indonesia’s main islands.

At an overwhelmed hospital in Sikakap, the main town on Pagai Utara island, doctors said they need medical supplies to help about 150 injured survivors. The hospital’s swelteringly hot rooms were filled with the moans of patients with flushed, sweat-coated faces. “We need morphine,” said Dr. Alyssa Scurrah, who flew in from Sydney, Australia. She said the hospital was desperate for a generator, antibiotics and a chest drain. One of Scurrah’s patients was a 12-year-old girl who was struggling to breathe due to an open chest wound. She clenched her teeth and cried out as a doctor applied cotton pads to the gash along her rib cage. The doctor said the girl needs to go to Padang for surgery, but no one could get off the island yesterday because of the weather. “If she stays here, she may not live,” Scurrah said. One bright spot amid the misery: A baby girl was born at the hospital on Friday. The mother was caught in the wave as it slammed into her village, doctors said, but her injuries were not severe and she and her baby were expected to be fine. — AP

Bomb plot shows lax cargo security Continued from Page 1 was,” he said, declining to say where the site was. “Generally security is high, but if you think it’s perfect you’re kidding yourself.”

Cargo companies have long shipped on passenger airlines, for whom cargo provides extra income. Air freight generally consists of the most expensive cargo, everything from designer clothing and prescription drugs to car parts and mobile phones. It is transported in large pallets, which are not often taken apart to inspect because the process would significantly slow down air travel and the movement of goods. About 50,000 tons of cargo is shipped by air within the US every day, according to the Transportation Security Administration. About 25 percent of that is shipped by passenger airlines. Mike Boyd, who heads an aviation industry consulting firm in Colorado, said cargo is often put onboard passenger flights at the last minute, similar to passengers flying on standby.

Inside the US, new rules that took effect in August require that every piece of cargo be checked for explosives. Cargo is increasingly screened by X-ray machines and handheld wands - the TSA has approved dozens of new machines in the past two years that can detect traces of explosive materials. Cargo that travels through airports in countries with high threat levels and advanced security systems is often safer. The system at London’s busy Heathrow Airport is relatively effective because cargo is held for 24 hours, giving authorities time to check it properly, according to Shingleton.

Still, since August US aviation officials have been pressing the European Union to require the X-raying of every package placed on passenger planes, but they have met resistance because of the cost and logistics involved in screening such a huge amount of material, aviation safety consultant Chris Yates said. “Is it possible one of these devices could get on passenger jets?” Yates said. “I’m not convinced it could on flights between London and the

States, but it could get on from less secure parts of the world, including the Middle East. If you talk to anybody senior at airports, they will tell you freight is the weak link in the chain.”

X-Ray machines are not an effective tool to screen bulk cargo because of the large size and number of the items that need to be inspected, said Philip Baum, editor of Aviation Security International, while more sophisticated technology, like gamma-ray machines, are extremely expensive. “Security in the UK is pretty good, the US is not bad, but aviation is a global business and we need effective regimes around the globe,” he said.

“Cargo travels on both cargo-only and on combi-aircraft, which have passengers and cargo, and cargo is not subject to the same screening requirements as passengers’ baggage.” Baum also warned that it is foolhardy to downplay the threat posed by cargo-only planes since those could be loaded with an explosive device that could be detonated when the plane is on its final approach over a major city. — AP

TEHRAN: Iran’s commerce minister yesterday denied that international sanctions imposed on the country over its disputed nuclear program have damaged Tehran’s trade ties and said the penalties will prove futile. Iran is under four sets of UN Security Council sanctions as well as other penalties by the United States and the European Union over its refusal to halt uranium enrichment - a technology that can be used to produce nuclear fuel or an atomic bomb. The US and other Western powers accuse Iran of using its civilian nuclear program as a cover to develop nuclear weapons. Iran denies the charges, saying its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.

Commerce Minister Mahdi Ghazanfari called the sanctions “ineffective”, and said they “have not affected our trade with other countries so far”.

He said that if the sanctions were really having an impact, then the UN would not have had to impose four sets of them. Ghanzafari’s comments come after the president of the Iranian Chamber of Commerce, Mohammad Nahavandian, said last week that the international penalties have begun to take a toll on the economy, pushing up the cost of living. “Sanctions can’t halt the importation of goods into Iran but estimates indicate that the cost of imports has increased between 15 to 30 percent,” Nahavandian was quoted as saying by the semi-

TEHRAN: Iranian women walk at Tehran’s old main bazaar yesterday. — AP official ISNA news agency.

In order to get around the sanctions, analysts say Iran has increasingly used front companies based abroad to import technology that may have civilian and military uses.

But Iran is finding it increasingly difficult to continue this cat and mouse game because of strict banking restrictions and tighter rules that ban the export of any dual use or technological equipment that could wind up in Iran’s hands.

Also yesterday, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that Iran’s foreign currency reserves exceed $100 billion, despite sanctions. “The coun-

Continued from Page 1 The shipment, which stopped in Mumbai’s port before heading to Lagos, had been labeled as containing “packages of glass wool and pallets of stone”. “The shipment in question was booked as a ‘shippers-owned container’ and supplied, loaded and sealed by the shipper, an Iranian trader who does not appear on any forbidden persons listing,” CMA CGM’s statement read.

“The containers were ... discharged in Lagos in July and transferred to a customsbonded depot where they have remained with all seals untouched and unbroken.”

The shipment sat untouched for weeks, a common occurrence in Lagos’ busy and chaotic Apapa Port. Last week, the Iranian shipper filed a request for the containers to be picked up again and this time shipped to the West African nation of Gambia, CMA CGM said. Agents with Nigeria’s State Security Service discovered the weapons Tuesday. Journalists allowed to view the weapons on Wednesday saw 107 mm rock-

ets, rifle rounds and other items labeled in English. Authorities said the shipment also contained grenades, explosives and possibly rocket launchers, but journalists did not see them. In the hands of highly trained troops, the 107 mm artillery rockets can accurately hit targets more than 8.5 km away, killing everything within about 12 m.

Fighters in Afghanistan and Iraq have used similar rockets against US troops. China, the United States, and Russia manufacture versions of the rocket, as does Iran - which calls the weapon a Katyusha rocket.

In 2006, the Islamist militant group Hezbollah fired nearly 4,000 Katyusha rockets across Israel’s northern border, some of which fell as far as 90 km inside Israel. Israeli military officials, speaking on condition of anonymity as they were unauthorized to discuss the matter with journalists, said Thursday that it appeared Iran hoped to smuggle the weapons into the Gaza Strip. Israel instituted a naval blockade of the region in 2007 after Iranianbacked Hamas seized control of the

Palestinian territory.

However, there remain more questions than answers about the Israeli claims. To reach Gaza, the weapons would first need to be trucked across Nigeria into Chad, Sudan and ultimately through Egypt. It also remains unclear why the shipper wanted to try to re-export the weapons to Gambia, a tiny sliver of nation carved out inside of Senegal. Abdullahi, the Iranian ambassador, said his embassy in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, planned to hold a news conference tomorrow to address the allegations. The weapons shipment claims come after a July visit by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Nigeria.

Nigeria, an OPEC-member nation that is one of the top crude oil suppliers to the US, is approaching what could be a highly contested presidential election next year.

Security remains a concern in Nigeria as it continues to see targeted killings allegedly committed by a radical Islamic sect in the north and the threat of new violence in its oil-rich southern delta. — AP

IRNA. The sanctions target Iran’s nuclear and missile program, and it there is no official report on how they have affected Tehran’s nuclear program. Experts believe the international penalties have hampered Iran’s nuclear progress, citing a smaller number of operating centrifuges at Iran’s main uranium enrichment plant in Natanz compared to a year ago. The number of operating centrifuges at the underground facility in May was 3,936 compared to around 5,000 last year, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. — AP

FORT SMITH, Arkansas: Birds that were feeding on grass near the runway swarm upwards as a US Navy E-6B plane makes touch-and-go landings Friday at the Fort Smith Regional Airport. — AP

Bahraini female candidate hopes to boost MP powers Continued from Page 1 “(The constitution) gives all power to the king instead of parliament,” said Fakhro as she greeted voters who trickled into a school used as a polling station.

She won 33 percent of votes in the first round in her district in the centre of Bahrain last week, 10 percent less than her rival, independent Sunni candidate Esa Al-Qadhi.

The opposition accuses the government of apportioning voting districts in a way to prevent Wefaq gaining a majority.

Waad fielded three candidates, one of whom lost last week. Fakhro said Waad

would propose changing the districts and electoral rules to also increase the chances of female candidates running against Bahrain’s main political blocs.

Waad is the only group that endorses female candidates. Women have hardly any say in politics in the Gulf Arab region and hold few top jobs in government and the private sector. Kuwaitis last year elected the region’s first four female members of parliament, and in Bahrain women have been eligible to vote only since 2002.

Mona Fadhel, a supporter of Fakhro and author on Gulf women’s political role, said women were quite active in

community groups but had gained few official posts. “Their presence in the official institutions does not reflect the level of activities of women in politics,” she said. Latifa Al-Gaoud, a Sunni independent, is the first female member of parliament but she won her district - a strip of desert in Bahrain’s south - without any voting for the second time this year as she faced no other candidate. On Thursday, Bahrain began the trial of 25 activists and opposition leaders accused of plotting to topple the Sunni-dominated political system with defendants saying they were tortured, an accusation officials denied. — Reuters

Parcel bombs could have blown up jets Continued from Page 1

Nigeria weapons came from Iran

try’s foreign exchange reserves have been estimated at $100 billion, but it’s definitely more than this figure,” Ahmadinejad said in a statement posted on his office’s website. In the past, the president has refused to provide even a rough figure for the reserves, saying the information should remain confidential amid stiffer international sanctions.

The head of Iran’s central bank, Mahmoud Bahmani, said Tehran has boosted its reserves by buying hundreds of tons of gold at a price that has since doubled, according to the state news agency

contained the powerful high explosive PETN - the same substance used by would-be 2009 Christmas Day bomber Farouk Abdulmutallab and 2001 attempted shoe-bomber Richard Reid. Dubai police chief General Dahi Khalfan told AFP: “This was a parcel bomb and a terrorist act could have occurred,” adding that the device could have “exploded” on board the airplane had it not been intercepted in time. The device consisted of a computer printer whose ink contained explosive material, connected to a mobile phone SIM card and a circuit board, a police statement said. The statement said it “bears the hallmarks of those used by terrorist organisations like Al-Qaeda.”

The parcel was flown in from the Yemeni capital Sanaa via Doha in Qatar on a Federal Express aircraft, an Emirati aviation official later said.

In Yemen, security forces yesterday arrested a woman “suspected of sending two parcel bombs”, after surrounding her house in the capital Sanaa, the defence ministry said, without providing further details. President Ali Abdullah Saleh who had announced that the suspect’s

house had been surrounded - said his country was “determined to fight terror but will not allow anyone to intervene in its affairs”.

News of the arrest came shortly after Cameron and US President Barack Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser both called Saleh to urge his “close” counterterrorism cooperation following the bomb plot. Obama also called King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. Riyadh provided the tip-off for the discovery of the bombs.

Obama has pointed the finger for the plot at Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the Yemen-based branch of Osama bin Laden’s extremist network.

Yemeni authorities also announced the seizure of 26 other parcels yesterday and said they were being examined.

The cargo scare offered a new twist as Western authorities have usually focused on dangers posed to passenger planes following the Sept 11, 2001 attacks, when Al-Qaeda hijacked jets and struck targets in New York and Washington. Cameron highlighted the new dangers, saying: “A package that started in Yemen, that landed in Germany, that landed in Britain en route to America, it just shows how united and determined we have to be to

defeat terrorism.” Police in Britain said the package intercepted there was flown in from Yemen via Cologne, Germany.

The White House said Obama had telephoned Cameron yesterday to thank him for his country’s “close cooperation” in helping disrupt the plot. Top officials said the threat level to the United States was unchanged, but the Department of Homeland Security announced it had boosted security measures. Britain said there were no plans to change a threat level already at its second-highest point, suggesting an attack is highly likely, but added that it had banned all unaccompanied cargo from Yemen. French aviation authorities yesterday also suspended air freight from Yemen.

Obama has said the bombs represented a “credible terrorist threat,” and his Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said the plot bore the “hallmarks of Al-Qaeda”. Yemen, the ancestral homeland of bin Laden, has become a haven for violent extremists over the past decade. It is the headquarters of AQAP and the hiding place for US-born radical cleric Anwar Al-Awlaki, who has been linked to high-profile terror plots in the United States. — AFP

Sunday, October 31, 2010

SPORTS

15

NHL results/standings NHL results and standings on Friday.

Montreal 3, NY Islanders 1; Carolina 4, NY Rangers 3; Philadelphia 3, Pittsburgh 2; Atlanta 4, Buffalo 3 (OT); Edmonton 7, Chicago 4; New Jersey 2, Anaheim 1 (OT indicates overtime win).

Ea stern Conference Atla ntic Division W L OTL GF Philadelphia 5 4 1 28 Pittsburgh 5 5 1 32 NY Islanders 4 4 2 30 NY Rangers 4 4 1 29 New Jersey 3 7 1 19

GA 26 28 31 30 36

PTS 11 11 10 9 7

Montreal Toronto Boston Ottawa Buffalo

Northeast Division 7 2 1 28 5 3 1 23 5 2 0 20 4 5 1 26 3 6 2 30

22 21 11 31 34

15 11 10 9 8

Tampa Bay Washington Atlanta Carolina Florida

Southea st Division 6 2 1 32 6 4 0 27 5 4 1 33 5 4 0 25 3 5 0 21

30 23 36 27 20

13 12 11 10 6

Western Conference Central Division Nashville 5 1 3 21 20 Chicago 6 5 1 36 36 St Louis 5 1 2 22 14 Columbus 6 3 0 23 24 Detroit 5 2 1 25 22

13 13 12 12 11

Calgary Colorado Minnesota Vancouver Edmonton Los Angeles Dallas San Jose Phoenix Anaheim

Northw est Division 6 4 0 31 5 4 1 34 4 3 2 25 4 3 2 24 3 4 2 28 Pacific 7 3 5 4 4 3 3 3 4 6

Division 0 31 0 28 1 24 3 23 1 27

27 38 24 24 33

12 11 10 10 8

24 27 23 26 37

14 10 9 9 9

ANAHEIM: Martin Brodeur No. 30 of the New Jersey Devils makes a glove save on the Anaheim Ducks during the third period at the Honda Center. — AFP

Canadiens down Islanders, Flyers beat Penguins UNIONDALE: The Montreal Canadiens won their fourth straight NHL game with a 3-1 defeat of the New York Islanders on Friday.

Tomas Plekanec scored for the third straight game for the Canadiens, and New York’s Matt Martin got his first NHL goal before Benoit Pouliot snapped a third-period tie. The trail man on a 3-on-2 rush, Pouliot took a back pass from Jeff Halpern from the right circle dot and snapped a shot past goalie Dwayne Roloson.

Travis Moen scored with 1:49 left to make it 3-1 Montreal goalie Alex Auld made 30 saves in his season debut to earn his first victory in nine months. The Canadiens swept the home-and-home series from the Islanders, and handed New York its first

regulation loss at Nassau Coliseum and third consecutive loss overall. The Canadiens haven’t lost in regulation to the Islanders in 14 games.

Flyers 3, Penguins 2 In Pittsburgh, Claude Giroux scored short-handed and on a power play to help Philadelphia edge Pittsburgh. Kris Letang gave the Penguins an early 1-0 lead, but they repeatedly squandered chances to take control by going 0 for 6 on the power play.

They are 0 for 20 in four games, three of them losses. With the score 1-1 late in the second period, Philadelphia’s Daniel Carcillo redirected a soft wrist shot past the goalie’s pads and the Flyers never trailed again. Giroux

sealed it midway through the third with his sixth goal, punching the puck home after a scramble in front of the Pittsburgh net in which three Flyers players had scoring chances. The power play was created by a penalty for too many men on the ice.

Pittsburgh’s Tyler Kennedy scored a one-timer of Sidney Crosby’s cross-ice pass with 45 seconds remaining, but it was too late for the Penguins as they dropped their third in a row. Philadelphia rookie goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky made 26 saves.

Oilers 7, Blackhawks 4 In Chicago, Edmonton snapped a sixgame losing streak by defeating Chicago.

Sam Gagner, Ales Hemsky and Jordan Eberle scored in a 1:09 span late in the first

period, and Gagner added an empty-netter in the third.

Rookie Taylor Hall had a goal and an assist, and Andrew Cogliano and Ryan Jones also scored for Edmonton, which posted its first win since taking the opening two of the season. It was only the third win in regulation for the Oilers in their past 29 road games. Patrick Sharp scored a power-play goal and added two assists for the Stanley Cup champion Blackhawks. Jonathan Toews, Patrick Kane and Jake Dowell also scored for mistake-plagued Chicago.

Hurricanes 4, Rangers 3 In New York, Erik Cole scored the goahead goal on a power play with 3:59 left as Carolina downed New York. Carolina’s Jeff

Skinner, the youngest player in the NHL at 18 years, 5 months, drew the hooking penalty that set up the key power play, then made the pass to set up a wide-open Cole for the winner. Skinner had two goals himself.

Tuomo Ruutu also scored for the Hurricanes, while Ryan Callahan, Marc Stall and Brandon Dubinsky netted for New York.

Thrashers 4, Sabres 3 In Atlanta, Dustin Byfuglien split two defenders and scored with a wrist shot at 4:31 of overtime to lift Atlanta past Buffalo.

Buffalo tied it with 8 seconds left in regulation when, with its goalie pulled, Derek Roy tipped Jordan Leopold’s shot into the net. Alexander Burmistrov scored his first NHL goal, and Niclas Bergfors and Nik

Late Wallaby strike ends All Black streak HONG KONG: Winger James O’Connor scored a last-minute try and drilled the conversion to give Australia a thrilling 26-24 victory over New Zealand yesterday, ending a 10-match losing streak against the All Blacks.

O’Connor’s nerveless kick minutes after the siren sounded also brought an end to New Zealand’s 15-test winning sequence and will send the Australians off on their forthcoming European tour brimming with confidence.

“I still can’t believe it, it’s a pretty surreal moment,” O’Connor said in a pitch side interview after being mobbed by elated team mates.

“They’re the things that you dream about when you’re a kid ... it’s a dream come true.”

Australia looked to have blown their chance of beating the All Blacks for the first time since 2008 when their early lead was snuffed out in front of a disappointingly low crowd at the Hong Kong Stadium.The Wallabies grabbed a 12-0 advantage through a try from flyhalf Quade Cooper and a brilliant solo effort from Adam Ashley-Cooper, who smashed through the All Blacks centres at halfway and dummied Cory Jane to touch down under the posts. New Zealand kept their composure, however, and converted tries from scrumhalf Jimmy Cowan and winger Jane had them back in front after 33 minutes before flyhalf Dan Carter, back after injury, added a penalty to put them 17-12 ahead at the break. The Tri-Nations champions, who had already secured the Bledisloe Cup, further extended their lead with a typically clinical try from centre Ma’a Nonu after 54 minutes.

Australia, who lost 23-22 in their last test against New Zealand, were not yet beaten and Drew Mitchell powered down the line to score in the corner after Kurtley Beale broke when Conrad Smith lost his footing just past the hour mark.

Mitchell’s score left the Wallabies needing a converted try to win and, after Carter’s replacement Stephen Donald had missed a penalty which would have sealed victory for the All Blacks, Australia laid siege to the New Zealand line.

The Australians showed great patience and discipline through several phases of play before O’Connor cut between two defenders and touched down to tie the scores, giving him his chance of a kick for glory. New Zealand, now deprived of the chance of exceeding Lithuania’s record of 18 consecutive test wins, also head for Europe next for a tour of Britain and Ireland.

“It was disappointing, we had a chance to close out the game but they put us under pressure and we didn’t manage to do it,” said skipper Richie McCaw. “It was just one of those days (but) when you have a bad day at the office you just have to get straight back on the horse.” — Reuters

Antropov also connected for Atlanta. Tim Connolly and Jordan Leopold added goals for Buffalo.

Devils 2, Ducks 1 In Anaheim, New Jersey won its first game in four by edging Anaheim. Patrik Elias scored the tiebreaking goal early in the third period and Martin Brodeur made 27 saves. Captain Jamie Langenbrunner also scored for the Devils, who had lost five of six while plummeting to the bottom of the NHL standings.

Jason Blake scored a power-play goal and Jonas Hiller stopped 25 shots for Anaheim, which came back flat from a four-game trip.

The Ducks haven’t won back-to-back games this season. — AP

Rangers need World Series turnaround

HONG KONG: Australia Wallabies’ Drew Mitchell, in yellow, battles with New Zealand All Blacks’ Cory Jane (14) in the DHL Hong Kong Bledisloe Cup rugby match. — AP

HONG KONG: New Zealand All Blacks’ Kieran Read (left) battles for the ball with Australia Wallabies’ Kurtley Beale (right) in the DHL Hong Kong Bledisloe Cup rugby match. — AP

ARLINGTON: The Texas Rangers will be back on their home field when the World Series resumes late yesterday, needing a radical reversal of fortunes to revive their chances of winning Major League Baseball’s decider.

Down 2-0 after successive losses in San Francisco, Texas’ hitters are slumping, the bullpen is a wreck and the manager is being criticized. A team that did so well in the American League playoffs got battered 11-7 in the opener, then embarrassed 9-0 in Game 2.

“What you do is you just try to analyze what went wrong and just try to correct it,” Texas manager Ron Washington said before Friday’s training.

“Now that we’re home, we feel comfortable back in this place. Not taking anything away from the Giants, they beat us soundly,” he said. “We’ve just got to come back here, get focused and win a game.

We win a game, everything will be fine.”

Texas pitcher Colby Lewis is set to start Game 3 against Giants left-hander Jonathan Sanchez. It will be the first Series game in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Signs around Rangers Ballpark proclaimed, “It’s Time!” Jeff Francoeur and his teammates hope so.

“It’s important for us to come out, play well early, get guys on and put pressure on them. Make them feel uncomfortable,” Francoeur said. “They did a good job of making us seem uncomfortable in their park. Hopefully we can turn around and do the same to them.” Lewis, who closed out the Yankees in the AL championship series, will try to stop San Francisco’s scoring spree.

Texas has been tagged for 20 runs, the most allowed in a franchise’s first two World Series games, STATS LLC said.

Colorado set the previous record of 15 runs in 2007. “If you try to get too amped or too overly confident, you get yourself in trouble,” Lewis said. Vladimir Guerrero will rejoin the Texas lineup as the designated hitter. He drove in the

first run of this World Series, but also made two errors in right field and sat out Game 2.

“We get to get all of our weapons in that lineup,” Washington said. “It’s just comfortable to be back home in front of our fans. We can draw energy from them, and that’s what we need.” They certainly need some sort of boost. “We’re not playing the same. I don’t know what it is,” Texas slugger Nelson Cruz said.

“I wish I could tell you. The way we’re playing, it’s different.

It’s not us.” Neither is San Francisco, apparently. The week began with many fans wondering whether the Giants could hit enough to win — so far, they’ve become the first NL team to score at least nine runs in back-to-back World Series games.

“Well, it’s nice to do it a little bit easier. As you know, we don’t do things easy,” manager Bruce Bochy said. Bochy and the Giants were inside the clubhouse while the postgame festivities took place on the field at AT&T Park, so nobody could accuse them of celebrating too early. Outside, members of the Giants organization whooped it up. They stood around the NL championship trophy — the official picture might’ve been a matter of logistics since there’s no guarantee the Series will return to San Francisco. “See you next year,” some giddy fans told ushers on their way out of the stadium. Others chanted “Sweep!

Sweep!”

“We have a lot of baseball left, but if anything to see how these fans have come out and brought the enthusiasm, energy, it’s been a lot of fun here playing down the stretch,” Bochy said.

Texas was one of baseball’s best home teams this year, the Giants were among the top road clubs. The Rangers also had been doing well on the road — 5-1 in the AL playoffs — before San Francisco stopped them. “They’re more comfortable where they play. That’s their home ballpark.

They’re used to having the DH,” Giants second baseman Freddy Sanchez said. — AP

SPORTS

16

Sunday, October 31, 2010

Packers, Jets present tough tasks for each other NEW YORK: Returning from a bye and rolling with a five-game winning streak, the New York Jets are well-rested, healthy and eager to play the banged-up Green Bay Packers in the NFL today.

The Jets are tied with New England and Pittsburgh for the best record in the league at 5-1, and they’d be undefeated but for a one-point loss to Baltimore in Week 1. Coach Rex Ryan has talked for months about how his team is headed for the Super Bowl, and his bold prediction looks increasingly more like a possibility than just bluster.

“We’re definitely hungry,” right tackle Damien Woody said. “We’re riding a nice winning streak and nobody wants to lose.

Nobody wants to have that taste in their

mouth.” The six-day break allowed two of the Jets’ top defensive players to heal from injuries that hampered them through the early part of the season.

Cornerback Darrelle Revis declared that his bothersome left hamstring was 100 percent for the first time since Week 1, and linebacker Calvin Pace appears to be close to a full go after missing the first four games with a broken right foot.

The Packers, tied for the NFC North division lead with Chicago, hope they launched a long run of success by beating Brett Favre and the archrival Minnesota Vikings last weekend. Quarterback Aaron Rodgers expects it, starting with himself.

“Last week was a big win for us,” Rodgers says. “We did some better things

on offense. Obviously, we’re still not exactly where we want to be yet. ... I just think that there is a sense of urgency personally. I need to start to play a little bit better.”

The Super Bowl champion New Orlean Saints are struggling, and just what they don’t need is a matchup with the NFL’s most physical team, the previous Super Bowl winners the Pittsburgh Steelers.

The Saints are coming off a stunning lopsided loss to the Cleveland Browns and have the kind of problems the Steelers feast on. With Reggie Bush and Pierre Thomas injured, the Saints haven’t run the ball consistently and haven’t been as effective beating pressure with screens, swing passes and check-downs. That has

forced quarterback Drew Brees to be more conventional, and when a defense expects passes-in Pittsburgh’s case, it might not even matter what is expectedthat spells trouble.

“The disappointing part is you haven’t seen the complete team since Week 2 when Reggie went down,” Saints linebacker Scott Shanle says. “It absolutely has an effect. I mean, we do a good job of having guys who are backups come in and play good football, but there’s a reason why Reggie Bush is Reggie Bush and Pierre Thomas has done what he’s done.”

The Indianapolis Colts’ first tomorrow night game since December 2006 is as close to a must-win as the Colts will have all season. The Colts are 0-2 against AFC

South division foes for the first time, and find themselves in the precarious position of needing to hold serve to get even with the visiting Houston Texans in the headto-head category. The Texans ended a long losing streak to the Colts with a romp in the season-opener, and another win would give them their first season sweep and the inside track to dethroning the division champs.

“They’ve been a juggernaut in this division for years, and they’ve been our Achilles’ heel,” Texans running back Arian Foster said. “That (win) was only one game. You can’t win anything with only one game. So it wasn’t like we did anything.” The Texans must shore up a pass defense that ranks dead last in the

league and is yielding nearly 320 yards a game. Houston might have a chance to do that because Colts quarterback Peyton Manning’s receiving corps has been diminished by injuries.

Also todaay, it’s Tennessee at San Diego, Minnesota at New England, Seattle at Oakland, Tampa Bay at Arizona, Buffalo at Kansas City, Miami at Cincinnati, Washington at Detroit, Carolina at St. Louis, and Jacksonville at Dallas.

The NFL’s international series continues with a matchup the league can’t brag much about, Denver vs. San Francisco at London.Off this week are Philadelphia, Chicago, Atlanta, Baltimore, Cleveland, and the New York Giants.—AP

Crane leads Classic

INCHEON: Amy Hung of Taiwan celebrates after making an eagle on the 18th hole during the second round of LPGA HanaBank Championship in Sky72 Golf Course.—AP

Lorenzo on pole in Portugal LISBON: Newly crowned MotoGP world champion Jorge Lorenzo will start the Portuguese Grand Prix from pole position after yesterday’s qualifying at Estoril was called off due to torrential rain and strong winds.

The Yamaha rider had been quickest in practice, despite crashing heavily on Saturday morning, with the combined times from the earlier sessions deciding

the starting grid for Sunday’s race.

Organisers first postponed qualifying and then abandoned hope of starting after sending out the safety car to test conditions, with pools of standing water on the track.

American Nicky Hayden will start in second place for Ducati, ahead of Lorenzo’s team mate and outgoing champion, Valentino Rossi.

Lorenzo, the Spaniard who will be starting on pole for the seventh time this season, wrapped up the championship with three races remaining in Malaysia earlier this month. Qualifying for the 125cc and Moto2 categories was also called off.

Britain’s Bradley Smith starts on pole in the 125cc category, with the Hungarian Gabor Talmacsi on the top slot for the first time this year in Moto2. —Reuters

PORTUGAL: Spanish Moto GP rider Jorge Lorenzo rides his Yamaha during the third Free Practice session for the Grand Prix of Portugal in Estoril.—AFP

So You Think perfect at Melbourne race carnival MELBOURNE: So You Think won the Mackinnon Stakes at Flemington yesterday, giving Australia’s latest boom horse its fifth Group 1 win in five races at the Melbourne spring carnival.

Ridden by Steven Arnold, the four-yearold New Zealand-bred stallion won yesterday’s 2,000-meter weight-for-age race by 3 3/4 lengths and immediately firmed as favorite for Tuesday’s running of the 3,200meter Melbourne Cup, Australia’s richest and most famous horse race, which is also held at Flemington.

So You Think’s owner Dato Tan Chin Nam, a retired Malaysian industrialist, said “I am very confident he will run a big race” on Tuesday. The horse is trained by 12-time Melbourne Cup winner Bart Cummings, 82, who was recovering in hospital Saturday from a respiratory condition.

Arnold had So You Think in fourth place until approaching the home turn, joined the leaders with 300 meters to go and left Descarado and Ginga Dude in second and third, respectively.

“He relaxed well in the run, traveled

beautifully and had the race at his mercy a fair way out,” Arnold said. “I’m more positive about him staying the 3,200 meters than yesterday as he relaxed so well and was strong late.”

After the race, So You Think, which has won the prestigious Cox Plate the past two years, moved from $5 to $3.50 favorite for the Melbourne Cup. Shocking, which went into the Mackinnon as Melbourne Cup favorite, worked home evenly yesterday to finish sixth as he prepares to defend his 2009 title on Tuesday.—AP

KUALA LUMPUR: Ben Crane of the United States birdied three of his last four holes yesterday to take a two-shot lead in the Asia Pacific Classic with a 5-under 66 in the third round.

The 36-year-old Crane has a 16-under total of 197 to sit two strokes ahead of Sweden’s Carl Pettersson, who also shot a 66.

“I’m just trying to play freely and trying to play like when I was playing like a kid,” Crane said. “I haven’t been in this position a lot. ... Certainly, I’ll pray tonight for peace and relaxation and come out tomorrow to enjoy this experience.”

Singaporean veteran Mardan Mamat carded a 65 for a share of third place with four other players, another two shots back.

Brian Davis, fellow Englishman Luke Donald and American duo Ryan Moore and Ricky Barnes were also tied for third in the tournament, which is co-sanctioned by the PGA Tour and the Asian Tour.

Overnight leader Pariya Junhasavasdikul of Thailand fell to a share of eighth place after a 71. Play was stopped for one hour because of a heavy thunderstorm, but when it resumed, Crane produced three straight birdies from the 15th to 17th.

Pettersson also finished strongly with five birdies on the back nine. He hit a 5-iron to within 4 feet of the flag for a birdie on No. 10 and then chipped in for another birdie on 14.

“It wasn’t a great start. But I made some good birdies and played a good back nine to get myself back into the tournament,” Pettersson said. “It was a fun finish.” Siddikur Rahman of Bangladesh produced a 65 to sit tied for eighth place.

The 26-year-old Siddikur grew up in a poor family in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka and built his first club by sticking the head of a broken 7-iron on a metal rod. He became the first Bangladeshi to win on the Asian Tour with his victory at the Brunei Open in August. On Saturday, he sank six birdies and outscored playing partner Heath Slocum, who won the McGladrey Classic this month, by six shots.

“I think it was a great day,” Siddikur said. “Drive, irons, chipping and putting were absolutely good.”

Meanwhile, South Korea’s Song-Hee Kim birdied four holes in a row on the front nine yesterday and finished with her second straight 4-under 68 for a onestroke lead over defending champion Na Yeon Choi in the LPGA Hana Bank Championship.

Winless in 73 LPGA Tour starts, Kim finished second in the LPGA Championship in late June, then lost a playoff to Choi the following week in the Jamie Farr Classic. “I played really well in the early part of the round, but I struggled with my shots in the last part of the round,” Kim said.

“I managed to overcome the adversity with my putting. I can play well tomorrow if I play the way I played today.” Choi also shot a 68 on Sky 72 Golf Club’s Ocean Course. “I have confidence right now, and I have a good feeling about my game,” Choi said. “I felt that I lost focus on the last couple holes, so I’m going to go to the range and hit some balls and get more focus and confidence.” Vicky Hurst was third at 6 under after a 70.

Juli Inkster, the 50-year-old Hall of Famer who bogeyed the final hole last week in Malaysia to finish a stroke behind winner Jimin Kang, was three strokes back at 5 under after a 68. Inkster is trying to become the oldest LPGA Tour winner.

“I’m over last week,” Inkster said. “I’ve played so long out here, I just kind of let it go. What it did tell me is I’m playing well, and I can compete out here.”

Second-ranked South Korean star Jiyai Shin was 3 under after a 68, and No. 1 Cristie Kerr was another stroke back after her second straight 71. Michelle Wie shot a 73, leaving her 1 under.—AP

MALAYSIA: Ben Crane of the US makes a putt on the 1st green during the third round of the CIMB Asia Pacific Classic Malaysia 2010 golf tournament at The Mines Resort & Golf Club.—AP

‘Woods’ toppling signals a new competitive era’ CHINA: Golf is entering a new competitive era with Tiger Woods set to be toppled from the number one spot after this weekend, European Ryder Cup winning captain Colin Montgomerie believes.

Either Briton Lee Westwood or German Martin Kaymer, both in Montgomerie’s successful European Ryder Cup team at Celtic Manor in Wales, will be crowned number one when the new rankings are released on Monday, ending Woods’s 281-week reign.

Kaymer, who won the US PGA championship this year, needs to finish inside the top two at the Andalucia Masters to take the top spot. Westwood, at home resting an injured calf, will become world number one if Kaymer does not achieve the top-two finish.

“Both Martin and Lee are deserving of the number one title,” Montgomerie said at the Mission Hills pro-celebrity tournament in Hainan, southern China on Saturday. “I would say they are number one and two in the world.

“You can’t knock Martin’s and Lee’s current form. “It could mean Europe has one and two for the first time since the heady days when (Nick) Faldo, (Bernhard) Langer, (Ian) Woosnam and Seve (Ballesteros) were on top of that tree.

“This world competition being so close is fantastic and great for golf, (especially) with Phil Mickelson close behind and other Europeans coming through to join that band.” Montgomerie, however, was quick to warn his European proteges the American will roar back.

“It might be the end of Tiger’s reign for a limited spell. I don’t think he will be happy at being number two or three in the world,” Montgomerie added.

“I am sure with the form he showed at the Ryder Cup he’ll be back with a vengeance next year, win-

ning majors again and will get to Jack Nicklaus’s record. He hasn’t gone anywhere.

“But once you are number one, you want to stay there and you have to improve as the competition behind you gets better. I am sure Lee and Martin will seek to do so.”

Montgomerie, who escaped serious injury in a car crash in Britain just over a week ago and was limping in Hainan, ignored his doctor’s advice to vie for the US$1.28 million purse.

“I am still getting flash backs from the accident and my rib cage and hip were knocked out of position slightly. My hip is very stiff and is not quite right,” he said.

“I had intense physio before I travelled and it was touch and go whether I would come. I semi-ignored medical advice because I wanted to come as I always enjoy it here.”

He said the crash had given him a jolt and changed his outlook on life. “It was shock. It puts certain things into perspective. We have to be very, very thankful.”

Meanwhile, Montgomerie wants his successor to have more picks when Europe defend their title in 2012 to avoid the “terrible” situation of omitting world class players.

Montgomerie left out world number seven Paul Casey and twice winner on this season’s PGA Tour Justin Rose, instead opting for three-times major winner Padraig Harrington, world number eight Luke Donald and Italian Edoardo Molinari as his wildcard picks.

“The more captain’s picks the better. Can you imagine if I had only had two? It was bad enough with three,” the Scot said on the sidelines of the Mission Hills pro-celebrity tournament in Hainan, southern China yesterday.—Reuters

17

SPORTS

Sunday, October 31, 2010

Heat end Magic spell MIAMI: The Miami Heat score the first 14 points of the second half to turn a close game against the Orlando Magic into a one-sided 96-70 victory in the NBA on Friday. Dwyane Wade scored 26 points in Miami’s home opener, while LeBron James had 15 points and seven assists.

And if this game was the measuring stick to see how the new-look Heat are coming together, the result had to be an enjoyable one for Miami’s Big 3 of Wade, James and Chris Bosh. The Heat held Orlando to its lowest point total since 2005.

Lakers 114, Suns 106 In Phoenix, Los Angeles beat Phoenix in the Suns’ home opener and a rematch of last season’s Western Conference finalists.

Los Angeles’ Lamar Odom had 18 points and 17 rebounds and Kobe Bryant scored 25 points.

Grant Hill scored 21 points, Robin Lopez had 18 points and 14 rebounds and Jason Richardson added 17 points for the Suns, playing on consecutive nights after beating the Jazz in Utah on Thursday.

KINGSTON: Yasuharu Nanri from Japan performs his short program in the men’s competition at the Skate Canada International figure skating competition. — AP

Phaneuf leads Skate Canada KINGSTON: Canada’s Cynthia Phaneuf took out he women’s short program at Skate Canada on Friday, as the host nation almost completed an impressive double.

In the men’s program, Canada’s Kevin Reynolds became the first man to execute two quads in a short program but was edged out by a flawless performance from Japan’s Nobunari Oda. Phaneuf, the top-ranked Canadian in the absence of Olympic bronze medalist Joannie Rochette, scored 58.24 points, then said she’s comfortable carrying Canada’s flag for the women.

“My job is the same (with or without Rochette), but for sure it’s a pleasure for me to be the first Canadian and be proud to go out there and know I’m the top lady,” Phaneuf said. “For me it’s an honor to have that title and just do my job knowing I’m the one that has to lead.”

Rochette, who skated her way onto the podium at the Vancouver Olympics days after her mother’s death, is skipping the Grand Prix season as she contemplates her competitive future.

Ksenia Makarova of Russia was second in the short program with 57.90 points, while American Agnes Zawadzki was third with 56.29.

Reynolds took advantage of a new International Skating Union rule that allows skaters to have two quads in the

short program, landing a quad Salchow in a combination and a quad toe loop to score 80.09 points.

Oda of Japan didn’t have a quad but finished first with 81.37 points. Adam Rippon of the US was third with 77.53.

The 22-year-old Phaneuf skated a clean program Friday, nailing both triple jumps. Phaneuf at one time was Canada’s top woman. She rocketed to the top at the Canadian championships when she was just 15, upsetting six-time champion Jennifer Robinson, and went on to win Skate Canada and finish second at Skate America.

But her fall was nearly as swift as her rise. Stress fractures to her ankle and hip kept her off skates for nearly a year. A growth spurt during that time saw her grow 11 centimeters (4 inches).

After skating in the shadows of six-time Canadian champion Rochette, Phaneuf re-emerged as an international contender at the world championships in Turin in March, finishing fifth, 10 spots better than her previous best world finish.

Russia’s Lubov Iliushechkina and Nodari Maisuradze won the pairs short program with 60.72 points. Americans Marissa Castelli and Simon Shnapir were second with 56.34, while Paige Lawrence and Rudi Swiegers of Canada were third with 56.14. Skate Canada is the second of six stops on the ISU Grand Prix circuit. — AP

Ljubicic in Open Sud final MONTPELLIER: Defending champion Ivan Ljubicic used his strong serve to beat sixth-seeded Albert Montanes of Spain 6-3, 7-6 (4) yesterday and reach the final of the Open Sud de France.

The fourth-seeded Croat sealed the win with his 18th ace of the match and never faced a break point. He won every point on his serve in the tiebreaker.

“I feel great. Today was good, I was able to play aggressive the way I wanted and everything went pretty good,” Ljubicic said, admitting that he felt tired heading into the match. “That’s why I kept the points very short, I went for winners. I made a lot of mistakes but I knew that I couldn’t play with him left and right, 10 shots.”

Ljubicic won last year when the tournament was held in Lyon and in 2001 for his first career title. “I have a fantastic record in France. I have won three titles here, played the final in Bercy, semifinal in Roland Garros and now here,” said Ljubicic, who also won an indoor title in Metz five years ago. Ljubicic is looking for his 11th career title, having lost to Roger Federer in the Stockholm Open semifinals last week.

He will play the winner of the all-French semifinal between No. 2 Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and No. 3 Gael Monfils. “It’s going to be a great match, Gael and Jo are playing great tennis,” Ljubicic said. —AP

ST PETERSBURG: Mikhail Youzhny of Russia returns the ball to Russia’s Dmitry Tursunov during the St. Petersburg Open ATP tennis tournament semifinal match. — AP

Kukushkin sends Marchenko packing ST. PETERSBURG: Mikhail Kukushkin of Kazakhstan reached his first career ATP tour final yesterday by defeating Illya Marchenko of Ukraine 6-3, 6-4 at the St. Petersburg Open.

Kukushkin broke twice for a 5-1 lead in the first set. He made a decisive break in the ninth game of the second before serving out the match by converting his second match point. Kukushkin said he had set no goals ahead of the event and played free of pressure.

“I didn’t think of reaching the quarterfinals or semifinals, and I don’t think about my next opponent during the event,” Kukushkin said. “I just wanted to play my best tennis. I was relaxed and that helped me to win today. Illya always fights till the last point of the match.”

On the way to the semifinals, the 88th-ranked Kukushkin upset seventhseeded Jeremy Chardy and third-seeded Janko Tipsarevic.

Both Kukushkin and Marchenko were playing their second career semifinal, having reached the same stage at last year’s Kremlin Cup in Moscow as qualifiers. “I’m satisfied with the way I played at the tournament,” Marchenko said.

“But I really was tired both physically and mentally and I couldn’t control my emotions today. Mikhail was better today and that’s why he won.” In Sunday’s final, Kukushkin will play the winner of the all-Russian semifinal between top-seeded Mikhail Youzhny and wild card Dmitry Tursunov. — AP

US, Brazil advance MATSUMOTO: The United States improved to 2-0 at the women’s volleyball world championships yesterday with a 25-16, 25-13, 25-23 win over Croatia.

Destinee Hooker led the way with 15 points and Logan Tom added 12 for the Americans, who are No. 2 in the world rankings. The United States beat Thailand on Friday and next faces Germany in Group C. “Our goal is to play the best volleyball we can and try to improve in every game,” said US captain Jennifer Tamas. “Today was a great team effort and we passed better and served better. I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s game.” Top-ranked Brazil needed five sets for a 22-25, 25-22, 23-25, 25-20, 15-9 win over the Czech Republic. Brazil won its opening match with a

three-set win over Kenya on Friday but had a much tougher time with a surprising Czech team.

“The Czech team did a very good game tonight,” said Brazil coach Jose Guimaraes. “They served very well, and we didn’t receive in a good situation for the setter.” Elsewhere, defending champion Russia posted a 25-27, 25-22, 25-11, 25-17 victory over Turkey and South Korea improved to 2-0 with a 29-27, 25-23, 2520 victory over the Dominican Republic.

The first round involves four six-team groups and a round-robin schedule. The top four teams in each pool advance to the second round for crossover play. The semifinals and finals will be played in Tokyo on Nov. 13-14. — AP

Hornets 101, Nuggets 95 In New Orleans, the hosts kept rookie coach Monty Williams unbeaten by defeating Denver.

Chris Paul scored 18 points and David West added 17 for the Hornets.

Carmelo Anthony had 24 points and 10 rebounds for Denver, which led 79-74 early in the fourth quarter before Paul returned from a rest to score 10 of his points inside the final nine minutes. Both teams shot better than 48 percent, but the Hornets’ defense stepped up late with blocks.

Celtics 105, Knicks 101 In Boston, Rajon Rondo had a triple-double with a career-high 24 assists to lead Boston over New York. Rondo had 10 points and 10 rebounds and topped his regular-season personal best of 18 assists, but fell short of the franchise record of 28 set by Bob Cousy in 1959. Paul Pierce scored 25 points with 14 rebounds for the Celtics. Amare’ Stoudemire scored 27 for the Knicks.

T’wolves 96, Bucks 85 In Minneapolis, Minnesota pounded Milwaukee on the boards for a comfortable victory. Michael Beasley had 21 points and 10 rebounds and Kevin Love added 17 points and 16 rebounds, as the Timberwolves outrebounded the Bucks 62-39.

Corey Maggette scored 23 points for Milwaukee, which shot just 36 percent, including 3 for 20 from 3-point range. The Timberwolves weren’t exactly sharp shooters themselves at 38 percent, but their 26-9 advantage in secondchance points made all the difference.

Nets 106, Kings 100 In Newark, New Jersey staged another late rally to defeat Sacramento. New Jersey closed with a 17-3 surge over the final 3:40. Devin Harris scored seven straight late in the run and finished with 21 points and 10 assists.

The Nets, who squandered an 18-point lead in this one, needed 21 games last season to get two wins. Now they have done it in two games this season.

New Jersey erased a seven-point deficit in the final 1:40 to beat Detroit in their opener on Wednesday. Tyreke Evans and Francisco Garcia had 18 points apiece for Sacramento.

Hawks 104, 76ers 101 In Philadelphia, Al Horford had 20 points and 12 rebounds to lead Atlanta over Philadelphia. Joe Johnson scored 22 points and Jamal Crawford finished with 19 for the Hawks, who hung on despite blowing most of a 15-point lead.

Andre Iguodala and Elton Brand had the kind of games the Sixers expected to see more off when they signed them both to $80 million contracts in 2008. Iguodala had 27 points, 10 assists and six rebounds, and Brand had 20 points and eight boards.

MIAMI: Forward Chris Bosh No. 1 of the Miami Heat defends against guard Jameer Nelson No. 14 of the Orlando Magic at American Airlines Arena. — AFP

England arrives for Ashes PERTH: England’s cricket team arrived Down Under yesterday for a five-match Ashes tour with its captain Andrew Strauss taking a cautious approach to the opposition. Strauss said England would not target any members of the Australian team, including struggling captain Ricky Ponting, when the series begins with the first test Nov. 25 in Brisbane. England holds the Ashes after a 21 series win in England last year.

“I don’t know what his (Ponting’s) state of mind is but one thing I do know is we’re not in the business of targeting opposition players,” Strauss said. “My past experience is that if you say too much about opposition teams, it can come back and haunt you.”

“We expect Australia to be very strong. Their record here is very good. When you’re out here, you can’t afford any passengers in your side, so you need all 11 to be performing and standing up at the right time.”

Strauss’ comments were in contrast to the ones made several days earlier when the team left England.

“I’m not sure about not being able to say hello to them,

but until the end of that fifth test there’s two sides at war with each other,” Strauss said in London. “Both sides know that at the end of the series there’s going to be 11 guys feted as heroes and 11 guys who failed in their task.

Until that final test is over there’s no point being too hunky-dory or friendly with the opposition. Our task is to go out there and try to beat them.” Australia has slipped one spot below England to fifth in the ICC test rankings but England has not taken a series Down Under since 1986-87 and has won just three of its last 26 Ashes tests in Australia — all when the outcome had already been decided.

Strauss said on arrival yesterday that England was mentally and physical ready for the series. “I said in London there’s a relaxed excitement about the group,” he said. “Now that we’ve touched down and are on Australian soil, everything’s a bit more at the forefront of our minds about what lies ahead of us, what massive opportunities there are and also how determined we are to come out here and play well.”—AP

Pacers 104, Bobcats 101 In Charlotte, Danny Granger scored 33 points as Indiana rallied to beat Charlotte. Indiana’s Tyler Hansbrough, who led North Carolina to a national college championship but was injured for most of his rookie season injured, hit two free throws with 10.7 seconds left.

D.J. Augustin and Stephen Jackson then missed tying 3-point attempts for the Bobcats.

Gerald Wallace led Charlotte with 29 points.

Raptors 101, Cavaliers 81 In Toronto, the hosts dominated in a game between two sides adjusting to life without bigname stars. Andrea Bargnani scored 20 points and Linas Kleiza added 19 for the Raptors, who are learning to live without Chris Bosh.

Antawn Jamison scored 13 points for the newlook, no-LeBron-James Cavaliers, who were without Mo Williams and Anderson Varejao.

Thunder 105, Pistons 104 In Auburn Hills, Jeff Green made a layup with 2.5 seconds left for Oklahoma City to snatch victory over Detroit. The Pistons were out of timeouts at the end of the game and failed to attempt a shot.

Charlie Villanueva made a go-ahead 3-pointer with 7.5 seconds left, but Detroit’s defense allowed the Thunder to make one too many easy shots with the game on the line. Kevin Durant finished with 30 points and Green had 21 for the Thunder, who made their first 24 free throws.

Ben Gordon had 32 points for the Pistons.

Grizzlies 91, Mavericks 90 In Dallas, Rudy Gay scored 21 points for Dallas, O.J. Mayo added 20, and each made key defensive plays in the final seconds to help Memphis edge Dallas. Dirk Nowitzki had 27 points for the Mavericks.

Warriors 109, Clippers 91 In Oakland, Monta Ellis had 15 points and 11 assists to help Golden State beat Los Angeles.

Dorel Wright scored 24 points for the Warriors, who lost Stephen Curry to an ankle injury.

Blake Griffin, the top draft pick in 2009 who missed all of last season because of a knee injury, had his second straight double-double for the Clippers with 14 points and 10 rebounds. — AP

DUBAI: Suspended Pakistan cricket player, Salman Butt (right) arrives with his lawyer (unidentified) at the ICC building for the appeal hearing in Dubai. — AP

Hearing for Pakistan cricketers begins DUBAI: The International Cricket Council begun hearing an appeal yesterday by Pakistan cricketers Salman Butt and Mohammad Amir’s against their suspensions for involvement in a fixing scandal.

The ICC hearing was set down for two days, with the pair hoping their suspensions are lifted and they are able to join the Pakistan team in the United Arab Emirates for the ongoing series against South Africa.

The team has lost all matches in the absence of Butt, Amir and Mohamad Asif, who is not challenging his suspension as he’s banned from entering the United Arab Emirates due to a previous offense, so could not play in the series anyway.

The ICC suspended the trio after a British tabloid sting alleged money was paid for bowling no-balls at prearranged times in a test against England to fix spot betting markets.

The lifting of the suspensions, should it happen, will have no bearing on the investigation into the fixing allegations which the ICC has only said is ongoing.

Butt and Amir, along with their lawyers, refused to comment as they were rushed into ICC headquarters where the governing body’s code of commission board began hearing their appeals.

An ICC spokesman said the pair would be making no comments to the press and that the hearing would continue Sunday. He refused to provide any further details about the hearing. Before departing Pakistan, Butt said that he was innocent and hoped to be cleared.

“Either you are guilty or you are not, and I am not guilty and I am sure about it,” Butt told reporters. The 18-year-old fast bowler Amir — in his first public comments since he was suspended on Sept. 2 — also hoped to be cleared.

“I hope to get the suspension lifted and will be part of the team,” he said. Butt’s lawyer Aftab Gul said he was confident they had a good case and would be back on the pitch soon. “We are going for justice in their court,” Gul said in Pakistan.

“We can’t pre-empt what decision they give, it’s their discretion, but our case is very good. “There is no strong evidence against Salman Butt on the basis of which we can say that he should remain suspended.”

Butt’s other lawyer — former law minister Khalid Ranjha — said there was no evidence other than provided by the British tabloid The News of the World.

“I don’t see any substantive evidence against Salman Butt,” he said. “I can read bias into this case.”

Pakistan chief selector Mohsin Khan, meanwhile, has said that he would welcome back both cricketers into the team if their suspensions were lifted.

Khan told the daily Dawn that “we will seek a No Objection Certificate from the PCB to immediately consider their cases for national selection.” Pakistan has been forced to play ‘home’ games in neutral venues like the United Arab Emirates since last year’s terrorist attack on Sri Lanka’s team bus and security convoy at Lahore, which killed six police officials and a van driver while injuring several players. — AP

18

SPORTS

Sunday, October 31, 2010

Ronaldo sends Real four clear

DOHA: Belgium’s Kim Clijsters serves the ball to Samantha Stosur from Australia during the semi finals of the Qatar WTA Tennis Championship.—AP

Clijsters survives car crash to reach Doha WTA final DOHA: US Open champion Kim Clijsters reached the final of the WTA Championships despite being involved in a “scary” car crash on the way to the venue yesterday.

Clijsters’ 7-6 (7/3), 6-1 win over Australia’s Samantha Stosur was ultimately impressive despite slipping to an early 0-3 deficit, which some attributed to the upset of her vehicle being smashed into by a large truck.

She was physically unhurt, but she admitted that it was “a bit of a shock,” and that her manager Bob Verbeeck suffered from cuts. “I don’t know exactly what happened,” she added, “But there was a lot of glass, and Bob was cut, and we got lucky.” Her vehicle was abandoned by the side of the highway while a replacement was being summoned.

Clijsters tweeted: “We just had an accident on the way to the courts. So scary. Bob, my manager took the hit. We are all okay....Just the car is ready for the junk yard.”

Clijsters quickly went 0-3 down and did not really seem herself until 20 minutes into the match.

Then she carved out a break back point with a topspin backhand down the line which combined great pace with magnetic accuracy.

She converted that chance quickly, and served her way back to 3-3, but had to save a set point at 45, 30-40, when she came up with a similarly brilliant winner, unerringly parallel to the sideline.

Her next crucial push came in the tie-break, when a heavy forehand drive went for a winner off the edge of the baseline to make a mini-break for 5-3.

Clijsters reached 6-3 when Stosur missed with a drive volley from a good position, and from that point on the match changed character. Clijsters won her first set point, and immediately took charge of the

second set.

Ever the diplomat she denied though that her play had been adversely affected by the accident.

“Everyone was distracted and I was trying to switch off my mental state when we got to the stadium,” she explained. “But I felt better after I had had a hit and a shower.”

Clijsters now has a showdown with Caroline Wozniacki, the year-end world number one from Denmark, who produced a crowd-rousing fight-back to overcome Vera Zvonareva, the world number two from Russia, by 7-5, 6-0.

Wozniacki led 4-1 and then slipped to 5-4, 40-15 down before tenaciously saving two set points in a row with her mobile, consistent game.

Once she had done that the match utterly changed, and the favorite hurtled through nine games in a row to reach the final.

There Wozniacki will have a chance to avenge herself against Clijsters who beat her in the semifinals en route to a successful defence of the US Open title seven weeks ago.

“I’m not sure how I am going to do that,” answered Wozniacki when asked how she would achieve it. “I shall just try to enjoy the occasion - this is a huge tournament - and we will see what I come up with.”

However this is Clijsters first tournament since their New York meeting, following a foot operation, and her capacity to rise to her greatest heights remains unclear.

“I felt that slowly every day I felt better,” Clijsters said. “So far I think today was my best match. It’s been improving.” Her sense of humor though has hardly left her at all. “But we might be walking back to the hotel,” she joked.—AFP

DURBAN: Andrie Strauss from the Sharks team celebrates after winning the Absa Currie Cup Final match between the Sharks and Vodacom Western Province at Absa Stadium.—AFP

Sharks win Currie Cup DURBAN: Flyhalf Patrick Lambie scored 25 points in his first major final to inspire the Sharks to a 30-10 win over Western Province for the Currie Cup yesterday.

The 20-year-old Lambie scored two tries and kicked 15 points — the second-highest total in finals history — as Durban’s Sharks outplayed the visitors from Cape Town at ABSA Stadium in the climax to South Africa’s 121-year-old domestic rugby championship.

Scrumhalf Charl McLeod and Lambie scored first-half tries as the Sharks went on a run of 23 unanswered points in 22 minutes, after falling behind to an early penalty.

Western Province captain Schalk Burger muscled over for his team’s only try just before halftime, but the Sharks defended grimly for most of the second half and the outstanding Lambie sealed their sixth title with his second try in the final minutes.

Lambie ended his debut Currie Cup season with man of the match in the deciding game, overshadowing experienced opposite Willem de Waal, the 2010 competition’s leading pointscorer who was playing in his fifth final.

Lambie’s haul was just short of Derick Hougaard’s record 26 points for the Blue Bulls in 2002. Lambie was also rewarded with a place in South Africa’s squad for its tour to Britain and Ireland, which was announced later yesterday.

With Lambie leading, the Sharks were always in control against a star-studded Province outfit that had eight Springboks internationals in its starting lineup. “Any team can beat any bunch of individuals,” veteran Sharks captain Stefan Terblanche said, “so, to my team, I’m very proud of you.” Province, the country’s most successful

team, was last crowned champions of South Africa in 2001. “It was heartbreak tonight,” said Burger.

“We weren’t good enough and we got comprehensively outplayed. To our fans down in the Cape, sorry about that, it was just one of those nights.”

Lambie coolly slotted his first kick at goal to level the scores in the fourth minute after De Waal’s second minute penalty.

McLeod, another outstanding performer for the Sharks in his breakthrough season, started and finished a move in the seventh minute for the Sharks’ first try, cleverly kicking over the defense for winger Lwazi Mvovo to chase. McLeod followed up after Mvovo was hauled down five meters out and collected a short pass to run in unchallenged.

The outstanding Lambie broke through three tackles, including an attempt from Springboks flanker Burger, to go in under the crossbar in the 13th minute. His conversion, and then penalties in the 17th and 26th minutes, pushed the home team 23-3 ahead and capped a pulsating run from the home favorite. Province’s disastrous start, as it was punished for a string of infringements and mistakes, was made worse as De Waal missed two of his first three kicks at posts. The visiting team also lost two key players to injury inside the first 30 minutes as scrumhalf Ricky Januarie and center Juan de Jongh, both Springboks, left the pitch.

With De Waal’s boot faltering, and trailing by 20 points, Province opted to chase tries with just 30 minutes of the first half played.

Burger forced his way over five minutes before halftime after an attacking lineout. The score was awarded after a long delay by TV official Shaun Veltzman, who decided the WP skipper pushed the front edge of the ball onto the tryline. —AP

MADRID: Cristiano Ronaldo hit double figures for the season with a late brace as Real Madrid came from behind to win 3-1 at promoted Hercules and stretch their lead at the top of the Spanish first division to four points.

Ronaldo scored a quadruple in his last league outing and scored twice on 82 and 86 minutes to make it 10 goals in his last four league matches and 11 for the season.

Unbeaten Real now sit four points above Barcelona and Villarreal, who both have a game in hand, and go into Wednesday’s Champions League match at AC Milan full of confidence.

Champions Barcelona host Sevilla at Camp Nou in yesterday’s late match hoping to close to within a point of Madrid while second-placed Villarreal, four points behind Real, travel to Sporting Gijon today.

Real were full of confidence after scoring 16 goals in their last three league matches and it was no surprise to see Jose Mourinho field his strongest line-up.

Hercules had already beaten Barcelona and Sevilla this season and took a shock third minute lead against mighty Real.

David Cortes got down the byline and crossed for veteran French striker David Trezeguet, back from suspension, who guided a header past Iker Casillas.

The 33-year-old Trezeguet, who scored the golden goal in France’s Euro 2000 final win over Italy, joined Hercules after 10 years with Juventus and has had an immediate impact scoring four goals in his last four league games.

Remarkably, it was the first time Real had gone behind this season under Mourinho but the league leaders did not take long in fashioning a response.

Ronaldo and Gonzalo Higuain were both denied by goalkeeper Juan Calatayud on 23 minutes but the lively Trezeguet then forced a save from Casillas as Hercules resisted the temptation to sit on their lead.

Seven minutes after the break Madrid were level with Ronaldo’s dipping shot spilled by Calatayud and di Maria pounced on the error to side-foot home.

Real had to wait until the 82nd minute to go ahead with Ronaldo tapping in after French substitute Karim Benzema had his shot saved.

Benzema was again the provider four minutes later with his cut-back slotted in neatly by Ronaldo, who could have had a ten-minute hat-trick but fired over in the closing stages.

Earlier, title hopefuls Valencia dropped two more points in a disappointing 1-1 home draw against 10-man Real Zaragoza with a performance that inspired little confidence ahead of a vital Champions League clash with Rangers.

Valencia have fallen to successive defeats to Barcelona and Real Mallorca and this draw against winless Zaragoza meant one point from the last six at home and leaves them fourth six points behind Real.

“We didn’t think we could surrender five points in two home matches, however, we don’t have to look for excuses but solutions,” said Valencia coach Unai Emery.

Zaragoza’s Italian defender Maurizio Lanzaro put his side into a shock two minute lead but undid the good work on 42 minutes when a mix-up with goalkeeper Antonio Doblas saw him put through his own net for Valencia’s equaliser.

Visitors Zaragoza were reduced to ten men on 67 minutes when midfielder Ander Herrera, only on as a second half substitute, was given a straight red card for a challenge on Juan Mata. Emery must now pysche his team up for Tuesday’s Champions League group match at home to Rangers with one point separating the two teams in Group C.—AFP

SPAIN: Real Madrid’s Cristiano Ronaldo from Portugal celebrates after scoring against Hercules during their Spanish League soccer match at the Rico Perez stadium.—AP

Nuremberg beat Bremen BERLIN: Werder Bremen warmed-up in poor fashion for Tuesday’s crunch Champions League clash at home to Dutch side FC Twente when they were beaten 3-2 at home by Nuremberg in the Bundesliga yesterday.

Bremen need to beat the Dutch titleholders at home on Tuesday at the Weserstadion to keep their dreams of the Round of 16 alive and close the gap behind Group A leaders and holders Inter Milan and second-placed Spurs.

But Bremen squandered a possible chance to go third in the German League and slumped to their fourth defeat of the season.

“After the early opening goal, we suddenly stopped being as threatening and dangerous,” fumed Bremen coach Thomas Schaaf. “In the second half, we just made it too easy for our opponents.

“We lost too much focus and we have to work much, much harder.” Bremen took an early lead when Hugo Almeida was left unmarked at the far post and Germany winger Marko Marin found him with an accurate cross and the Portugal striker headed home after just five minutes.

But Nuremberg fought back as midfielder Ilkay Guendogan scored just before the half-time break, then fellow-midfielder Mehmet Ekici put the guests ahead on 47 minutes.

Nuremberg had numerous chances to extend their lead and scored their third goal when Guendogan scored his third goal in two games when he drilled in his shot on 73 minutes to compound Bremen’s misery.

Werder’s Claudio Pizarro pulled back a consolation goal in the 92nd minute, but it failed to save Bremen’s blushes. Fellow Champions League side Schalke also prepared for their trip to Israel to face Hapoel Tel Aviv on Tuesday in Group B poorly with their sixth defeat in ten games as they lost 1-0 at home to Leverkusen late yesterday.

The defeat keeps them second-from-bottom in the table while Leverkusen go third after midfielder Sidney Sam hit the winner in the 65th-minute.

The key clash of the weekend is on Sunday when leaders Mainz are at home to second-placed Dortmund, but Eintracht Frankfurt went fourth after their 3-1 win at St Pauli.—AFP

Spanish league results/standings Valencia 1 (Lanzaro 42-og) Real Zaragoza 1 (Lanzaro 2) Hercules 1 (Trezeguet 3) Real Madrid 3 (di Maria 52, Ronaldo 82, 87) Playing later Barcelona v Sevilla Spanish league table ahead of yesterday’s late match (played, won, drawn, lost, goals for, goals against, points): Real Madrid Villarreal Barcelona Valencia Espanyol Sevilla Getafe Atletico Mallorca Bilbao Sociedad Osasuna Hercules Levante Sporting Almeria Malaga Racing Zaragoza Deportivo

9 8 8 9 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 9 8 8 8 8 8 9 8

7 6 6 5 5 4 4 4 3 3 3 2 2 2 2 1 2 2 0 0

2 1 1 2 0 2 1 1 2 1 1 3 3 2 2 4 1 1 4 4

0 1 1 2 3 2 3 3 3 4 4 3 4 4 4 3 5 5 5 4

25 16 14 14 8 14 14 12 7 14 10 7 9 8 8 6 13 5 7 3

5 6 6 9 10 11 10 9 8 14 11 6 12 14 14 7 19 14 15 14

23 19 19 17 15 14 13 13 11 10 10 9 9 8 8 7 7 7 4 4

GERMANY: Leverkusen’s Eren Derdiyok of Switzerland (left) and Schalke’s Benedikt Hoewedes challenge for the ball during the German First Division Bundesliga soccer match.—AP

Roma continue climb to the top ROME: Roma went seventh in Serie A ahead of today’s matches after a 2-0 success against Lecce in the capital saw them earn a third home win in a row yesterday.

Argentina centre-back Nicolas Burdisso and Montenegro forward Mirko Vucinic scored the goals but both teams finished with 10 men after the dismisals of Francesco Totti and Ruben Olivera.

Roma are now closer to the business end of Serie A following a disastrous start to the season that saw them lingering in the bottom three just a couple of weeks ago. As well as two goals and two red cards, the woodwork was hit four times in an entertaining game.

But Roma were counting the cost of Totti’s dismisal as he will now miss next week’s Rome derby against leaders Lazio. “Of course it will hurt us a lot, not just for what he does on the pitch but for what he means to all of us,” said Burdisso.

“Apart from that we played well following a negative period, we did well. “I think we all have to win back the public with our play, with results and with the desire that we showed today and that we need to show in every game.”

In a first half full of scoring opportunities, Lecce threatened first when Daniele Corvia caught a dropping ball on the volley from 20 yards only to see it crash back off the bar on 11 minutes. Four minutes later Marco Borriello headed a Totti free-kick wide from 10 yards.

Roma went close on 28 minutes, with Borriello converting a rebound after Totti’s shot had been saved by Antonio Rosati, only for the goal to be dis-

allowed because the ball had hit Daniele De Rossi’s arm in the build-up.

Vucinic, who was a menace throughout the first half, then got in behind the Lecce defence but Rosati tipped his volley onto the bar. Vucinic broke through again in the 36th minute, but Rosati saved with his foot this time.

Probably the best chance of the first period fell to Lecce, as Roma goalkeeper Julio Sergio was caught out of goal only for Burdisso to come to his rescue, blocking Corvia’s weak effort on the line three minutes from the break.

And Burdisso was the hero again on 62 minutes as he rose in the box to head John Arne Riise’s deep cross into the top corner.

Minutes later Borriello rose to meet Totti’s corner but his header flicked off the top of the bar. Roma should have buried their opponents on 75 minutes following a swift counter-attack but Vucinic lashed a volley well over the bar from Borriello’s centre.

But the Montenegro striker came good just a minute later after being released down the left by Totti, firing low into the far corner past Rosati.

A spat between Totti and Olivera in the break in play after that goal saw both shown a straight red card, after which Totti chased the Uruguayan down the tunnel and had to be restrained by security officials. On Friday night champions Inter Milan went second as Genoa goalkeeper Eduardo dropped a clanger to gift Sulley Muntari a winning goal in a 1-0 success. The big game of the weekend takes place at the San Siro later yesterday as AC Milan host Juventus.—AFP

Brest top table after washout at Marseille PARIS: Promoted Brest capitalised on a washout at Marseille to go top of the French first division with a 2-0 win at home to Saint-Etienne yesterday.

Marseille’s late match against previous leaders Rennes was called off at late notice due to heavy rain at Stade Velodrome, giving Brest and their opponents the chance to take over at the summit.

Saint-Etienne came closest to taking the lead in the first half, but right-back Albin Ebondo’s rising drive crashed back off the outside of the post.

Brest seized their opportunity with 13 minutes of the second period remaining, when Bruno Grougi’s inswinging left-wing cross was headed home by Mario Licka.

Romain Poyet made it 2-0 with a sublime chip from the edge of the box moments later, as the team promoted from Ligue 2 last season went two points clear at the top and extended their run without conceding a goal to eight league matches.

Former leaders Saint-Etienne slipped a place to fourth, behind Marseille on goal difference, with

Toulouse holding onto fifth after a 1-1 draw at home to Lens. Lyon put a turbulent week behind them to win 2-1 at home to Sochaux and climb to eighth in the standings. Lyon president Jean-Michel Aulas ended weeks of speculation in mid-week by confirming that coach Claude Puel will stay on until the end of the season, despite a 1-1 draw at bottom club ArlesAvignon last weekend and defeat to Paris SaintGermain in the League Cup. The hosts took a 31st-minute lead when Michel Bastos gathered Yoann Gourcuff’s pass before firing inside the near post, moments after Hugo Lloris had produced a stunning save to deny Ryad Boudebouz at the other end.

Sochaux drew level in the 66th minute through Nigerian striker Ideye Brown, but substitute Alexandre Lacazette-on for the injured Bastos-rattled home the winner just three minutes later.

In the day’s other games, Auxerre climbed to ninth with a 2-0 win at home to Nice, while Nancy won 3-2 at Caen and Arles fell 2-0 at Lorient.—AFP

SPORTS

Sunday, October 31, 2010

Soccer results/standings Arsenal 1 (Song 88) West Ham 0; Blackburn 1 (Benjani 21) Chelsea 2 (Anelka 39, Ivanovic 84); Everton 1 (Yakubu 67) Stoke 0; Fulham 2 (Dempsey 30, 44) Wigan 0; Man Utd 2 (Vidic 31, Nani 84) Tottenham 0; Wolves 2 (Milijas 30, Edwards 57) Man City 1 (Adebayor 23-pen).

Playing today: Aston Villa v Birmingham; Bolton v Liverpool; Newcastle v Sunderland.

Playing tomorrow: Blackpool v West Brom English Football League results yesterday: Championship Barnsley 1 Hull 1; Cardiff 3 Norwich 1; Crystal Palace 0 Swansea 3; Derby 4 Watford 1; Ipswich 2 Millwall 0; Leicester 1 Preston 0; Middlesbrough 1 Bristol City 2; Portsmouth 2 Nottingham Forest 1; QPR 1 Burnley 1; Reading 4 Doncaster 3; Scunthorpe 1 Leeds 4; Sheffield Utd 0 Coventry 1.

Division One Bournemouth 1 Colchester 2; Bristol Rovers 1 Carlisle 1; Charlton 1 Sheffield Wednesday 0; Dagenham and Redbridge 1 Hartlepool 1; Exeter 2 Brentford 4; Huddersfield 1 Walsall 0; Leyton Orient 2 Rochdale 1; Notts County 1 Southampton 3; Oldham 4 Plymouth 2; Peterborough 0 Brighton 3; Tranmere 4 Milton Keynes Dons 2; Yeovil 3 Swindon 3.

Division Two Accrington 2 Cheltenham 4; Aldershot 1 Bury 3; Bradford 5 Oxford 0; Macclesfield 2 Burton 1; Northampton 2 Gillingham 1; Port Vale 2 Crewe 1; Shrewsbury 2 Barnet 1; Southend 1 Rotherham 0; Stevenage 0 Chesterfield 0; Stockport 0 Hereford 5; Torquay 3 Morecambe 1; Wycombe 2 Lincoln 2.

Scottish Premier League results Dundee Utd 1 (Goodwillie 87) Hibernian 0; Motherwell 0 Hamilton 1 (Hasselbaink 15); Rangers 1 (Edu 11) Inverness CT 1 (Odhiambo 81); St Johnstone 0 Celtic 3 (McGinn 2, 89, Izaguirre 41); St Mirren 2 (McAusland 28, Travner 90) Aberdeen 1 (McArdle 57).

English Premier League table English Premier League table after yesterday’s matches (played, won, drawn, lost, goals for, goals against, points): Chelsea 10 8 1 1 27 3 25 Arsenal 10 6 2 2 22 10 20 Man Utd 10 5 5 0 22 12 20 Man City 10 5 2 3 13 10 17 Tottenham 10 4 3 3 11 10 15 West Brom 9 4 3 2 13 15 15 Everton 10 3 4 3 10 8 13 Fulham 10 2 6 2 12 11 12 Sunderland 9 2 6 1 8 7 12 Bolton 9 2 6 1 13 13 12 Newcastle 9 3 2 4 14 13 11 Aston Villa 9 3 2 4 9 13 11 Birmingham 9 2 4 3 10 12 10 Stoke 10 3 1 6 10 14 10 Blackpool 9 3 1 5 13 20 10 Wigan 10 2 4 4 7 18 10 Blackburn 10 2 3 5 9 12 9 Liverpool 9 2 3 4 9 14 9 Wolverhampton 10 2 3 5 10 16 9 West Ham 10 1 3 6 7 18 6 English Football League tables Championship Cardiff 14 10 QPR 14 8 Swansea 14 8 Coventry 14 7 Norwich 14 7 Reading 14 6 Derby 14 6 Burnley 14 5 Watford 14 6 Portsmouth 14 6 Ipswich 14 6 Leeds 14 6 Nottingham Forest 14 4 Millwall 14 5 Doncaster 14 5 Scunthorpe 14 5 Barnsley 14 4 Sheffield Utd 14 4 Leicester 14 4 Hull 14 3 Preston 14 4 Bristol City 14 3 Middlesbrough 14 3 Crystal Palace 14 3 Division One Brighton 14 9 Huddersfield 14 7 Colchester 14 5 Bournemouth 14 6 Peterborough 14 7 Charlton 14 6 Sheffield Wednesday 14 6 Oldham 14 5 Southampton 14 6 Carlisle 14 5 Milton Keynes Dons 14 6 Bristol Rovers 14 5 Rochdale 14 5 Exeter 14 5 Brentford 14 5 Swindon 14 4 Hartlepool 14 4 Leyton Orient 14 4 Notts County 14 5 Tranmere 14 4 Plymouth 14 4 Yeovil 14 4 Dagenham 14 2 Walsall 14 3 Division Two Chesterfield 14 8 Port Vale 14 8 Bury 14 8 Shrewsbury 14 7 Rotherham 14 6 Wycombe 14 5 Cheltenham 14 6 Torquay 14 5 Crewe 14 4 Stevenage 14 4 Aldershot 14 4 Macclesfield 14 5 Burton Albion 14 4 Oxford Utd 14 4 Southend 14 5 Bradford 14 5 Accrington Stanley 14 3 Gillingham 14 3 Stockport 14 3 Morecambe 14 3 Northampton 14 3 Lincoln City 14 3 Hereford 14 3 Barnet 14 3 Scottish Premier League table Rangers 10 9 Celtic 10 9 Motherwell 10 5 Inverness CT 10 4 Hearts 9 4 Dundee Utd 10 4 St Johnstone 10 3 Aberdeen 10 3 Hamilton 10 2 Hibernian 10 2 St Mirren 10 2 Kilmarnock 9 2

2 6 2 3 2 4 3 6 3 3 3 2 7 4 4 2 4 3 3 5 1 4 2 2

2 0 4 4 5 4 5 3 5 5 5 6 3 5 5 7 6 7 7 6 9 7 9 9

28 26 20 21 20 22 25 22 26 21 17 23 16 18 23 18 18 9 17 10 20 14 13 14

12 5 12 16 18 14 17 16 22 19 15 26 14 17 23 21 25 18 27 18 30 24 24 28

32 30 26 24 23 22 21 21 21 21 21 20 19 19 19 17 16 15 15 14 13 13 11 11

4 2 8 4 1 4 3 6 3 5 2 5 4 4 3 5 5 4 1 4 4 3 6 2

1 5 1 4 6 4 5 3 5 4 6 4 5 5 6 5 5 6 8 6 6 7 6 9

24 23 18 28 29 19 17 21 16 19 18 17 21 20 16 23 14 16 19 17 17 15 15 14

8 17 15 17 27 20 9 17 12 13 20 19 17 24 17 24 20 18 24 23 24 25 24 22

31 23 23 22 22 22 21 21 21 20 20 20 19 19 18 17 17 16 16 16 16 15 12 11

5 4 4 3 5 7 3 5 7 7 6 3 5 5 2 2 7 6 6 5 4 4 4 3

1 2 2 4 3 2 5 4 3 3 4 6 5 5 7 7 4 5 5 6 7 7 7 8

29 19 28 23 25 22 21 22 31 15 12 17 19 16 15 14 21 17 14 14 15 9 15 15

17 8 18 15 19 16 24 17 20 12 15 21 16 16 17 17 20 20 23 24 23 17 25 28

29 28 28 24 23 22 21 20 19 19 18 18 17 17 17 17 16 15 15 14 13 13 13 12

1 0 1 3 2 2 2 1 3 2 2 1

0 1 4 3 3 4 5 6 5 6 6 6

26 22 14 14 14 11 9 14 10 10 10 10

9 7 12 10 10 16 13 15 20 18 20 14

28 27 16 15 14 14 11 10 9 8 8 7

Scottish Football League tables First Division Raith 11 8 2 Dunfermline 11 8 1

1 2

16 5 26 23 11 25

Playing today Hearts v Kilmarnock Scottish League results First Division Dunfermline 3 Stirling 0; Falkirk 3 Dundee 3; Morton 0 Raith 1; Partick 1 Cowdenbeath 0; Ross County 1 Queen of the South 1.

Second Division Airdrie 1 Stenhousemuir 0; Alloa 2 Brechin 2; Dumbarton 4 East Fife 1; Forfar 1 Livingston 0; Peterhead 2 Ayr 4.

Third Division Albion 3 Clyde 1; Berwick 1 Queen’s Park 1; Stranraer 2 Elgin City 1.

German league results Werder Bremen 2 (Hugo Almeida 5, Pizarro 90+2) Nuremberg 3 (Guendogan 45, 73, Ekici 47); VfL Wolfsburg 2 (Dzeko 6, 76) VfB Stuttgart 0; Cologne 3 (Novakovic 11, 29, 84) Hamburg 2 (Petric 15, Son 24); Kaiserslautern 3 (Tiffert 71, Nemec 83, Lakic 88) Borussia Moenchengladbach 0; St Pauli 1 (Zambrano 5) Eintracht Frankfurt 3 (Gekas 42-pen, 70, Caio 90); Schalke 04 0 Bayer Leverkusen 1 (Sam 65).

Playing today: Mainz 05 v Borussia Dortmund, Hoffenheim v Hannover 96 Played Friday Bayern Munich 4 (Demichelis 39, Gomez 61, Tymoschuk 72, Kroos 80) Freiburg 2 (Reisinger 64, Braafheid 87-o.g.)

Italian Serie A results Roma 2 (Burdisso 62, Vucinic 76) Lecce 0 Playing later: AC Milan v Juventus Playing today: Palermo v Lazio, Bari v Udinese, Brescia v Napoli, Cagliari v Bologna, Cesena v Sampdoria, Parma v Chievo, Catania v Fiorentina Played Friday: Genoa 0 Inter Milan 1 (Muntari 45) Falkirk Dundee Queen of the South Cowdenbeath Partick Stirling Ross County Morton Second Division Brechin Livingston Ayr Forfar Alloa Airdrie Utd Stenhousemuir East Fife Peterhead Dumbarton Third Division Stranraer Albion Berwick Annan Athletic Elgin Arbroath Montrose Queens Park East Stirling Clyde

11 11 11 11 11 11 11 11

6 3 4 4 4 3 2 2

1 5 2 1 0 3 4 3

4 3 5 6 7 5 5 6

23 13 14 15 10 12 8 9

13 13 17 21 18 21 12 12

19 14 14 13 12 12 10 9

11 11 11 11 11 11 11 11 11 11

6 6 6 6 5 4 3 2 2 2

4 3 2 1 3 4 2 3 3 1

1 2 3 4 3 3 6 6 6 8

23 19 20 21 19 19 13 22 12 9

13 12 19 17 16 17 14 25 19 25

22 21 20 19 18 16 11 9 9 7

11 10 10 9 11 10 10 11 10 10

6 6 4 5 4 4 3 3 2 1

4 2 6 3 1 1 3 1 2 3

1 2 0 1 6 5 4 7 6 6

23 20 24 18 19 16 23 14 5 10

16 15 12 9 25 24 17 17 12 25

22 20 18 18 13 13 12 10 8 6

German League table Mainz 05 Borussia Dortmund Bayer Leverkusen Eintracht Frankfurt Hanover 96 Hoffenheim Bayern Munich Hamburg Nuremberg Freiburg Werder Bremen VfL Wolfsburg St. Pauli Kaiserslautern Cologne VfB Stuttgart Schalke 04 Borussia M’gladbach

9 9 10 10 9 9 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10

8 7 5 5 5 4 4 4 4 5 4 4 4 3 2 2 1 1

0 1 3 1 1 3 3 3 3 0 2 1 1 1 2 1 3 3

1 1 2 4 3 2 3 3 3 5 4 5 5 6 6 7 6 6

19 21 19 17 13 17 12 15 14 16 19 17 12 13 12 16 10 14

8 7 15 10 12 13 10 14 14 18 21 16 15 18 19 19 17 30

24 22 18 16 16 15 15 15 15 15 14 13 13 10 8 7 6 6

Italian Serie A table Lazio Inter Milan AC Milan Chievo Juventus Napoli Roma Palermo Sampdoria Genoa Lecce Udinese Catania Brescia Fiorentina Bologna Cesena Bari Cagliari Parma

8 9 8 8 8 8 9 8 8 9 9 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8

6 5 5 4 3 3 3 3 2 3 3 3 2 3 2 1 2 2 1 1

1 3 2 1 3 3 3 2 5 2 2 1 3 0 2 5 2 2 4 4

1 1 1 3 2 2 3 3 1 4 4 4 3 5 4 2 4 4 3 3

12 11 13 11 16 14 9 15 10 8 7 6 8 8 9 8 6 7 8 6

6 4 6 9 9 11 12 12 8 10 15 10 8 11 10 12 10 13 8 8

19 18 17 13 12 12 12 11 11 11 11 10 9 9 8 8 8 8 7 7

Matches on TV (local timings) English Premier League Aston Villa v Birmingham Abu Dhabi Sports HD 3 Abu Dhabi Sports HD 5 Newcastle v Sunderland Abu Dhabi Sports HD 4 Bolton Wanderers v Liverpool Abu Dhabi Sports HD 3 Abu Dhabi Sports HD 5 Italian League Palermo v SS Lazio Al Jazeera Sport +3 AS Bari v Udinese Al Jazeera Sport +1 Brescia v Napoli Al Jazeera Sport +3 AC Cesena v Sampdoria Al Jazeera Sport +4 Parma v Chievo Verona Al Jazeera Sport +7 Spanish League Deportivo v Espanyol Al Jazeera Sport +9 Malaga v Sociedad Al Jazeera Sport +5 Sporting v Villarreal Al Jazeera Sport +7 Ateltico v Almeria Al Jazeera Sport +2 Bilbao v Getafe Al Jazeera Sport +2

15:00

16:30 19:00

14:30 17:00 17:00 17:00 17:00

19:00 19:00 19:00 21:00 23:00

19

Song hits right note to silence West Ham Arsenal 1

West Ham 0 LONDON: Arsenal midfielder Alex Song’s late header secured a 1-0 victory over West Ham yesterday that kept Arsene Wenger’s side firmly in the title race.

For 87 minutes it looked as though the Gunners would drop two valuable points at the Emirates Stadium and allow leaders Chelsea to open up a seven-point advantage at the head of the table.

West Ham goalkeeper Robert Green was in inspired form, producing a string of saves to deny Arsenal, who were in danger of failing to build on last weekend’s impressive 3-0 victory at Manchester City.

But Song finally found a way through when he dived full length to connect with Gael Clichy’s left-wing cross and secure the win that kept Arsenal five points behind Chelsea.

That brought relief for Wenger and his players but it was a harsh blow for the visitors, who remain rooted at the foot of the table despite producing an impressive defensive performance.

Arsenal started in their normal fluid way, moving the ball through the West Ham defence quickly, with Andrey Arshavin heavily involved during the opening minutes.

Surprisingly, though, the home side quickly lost their momentum, partly because West Ham skipper Scott Parker was assigned to close down Cesc Fabregas at every opportunity.

West Ham were well organised at the back and in midfield, while lone striker Frederic Piquionne worked hard to provide an outlet for his teammates.

And when Piquionne was fouled on the edge of the Arsenal box in the ninth minute, Mark Noble was able to test home keeper Lukasz Fabianski with a curling freekick.

Fabianski had been outstanding against City but it was clear that West Ham had not forgotten the rash of errors that marked the keeper’s performances last season and they made sure every set-piece was delivered into the six-yard box.

The Pole stood firm, twice punching clear when under pressure, providing his side with the breathing space they needed to recover their poise.

Green was then called to make the most decisive intervention of the first half when the West Ham keeper saved superbly from Fabregas after an incisive move involving Song and Bacary Sagna.

Sagna’s pull-back found Fabregas in space ten yards out but Green threw himself to his right to deny the Spaniard.

The West Ham keeper repeated the feat two minutes before the interval, this time to deny Song, who had been released by Fabregas’s pass.

And when Green tipped Sebastien Squillaci’s header over the crossbar seconds before the half-time whistle, it was clear Arsenal would have to work hard to find a way past a player who is desperately trying to rebuild his reputation after a nightmare World Cup. There had been a growing sense of impatience around the Emirates Stadium towards the end of the first period and Arsenal responded by upping the tempo immediately after the restart.

A couple of strong challenges by Parker sparked anger among the Arsenal players and prompted Wenger to remonstrate with the fourth official.

Fired up, the home side applied growing pressure on Green’s goal with Samir Nasri striking the bar with a powerful 35-yard free-kick.

Then substitute Theo Walcott fired against the post, adding to the feeling that this was not going to be Arsenal’s day. To their credit, the home side never let up and they finally got their reward two minutes from time. —AFP

LONDON: Arsenal’s Bacary Sagna (left) and West Ham United’s Herita Ilunga (right) fight for the ball during their English Premier League soccer match at Emirates Stadium. —AP

Fulham end winless run Fulham 2

Wigan 0 LONDON: A first-half double from Clint Dempsey earned Fulham a 2-0 win at home to Wigan Athletic yesterday as the Cottagers brought a five-game winless run to an end with only their second victory of the season.

American international Dempsey’s goals proved enough to inflict a first away defeat of the season on Roberto Martinez’s Wigan, who slip one place to 16th in the Premier League table while Fulham shoot up to eighth.

Wigan were first to threaten, with Tom Cleverley’s shot inadvertently blocked by team-mate

Franco di Santo, but the presence of Brede Hangeland in the Wigan penalty area soon began to cause problems for the visitors.

The giant Norwegian centreback had a shot blocked after Wigan goalkeeper Ali Al Habsi sewed chaos in the area by fumbling a corner and Hangeland then sent a header over the crossbar from a deep Simon Davies cross.

The pace of Charles N’Zogbia on the counter-attack was a constant source of concern for the Fulham defence but in the 30th minute the hosts took the lead with a well-constructed goal.

Zoltan Gera sprayed the ball wide to Carlos Salcido on the left and the Mexican international’s cross was headed into the bottom corner by Dempsey.

Gera twice came close to extending Fulham’s advantage,

curling a low effort inches wide of the post and then heading over the crossbar after Al Habsi had tipped Demsey’s header onto the bar following another Salcido centre.

Mark Hughes’s side did not have to wait long for a second goal, however, as Dempsey lashed a half-volley high into the net from Chris Baird’s cross a minute before the interval.

Salcido almost put Fulham 30 up early in the second half with a mis-hit cross that narrowly avoided dipping inside the far post, while Mohamed Diame threatened for the visitors with a marauding run and shot that went wide from a tight angle.

Striker Andy Johnson was given a rousing reception by the Craven Cottage crowd when he came on as a late substitute to make his first home appearance since January after a spell on the sidelines through injury. —AFP

LONDON: Manchester City’s Gnegneri Toure Yaya (left) and Wolverhampton Wanderers’ Nenad Milijas in action during the English Premier League soccer match. —AP

Wolves down City Wolves 2

Man City 1 LONDON: Roberto Mancini endured another sobering experience in charge of Manchester City after David Edwards condemned the super-spenders to their second successive defeat.

Edwards piled more pressure on Mancini with the second-half winner to gift Wolves only their second victory of the season.

And days after Mancini warned his players against the perils of alcohol he must have felt like drowning his own sorrows after City were left to look a bunch of champagne charlies at Molineux.

Emmanuel Adebayor’s penalty gave the visitors the lead but Nenad Milijas rewarded Wolves’s pressure with a fiercely struck equaliser.

City fell behind early in the second period when Edwards beat Joe Hart from close range, following suspect defending from Mancini’s expensively assembled back four.

The visitors mounted a late bombardment in search of an equaliser but Mick McCarthy

was celebrating his first win in six attempts against his opponents. This result will do little to endear Mancini to his employers.

A sobering 3-0 home defeat against Arsenal last weekend, their heaviest on their own turf since January 2007, provided him with another harsh reminder that he has much work to do to guide City to a top four place.

The urbane Italian was adamant City are still one of the best teams in the Premier League after their treatment at the hands of Arsene Wenger but any club with title aspirations are judged on how they respond to adversity.

And Mancini went with an uncharacteristically ambitious piece of team selection here with Mario Balotelli making his first Premier League start alongside Adebayor, with David Silva on the left.

City were almost embarrassingly dominant in the opening period, with Balotelli sending two efforts wide. And their pressure was rewarded in the 23rd minute after Richard Stearman upended Silva in the box. Silva cleverly kept the ball in play by the touchline and Stearman was simply caught out after committing himself, leaving referee Mike Dean with no alternative.

Adebayor made no mistake from the spot, with his first Premier League goal of the season. But Wolves responded and were deservedly level on the half hour, when Stephen Hunt’s cross was deflected to bamboozle Kolo Toure and Milijas ruthlessly dispatched a half-volley into the bottom corner from 12 yards.

City’s defending was equally poor when Wolves took the lead for the first time. City failed to clear Kevin Foley’s cross and though Doyle’s volley was blocked by Kolo Toure, Edwards had time to pick his spot and slide the ball past Hart.

Mancini cannot have said it wasn’t coming, with his players regularly suffering from lapses of concentration and complacency.

He introduced Adam Johnson for the ineffectual Barry midway through the second half in an attempt to pile some pressure on the home side.

But Wolves dealt with everything their opponents threw at them to cling on to their first win since the opening day against Stoke.

It doesn’t get any easier for McCarthy just yet, though. Up next for Wolves is a trip to Manchester United before they entertain Arsenal. —AFP

Rangers’ lead cut after Caley stalemate GLASGOW: Rangers’ lead at the top of the Scottish Premier League was reduced to one point after Inverness Caledonian Thistle struck late to earn a 1-1 draw at Ibrox yesterday.

After their loss in the Old firm derby last weekend, Celtic piled the pressure on their rivals as they defeated tenmen St Johnstone 3-0 in the early kick-off.

At Ibrox a superb strike from Maurice Edu early in the first half looked to be enough to continue the Gers’ 100 per cent winning start to the season.

But despite chances to increase their lead, substitute Eric Odhiambo prodded home eight minutes from time to extend a run that has seen Inverness go undefeated away from home since November 2009. Walter Smith said he had no complaints about the result.

“We started the game well and then we were a little bit casual and slack,” the Gers manager said. “We really didn’t deserve to take full points from a game where we had most of the territorial pressure but never the required sharpness to look like winning the game.”

Rangers made four changes from their mid-week League Cup win as Steven Naismith and Steven Whittaker were rested before Tuesday’s Champions League clash with Valencia.

Both sides took time to settle in the match, with Inverness having the better of the early exchanges before Edu fired Rangers ahead at the second attempt in the 11th minute.

The American midfielder took a fresh air swipe at Steven Davis’s lofted pass before connecting at the second time of asking to send a half-volley flying past Ryan Esson from 15 yards.

Kenny Miller then went on a rampaging run through the Inverness defence but Esson did well to stop his low drive.

Richie Foran headed wide of the target before Jonny Hayes sent a shot from distance harmlessly over the bar as Caley Thistle enjoyed a brief respite from Rangers pressure.

Foran went into referee Iain Brines’ book for a late lunge on Edu before Lee McCulloch twice missed the target with his head.

John Fleck and Naismith came on at the break for Vladimir Weiss and goalscorer Edu, who never recovered from Foran’s challenge in the first half.

The first chance of the half fell to Nick Ross but he lashed his shot on the volley over the bar after connecting with a cross from the right 12 yards out.

At the other end Lafferty set up Northern Ireland international team-mate Davis but the midfielder dragged his shot wide from the edge of the box.

Allan McGregor denied Inverness with a magnificent save to tip Foran’s effort from a Hayes cross over the bar.

Foran squandered another chance from the resulting corner when he found space in the box but could only fire wide.

On the hour mark Fleck saw his fierce strike from 20 yards tipped over by Esson before the keeper smothered Lafferty’s weak effort. Miller twice came close before Inverness hauled themselves level in the 82nd minute. Kirk Broadfoot lost possession, allowing skipper Foran to roll the ball into the path of substitute Odhiambo, who prodded the ball past McGregor.

“In the first half we just needed a bit more belief and cutting edge,” Inverness manager Terry Butcher said. “We wanted to come here and enjoy the occasion and the second half was much better.”

At McDiarmid Park, Celtic got back to winning ways with a 3-0 win over ten-man St Johnstone. Niall McGinn opened the scoring after just 68 seconds before Emilio Izaguirre took advantage of a slack backpass to double the lead at the break.

Danny Grainger was sent off for Saints late on and a minute before full-time McGinn got his second of the game to round-off the win.

Elsewhere, St Mirren moved off the bottom with a 2-1 win over Aberdeen, Dundee United won 1-0 against Hibernian and Hamilton defeated Motherwell 1-0. —AFP

www.kuwaittimes.net

Chelsea late show end Blackburn's resistance Blackburn 1

Chelsea 2 BLACKBURN: A late goal from Branislav Ivanovic saw Chelsea defeat Blackburn 2-1 here yesterday to maintain the champions' five-point lead at the top of the Premier League.

Ivanovic struck six minutes from time to see the Londoners snatch all three points as Carlo Ancelotti's men came from behind to maintain their title challenge at Ewood Park.

Earlier, Nicolas Anelka had levelled for the Blues after Benjani Mwarurwari had fired Blackburn into the lead.

Benjani's goal was the first goal Chelsea had conceded in 502 minutes, more than eight hours of football since the 4-3 Carling Cup defeat to Newcastle in September.

The visitors dominated possession for the first quarter of an hour and worked a fine opening after several quick passes in central midfield.

Anelka fed Ivanovic and the Serb hit a cross that just evaded the unmarked Didier Drogba six yards from goal. However Blackburn were also causing problems of their own for Chelsea. Australian midfielder Brett Emerton broke clear of John Terry but his attempt to cross to Benjani was blocked by Alex. And Morten Gamst Pedersen's thumping effort from 25 yards bounced away off Terry.

Terry was once again alert to block Mame Biram Diouf after the Senegalese attacker burst into the area from Pedersen's pass. As Blackburn continued to threaten, a slip from Petr Cech almost allowed the hosts to take the lead. Benjani knocked wide to Mame Diouf and as the onloan Manchester United man

chipped, Cech lost his balance, only to tip away the shot.

Zimbabwean Benjani should have done better when he collected a pass from Emerton and drove into the box only to shoot straight at Cech and then head the rebound to the goalkeeper.

Making his first start for Rovers, Benjani then drove wide of goal from just outside the area. Blackburn's pressure told when Chelsea failed to clear and Diouf crossed and Terry's header flicked off Benjani and into the corner of the net. Chelsea attempted a response seven minutes before the break when Michael Essien's toe-poke flew just wide of Paul Robinson's goal. And a couple of minutes later they drew level with a goal from Anelka.

Cech kicked to Florent Malouda on the left and the Frenchman hit a long cross-field pass. Ryan Nelsen and Martin Olsson ran into each other and Drogba knocked down for Anelka, who spotted the opening quicker than Phil Jones, to touch past Robinson.

Malouda drove well over the bar at the start of the second period before Blackburn's Chris Samba hit a shot that went out for a throw. Ashley Cole should have pulled Chelsea in front but shot wide at the far post from Malouda's cross.

Yuri Zhirkov also brought a fine save from Robinson after Malouda's cross ran across the box. Blackburn also had a nearmiss when Diouf's free kick deflected off Jason Roberts and was turned into the side-netting at the far post by Mame Biram Diouf. Chelsea substitute Daniel Sturridge went close when he cut in from the right and drilled a shot just wide from 25 yards.

Mama Biram Diouf had a header saved at the far post from David Dunn's cross and Diouf then sent Roberts through, only for the substitute to curl wide. — AFP

Nani late strike seals United win Man United 2

Tottenham 0

LONDON: Manchester United's Nani celebrates after scoring past Tottenham Hotspur's goalkeeper Heurelho Gomes during their English Premier League soccer match at Old Trafford Stadium. — AP

Yakubu ends EPL goal drought LIV-

Everton 1

Stoke 0

ERPOOL: Ayegbeni Yakubu scored his first Premier League goal since April to give Everton a 1-0 win against Stoke at Goodison Park yesterday.

Yakubu has struggled to convince Toffees boss David Moyes that he is worth a regular first-team place for the last few months after reports that the Nigeria striker was troubled by fitness issues.

But he made his point to Moyes with a clinical second-half finish that lifted Everton into mid-table and left Stoke just one point above the relegation zone. Moyes was boosted by Mikel Arteta's return from a hamstring injury

after the Spanish midfielder passed a late fitness test.

Arteta had an early opportunity when Yakubu was tripped after turning Ryan Shawcross, but he blasted the free-kick well over.

Moments later, Stoke striker Kenwyne Jones dragged an effort wide when he pounced on the rebound after Everton defender Sylvain Distin smashed a clearance straight at Arteta.

Everton responded and Steven Pienaar's clever through-ball sent Yakubu clear on goal, but the Nigerian was unable to get enough accuracy on his shot and Asmir Begovic saved easily. Arteta underlined his creative skills with a neat pass to Phil Neville in the Stoke penalty area, but Abdoulaye Faye got back to deflect the former Manchester United midfielder's shot to Begovic.

Stoke had a sight of goal just before the break after winning a corner but Faye shot wide at the far post.

Everton's Leighton Baines picked out Tim Cahill with a good cross early in the second half, only for the midfielder to head over.

The visitors hit back and should have gone in front when Shawcross shot wide after Robert Huth had a shot blocked.

Tuncay Sanli thought he had scored at the far post after bundling the ball over the line, but referee Lee Probert ruled that the Turkish forward had barged into Baines.

It was Everton who finally made the breakthrough in the 67th minute after Faye failed to clear Pienaar's cross. Yakubu collected the loose ball and set up Cahill. The Australian's powerful shot hit a post and Yakubu was on hand to lash the rebound into the roof of the net. Moyes's side were happy to sit on their lead after that but Stoke should have equalised 10 minutes from time when Matthew Etherington broke clear, only to drag

MANCHESTER: A controversial late goal from Nani helped Manchester United secure a 2-0 win over Tottenham yesterday that kept Sir Alex Ferguson's side in touch with leaders Chelsea.

United were holding on in the closing stages at Old Trafford after Nemanja Vidic's first half header before Nani sealed the points with a bizarre strike that infuriated Tottenham.

Spurs goalkeeper Heurelho Gomes had put the ball on the ground thinking his side had been awarded a free kick, but Nani was lurking in the penalty area and cheekily tapped home. Gomes protested but referee Mark Clattenburg allowed the goal to stand despite his assistant referee appearing to raise a flag to rule it out. United were well short of their best but Nani's crazy goal did enough to see off a Tottenham team that has now failed to defeat Ferguson's side in 23 attempts.

The match started against the backdrop of more protests against the owners of United, with supporters desperate to depose the Glazer family marching in numbers before kick off.

There were reports of some bottles being thrown and an attempt to smash the doors to the club's Megastore. Inside Old Trafford, United had a job to do after Chelsea's victory at Blackburn earlier in the day left Ferguson's side eight points adrift of the Premier League summit.

In a frantic start, both sides rattled the woodwork with Park Ji Sung hitting the post as early as the second minute before Nani forced a save from Gomes as United looked to make an early breakthrough. Old Trafford has proved a graveyard for Tottenham in recent years. The last time they won at the venue, in December 1989,

Gareth Bale, who has been in outstanding form for Harry Redknapp's side this season, was just five months old.

Yet the visitors went close to stunning the hosts thanks to a piece of genius by Rafael van der Vaart. The influential Dutchman took advantage of a slip by Vidic to run to the edge of the area before hitting a left foot shot that clattered the far post.

Despite the absence of Wayne Rooney, sat in the main stand nursing his ankle injury, United continued to carve out the better chances. Park once again went close after former Tottenham striker Dimitar Berbatov threaded him in before Darren Fletcher forced another save from Gomes. Tottenham had fallen behind in seven of their previous eight games.

And they were once again were left in an all too familiar position when Vidic pounced after Younes Kaboul had been booked for sliding through Javier Hernandez in the 30th minute.

From the free-kick, Nani whipped in a teasing cross for Vidic to direct a powerful header beyond Gomes.

Tottenham produced a quick-fire response, Luka Modric letting fly from 25-yards only for Edwin van der Sar, who turned 40 on the eve of the game, to show his class.

United's Javier Hernandez had a quiet opening 45 minutes and it was not until the second half that the Mexican showed flashes of his brilliance. He almost carved open the Tottenham defence after a one-two with Park to get free in the box, but lost his composure and blazed wide.

Robbie Keane, back in the Spurs starting line up in place of Peter Crouch, struggled on his own in attack.

So many times the visitors got themselves into promising positions. But their delivery and final touch badly let them down.

Then the game ended amid extraordinary scenes as Nani took advantage of confusion between Gomes and Clattenburg to put the result beyond doubt. — AFP

Wataniya unveils stylish Wi-Fi pocket router

22

Markaz posts KD 6.9m net profit for Q3

GM showcases technology advantage

23

25

Sunday, October 31, 2010

www.kuwaittimes.net

Star Cruises appoints Caesars Holidays as agent in Kuwait Cruising industry to get a push from Kuwait

By Sajeev K Peter KUWAIT: Star Cruises, the leading cruise line in the Asia-Pacific and the first global cruise line, has appointed Caesars Holidays as its preferred sales agent (PSA) in Kuwait. “The appointment of Caesars Holidays as our PSA will undoubtedly boost the cruise-based holidaying from the

AHMEDABAD: An Indian sales clerk shows gold ornaments to customers on the occasion of ‘Shani Pushya Nakshatra,’ in Ahmedabad yesterday. According to Hindu belief, this day is considered auspicious for beginning new ventures, investments and buying gold.—AP

Iran forex reserves exceed $100 billion: Ahmadinejad TEHRAN: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said yesterday that the foreign exchange reserves of sanctions-hit Iran were higher than the World Bank’s estimate of $100 billion.

“They say that the foreign exchange reserves of the country are estimated to be $100 billion, but in fact they are definitely more than this figure,” the website of Ahmadinejad’s office quoted him as saying at a seminar in Tehran and referring to estimates by the World Bank.

Last week Iranian media reported that central bank chief Mahmoud Bahmani had said that the World Bank estimated Iran’s foreign exchange reserves to be at $100 billion.

Iran has refrained from giving the exact figure

of how much reserves it has amid tightening international sanctions. The last official figure of the reserves was released in February 2008 when the central bank said they stood at $76.1 billion.

“We imported hundreds of tons of gold when its price was at an average of 656 dollar per ounce,” Bahmani said at the seminar in Tehran yesterday.

“Today its global price has gone up to $1,230 (per ounce). Given the current situation, billions of dollars have been added to the country’s foreign exchange reserves.”

He said the reserves were brought into the country “to avoid being seized by other countries due to sanctions.”—AFP

Asia must avoid ‘distortions’ in handling hot money: ADB HANOI: Developing Asian nations must carefully manage a massive inflow of foreign capital and avoid remedies that could create destabilizing “distortions”, the Asian Development Bank chief warned yesterday.

Haruhiko Kuroda told Asian leaders at a summit in the Vietnamese capital Hanoi that capital flows are one of two risks that regional economies face as they rebound from the global downturn that began in 2008.

His comments came shortly before the US Federal Reserve is expected to announce it will go into a second round of quantitative easing, injecting more money into the banking system to further stimulate the world’s biggest economy.

The first risk is that the recovery in the developed economies could falter, Kuroda told presidents, prime ministers and a sultan, as well as US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the Russian foreign minister.— AFP

Mithvani, who arrived in Kuwait from Dubai to sign the PSA agreement with Caesars Holidays, was talking to Kuwait Times in an interview. Star Cruises has an office in Dubai since 2001 to take care of the passenger clientele in the region.

The holidaymakers booked from the Gulf region including Kuwait will board ships of Star Cruises based in Singapore, Penang, Kuala Lumpur or Hong Kong on a three to five days of cruise program, he said.

Star Cruises has been receiving booking from Kuwait quite consistently, “But we want to beef up our bookings from here as the demand has been steadily growing and the feedback has been excellent,” he added.

Mithvani said that the potential of the Kuwait market is quite high, “The spending power of Kuwaiti nationals is very high when compared to other GCC nationals. Kuwait is one market that is always aware of the excitement of cruising industry.

The market requires only a push to realize its full potential,” he added.

“Now, we are here to promote the cruising market in the Asia-Pacific. So many people including Kuwaiti citizens are showing an interest in joining the cruise program offered by Star Cruises,” said P N J Kumar, General Manager, Caesars Travel Group, who was also present during the interview.

Caesars Holidays is the subsidiary of the Caesars Travel Group.

Experience “It will be a unique experience for every passenger. Star

Gulf region to the Asia-Pacific. With their expertise in leisure and travel industry and the wide network of offices in Kuwait, Caesars Holidays could help Star Cruises offer memorable cruise experiences to a large number of holidaymakers from Kuwait and the region,” said Najeeb Mithvani, Second Assistant Vice President, Sales and Marketing, Star Cruises, Dubai.

KUWAIT: Najeeb Mithvani, Second Assistant Vice President, Sales and Marketing, Star Cruises presents the SuperStar Virgo brochure to P N J Kumar, General Mananger, Caesars Travel Group, after signing the PSA agreement in Kuwait. —Photo by Sajeev K Peter

Every deck onboard SuperStar Virgo teems with endless fun, entertainment and activities.

Cruises’ flagship the SuperStar Virgo is a floating resort which

has 13 decks,” Kumar added.

“Whatever you are looking

for in a holiday, you will find it onboard the colossal SuperStar

Virgo, the cruise ship made exclusively for the modern holidaymaker,” Mithvani added.

“There is something for everyone and every occasion,” he said detailing the diverse array of facilities and activities onboard SuperStar Virgo.

“We have packages for honeymooners, anniversaries, weddings, family reunions, business conferences etc. We also have a child care center for children who travel with their parents on a cruise,” he pointed out.

“Unlike many European or American cruise trips, we have a younger crowd where the average age is 35 years. We cater to all generations of people such as school groups, college students etc,” Kumar said, pointing out that Caesars Holidays is working out on an attractive cruise package for university students in Kuwait.

Halal food “We cater to every segment of passengers if you look at, said Mithvani. “We are the only ship that serves Halal food on board keeping in mind the large number of Muslim holidaymakers,” he explained. Star Cruises has a choice of 10 different food and beverage outlets including Japanese, Chinese, Italian, Indian, Halal and other international restaurants offering sumptuous delicacies for the vacationer to choose from. Star Cruises follows a comfortable pricing mechanism that suits every pocket and meets the demand of every passenger segment, he added. Star Cruises is the subsidiary of the Genting Group of Hotels based in Hong Kong. The company has a fleet strength of 16 ships worldwide and has a sister company called Norwegian Cruise Line.

22

BUSINESS

Sunday, October 31, 2010

Wataniya Telecom unveils stylish Wi-Fi pocket router

Gifts galore during Diwali at Joyalukkas DUBAI, UAE: Joyalukkas, the region's foremost Jewellery retailer, has unveiled its highly anticipated Diwali offers. The festive season always witnesses a huge demand for fine jewellery and this year Joyalukkas has once again come up with something very special to delight all its customers.

Joyalukkas has created 9 exquisite Diwali collections in Diamond, Gold, Pearl & Precious stones. The collections are themed and designed to capture the celebration spirit of the festival of lights. These exquisite designs will be made available under the popular Joyalukkas brands like Tyohaar, DiRoyale, Eleganza, Masaaki, Navaratna, Ratna & Sumangal.

Some of the exciting offers that Joyalukkas will offer are...

• Free gold coin on purchase of jewellery worth KWD. 200 and above, this offer is planned in association with the World Gold Council. This offer will be only valid on the auspicious days of 3rd, 4th & 5th Nov, 2010.

• Customers will also get a 40% Discount plus 10% Cash back voucher on Diamond jewellery purchased at all Joyalukkas showrooms.

• An exquisite diamond set has been specially created under the renowned Tyohaar collection.

The customer can buy this special set for just KWD. 1400 and get a Free Rado Watch. Under the Tyohaar collection Joyalukkas has also created an entry range set for only KWD. 175.

• Joyalukkas has created an exotic Eleganza Polki Diamond set which will be available to customers for KWD. 1300 with a Free Tissot watch.

• The ever popular Di Royale Diamond Diwali set will be available for KWD. 1000 only with a Free LG Optimus phone.

• For the first time Joyalukkas has created a special diamond Mangalsutra set under the Sumangal brand which the customers can buy for only KWD. 500.

• For the customers who prefer and love jewellery made in precious stones Joyalukkas has created a special collection under Ratna, this can be purchased for only KWD. 675.

• Since Pearl jewellery is currently a craze internationally, Joyalukkas has created two exquisite sets under their renowned Masaaki brand.

These exciting designs have been created in a mix of Pearl & Diamonds and will be available to customers for KWD. 635 and KWD. 175 respectively.

• Value customers can purchase a special Navaratna Pendant set at Joyalukkas for KWD. 285 only. Joy Alukkas, Chairman, Joyalukkas Group said, "On behalf of Joyalukkas, I wish all our patrons a happy and prosperous festival. The festival of lights is a great occasion to spread and share happiness. We are delighted to add our touch to our customer's festivities by offering them specially designed jewellery sets and many gifts on pur-

With you...everywhere!

KUWAIT: Merging convenience and elegance, Wataniya Telecom presents its loyal customers with a sleek and extremely useful device, the Wi-Fi pocket router. It is a cost effective and extremely easy to carry-around product.

Now with the holidays just around the corner Wataniya customers can enjoy a wireless connection from the comfort of their home, while camping in the desert, the Diwaniya, in the middle of the sea and... almost anywhere!

A small and trendy device, the Wi-Fi pocket router provides internet connection on the go and offers battery life of up to 5 hours; it can be charged like a mobile phone and

Abdul Aziz Al-Balool

ing for exclusive products that offer convenience, simplicity and style. The new Wi-Fi pocket router is a combination of all these attributes and it will enhance our customers' online experience even more."

The Wi-Fi pocket router is now available for a promotional offer after getting the annual Wnet High Speed plan.

Now customers can enjoy more flexibility with a faster and easier Internet connection. This mobile router is an ideal choice that fulfills every ones communication requirements and is perfect for camping trips, brainstorming sessions and family nights at home.

easily fits in the pocket. The Wi-Fi pocket router also offers fantastic range, network and coverage with high speed and lots more. In addition to the above, the most advantageous feature of the mobile router is that it can be simultaneously shared amongst five users and is password protected.

Commenting on the release of Wataniya's latest product and its attributes, Abdul Aziz Al-Balool, the PR Manager of Wataniya said, "We invest in premium services and products so that our customers can stay ahead with the latest technology.

As part of our customer satisfaction strategy we will continue look-

ETA Melco sees growing market for elevators, escalators in Kuwait Seminar on 'Green and Eco-friendly technologies’ KUWAIT: Elevators and escalators play an inevitable role in sustaining the vertical growth of our planet. Vertical transportation systems have been going through revolutionary technological changes for the better. With the advent of mandatory eco-friendly requirements for all the latest engineering inventions, "Green Technology" is the buzzword in building conveying systems also.

ETA Melco Elevator Co LLC Dubai, a joint venture company of Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, Japan and ETA ASCON STAR group, Dubai, since 1973, has staged a seminar at Crown Plaza, Farwaniya yesterday, to mark the unveiling of "Green and EcoFriendly Technologies" in building conveying systems (Mitsubishi brand Elevators, Escalators & Moving Walks) and to introduce new product lines. The event was used as a platform to launch their new product range, the "NEXIEZ".

The seminar was well attended by leading architects, consultants, promoters, developers, building owners and government agencies. They well appreciated the presentations handled by the Japanese experts from Mitsubishi Factory in Japan.

Ahmed Al-Ghannam, the sponsor of M/s ETA Engineering & Elevator Co W LL, the sole distributor of Mitsubishi conveying systems in the 'State of Kuwait', delivered the special address and which was followed by the keynote address by Ahamed Meeran, Executive Director, ETA Melco, Dubai. In the key note address, he expressed that for ETA Melco, Kuwait is one of the important markets, wherein they want to aggressively expand the elevator & escalator business, as this market holds tremendous potential in the near future.

Earlier, Hemanth Kumar, General

Officials address the seminar at Crowne Plaza, Farwaniya.

chase." All the festive offers will be available to the Joyalukkas customers across the GCC from 27th October to 5th November, 2010. In addition to the special offers all the exciting range of Jewellery at Joyalukkas will continue to remain available to its patrons. Customers can choose from a range of over 1 million designs at Joyalukkas in Gold, Diamond, Precious Stone, Platinum and Pearl.

"From the beginning, the Joyalukkas brand has epitomized the highest level of design and quality for our customers. With our commitment to deliver only the finest, they have always trusted us to make their special occasions even more beautiful.

Our Diwali offers are not just a promotion, but a continuation of a legacy we share with millions of customers", added Joy Alukkas.

Etihad to commence 'all economy' service Manager, Kuwait Operations, welcomed the entire gathering. Hideharu Kimura & Shingo Sawada represented Mitsubishi HQ, Tokyo, and Tamotsu Tsuchida from Mitsubishi Works in Japan have graced the occasion with informative, technical presentations in addition to enthralling the audience during the question and answer ses-

sion which revealed the inquisitive, indepth knowledge of the various professionals among the audience. The concluding address and vote of thanks was rendered by A.S.A. Basheer, DirectorOperations, ETA Melco, Dubai.

Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, Japan is marketing Elevators, Escalators & Moving Walks in over 90

countries all over the world, out of which ETA Melco Elevator Co LLC, Dubai are their biggest global partners associated in 21 countries including Kuwait. They hold the largest share in the Gulf market and are popularly known as the "ELEVATOR PEOPLE OF THE GULF". The Kuwait operation was established in 1983.

KUWAIT: Etihad Airways, the Abu Dhabi-based national airline of the UAE, will start flying its first 'All Economy' class aircraft next week. The Airbus A320 will be configured to carry 162 Economy class passengers, an increase of 42 from the current economy capacity. From October 31, the 'all Economy' aircraft will be operating to Alexandria, Colombo, Damascus, Thiruvananthapuram, Calicut and Peshawar.

Hareb Mubarak Al-Muhairi, Etihad Airways' Vice President Sales, United Arab Emirates,

said: "customers travelling on the new 'all Economy' aircraft will receive the same world class service and product for which we are renowned, such as seat back inflight entertainment screens and hot and cold meals and beverages, as well as a 32 inch seat pitch." The 'all Economy' services will operate on all four weekly return flights to Alexandria, operating as Etihad flights EY663/662.

The 'all Economy' services to Damascus will be available on flight EY541/542, one of the airline's double daily return services to the city. The 'all Economy' ser-

vices to the Indian Subcontinent will operate daily to Thiruvananthapuram on EY272/273; three times weekly on Calicut flights EY 250/251; twice weekly on flights to Peshawar in Pakistan on EY261/262; and four times weekly to the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo, operating on EY 266/267.

Details of Etihad's 'all Economy' flights to Alexandria, Colombo, Damascus, and Thiruvananthapuram, Calicut and Peshawar are available at www.etihadairways.com.

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

.2770000 .4425000 .3860000 .2825000 .2715000 .2710000 .0045000 .0020000 .0762710 .7430830 .4020000 .0730000 .7284600 .0045000 .0480000

.2870000 .4510000 .3920000 .2940000 .2810000 .2780000 .0075000 .0035000 .0764620 .7505510 .4170000 .0770000 .7357820 .0072000 .0580000

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

CUSTOMER TRANSFER RATES .2809500 .4446690 .3882580 .2847460 .2738380 .0520580 .0415820 .2735410 .0362080 .2157680 .0034400 .0063490 .0025250 .0033050 .0040280 .0765330 .7456310 .3973550 .0749710 .7305130 .0065710

.2830500 .4478130 .3910030 .2867650 .2757790 .0524270 .0418770 .2754750 .0364650 .2172980 .0034640 .0063940 .0025430 .0033280 .0040560 .0770210 .7503920 .4001730 .0754500 .7351770 .0066180

US Dollar Sterling pounds Swiss Francs Saudi Riyals

TRANSFER CHEQUES RATES .2830500 .4478130 .2867650 .0754500

Al-Muzaini Exchange Co. EUROPEAN & AMERICAN COUNTRIES Japanese Yen 3.475 Indian Rupees 6.340 Pakistani Rupees 3.281

Srilankan Rupees Nepali Rupees Singapore Dollar Hongkong Dollar Bangladesh Taka Philippine Peso Thai Baht Irani Riyal - Transfer Irani Riyal - Cash

2.522 3.976 217.410 36.383 3.996 6.544 9.447 0.267 0.310 GCC COUNTRIES 75.278 77.565 733.410 749.780 76.874

Saudi Riyal Qatari Riyal Omani Riyal Bahraini Dinar UAE Dirham Egyptian Pound - Cash Egyptian Pound - Transfer Yemen Riyal Tunisian Dinar Jordanian Dinar Lebanese Lira Syrian Lier Morocco Dirham

ARAB COUNTRIES 51.650 48.856 1.324 202.570 398.640 188.700 6.174 35.273

EUROPEAN & AMERICAN COUNTRIES US Dollar Transfer 282.180 Euro 391.240 Sterling Pound 447.440 Canadian dollar 276.110 Turkish lire 196.090 Swiss Franc 286.770 Australian dollar 275.180 US Dollar Buying 281.095

SELL CASHSELL DRAFT 280.300 750.220 4.270 279.600 554.000 14.100 53.500 187.800 51.150 397.000

10 Tola

GOLD 1,409.440

36.890 6.350 0.033

398.730 0.190 93.120 3.980 217.700

278.800 750.220 3.992 278.300

218.600 48.879 395.500

US Dollar Canadian Dollar Sterling Pound Euro Swiss Frank Cyprus Pound Bahrain Dinar UAE Dirhams Qatari Riyals Saudi Riyals Jordanian Dinar Egyptian Pound Indian Rupees Pakistani Rupees

Sri Lankan Rupees Bangladesh Taka Philippines Pesso Japanese Yen Thai Bhat Syrian Pound Nepalese Rupees

Kuwait Bahrain Intl Exchange Co.

288.700 6.200 9.380 76.670 282.100

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 Candaian Dollars

TRAVELLER'S CHEQUE 454.000 282.100

282.100 278.695 447.442 392.219 285.756 691.418 746.658 76.783 77.465 75.195 398.067 49.015 6.342 3.288

2.523 4.016 6.524 3.450 9.396 6.154 3.960

Currency 732.580 3.295 6.560 77.600 75.320 218.580 42.840 2.520 454.000

Dollarco Exchange Co. Ltd

Bahrain Exchange Company COUNTRY Australian dollar Bahraini dinar Bangladeshi taka Canadian dollar Cyprus pound Czek koruna Danish krone Deutsche Mark Egyptian pound Euro Cash

37.040 6.470 0.033 0.265 0.247 3.590 400.510 0.191 93.120 47.300 4.420 219.200 1.816 48.900 732.760 3.410 6.700 78.030 75.320 218.580 42.640 2.687 458.000 42.800 290.200 6.200 9.750 198.263 76.970 282.500 1.380

Sterling Pound US Dollar

GOLD 255.000 129.000 66.500

20 Gram 10 Gram 5 Gram

Hongkong dollar Indian rupees Indonesia Iranian tuman Iraqi dinar Japanese yen Jordanian dinar Lebanese pound Malaysian ringgit Morocco dirham Nepalese Rupees New Zealand dollar Nigeria Norwegian krone Omani Riyal Pakistani rupees Philippine peso Qatari riyal Saudi riyal Singapore dollar South Africa Sri Lankan rupees Sterling pound Swedish krona Swiss franc Syrian pound Thai bhat Tunisian dollar UAE dirham U.S. dollars Yemeni Riyal

282.150 3.300 6.355 2.535 4.000 6.565 76.890 75.435 749.900 48.895 452.300 0.00003280 4.025 1.550 400.700 5.750 395.800 280.800

Al Mulla Exchange 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 *Rates are subject to change

Transfer rate 281.600 394.000 452.750 277.200 3.545 6.340 48.840 2.521 3.980 6.550 3.288 748.250 76.780 75.200

BUSINESS

Sunday, October 31, 2010

23

Investor confidence returning: Diraar Y Alghanim

Markaz posts KD 6.9m net profit for Q3 2010 KUWAIT: Kuw ait Financial Centre SAK “Markaz”, one of the Middle East’s leading investment banking and asset management companies, announced its financial results for the third quarter ended 30 September 2010. The comDiraar Y Alghanim, Chairman and Managing Director of Markaz said:”Our earnings have improved on the account of better investment returns and a gain in Assets under Management. Investors’ confidence is returning, driven by improvement in market fundamentals. Firstly, government projects are expected to be awarded at an increasing pace; secondly, the regulatory landscape is shaping up with the recent appointment of the Capital Market Authority Board, reflecting the process of bringing more order to the market; and thirdly, prospects of major acquisitions had favorable impact on the market.

We are optimistic that the demand for M&A advisory services will be on the increase, as mid-size and smaller companies benefit from increased liquidity.”

Manaf A. Alhajeri, Chief Executive Officer of Markaz said: “With its liquid balance sheet, Markaz was well positioned to benefit from favorable market conditions which enabled it to seize attractive investment opportunities. Our investment approach was mainly driven by risk-adjusted performance and compliance, which are the main priorities for investors.

Consequently, there was positive inflow of funds from our clients, resulting in an increase in our assets under management (AUM) by over 12% YTD. In addition, the comeback of M&A activities will continue to contribute to the stability of our fee income. As previously announced, we are in full compliance with the Central Bank of Kuwait’s financial ratios, a factor that further enhances Markaz reputation as a leading institution in asset management and investment banking.”

While most markets in the region posted strong gains for the quarter, Kuwait was a notable performer with strong gains in blue-chip stocks led by banking shares and positive news on major deals flow. The KIC Index posted a return of 16.4%, year-todate. S&P Pan Arabian Composite Index posted a return of 9.9% YTD. Markaz Equity funds continue to deliver superior returns outperforming their benchmarks. Markaz flagship fund ‘Mumtaz’ posted 21.4% year-to-date returns. ‘Forsa Fund’, the only derivatives fund in the region returned 15.9% while ‘MIDAF’ registered a return of 19.8% for the same period.

Markaz continues to reap awards and ratings. Markaz won the “Best Asset Manager in Kuwait” award by Global Investor magazine, a Euromoney publication. The judges granted the award taking into account the company’s healthy balance sheet, performance and diversity of its product offerings, innovation, investment approach to navigate market cycles, high level of corporate governance, and sustainable growth in market share, assets under management and client base.

‘Markaz Gulf Fund’ (Gulf) which performed 8.3% YTD, has been ranked as the top performing MENA Equities Fund by Zawya, the leading Middle East business information company. ‘Mumtaz Fund’ was awarded “Best Equity Fund - Kuwait” for the year 2009 by the leading regional publication ‘MENA Fund Manager’.

pany reported an YTD net profit of KD 6.9 million, or 15 fils per share as of 30 September 2010, compared to an YTD net profit of KD 4.15 million, or 9 fils per share for the same period in 2009.

Corporate finance The public market has witnessed pickup in merger and acquisition activities with the announcement of the Zain transaction.

Whereas Markaz is working on several sale and recapitalization mandates and transactions in the medium to small size space, the bid-ask spread on transactions remain high, and it is taking longer to close transactions, which is usual in this stage of the recovery.

‘Markaz Fixed Income Portfolio” has shifted strategy from investing opportunistically in the past, achieving double digit returns, to investing in low-risk sovereign and quasi-sovereign issues. The Portfolio has achieved 9.08% in Q3, and Markaz is in the final stages of launching a fixed income fund.

Diraar Y Alghanim Additionally, three funds collectively won four Lipper Awards for best risk-adjusted performance during the year. Markaz ‘Mumtaz Fund’ won two awards for Best Kuwaiti Equities Fund for the periods of three and five years. ‘Markaz Gulf Fund’ won Best MENA Equities Fund and ‘Markaz Islamic Fund’ won Best Islamic Kuwaiti Equities Fund, both for the period of three years. Additionally, Standard and Poor’s renewed its “A” rating for both ‘Mumtaz’ and ‘Gulf’ Funds.

To reach a wider base of retail clients, Markaz signed a distribution agreement with Gulf Bank whereby the Bank acts as selling or marketing agent through its Priority Banking network.

International investments Fears of double-dip seem to be exaggerated as demonstrated by the swift rally during the last quarter. However, Markaz is being cautious since, the recovery is weak.

Accordingly, Markaz tweaked its asset allocation at the beginning of this quarter by betting into balance funds, while simultaneously increasing its exposure to emerging markets like Africa, Russia and other frontier markets.

Accordingly, the tactical asset allocations carried out by Markaz resulted in a swift turnaround in its proprietary portfolio’s performance. As of the quarter end, the flagship international fund, ‘Atlas Diversified Class’ returned 0.58% YTD. The themes based fund, ‘Atlas EMT Class’ was down 1.09% YTD. The ‘ETF program’, where a slew of ETFs are traded, was up 4.6% YTD. And the ‘Creative Investment Program’, which is modeled on a hedge fund style of investing, has returned -1.8% YTD. Markaz Private Equity net assets under management return was up 9.41% as deal flow and fund raising activities are strengthening.

Structured finance Markaz remains the sole options market maker in the Middle East since 2005. A total of 6,543 contracts were traded in YTD 2010 with an underlying value of KD 6.849 million, a decline of 40.72% and 46.01%, respectively, compared with the same period in 2009. Trading has increased relatively by the end of Q3 due to news on positive corporate earnings in Q3 2010, and the execution of major deals in the Kuwaiti Market.

Real estate investments Markaz MENA Real Estate team manages investments across the region developing residential and commercial buildings as well as managing income generating real estate assets.

In Q3 of 2010, Kuwait real estate market showed modest recovery signs for the investment sector while the commercial sector remained stable and the office sector is still lurking on the weak side.

‘Markaz Real Estate Fund’, with a low allocation to the adversely affected commercial real estate, achieved a 4.2% return YTD and continues to distribute a monthly cash dividend amounting to 7% annually.

Markaz entered into an agreement with Gulf Bank to market MREF to their clients. The efforts were very successful with an overwhelming interest from the bank’s clients.

Oil and Gas ‘Markaz Energy Fund’ (MEF) invested in energy services stocks, listed on the local and international markets, which has reflected positively on the Fund’s performance in Q3 2010. The Fund also invests in Kuwait First Transportation Company (KFTC), which offers equipment leasing services to the contractors in the oil sector. KFTC has recently hired an international advisor to restructure the Company’s strategy in order to achieve its expansion plans.

On the back of appreciating oil barrel prices, production, exploration, development, and services companies operating in the sector will be the main beneficiaries.

Capitalizing on that, MEF is mainly investing in such companies and working on acquiring a stake in a regional company in the exploration and production field.

Zain enhances spread of its branch network in Kuwait Company opens 2 new branches in Metro Farwaniya, Awtad Khaitan KUWAIT: Zain, the leading mobile telecommunications provider in Kuwait, announced that it increased the number of its country-wide spreading branches network by opening two new branches in both Metro complex in Farwaniya and Awtad complex in Khaitan, raising the total number of its branches to 22, in addition to its great base of authorized distributors.

The Sales Executive Director Sahfiq AlSayed Omar said: “Zain is always after com-

forting the customer, and the opening of the Farwaniya and Khaitan two new branches enhances the company’s endeavor to achieve this objective”, denoting that the company is keen to exist close to its customers for faster and easier services.

Omar further said: “Our vast network of branches allows our clients to enjoy our numerous services. Zain local spreading map targets covering most of dwelling and commercial areas with a network of branches to be at the closest point to the customers”

Sahfiq Al-Sayed Omar

He added: “Opening Farwaniya branch in Awtad complex comes in this course, in view of the great number of visitors from the surrounding area, as it is the case with Khaitan’s Awtad branch”.

Omar stated that Zain applies a clear expansion policy by enhancing the network of its branches and authorized distributors, seeking to inspire others and provide an example in this developing industry, and introducing a comprehensive communication environment for customers.

He also mentioned that the company is proud of having the largest network of branches in the country, which affirms its commitment to be always close to its customers, referring that by opening those two new branches, Zain participates to upgrading the level of service providing to meet the anticipations and desires of its customers”.

He added: “The number of company customers is in continuous increase as it managed to maintain its leading position in the market, and enhance it with a number of new and innovative services”, explaining that the enhancement of Zain branches network and the expansion of its authorized distributors’ database serve this trend and provides the company better opportunities to receive them.

Omar promised that Zain shall continue providing the best services and products to its customers pursuant to the highest international standards, along with elevating business practices in all its branches in a manner that copes with the size of growth in its customers’ database.

In Byblos

MINI: The talk of the town MINI fans from across Mideast get together for an unforgettable brand experience BEIRUT: Few events trigger as much excitement as a MINI celebration, and this weekend’s Beirut extravaganza was no exception. Putting its style, creativity, excitement and latest MINI models on display, the iconic brand hosted one of the hottest events of the year, with hundreds of MINI fans from across the Middle East coming together for an unforgettable experience in Beirut.

As residents and tourists watched on in admiration, 87 MINI cars and Middle East competition winners took to the streets in convoy to test their driving skills on a tour which took them from Beirut to the historic city of Byblos. A special award was also presented to William Kurban won for having the coolest decorated MINI who had kitted out his Oxygen Blue MINI in a Super Man costume, along with a velvet red cape to match! Some of the participants also had the opportunity to test drive the new and updated range of MINI’s including the MINI Hatch, MINI Cabrio and MINI Clubman.

And as the sun set, Fashion, Design, Art, Zen and Music fused together in what was a truly unforgettable evening at the historic Robert Mouawad Palace in central Beirut.

The best of Beirut’s music talent set the ambiance for the evening which saw headline performance from Slutterhouse and a fashion show featuring designs by local Lebanese designers, Azzi and Osta.

Meanwhile partygoers enjoyed yoga and Tai-Chi display’s in the Zen Zone and an exhibition of MEGA, the designer toy created by Emirati designer Mohammed

Sneak preview of the MINI Countryman.

Abedin. The exhibition was commissioned

by Beirut’s trendy Plastik* Magazine and MINI to underline the city’s positioning as art capital of the Middle East and to showcase the very best in Lebanese talent in fashion, graffiti, design and photography.

“This event was designed to inspire passion and creativity and bring like-minded people from across the region together to celebrate the iconic brand. It was an opportunity to meet up, experience the excitement of driving a MINI, and to enjoy an action-packed evening in Beirut,” said Sarah Klippert, MINI Manager of BMW Group Middle East.

Guests attending the event also enjoyed a sneak preview of the new MINI

Countryman, due to arrive in the Middle East in January 2011. Annette Baumeister was on hand to explain the concept of the MINI Countryman which bridges the gap between the classic notion of the MINI and a modern Sports Activity. This is the biggest and first-ever four door MINI that boasts four seats and four wheel drive, representing a new chapter for the brand. Fully living up to the quirky spirit defined by MINI, the MINI Countryman - with its increased length offers the perfect solution for customers who are looking for more room in a MINI. With all the fun and gokart handling that is expected from MINI, the new four door option allows new buyers the chance to enjoy the MINI experience.

BUSINESS

24

Sunday, October 31, 2010

KSE records gains amid earnings reports KUWAIT: Kuwait Stock Exchange (KSE) ended the week in the green zone, as both market indices recorded gains, along with trading indicators. The market price index ended last week with an increase amounted to 1.77%, the weighted index advanced with the same percentage compared to the closings of the week before. In addition, last week’s average daily turnover raised by 27.20%, compared to the preceding week, reaching KD 56.54 million, whereas trading volume average was 346.31 million shares, recording increase of 27.25%.

Moreover, different factors affected the market, as the listed company results was the main player in the market during last week. Despite of the fact that the majority of the listed companies didn’t announce its 9 months results, the positive results from the Banks sector had affirmative effect on the market. On the other hand, the traders kept an eye on the development of the expected deal for mobile telecommunications

BAYAN INVESTMENT WEEKLY REPORT “Zain” stocks specially the news about collection mechanism for minor investors stocks. The debates and news about the development plan financing contained to be present in the market.

The Deputy Prime Minister said that from as a point of view, special fund should be established to finance the development plan. On the other hand, the Minister of Finance said that the government view for financing the development plan will be introduced to the parliament within two weeks.

By the end of the week, the price index closed at 7,067.60 points, up by 1.77% from the week before closing, whereas the weighted index registered a 1.77% weekly gain after closing at

477.61 points.

Sectors’ Indices All of KSE’s sectors ended last week in the green zone. Last week’s highest gainer was the Banks sector, achieving 2.83% growth rate as its index closed at 11,571.5 points.

Whereas, in the second place, the Food sector’s index closed at 4,736.7 points recording 2.80% increase. The Investment sector came in third as its index achieved 2.75% growth, ending the week at 5,165.2 points. The Non Kuwaiti companies sector was the least growing as its index closed at 7,156.0 points with a 0.43% increase.

Sectors’ Activity The Investment sector dominated total trade volume during last week with 548.11 million shares changing hands, representing 31.65% of the total market trading volume. The Real Estate sector was second in terms trading volume as the sector’s traded shares were 28.10% of last week’s total trading volume, with a total of 486.54 million shares. On the other hand, the Banks sector’s stocks where the highest traded in terms of value; with a turnover of KD 115.09 million or 40.71% of last week’s total market trading value. The Investment sector took the second place as the sector’s last week turnover of KD 68.24 million represented 24.14% of the total market trading value.

Market Capitalization KSE total market capitalization grew by 1.74% during last week to reach KD 34.37 billion, as all of KSE’s sectors recorded an increase in their respective market capitalization. The Food sector headed the list as its total market capitalization reached KD 808.31 million, increasing by 5.24%.

The Investment sector was the second in terms of recorded growth with 3.77% increase after the total value of its listed companies reached KD 3.04 billion. The third place was for the Industry sector, which total market capitalization reached KD 3.03 billion by the end of the week, recording an increase of 3.08%. The Non Kuwaiti companies sector was the least growing with 0.87% recorded growth after its market capitalization amounted to KD 2.24 billion.

For further details, please visit our web site: www.bayaninvest.com Prepared by the Studies & Research Department Bayan Investment Co.

BUSINESS

Sunday, October 31, 2010

KUWAIT: The consumer sector has managed to sustain a recovery starting in the second half of 2009 and has remained strong during the first half of 2010.

Consumer spending has continued to show an increase from a year ago with consumer confidence appearing also to have strengthened. Employment growth has been slower to follow but has already shown positive signs during the first half of 2010.

Meanwhile, growth in household debt has remained slow.

Consumer spending Consumer spending sustained its recovery in 2010 with credit and debit card point-of-sale (POS) spending in 2Q10 up 18% against the year before, though some of this spending may be related to small businesses. The recovery, which began in 3Q09, has maintained double-digit strength for the third consecutive quarter. POS data, which exclude ATM transactions, should be a good indicator of consumer spending.

Consumer confidence indices also support an improving consumer sector view. Sentiment among consumers remained relatively high during most of

2010. The Ara’a general index stood at 111 in July, up from 92 in January this year. The index, which measures people’s views on the economy and their expectations regarding their spending and income trends, had dipped to a low of 81 in the midst of the economic slowdown in December 2008. The Bayt.com consumer confidence index, which is conducted quarterly, revealed a similar trend with the index rising to 569 in September 2010.

The positive sector trend was also visible in Kuwaiti household formation, which accelerated during the first half of 2010. As consumers see prospects for employment and income growth improving, they are more likely to establish new households. Growth in Kuwaiti households accelerated to around 3.7% in the first half of 2010, compared to 1.9% during the second half of 2009.

Growth has moved closer to, but remains below, the 4.3% ten-year average rate of growth in household formation among Kuwaiti nationals.

Employment shows strength The recovery in spending has received some support from employment, though the picture remains

25

NBK GCC Brief mixed. Hiring among civilian Kuwaitis picked up in 2Q10 for the first time since the economic slowdown, with over 4,000 net new hires during the quarter. Still, this was not enough to counter slower employment growth in the previous three quarters.

As a result, year-on-year employment growth remained moderate at 4.9%, compared to 6.3% a year ago. Total new hires during the last 12 months was over 12,300, 17% lower than during the same period a year before. The figure is also the lowest in five years and indicates room for improvement in Kuwaiti employment.

Expatriate employment, as measured by the number of foreigners with a residence permit, was somewhat resilient, with year-on-year growth in June 2010 of 4.1% compared to a shrinking workforce last year. Growth came primarily from two segments of the workforce: higher income professionals and domestic workers. Meanwhile, other

segments, which form the bulk of the expatriate workforce, continued to see a decline in employment.

The number of expatriates within higher-paying professions grew by 4.4% year-on-year in June, compared to 2.1% in June 2009. This segment of the workforce, which accounts for 13% of expatriate employees, had seen rates of growth of 9-10% before the economic slowdown. It was also the only one to keep growing throughout the crisis at a time when total expatriate employment was shrinking. Public sector employment of expatriates, much of it higher paying, saw a similar trend. Expatriates working in the government rose by 4.7%, up from 2.7% in 2009.

The number of household workers also grew rapidly, most likely supported by strong demand and household formation. The number of domestic workers saw strong growth, rising by over 17% year-onyear. This part of the workforce had already seen a small recovery in the second half of 2009, though the trend has strengthened since. The number of household workers saw the largest decline during the economic slowdown, falling from peak to trough by as much as 11%, thanks in part to an amnesty for resi-

dency violations. As such, it is not a surprise that this part of the workforce is witnessing the strongest recovery.

Private sector jobs The private sector has maintained its role as the largest job creator for Kuwaitis in 2010, a role it has played for several years now. During the 12-month period ending in June 2010, 69% of all new civilian jobs filled by nationals were in the private sector.

This trend does not appear to be letting up. It has already pushed the ratio of Kuwaiti nationals working in the private sector to nearly one in six employed Kuwaitis. Ten years ago only 1 in 22 employed Kuwaitis worked in the private sector.

Household debt In contrast to strong consumer spending growth, growth in household indebtedness has slowed in 2010. Annualized growth during the first three quarters of 2010 stood at 3.8% compared to 10.5% in 2009. There was a moderate pickup in household debt growth during 3Q10 to an annualized 4.8% which supports the notion of further recovery.

Elliott wave principles in action applied to gold

By Kamel Mansour Gold has always been an investment commodity to protect against uncertain economic future. The analysis will bring forth a different perspective to keen investors using Elliott Wave Principles where the market moves in wave combinations of 5s and 3s with a special focus on Fibonacci.

Why 5-3 Wave Structure?

Fibonacci, an Italian Mathematician, disclosed in the 13th Century a Summation Series that started with these numbers: 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21 etc... whereby the sum of the previous two digits equaled the next upper digit, ad infinitum.You may notice that the 5-3 wave structure is from this series and, for those who are into esoteric reasoning, the human body reveals these recurring 5-3 patterns. The human body has 5 extremities: 2 arms, 2 legs and a head. Each arm and leg has three divisions.

Each finger has three parts except for the index.

A special characteristic of this Series is that any digit divided by the previous one gives a ratio of 1 and a leftover of 0.618. Similarly, any digit divided by the one before the previous would give a ratio of 2 and a leftover of 0.618. Last but not least, a digit divided by the third digit before it would give a ratio of 4 and a left over 0.236.

The inverse of 4.236 is 0.236.

Where does Gold fit into Fibonacci and Elliott Wave Principles?

To recap, the Primary Wave (P series) is a bigger cycle than the Intermediate Wave (I Series) and the former is one lesser degree than the Cycle Wave (C Series). Gold Cycle time span is summarized hereunder where you may notice the close proximity of Gold with Fibonacci series in terms of time element.

C1=15 years from 1932 to 1947, a non Fibonacci Series.

C2=20-21 years from 1947 to 1967.

C3 = 13 years from 1967 to 1980.

C4 = 21 years from 03/1980 to 12/2001.

P1 of C5 from 12/2001 to 03/2008 is 88 months, close to Fibonacci digit 89.

As regards to the price movements, interesting facts about Gold using Fibonacci Digits are revealed in this analysis.

P3 of C3 = 2.237 of C1. (This means that the Third Primary of the Third Cycle equals 2.237 of the First Cycle).

Historical strength signs in gold These subnormal retracements indicated strength in

the ensuing market. As can be visualized in the Quarterly Chart, all major Retracements consolidated to the area of the 4th wave of the previous degree; i.e. the market went right down to the fourth sub-wave of the previous wave.

Another important factor that added to the subnormal structure was that the Second and Fourth Cycle consolidated in time for 21 years, a very long period which acted as a spring to the consequent waves. The strength of the moves after the Second Cycle was clearly delineated in the hikes of prices. Similarly, this Fifth Cycle is expected to follow suit.

Short term analysis With such strengths in the market throughout time, Irregular Tops form. These are higher tops that are part of the Consolidation Move after an Impulse wave.

Currently, the market underway is Wave ( C ) of Wave B of P2 of C5. This B wave is an Irregular Top. On the Weekly chart, the trend line joining Wave (A) to Wave 3 captured the whole move. With its parallel from April 2009 Low at Wave (B) has become a strong support for all the weekly retracements since then.

If this upper trend line is extended in time, it will cap the five waves of this Irregular Wave at around 1,600 marks on Gold in Q4-2010. With the strength embedded in Gold, I would not be surprised to see prices at 1,700 early 2011. This price target also satisfies Fibonacci digit: (High from March 2008 to the Low in Dec 2008) Multiplied by 2.236 then added to the Lows from Dec 2008 would equal expectation at 1,700 levels on Gold.

Long Term Analysis - Gold 6,000 The history of the Gold since 1932 was embedded with subnormal retracements and elongated Major Corrections of Cycle Degrees.

The move from Dec 2001 to March 2008 did not significantly cross above the Third Cycle High in terms of our plotting techniques (Refer to the Quarterly Chart).

With the elongated Fourth Cycle in time, this wave from Dec 2001 to March 2008, instead of being the last High we will see on Gold, would mark the First Primary P1 of Five which will definitely take us to highs never seen in Gold.

If Fibonacci had applied throughout the Super Cycle from 1932, the estimated next Fibonacci time target is 21 years from Dec 2001. We are already 8 years in this phase and hence, will take us to the 2022 for a major high on Gold.

GM showcases technology edge by providing electric demo fleet SEOUL: General Motors (GM) announced that its South Korean unit, GM Daewoo Auto & Technology (GM Daewoo), will provide 10 battery electric vehicles (BEVs) as part of a demonstration fleet to the Seoul G20 Summit Committee and Seoul Municipality for use during the G20 Summit in South Korea’s capital on November 11-12.

Three Chevrolet Cruzes will be used by foreign media and seven GM Daewoo Lacetti Premieres will be used by the G20 Summit Committee. GM currently markets the vehicle under the local brand in South Korea. The G20 Summit is one of the most important international economic events, bringing together 20 leaders from countries around the globe.

The demonstration fleet of Cruzes and Lacetti Premieres is part of GM’s effort to gather information on the functioning of pure BEVs worldwide.

Developed through cooperation between GM Daewoo, LG Chem and LG Electronics, the demonstration fleet was unveiled in mid-September.

General Motors is committed to delivering a range of advanced propulsion technologies, offering a portfo-

Al-Mutawa Consulting reaches deal with Microsoft Innovation

Ahmad Al-Mutawa (right) and Mohammed Al-Tammimi

KUWAIT: Al-Mutawa Consulting Group has recently signed an agreement with Microsoft Innovation Center - Kuwait. ACG will provide its innovative solutions and services to MIC and in turn will be allowed to use the state-of-the-art facility at MIC for conducting workshops and trainings. “This step will synergize Innovation and Entrepreneurship between us in a way were we can enhance Kuwait’s Entrepreneurs in all industries and sizes,” said Ahmad Al-Mutawa, Chairman and CEO of Al-Mutawa Consulting Group.

“Associating the MIC and AlMutawa Consulting Group gives us a way to reach Kuwaiti entrepreneurs and provide them with the proper support that they would require. Both our goals are to make Kuwaiti startups reach their potential and flourish,” said Mohammed Al-Tammimi, MD of Microsoft Innovation Center.

Petrochem starts work at Fujairah oil terminal KHOBAR: UAE-based Gulf Petrochem said it has started building the first phase of a new 1.2 million cubic metres oil storage terminal at Fujairah port.

The first phase, which is to be commissioned in the second quarter of 2012, would have a storage capacity of 412,000 cubic metres, the firm said in an emailed statement. “Subse-quent phases will take the full capacity to 1.2 million cbm (cubic metres),” it added.

In June, Petrochem awarded a $45 million contract for the first phase to Nico Hydrospace, a subsidiary of Topaz Energy and Marine, it said in a separate email. Topaz is a subsidiary of Oman’s Renaissance Services.— Reuters

Seoul G20 Summit lio of solutions that will allow customers to choose the vehicle that best meets their needs. Deep experience and expertise in batteries, electric motors and power controls will ensure GM provides the best possible choices when it comes to vehicle electrification technologies.

The Chevrolet Volt and Opel Ampera with extended-range capability are examples of industry-leading solutions for customers who seek electric power and up to 560 km (350 miles) of range. GM also is establishing BEV demonstration fleets around the world to better understand driving patterns, battery charging, market needs and customer acceptance of electric vehicles. At the same time, GM is investing in start-up companies with innovative ideas to accelerate nextgeneration electrification technologies.

“The Seoul G20 Summit is a historic and meaningful event for the entire nation. We are pleased to be providing a demonstration fleet of battery electric vehicles

for such a critical gathering,” said Mike Arcamone, GM Daewoo President and CEO. “This will serve as a great opportunity for GM and GM Daewoo to exhibit our green technology leadership to leaders from around the world by introducing our blueprint for a cleaner, greener future for the automotive industry.”

The Cruze/Lacetti BEVs are equipped with a 31kWh battery that generates maximum power of 150 kW. The products in the demonstration fleet will be monitored closely to determine the amount of realworld range achievable by vehicles of their size. On specific test schedules conducted by LG Chem, the demonstration vehicles may achieve a range of up to 160 km (100 miles). The vehicles can go from 0 to 100 km/h (60 miles per hour) in 8.2 seconds with a maximum speed of 165 km/h (102.5 miles per hour).

During the G20 Summit, GM and GM Daewoo will gauge consumer interest in electric vehicles and gain key learnings about the performance of BEVs on local roads. This will help GM and GM Daewoo grow the competitiveness of core EV components such as batteries, motors and charging systems.

Reliance Industries profit rises 27.8% MUMBAI: India’s Reliance Industries posted a 27.8 percent rise in quarterly profit yesterday, in line with expectations, on rising refining margins and oil and gas production revenues.

Net profit for the July-Sept quarter was 49.2 billion rupees ($1.1 billion), up from 38.5 billion rupees in the year-ago period. Total revenues rose 22.8 percent, to 599.6 billion rupees ($13.5 billion).

“Improving refining margins and high operating rates at all our manufacturing facilities led to a record quarter,” chairman Mukesh Ambani said in a statement.

Reliance Industries is India’s largest listed company, which has been looking beyond its core interests in petrochemicals and oil and gas, to fast-growing sectors like telecom and logistics.

Ambani, the world’s fourth-richest person according to Forbes, is also keen to go global. This year, Reliance has signed joint ventures with three US shale gas companies,

which together are the largest investment ever by an Indian company in the United States.

The company had cash and cash equivalents of 293.5 billion rupees ($6.5 billion) at the end of September. “For Reliance the biggest problem is to seek sizable growth,” said IIFL Capital analyst Bhaskar Chakraborty. “To keep their competitive edge, they have to think big. You’ll probably see some of that translate into overseas acquisitions.” He said the recent dip in natural gas prices in the US will dampen Reliance’s immediate appetite for further shale acquisitions.

“The economics of the deal could be threatened if natural gas prices remain as low as they have been in the near past,” he said.

Reliance benefited from rising global demand, with export revenues up 55.5 percent for the half year, despite softening refining margins in the US and Europe due to recent concerns about future

growth. Despite production setbacks from a pipeline problem and disappointing production from one basin, Reliance boosted oil and gas production revenues to 43.0 billion rupees ($970.7 million) for the quarter, up 46.5 percent from last year.

The company has yet to ramp up to full gas production from its main KGD6 basin off India’s eastern coast. It runs two deepwater exploration rigs and said it expects to add a third by April.

The company operates the world’s largest complex refinery in the western state of Gujarat, which processed 33.8 million metric tons of crude during the half year ended September. Refining margins, which are key to profitability, for the quarter were $7.90 a barrel, up from $6.00 a year ago. Revenues from refining rose 25.5 percent, to 496.7 billion rupees ($11.2 billion) during the quarter, on higher volumes and higher prices, the company said. — AP

BUSINESS

26

Sunday, October 31, 2010

Stocks’ week of reckoning arrives; Fed in focus NEW YORK: The wait is almost over. After a two-month rally in the stock market, some investors are about to see if they get what they wished for: more Republicans in Congress and lots of cheap money.

The US stock market has priced in the Republicans gaining ground in Tuesday’s midterm elections, an outcome widely seen as more businessfriendly, as well as the Federal Reserve pumping billions into the economy through Treasury debt purchases. The Fed’s statement on Wednesday afternoon at the end of its two-day policy meeting is widely anticipated for details of the central bank’s economic stimulus plan.

Jobs will be a touchstone, with the high US unemployment rate figuring into the campaign rhetoric of Democrats and Republicans alike in the midterm elections. The federal government’s non-farm payrolls report, due on Friday, is expected to show a gain of 60,000 jobs in October, compared with September’s loss of 95,000 jobs, according to economists polled by Reuters. The US unemployment rate, however, is seen holding steady at 9.6 percent.

More earnings from S&P 500 companies and a steady stream of top-tier economic indicators will give investors more evidence of the economy’s health throughout the week.

A series of foreign central bank meetings also is on tap. But these

numbers will serve mostly as backdrop to the outcome of the elections and the Fed meeting.

With so many variables in the week ahead, Wall Street professionals are unusually reticent to call the market. Only one thing seems for sure: Volatility will play a major role.

Traders expect the week to end with a swing of around 2.5 percent in either direction, based on options activity in the SPDR S&P 500 fund.

While that is not out of the ordinary, traders could see significant volatility during the week as events unfold.

“It will probably be a very volatile and very active market because there are a lot of moving parts,” said John Praveen, chief investment strategist of Prudential International Investments Advisers LLC in Newark, New Jersey.

If there are fireworks, they will probably come after the Fed’s twoday meeting on Wednesday afternoon. That could create a dead period for markets at the start of the week, especially if the elections’ results are in line with predictions.

Expectations of the size of the Fed’s purchases of US government bonds have been coming down in recent days. That has kept the stock market locked in a tight range, but it has also opened the door for upside surprises.

“Two weeks ago, the Fed was definitely poised to disappoint the mar-

WALL STREET WEEKLY OUTLOOK

ket,” said Burt White, managing director and chief investment officer of LPL Financial in Boston. “Now, it’s much more balanced, and maybe even leaning toward a slight sur-

prise.”

Most leading economists expect the Fed to buy between $80 billion and $100 billion worth of assets per month, according to a recent Reuters

poll of primary US Treasury dealers.

Estimates for how much the Fed will eventually spend varied widely, from $250 billion to as high as $2 trillion.

The Bank of Japan has moved its

policy meeting forward to the end of the week, right after the Fed’s meeting. Investors suspect the Japanese central bank-whose board members will meet on Thursday and Fridaymay respond by stepping up its bond purchases in reaction to the Fed. The Bank of England and the European Central Bank are also set to hold policy meetings during the week. Among the readings on the US economy expected during the week, Wall Street will watch two reports from the Institute for Supply Management. The ISM index on US manufacturing for October, due tomorrow, is forecast to dip to 54.0 from September’s reading of 54.4, the Reuters poll showed. The ISM services- sector index for October, due on Wednesday, is seen edging up to 53.5 from September’s reading of 53.2.

Traders on online betting forum InTrade are betting on a more than 90 percent chance of the Republicans winning the House, meaning the degree of the potential victory could be more important than the win itself.

InTrade traders are pricing in a 45 percent chance that Republicans will win more than 60 seats in the 435seat House — they need to gain 39 seats to control the chamber-and a 55.5 percent chance that they will take the Senate.

A stronger-than-expected

Republican showing in the House and a Republican coup in the Senate could be a boost for the stock market. To be sure, some would view the failure to take the House as a blow.

Bernie McSherry, senior vice president of Cuttone & Co, a New York Stock Exchange floor trader, said if exit polls point to a surprising result, then that could filter into markets on the same day.

“You could see some reaction late in the day on Tuesday, but only in the case of a really substantial surprise,” he said. “If it proceeds as expected or is too close to call, I think people will hold off until the following day.”

Wayne Kaufman, chief market analyst of John Thomas Financial in New York, said his firm is betting stock prices will rise near-term as earnings beat estimates. But his firm will view any sharp pullbacks in stocks as a buying opportunity.

“We are along the market,” he said. “We are watching to see if we are going to have signs of distribution, but we are not going to forecast that happening. We will be in a reactive mode, we will respond to what we see.”

The CBOE Volatility Index, or VIX, is still relatively low, but it has been picking up steam in the last several days. The index, a popular gauge of investor anxiety, rose 1.5 percent on Friday to close at 21.20. — Reuters

Australia offers $132m for S E Asia transport Funds to be used for road, rail and other projects: Gillard

NEW YORK: Women carry their shopping bags on Fifth Ave. in New York. The economy grew at a slightly faster pace over the summer as Americans spent a little more freely.—AP

Tribune creditors file reorganization plans CHICAGO: Tribune Co creditors, objecting to the company’s proposal for getting out of bankruptcy protection, submitted competing plans that could ignite another legal battle.

The alternatives filed late on Friday by creditors including Tribune bondholder Aurelius Capital Management didn’t come as a surprise. After a creditor dispute derailed the original reorganization plan that Tribune Co. filed in April, the bickering continued while a court-appointed mediator tried to negotiate a compromise. Tribune Co found common ground with enough creditors to file its revised plan last week.

Tribune Co spokesoman Gary Weitman said the company still considers its plan to be the best for creditors.

“We will continue to study these alternative plans, but still believe that the company plan, with its broad creditor and official committee support, is the best option for treating our stakeholders fairly and allowing the company to emerge from bankruptcy as quickly as possible,” he said in an e-mailed statement.

Friday’s filings erect a new hurdle that could prevent Tribune Co from attaining its goal of exiting bankruptcy protection by the end of the year. The owner of several major newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times, and more than 20 radio and TV stations already has spent nearly two years operating under the super-

vision of a bankruptcy court in Delaware. A battle like this has loomed as a possibility since Tribune Co’s exclusive right to file a reorganization plan expired in early August.

With multiple plans to consider, US Bankruptcy Judge Kevin Carey is likely to have to schedule more hearings to determine whether they satisfy the legal standards that would allow them to be voted upon by Tribune Co’s creditors.

Tribune Co. has been in upheaval since real estate mogul Sam Zell took the company private in an $8.2 billion buyout in 2007.

The debt-laden deal closed just as newspapers throughout the country entered an advertising slump that depleted their main source of income. To make ends meet, publishers cut their staffs and, in the most extreme cases, filed for bankruptcy protection. Tribune Co. did so in December 2008 with about $13 billion in debt.

Tribune Co. probably wouldn’t have faced such dire circumstances had not Zell piled on so much debt to gain control of the company. That has triggered allegations that shady dealings caused the financial disrepair. An independent examiner concluded in July that some aspects of the Tribune buyout had bordered on fraud, further agitating some creditors.

Earlier Friday, a group of Tribune Co. creditors filed a lawsuit alleging that the company’s stint in bankruptcy protection might have been averted if not for the greed

of big banks who saddled the business with more debt than it could afford to repay.

The complaint filed in New York state court seeks to hold the banks behind the buyout of the company responsible for the financial wreckage left behind by the deal.

The lawsuit’s targets are JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s bank, Bank of America Corp.’s Merrill Lynch Capital Corp., Citigroup Inc.’s Citicorp and Bank of America. Attempts to reach the banks late Friday were unsuccessful. The drama hasn’t been confined to the courtroom. Last week, Tribune Co CEO Randy Michaels — a former radio industry executive brought in by Zell — resigned following published reports that he had cultivated a lewd office culture.

A committee of four executives from Tribune Co, Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times is running the company until a reorganization plan wins court approval and brings in a new ownership.

Tribune Co.’s plan would hand ownership to several of its largest creditors, including JPMorgan Chase, distressed debt specialist Angelo, Gordon & Co. and hedge fund Oaktree Capital Management.

Even after getting out of bankruptcy, Tribune Co. believes its publishing revenue will decline for several years, although not as severely as it has been. Publishing accounts for about two-thirds of the company’s revenue, which is expected total $3.2 billion this year.— AFP

HANOI: Australia yesterday pledged more than 132 million Australian dollars ($129 million) to improve infrastructure in Southeast Asia’s poorest countries. Prime Minister Julia Gillard, on her first regional tour, made the announcement during a summit with presidents and prime ministers from the 10member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The funds would be used for road, rail and other projects, she said.

“We hope this infrastructure will spur economic growth in the Greater Mekong Sub-Region,” Gillard said. Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam have recorded high growth rates, but they still have the lowest per capita gross domestic product figures among ASEAN members.

Southeast Asian leaders have warned of a widening gap between the booming region’s richest and poorest nations that could threaten its drive to create a single market of almost 600 million people by 2015. In Vietnam alone, the European Chamber of Commerce has cited estimates that the country needs around $70-80 billion of investment in infrastructure, such as ports and roads, over the next five to 10 years. Gillard also pledged 10 million dollars to fight “exploitation” of migrant workers in Southeast Asia. From Hanoi she is to visit Malaysia and Indonesia, where she will discuss plans for a regional asylum-seeker detention centre. Indonesia’s Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa told AFP after the ASEAN-Australia summit that the subject of “boat people” making the voyage to Australia was not raised during those talks. — AFP

BELTSVILLE: President Barack Obama speaks about the economy at Stromberg Metal Works in Beltsville, Maryland on Friday.—AP

Hungary submits 2011 budget to parliament BUDAPEST: The Hungarian government submitted to parliament yesterday its draft budget for 2011, standing by its pledge to bring the deficit below the European Union limit next year.

Dubbed “the budget of recovery” by Economy Minister Gyorgy Matolcsy, it puts growth in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) next year at 3.0 percent, with a deficit of 2.8 percent of GDPbelow the EU 3.0-percent ceiling-and inflation at 3.5 percent.

Parliament was expected to debate the draft this week, before voting on it in the coming weeks.

Economic growth next year will rely on several reforms, including to pensions and the health service as well as a new 16-percent flat tax rate, giving the country the lowest tax regime in the region, Matolcsy said. Under reforms passed this

week in parliament, part of an employee’s wages which would normally be placed in private pension funds will be redirected into state coffers, raising an additional 1.5 billion euros (2.1 billion euros) in revenue.

By the end of 2011, the government expects at least 90 percent of private pension fund members to return to the state fund, Matolcsy said.

Hard hit by the global economic crisis, Hungary saw its economy shrink 6.3 percent in 2009 but it emerged from recession in the first quarter of 2010 with growth of 0.6 percent.

Under a deal with the European Union, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in exchange for a 20-billion-euro loan in 2008, Budapest was required to reduce its budget deficit to 3.8 percent of GDP in 2010 and bring it under 3.0 percent in 2011. —AFP

Portugal govt, opposition reach agreement on budget LISBON: Portugal’s minority Socialist government and opposition Social Democrats (PSD) reached an agreement on the 2011 budget yesterday, averting a political crisis in one of the euro zone’s financially weakest members.

The agreement, confirmed by the finance ministry, comes after a lengthy showdown between the government and the PSD which had threatened to derail the budget and plunge the country into paralysis. “The agreement will be signed today at 11 o’clock in parliament,” a finance ministry spokeswoman said.

Brussels, investors and Portugal’s large banks have piled pressure on both sides to reach a deal. Failure to do so could have forced the government to seek a financial rescue from its European partners, as Greece did earlier this year.

Fears grew after talks between the government and the PSD collapsed on Wednesday.

But on Friday Prime Minister Jose Socrates and PSD leader Pedro Passos Coelho said they were open to new talks, suggesting an agreement was possible after all.

Because the government rules without a majority it needs the support of the opposition to pass legislation. The PSD has insisted on more spending cuts and smaller increases in taxes to cut the budget deficit, arguing that the Portuguese state sector is bloated and needs deep reforms.

Socrates had threatened to resign if the budget was not passed, which would have created months of uncertainty because, under the constitution, a snap election could only be held in May at the earliest. Socrates has promised to cut the deficit to 4.6 percent of GDP next year from 7.3 percent this year and needs the PSD to vote for the budget or abstain in order to pass it. A first vote in parliament is scheduled for Wednesday. —Reuters

ROME: Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, chairman of the Vatican bank, officially known as the Institute for the Works of Religion (IOR) as he leaves Rome’s Prosecutor office. The Vatican bank has taken steps to satisfy tough EU and international norms on money laundering and terror financing after being confronted with an unprecedented crackdown by Italian prosecutors. —AP

TECHNOLOGY

Sunday, October 31, 2010

27

Microsoft’s billions count for little in post-PC world SAN FRANCISCO: Microsoft reported record first-quarter sales Thursday of more than 16 billion dollars and notched up a nottoo-shabby 5.4 billion dollars in net profit.

Not bad for a company that has been widely written off as a creaking dinosaur, destined to go the way of T-Rex in the face of competition from Google, Apple, Facebook and other companies that we probably haven’t even heard of yet. It’s not just the tech contrarians who have been ganging up on the great software giant from the north. CNN ran a big story this week with the headline “Microsoft is a dying consumer brand” at a time when no less than five leading financial analysts all downgraded the company’s stock.

If that weren’t indictment enough, the

‘Microsoft is a dying consumer brand’: CNN nail in the coffin was hammered by Ray Ozzie, the company’s outgoing software guru. He’s one of the most renowned visionaries in the technology world, a man who laid the foundation of modern business software by inventing Lotus Notes in the 1990s. His fear is that Microsoft will go the way of Lotus Notes and become just another niche player, as it clings to the legacy products that are the foundation of its fortune, rather than the springboard for its future.

Ozzie wrote a 3,000-word memo to his Microsoft colleagues, in which he urged

them to look beyond the era of the PC to a multi- device future where software and services reside in the cloud, instantaneously accessible, presciently powerful, awesomely intelligent and blissfully free of such dated 20th century artifacts as PC desktops, CD-installed programs, files and folders.

But as the noted tech commentator Robert X Cringely noted, this stuff isn’t exactly new and Ozzie’s observations smacked more of hindsight than prophecy.

“That post-PC era isn’t coming. It’s already here,” Cringely noted. “You can date its arrival to January 9, 2007 - the day

Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone. Everything follows from that.” Microsoft was too busy gorging on the monopolistic profits of cash cows such as Windows and Microsoft Office to acknowledge the significance of the mobile revolution and the Google insurrection, which now look like making its entire business model largely obsolete.

David Hilal, an analyst at FBR Capital, spoke for many of his colleagues in the investment community when he downgraded the company over concerns about slowing PC-growth, and Microsoft’s poor position in the fast-growing areas of computing

- tablets and smartphones. Even before the downgrades, Microsoft’s stock had been flat to down for the last 10 years, and the continued strong performance of legacy businesses such as Office and Windows will not be enough to change that.

Microsoft does have a few tricks up its sleeve. Its Xbox Kinect, which hits markets next month could become the game console to beat with its game-changing technology that tracks players’ movements and translates them to the screen. Windows 7 has also been praised as a potentially worthy rival to Google’s Android and Apple’s

iPhone, though many feel it will be too little too late. It doesn’t matter what happens with Microsoft’s core business, says Business Insider’s Jay Yarrow. “It has grown a number of businesses over the last 10 years and investors could care less.”

Financial analyst Sasa Zorovic put it another way. “We were expecting great earnings, great cash flow - and the stock not to go anywhere,” Zorovic told Investors.com. “From the investor standpoint, the company is facing death by a thousand cuts, not one or two blows. The skeptics’ argument is you get great revenue, earnings and cash flow, but then PCs go away. And the tablets and smart phones win and cloud computing wins, and Microsoft just isn’t there.” — dpa

Professor kick-starts disobedience movement SAN DIEGO: When protesting students spilled into University of California campus courtyards in March, Ricardo Dominguez took to the streets in his own way digitally - leading a march to the online office of the UC president. The bespectacled associate professor triggered a software program that continuously reloaded the home page of UC President Mark G Yudof’s website.

“Transparency,” hundreds of protesters wrote, over and over again, in the search box of the home page. The jammed website responded with an error message: “File not found.” The protesters’ message: Transparency doesn’t exist in the UC system.

It was a virtual sit-in, an oftused tactic from Dominguez’s academic specialty at UC San Diego: electronic civil disobedience. Another project last year took as inspiration the debate over illegal immigration. Dominguez, a new media artist, unveiled a prototype for a modified cell phone that he

tioning his work. “Time for a change in this country,” wrote Nick Vecchio, a La Mesa resident, in a letter to the San Diego Union Tribune. “My taxes are sky high, and I’m paying a state university to employ activists and professors specializing in civil disobedience? What, pray tell, is a ‘new media artist?’ “ Disturbance, answers Dominguez. He ponders the controversy with professorial detachment, studying reactions to his esoteric stagecraft, which is intended to blur the line between advocacy and performance art. “I’m interested in how different forms of power respond to this,” said Dominguez, 50, in a mellifluous baritone. “Our work has always been to bring to the foreground what artists can do using available low-end, new technologies that can have a wider encounter with society than just the limited landscape of the museum, the gallery and the scholarly paper.”

There are complications, however, when reality pierces

SAN DIEGO: Ricardo Dominguez, a University of California San Diego professor and a new media artist, displays a cell phone with GPS capabilities that he would like to provide to Mexican immigrants trying to enter the country illegally. — MCT called a “mobile Statue of Liberty.” He said phones like it would provide immigrants with directions and inspirational poetry readings during arduous desert crossings.

Never mind that few of the phones will probably ever end up in immigrant hands - there are no plans to mass produce them - or that the virtual sit-in may not have actually disrupted the UC president’s computer. The projects were political statements meant to agitate, which they did, with unexpected consequences. Campus police are probing whether the virtual sit-in broke any computer hacking laws. The phone has drawn fire for allegedly encouraging illegal immigration. The media showed up, and faculty and students have rallied to Dominguez’s defense, slapping black tape over their mouths at a campus protest.

To his detractors Dominguez is a leftist prankster who wastes public funds pursuing projects that border on the criminal. Three Republican congressmen in San Diego county have written letters to the university ques-

the bubble of conceptual art.

“The negative end is police coming to your door,” Dominguez said, mentioning that the university also shut down his laboratory’s computer server for eight days.

Dominguez, a MexicanAmerican raised in Las Vegas, majored in theater arts Shakespeare’s vainglorious Malvolio in “Twelfth Night” was among his favorite roles and moved to New York City in the 1990s, pulled more by the burgeoning digital subculture than the bright lights of Broadway.

With fellow new media artists and social activists, he co-founded the Electronic Disturbance Theater, which developed virtual protest tactics against computer systems across the world. The online protests flood network servers with automatic “reload” requests that can disrupt and slow systems, but not destroy data, Dominguez says. The group targeted, among others, the Frankfurt stock exchange to protest mining investments in Mexico, and the Mexican government for its military actions against the Zapatista

rebel movement. Dominguez likens the protests to thousands of people standing in the middle of the information superhighway, or massing as if they will.

In 1998, for example, the US Defense Department, anticipating a virtual attack from the Disturbance Theater, set up a program to divert the virtual swarm to a nonexistent website, The New York Times reported.

“When the Department of Defense launched the information war weapon at us - that’s kind of a brilliant moment in that performance,” Dominguez said.

“One can take the measure of power by not doing anything.

That is the power of art; that is the power of performance, that it creates not effect, but affect.”

Dominguez was hired as an associate professor at UC San Diego’s prestigious Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology in 2005. He joined an eclectic group of nanotechnology experts, computer musicians and game designers exploring cyberspace trends in a gleaming, postmodern building at the La Jolla campus. His students in the visual arts department have created a sound sculpture exhibit featuring columns of white speakers, that draws attention to the presence of nanotechnology particles in everyday products. Another student spent 365 hours as a virtual-world dragon, her movements mimed with motion-capture technology in a three-dimensional visual laboratory.

In class, Dominguez’s students are taken on a braintwisting journey into abstract ruminations on cyber-hallucinations and the nature of beauty. To the uninitiated, the language is incomprehensible.

Want to learn about “Trans( )infinities,” his latest course offering? It “will be imagined as an (empty set) of potential aesthetic practices that move between, through, across and beyond the post of the postcontemporary by transfixing on the loanwords,” reads the course description.

Last year, Dominguez was granted tenure. “Professor Dominguez ... has been a defining figure in the migration of performance art from physical space to virtual space,” wrote professor Paul Drake, UC San Diego’s senior vice chancellor of Academic Affairs, in a tenure notification letter quoted by the UC Faculty Coalition in a letter to administrators.

With the public unveiling of the immigrant cell phone, Dominguez seized the spotlight. The phone’s global-positioning system program directs immigrants to desert water stations and has a “poetry-in-motion” audio feature.

“May the road rise up to meet you,” says one poem.

“May the wind always be at your back.” The phone is more conceptual than practical.

Similar border-inspired projects have been dreamed up by several artists over the years, including an illegal-immigrant shoe equipped with maps and a compass. They languished in galleries, generating little interest beyond art circles.

The immigrant cell phone created with three colleagues for about $10,000 - scored public relations riches. CNN named Dominguez one of its most intriguing people in December, and the associate professor shared the media stage with conservative lawmakers, giving him a platform to draw attention to the plight of immigrants. —MCT

This Oct 21, 2005 file photo shows Mount Everest from an aerial view taken over Nepal. Climbers attempting to scale the world’s highest peak now have access to high-speed Internet near its 5,200-m base camp, the last gathering point on the journey to the top. — AP

Tweet this from Everest: ‘OMG! We’re halfway up!’

KATMANDU: You can’t get away from a cell phone call, even at the top of the world. Thanks to 3G towers newly installed near Mount Everest’s base camp, explorers can surf the Web, tweet and post Facebook updates without worrying that their signals will disappear into thin air. The new high-speed service, announced Friday by Ncell, a subsidiary of Swedish telecom company TeliaSonera, will allow mountaineers setting off to the summit of the world’s tallest mountain to access wireless Internet and make video calls to family, friends and supporters. “You know, I think it’s kind of good and kind of bad, but to me it’s kind of inevitable,” said renowned climber Ed Viesturs, frequently described as the strongest US high-altitude mountaineer. The 51-year-old veteran of seven climbs to Everest’s 29,035-foot (8,850-meter) summit said the new technology is not for him.

“I’m kind of old school,” said Viesturs, who has climbed all 14 of the world’s highest peaks. “But you can imagine the newer generation saying, ‘No, bring it on. The more the better.”‘ Every year, thousands of trekkers from all over the world walk to Everest’s base camp at 17,000 feet (5,182 meters), and hun-

dreds of mountaineers take on the arduous and dangerous route to the summit. Until now, they were forced to carry heavy - and expensive - satellite equipment to transmit information and images from base camp. On the climb, mountaineers carry handheld VHF radios to talk with base camp, though an expedition might also carry a satellite phone to contact sponsors and family.

For 25-year-old Leif Whittaker, who summited Everest for the first time in May - calling his mother on the descent, using a satellite phone - the advantage comes down to being able to easily phone home. “Just being able to communicate with your family and friends would make it a lot easier to spend two months in a tent away from home,” said Whittaker, whose father, Jim Whittaker, was the first American to summit Everest. But there is a risk that it could be a dangerous distraction, the Port Townsend, Washington, resident said. When attempting the summit, “you need to stay focused in the moment.”

Dave Hahn, who has climbed Everest 12 times, more than any other American, noted that the north side base camp in Tibet has had cell service for several

years, but not the south side in Nepal.

The 48-year-old from Taos, New Mexico, said that when he first climbed Everest in 1991, he had equipment that allowed him to transmit lines of Telex.

“That was pretty high-tech in 1991.” And in 1999, when Hahn was on the expedition that found the body of legendary English mountaineer George Mallory, who died on Everest in 1924: “I remember sitting up all night figuring out how to send the photos out in big enough resolution.” That will be a thing of the past now. But might Facebook, Twitter and the highpitched sound of dozens of cell phones ringing cheapen the experience? “I hear that all the time,” Hahn said. “And what can you say? Things change that way. And those of us who’ve beamed home pictures and stories from the place, well, we’ve accelerated that change.” Gordon Janow, who helps set up base camps for expeditions led by Alpine Ascents International of Seattle, agreed. Trekkers in the lower elevations of the Himalayas also use cell phones, and “I don’t know if it’s good or bad,” he said.

“It was one of the few places you could go and lose yourself from the world.” — AP

Facebook tightens grip on user identification data SAN FRANCISCO: Facebook on Friday took more steps to stop third-party applications from sharing identifying information about users with advertising and Internet tracking companies. “Today, we are clarifying our policy to ensure that developers understand the proper use of UIDs (user identification data) in their applications,” the world’s leading online social network said in a release. “Our policy has always stated that data received from Facebook, including UIDs, cannot be shared with data brokers and ad networks.”

Facebook recently learned that some software developers behind outside applications popular in the online community were “inadvertently” sharing user identification numbers due to the way Web browser programs work. “We have proposed a technical solution to prevent this sort of transfer in the future,” Facebook said. “In addition, we are working with browser vendors to address this issue more broadly across

the web.”

Facebook modified its policy to forbid user identification data from leaving third-party applications and for such information to remain confidential if used by analytics services connected to programs. “Ad networks that operate on Facebook Platform are already required to sign terms that govern their use of data,” the social network said.

“We are requiring these ad networks to delete any Facebook UIDs, regardless of how they were obtained. Facebook said that its investigation into the situation revealed that some developers were paid by a data broker for UIDs in violation of the social network’s policy. Violating developers are being placed on 6-month moratoriums and will have their data practices audited to make sure they are in compliance with rules at the social network, according to Facebook. The moratorium was said to affect fewer than a dozen, mostly small developers, none of which are in the top ten applications at

Facebook. Two members of the US Congress have asked Facebook to explain how applications transmitted information about users to advertising and Web tracking companies in violation of the social network’s rules.

Representative Joe Barton, a Republican from Texas, and Representative Edward Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts, asked Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to reply to 18 questions about what they called a “privacy breach.” They asked how many users were impacted, what information was transmitted to other parties and how many third-party applications were involved. They also asked whether Facebook will “seek the deletion of its users’ personal information from data bases of the Internet or advertising companies who received it as a result of this series of privacy breaches?”

Andrew Noyes, a Facebook spokesman, said Facebook “is committed to safeguarding private data while letting

people enjoy meaningful social experiences with their friends. “As our privacy policy states, when a Facebook user connects with an application, the user ID is part of the information that the application receives,” he said. “The suggestion that the passing of a user ID to an application, as described in Facebook’s privacy policy, constitutes a ‘breach’ is curious at best,” Noyes said. The Wall Street Journal said applications were providing access to Facebook members’ names and, in some cases, their friends’ names, to companies that build detailed databases on people in order to track them online. All of the 10 most popular applications on Facebook were transmitting unique user ID numbers to outside companies, it said. They include Zynga’s FarmVille, with 59 million users, Texas HoldEm Poker and FrontierVille.

Facebook is the world’s most popular social network with around 500 million users, but it has been dogged by complaints about privacy protection. — AFP

28

HEALTH & SCIENCE

Sunday, October 31, 2010

Eliminating malaria impossible without vaccine LONDON: Eliminating malaria, the mosquito-borne scourge that kills more than 860,000 people a year, would be a dream come true for millions _ but medical experts say right now that goal remains completely unrealistic. That view from leading researchers contrasts sharply with grand announcements by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Health Organization, which have declared their wish to rid the world of the disease. “Far from being brave, the rhetoric around eliminating malaria is often naive,” said Richard Horton, editor of the British medical journal Lancet.

“For sub-Saharan Africa, it’s a hopelessly impossible target for now,” he said, pointing to the continent’s weak

health systems and chronic medicines shortage, among other problems.

The idea of eliminating malaria was examined in a series Friday in the Lancet. Experts analyzed issues like the practicalities of wiping out malaria and its financial costs. Getting rid of malaria will be far pricier than controlling it, and economists warned that higher costs would not necessarily be offset by future savings. Although research suggests wiping out the parasitic disease may be feasible in Latin America and Asia, it will be nearly impossible in Africa, where most of the world’s estimated 247 million yearly cases occur. Malaria is treatable if caught early but is especially deadly in children under five, who make up most of

its victims. One of the main stumbling blocks toward elimination is the lack of a malaria vaccine. The most promising candidate is still being tested, but at best it is only about 50 percent effective.

In comparison, the four vaccines being used to eradicate polio _ an initiative under way for more than two decades _ work about 95 percent of the time. Other experts said that since more than 70 countries including Britain, Italy, the U.S. and Singapore have already eliminated malaria, much can be accomplished with existing tools like bed nets and drugs. Economic development and higher living standards would also help.

“We should not fall into the ‘Waiting for Godot’ syndrome which undermines

strong progress while everyone waits for an ideal vaccine to arrive,” said Sir Richard Feachem, who formerly headed the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and one of the L ancet series authors. But because malaria is transmitted by mosquitoes, eliminating the disease will be particularly tricky. Unlike viruses spread only by humans, like polio, getting rid of malaria permanently means erasing it from billions of mosquitoes.

Richard Tren, director of the nonprofit Africa Fighting Malaria, said health officials had been too swayed by environmental lobbyists and were overlooking the need for new pesticides. “You cannot possibly stop an insect-borne disease

without more insecticides,” he said.

Previous attempts to get rid of malaria have largely failed in developing countries. WHO began a similar eradication program in 1955 but abandoned it in 1969. In 1998, WHO and others formed the Roll Back Malaria partnership.

Several years later, they found cases had actually risen.

Some experts said a new campaign to eliminate malaria might spur donors to cough up more cash. “It’s like building a monument,” said Scott Barrett, an economist at Columbia University who coauthored one of the L ancet papers.

“Everybody wants their name on it to say they were part of eliminating a disease.” Robert Newman, director of

WHO’s malaria program, guessed it would take 40 or more years to get rid of malaria. “En route to that ultimate goal ... there are opportunities for tremendous public health successes,” he said.

While officials are split over how possible it is to get rid of malaria, they agreed the idea is tempting. “The target of disease eradication is never bad,” said David Heymann, who previously led WHO’s attempt to wipe out polio. But he said wealthy donors shouldn’t try to impose their disease elimination goals on African countries. “It’s not rocket science to get rid of malaria,” Heymann said. “But this has to be something countries make a sober assessment about and decide for themselves.” —AP

health briefs Test shows no health risk to food from spill WASHINGTON: Testing has helped confirm that chemicals used to disperse oil from the BP <BP.L> spill have not made their way into fish, crabs, shrimp or oysters from the Gulf of Mexico, U.S. officials said on Friday. Tests of more than 1,700 samples show that fewer than 1 percent had any trace of chemicals at all, and the ones that did had extremely low levels, the officials from the Food and Dr ug Administration and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.

E-cigarette maker accepts California marketing limits LOS ANGELES: A leading U.S. maker of electronic cigarettes has agreed not to target its sales and advertisements to minors or to claim its products are safe alternatives to tobacco, under a consent judgment reached with California.

The settlement, announced on Friday by state Attorney General Jerry Brown, comes weeks after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it intended to regulate e-cigarettes, battery-powered devices made to look and feel like conventional cigarettes.

Extending daylight could boost health, help planet LONDON: Putting the clocks back in winter is bad for health, wastes energy and increases pollution, scientists say, and putting an end to the practice in northern areas could bring major health and environmental benefits. Countries across Europe, the United States, Canada and parts of the Middle East mark the start of winter by ending Daylight Saving Time (DST) and putting their clocks back by an houroften in late October or early November-a move that means it is lighter by the time most people get up to start their day.

Stress may have only small impact on weight NEW YORK: Despite the common belief that stress causes people to pack on the pounds, a new research review finds that, on average, stress has little long-term effect on weight.

The results are surprising, researchers say, given the widespread notion that stress - by causing people to reach for junk food or skimp on exercise, for example-is an important factor in weight gain.

MUMBAI: Indian fire brigade personnel take part in a laughter therapy session in Mumbai yesterday. The members of Priyadarshani Laughter Club International organised laughter therapy session for fire brigade staff. The club promotes the use of laughter as a means of providing both tension and pain relief. —AFP

Accord raises hopes for climate change NAGOYA, Japan: Bitterly divided rich and poor nations can work together to save the world from global warming, jubilant negotiators said yesterday after forging a historic UN pact on protecting ecosystems. Delegates from 193 countries emerged from two weeks of intense diplomacy and a frightening last few hours of bareknuckle negotiations to seal early yesterday morning an accord to curb the world’s loss of biodiversity by 2020. The talks, held in the central Japanese city of Nagoya, particularly saw the European Union, Brazil and the African bloc working closely together to ensure all nations made significant compromises.

“Having this agreement in Nagoya is a message that we can do it if we want,” European environment commissioner Janez Potocnik told

reporters, referring to multinational cooperation on global warming. “I’m convinced that this is something that simply cannot be ignored... I think it is a message that will echo in Cancun.” The next round of UN climate change talks aimed at forging a post-2012 treaty on curbing greenhouse gases, which are blamed for global warming, will begin in the Mexican city of Cancun on November 29.

Efforts to establish an accord to replace the Kyoto protocol have so far been plagued by disputes between rich and poor nations over who should do more to limit greenhouse gases and take other measures to tackle climate change. Public faith in the UN’s ability to act as a forum for solving the planet’s major environmental problems plummeted after a summit

in Copenhagen last year collapsed with world leaders unable to seal a climate change pact. The Cancun meeting is meant to repair some of the damage done in Copenhagen and lay the foundations for an accord to be potentially signed in 2011.

But a preparatory meeting in China a month ago saw the familiar types of bickering between rich and poor nations. Brazil, which has been a leading voice for developing countries in both the climate change and biodiversity negotiations, also said the Nagoya accord offered hope for the other UN battle. “What we have here is a good result, which shows you can get good results from the multilateral process. So we do believe we can get good results also in Cancun,” Brazil’s Environment Minister, Izabella Teixeira, told reporters. “I think

Nagoya shows we are able to negotiate, we are able to understand the diversity among the countries, but also we are able to promote convergence.”

Green groups also voiced hopes and expectations the events in Japan would give impetus to painstaking UN climate negotiations, particularly after many had expressed concern that the biodiversity talks had been in danger of collapse. “With the slow progress of talks in the first week, there was fear that Nagoya would wind up like Copenhagen,” Conservation International president Russ Mittermeier said. “The success of this final day helped to validate the importance of global conventions like these in creating conservation policies and promoting actions on the ground.” —AFP

India makes first expedition to South Pole NEW DELHI: India will kick off its first scientific expedition to the South Pole on Monday to analyze environmental changes in the frozen continent over the past 1,000 years, the mission leader said yesterday.

Rasik Ravindra, head of the National Centre for Antarctic and Ocean Research, is to lead a team of seven Indian scientists on the 40-day expedition from an Indian research base in the Antarctic to the South Pole. “No one has taken the route we will be taking to the South Pole,” the 62-yearold researcher told AFP from the state-run centre headquartered in the seaside Goa resort state. The expedition is part of India’s ambition of drawing international attention to its scientific presence in the desolate, icy region, scientists say.

A Russian-built Ilyushin-76 plane will fly out Ravindra’s scientists to the frozen continent via Cape Town in South Africa.

“We will then traverse up 1,200 feet (3,300 meters) to the South Pole from Maitri, one of our Antartica bases which is 100 meters (330 feet) above sea level,” he said. Maitri, which means friendship in the Hindi language, was set up in 1989 on the ice-free rocky foundation of the Schirmacher oasis in Antartica. The eight-member team will travel 2,400 kilometers (1,488) from Maitri to the South Pole.

The scientists will travel in vehicles specially designed for ice and will carry out wide-ranging experiments on the uncharted route to analyze climatic and other changes over the past 1,000 years, Ravindra said.”We will conduct meteorological experiments, record humidity, temperatures, wind speed and atmospheric pressures during the 20-day trip to the South Pole and other experiments would be conducted on our way back,” he said.

The experiments include geomorphology, a study of the movements of tectonic plates.

“We chose the expedition because noone has gone on this track and things have changed over time so new data on variations will be available to us,” he said.

“Everything is now linked to global warming,” Ravindra said and added the team would spend just one or two days at the South Pole. “There is no point in trying to re-invent the wheel as a US research station team is already working there,” he said. The team plan to bring air samples back to the Goa laboratory, as well as rocks collected for magnetism testing. The research is expected to “add to the knowledge of how the ancient landmass, once fused with other continents in a super-continent before being separated 200 million years ago, has evolved,” another official said. — AFP

Sexual problems? It’s probably not low testosterone NEW YORK: If you believe the ads from drugmakers such as Solvay Pharmaceuticals, you might well think that getting a testosterone prescription is the key to save a faltering sex life in middle age. But a new study adds to evidence that men’s levels of the hormone can vary quite a bit without causing sexual problems like impotence and decreased libido.

Vitamin B12 tied to Alzheimer’s NEW YORK: Vitamin B12 may help protect against Alzheimer’s disease, according to a study out Monday. The study suggests that seniors with more of the active part of the vitamin in their blood have a lower risk of developing the disease, which eats away at the minds of one in eight Americans aged 65 and older, according to the Alzheimer’s Association.

HHS offers grants for early insurance exchanges WASHINGTON: Five states will receive grants to design the technology needed for health insurance exchanges, the piece of health reform states have said could be a burden on them, the U.S. Depar tment of Health and Human Ser vices announced on Friday. States, as well as coalitions of states, will compete for the two-year “Early Innovator” grants, which will help defray the cost of developing and implementing information technology infrastructure for establishing the exchanges, HHS said.

Therapy for women prone to miscarriage questioned NEW YORK: Blood-thinning treatments for pregnant women with an inherited condition that makes them susceptible to blood clots may do more har m than good, Danish researchers report. Their study was designed to investigate the cause of repeat miscarriages in women with hereditary thrombophilia, a tendency to form blood clots, not the safety of particular treatments.

Pfizer recalls more U.S. lots of smelly Lipitor WASHINGTON: Pfizer Inc is recalling two more lots of Lipitor, the world’s largest selling prescription drug, after chemicals used in wooden pallets were found in some bottles that had an “uncharacteristic odor.” The drugmaker said on Friday that customer reports about the odor prompted the recall of about 38,000 bottles. Pfizer recalled other lots of its flagship drug in August and October.

US health panel FDA rejects new obesity drug Qnexa WASHINGTON: The US Food and Drug Administration has rejected a marketing request by Vivus for its new obesity treatment called Qnexa, because it considers it a health risk, the California-based biotech firm said in a statement. The FDA issued a letter “to communicate its decision that the NDA (New Drug Application for Qnexa) cannot be approved in its present form,” the company said.

In its decision, the FDA followed the July recommendations of its expert panel on endocrinological and metabolic drugs, who found by six votes to one abstention that Qnexa could cause potential heart problems. Qnexa was the first obesity drug submitted to the FDA in a decade.

It combines two existing drugs, the appetite suppressant phentermine and topiramate, an anti-convulsant that can be used in conjunction with other drugs for weight loss.

The FDA on October 8 requested US pharmaceutical company Abbott Laboratories to pull its obesity drug Meridia from the US market after European tests found the key ingredient increased the risk of serious heart problems. And last week, the US health panel rejected a marketing request for 2011 for weight-loss drug Lorcaserin, made by also California-based Arena Pharmaceuticals, after tests determined it caused tumors in laboratory rats. While a

Sunday, October 31, 2010

HEALTH & SCIENCE

29

Message in Marines’ calendar: Breast cancer strikes men, too WASHINGTON: As National Breast Cancer Awareness Month draws to a close this weekend, a cluster of men who once lived on a poisoned military base have this message for the public: The disease doesn’t just go away. Thirteen men who suffer from breast cancer posed for a calendar to raise awareness of their situation. All served or lived on the Camp Lejeune, NC, Marine base. All think their cancer can be traced to the decades in which toxic drinking water poured from In August, they stood among their own. They exchanged stories and handshakes. Many of the Marine veterans sported graying buzz cuts. Some had had mastectomies. “When we took our shirts off, we were all checking each other out,” said Peter Devereaux of North Andover, Mass. “You’re basically so similar,” Devereaux said. “You’re all men. You’ve got what’s considered a woman’s disease.

You’re all Marines or sons of Marines. It’s

incredible.” They posed, shirtless or clothed, for photographer David Fox, whose first wife died of breast cancer. Fox sat down with each man, chatted a few minutes about their stories. He said he tried to capture the beauty of the person, and the ugliness of the disease.

Male breast cancer makes up less than 1 percent of all breast cancer cases, and mostly affects men in their 60s, according to the National Cancer Institute. The

the base’s faucets, carrying poisons such as benzene, trichloroethylene and tetrachloroethylene. The 2011 calendar, “Men, Breast Cancer and the Environment,” became available online early this month; so far about 350 have been sold. The men gathered at a Boston hotel this summer for a unique photo shoot. Many had spoken with one another only on the phone, or through e-mail chats. Few had ever laid eyes on another male breast cancer patient.

Camp Lejeune calendar will be used for a seed grant to study potential links between male breast cancer and the base’s water. The project was produced

by Art BeCAUSE, a Framingham, Mass., nonprofit agency. The organization, www.artbecause.org, raises money for scientific seed grants to fund research into potential environmental causes of breast cancer. “They’re different because they’re guys, and they’re not sure why they got

WASHINGTON: Thirteen men who suffer from breast cancer pose for a calendar to raise awareness of their situation.—MCT

breast cancer,” said Ellie Anbinder, a cofounder and executive director of the organization and a breast cancer survivor.

“It probably happened because of the water.”

One of the men in the calendar, Mike Partain of Tallahassee, Fla., the son of a Marine, was born at Camp Lejeune. After Partain was diagnosed three years ago, he began hearing of other male breast cancer patients who’d lived at or been conceived at Lejeune. To date, there are an estimated 65. Partain, 42, who’s been an advocate for other victims of the water contamination, was among the men who posed for the calendar. In the calendar Partain stands shirtless, holding a photograph of his mother, who mixed Partain’s baby formula with water from Lejeune taps.

Devereaux posed for the 2010 calendar a year ago; then he was the only man in a year full of women. This year, he suggested rounding up Partain and a bunch of his fellow Marines for a guys-only project.

The stories were hopeful, but tinged with sadness. “You don’t want to miss a minute, because you’re not going to have this opportunity to have all the men together in the same room (again),” Devereaux said of the August photo shoot.

“They were so courageous, so proud.”

Devereaux, 48, just learned this summer he’ll receive veterans’ health benefits for his disease after fighting for a year to get the federal government to link his cancer to the poisonous water. He, like many of the men, for years had no idea that his exposure at Lejeune might mean he should be tested for cancer. His illness is incurable. He has a wife and teenage daughter. “I told everyone, ‘Listen, we got to sell a bunch of these,’ “ Devereaux said.

“Guys don’t even know they can get breast cancer. Let’s start getting them diagnosed early.” — MCT

LOS ANGELES: Billy, the Los Angeles Zoo’s 25-year-old male elephant, makes his way over to his keeper as elephant-management staffers gave a hard-hat preview tour of the Elephants of Asia exhibit, formerly known as Pachyderm Forest, on Friday, October 29, 2010. — MCT

New LA Zoo exhibit gets two big gifts: Elephants from San Diego LOS ANGELES: After surviving two city-ordered construction stops, the protests of animal welfare advocates, and an ongoing lawsuit, the Los Angeles Zoo is on the verge not only of opening its controversial $42-million new elephant exhibit but of getting what that exhibit needs: new elephants.

Elephants, that is, that will be new to the zoo. Tina and Jewel are female Asian elephants of un-certain age who between them have endured foot problems and dental surgery. They will be on indefinite loan from the San Diego Zoo, both zoos announced on Friday.

Estimated to be somewhere between 43 and 45 years old, they have their own fraught history. They spent years with a Texas outfitter that sent them off to circuses and was cited by the US Agriculture Department for bad conditions and mistreatment. When the San Diego Zoo acquired them 14 months ago, they had to be nursed back to health. They will arrive in Los Angeles well, when they feel like it. First they have to be trained to get into their transport crates, which is no easy business. “Until Tina and Jewel tell us they’re ready, we’ll wait,” said John Lewis, director of the LA Zoo. They will become charter members of the LA Zoo’s Asian elephant program — which zoo officials have indicated in the past would include breeding. Tina and Jewel, however, are well beyond hearing the tick tock of their biological clocks (which, for first-time pachyderm moms,

stops by age 30, according to Lewis). The exhibit’s primary purpose, Lewis said, is to exhibit Asian elephants of various ages and expose zoo visitors to the conservation needs of this endangered species. “The important part is to be able to show these great animals,” he said.

Zoos across the country have come under fire for their treatment of the giant land mammals. But management of elephants in zoos has evolved dramatically.

Over recent decades, most zoos have come a long way from the days when the animals were kept on concrete in small spaces and often disciplined with sharp-ended bull hooks. Today, the better zoos offer elephants softer ground, more space, and various enrichments _ waterfalls, mudholes and other natural attractions of the sort they might find in their native habitats. The LA Zoo’s new six-acre exhibit has all that and more (sandy hills, bathing pools) plus great medical care a wild animal wouldn’t have.

Still, animal welfare advocates argue that almost no zoo can replicate the habitat of wild elephants, who roam for miles each day and often stay in intact family groups.

Zoos, they point out, don’t just fail on the space front; they transfer animals to other zoos when they see fit.

Catherine Doyle, elephant campaign director for the animal welfare group In Defense of Animals, said that’s what she sees happening here. “Actually it feels like a betrayal for the elephants,” Doyle said. —MCT

WHATʼS ON IN KUWAIT

30

Sunday, October 31, 2010

Blood drive at Gulf University for Science and Technology (GUST) n October 27th, 2010 Gulf University for Science and Technology (GUST) invited its students, staff and faculty to participate in a blood drive with Kuwait Central Blood Bank. Doctors and nurses came to the O grand campus to set up their blood donation clinic. They received students, faculty and staff from 11am to 3pm. Not only were blood donations received, the doctors and nurses also were able to tell the donators of their blood pressure and blood type for their knowledge. It may not seem like important information but it can help a person with many instances they may not be aware of at the time. The spacious area was perfect for the occasion and the Kuwait Central Blood Bank and GUST were pleased with the impressive turn out.

Soorya festival 2010 oorya Kuwait Chapter, in association with S“Soorya UAE Exchange Centre is all set to stage Fest 2010, on Thursday, November 18, 2010, at the American International School Auditorium, Maidan Hawalli, at 7 pm, according to officials.

Indian Ambassador Ajai Malhotra will inaugurate the festival aiming to promote international integration through Culture.

The concert “Sarod Duo”, the title itself tells about the combination of 2 - the renowned Sarod players Amaan Ali Khan and Ayaan Ali Khan, the two sons and disciples of the Sarod Maestro Amjad Ali Khan, along with Ustad Rashid Mustfa on Tabla, will be the first of its kind to be staged in Kuwait, officials added.

Initiated into the fine art of Sarod playing at a very tender age, Amaan Ali Khan began his public performances as early as eight. He is now considered as one the finest young Sarod players and has attained very special place for himself to all music enthusiasts. Ayaan Ali Khan, stepped into the world of music at the age of eight, has been performing concerts worldwide ever since. Ayaan has won the hearts of music lovers both India and around the Globe. Recipients of the MTV’s Lycra Award for the most stylish person in Music in 2006, both were honored recently by the Mayor of the City of Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Acknowledged for his solo performances and accompaniment to vocalists, instrumentalist and dances Rashid Mustafa is a top grade artiste of the All India Radio and Doordarshan.

Frequently featured at prestigious concerts in India and abroad Rashid Mustafa has been awarded the Thirakwa Award by Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan in 1984. Playing Sarod, the most popular instrument in Hindustani (northern Indian) classical music along with Tabla creating a wide variety of different sounds will be a special feast to all arts lovers of Kuwait.

As usual, the entry for the show will be restricted with invitations. For more details, please contact 97977317, 66250037, 99293929, 97278029 or contact at Sooryakuwait@yahoo.com

IIS kids enjoy picnic in Shaab Park n 25th October 2010, the middle school of IIS Mangaf, Kuwait went to Shaab Park Salmiya for the school picnic. As the school believes, a right thing done at the right time and at the right place is the key to success.

So after the hectic Summative Assessment schedule of a week, the students were unplugged from the everyday monotony and were given a special day. A day filled with entertainment, enthusiasm and enjoyment.

O The big group of 180 people comprised of around 165 students, whereas the rest were the escorting educators and the supporting staff members. The Shaab Park came to life as the children entered its gates. The sweet smell of jauntiness and cheerfulness enveloped the whole environment. The students were elated to experience the variety of rides. The students enjoyed 3 hour bash of fun, food and frolic. Even the scariest of all the rides taught the scholars a very important lesson of practical life, keeping oneself calm and composed in the hugger and mugger of today’s complex life. “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” Adhering to this famous proverb, IIS Mangaf, Kuwait has reached another milestone towards excellence in the field of education by providing an overall development to its beloved students.

Aware EMBASSY OF BANGLADESH The Embassy of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh in Kuwait has taken up an initiative to update the database of Bangladesh nationals residing in the State of Kuwait. For inclusion in the database all the Bangladesh nationals are requested to collect the Registration Form from the Labour Wing of the Embassy. The forms can also be collected sending request to bdoot@kems.net e-mail address. The filled-in forms can also be submitted by hand, by email or by fax (number 2491-3204).

EMBASSY OF BRITAIN In order to improve the service to visa customers in Kuwait, UKBA has announced that they will pilot increased opening hours at their visa application centre in Kuwait City temporarily in the weeks before Eid Al-Adha. This will mean that the visa application centre in Kuwait City will be open on Saturday 30 October and Saturday 6 November between the hours of 0930 and 1630. HMA, Frank Baker said “We are always looking to improve our services and we recognize that it is not always convenient to attend during the working week. This pilot will allow customers increased access and choice of submission time. Simplifying the application process easier is a key aim for us and this is one of a number of steps that UKBA are exploring to improve customer service during peak periods. I also recommend that all visa applications are submitted online. By applying online, applicants will be able to make a specific appointment to visit the VAC at their convenience during opening hours and this will reduce the submission

process time to less than 15 minutes.”

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.The Embassy of Canada is open from 07:30 to 15:30 Sunday through Thursday. Consular Services for Canadian Citizens are provided from 9:00 until 12:00 on Sunday through Wednesday.

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.

EMBASSY OF INDIA The Embassy of India has further revamped and improved its Legal Advice Clinic at the Indian Workers Welfare Center, and made the free service available to Indian nationals on all five working days, i.e. from Sunday to Thursday every week. Kuwaiti lawyers would be available at the Legal Advice Clinic daily from Monday to Thursday, while Indian lawyers would be available on Sundays.

Following are the free welfare services provided at the Indian Workers Welfare Center located at the Embassy of India: [i] 24x7 Helpline for Domestic Workers: Accessible by toll free telephone no. 25674163 from anywhere in Kuwait, it provides information and advice exclusively to Indian domestic sector workers (Visa No. 20) as regards their grievances, immigration and other matters. [ii] Help Desk: It offers guidance to Indian nationals on routine immigration, employment, legal, and other issues (Embassy premises; 9 AM to 1 PM and 2 PM to 4.30 PM, Sunday to Thursday); (iii) Labour Complaints Desk: It registers labor complaints and provides grievance redressal service to Indian workers (Embassy premises; 9 AM to 1 PM and 2 PM to 4.30 PM, Sunday to Thursday); (iv) Shelters: For female and male domestic workers in distress; (v) Legal Advice Clinic: Provides free legal advice to Indian nationals (Embassy premises; Kuwaiti lawyers 3 PM to 5 PM, Monday to Thursday; Indian lawyers 2 PM to 4 PM on Sunday); and (vi) Attestation of Work Contracts: Private sector worker (Visa No. 18) contracts are accepted at the Embassy; 9 AM to 1 PM; Sunday to Thursday; Domestic sector worker (Visa No. 20) contracts are accepted at Kuwait Union of Domestic Labor Offices (KUDLO), Hawally, Al-Othman Street, Kurd Roundabout, AlAbraj Complex, Office No 9, Mezzanine Floor; 9 AM to 9 PM, Saturday to Thursday; 5 PM to 9 PM on Friday.

EMBASSY OF KENYA The Embassy of the Republic of Kenya wishes to inform the general public that it will remain closed on Wednesday, October 20 on the occasin of Mashujaa Day (formally Kenyatta Day). Office operations will resume

on Thursday, October 21.

EMBASSY OF THE NETHERLANDS The Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands together with Holland Marine Equipment organize a Dutch maritime trade mission to the State of Kuwait the latest Dutch innovations in maritime products and services. The trade mission, which will take place on October 24, will bring 12 prominent Dutch companies to Kuwait. These Dutch companies are globally-experienced specialized in unique marine products and services and eager to develop strong business relations with prospective Kuwaiti firms. The mission’s agenda will feature an arrangement for business meetings to enable Dutch and Kuwaiti firms to explore areas of interest and business opportunities.

This trade mission to Kuwait and the Arabian Gulf is a good and effective way for Kuwaiti companies to get acquainted with Dutch suppliers.

For further information on the participating companies and to register for a business to business meeting, contact Nidaa Al-Rajoudi (25312650 ext 205) or send an email to kweea@minbuza.nl.

EMBASSY OF SLOVAK REPUBLIC The Embassy of the Slovak Republic in Kuwait would like to announce to the public that due to technical reasons, the business hours will be only on Sundays and Tuesdays from 9 to 12. This will be effective

starting October 24, 2010 until May 1, 2011.

EMBASSY OF THE US The United States Department of State announces the increase in various visa fees to ensure sufficient resources to cover the increasing cost of processing nonimmigrant visas (NIVs). US law requires the Department to recover the cost of processing non-immigrant visas through the collection of the application fees.

The increased fees are to take effect June 4, 2010. Under the new rule, applicants for all visas that are not petition-based, including B1/B2 tourist and business visitor visas and all student and exchange-visitor visas, will pay a fee of $140. Applicants for petitionbased visas will pay an application fee of $150, as each of the below categories requires a review of extensive documentation and a more in-depth interview of the applicant than other categories, such as tourists.

These categories include: H visa for temporary workers and trainees L visa for intra-company transferees O visa for aliens with extraordinary ability P visa for athletes, artists and entertainers Q visa for international cultural exchange visitors R visa for religious occupations The application fee for K visas for fiance(e)s of US citizens will be $350. The fee for E visas for treaty-traders and treaty-investors will be $390.

EMBASSY OF FRANCE The Embassy of France in Kuwait will be closed on November 1st and November 11th because of French holidays. The Embassy of France will be closed also On the 1st day of Eid Al

he AWARE Management is glad to inform you that Winter 1 Arabic language courses will begin on November 21st until December 29th, 2010.

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 & those working in the private business sector.

AWARE Arabic courses highlight: • Introductory to Level 4 Arabic language basics • Better prepare you for speaking, reading and writing Arabic • Combine language learning with cultural insights • Taught in multi-nationality group settings • Provide opportunities to interact with Western expatriates and native Kuwaitis/Arabs.

For more information, call 25335260/80 ext 105 or 104 or e-mail: Htaware.hassan@gmail.com or log onto: www.aware.com.kw.”

“T

‘Society Girlz’ exhibition ociety Girlz’ is an exhibition to be held ‘S

by Dr Shurooq Amin, a creative and multi-talented Kuwaiti artist. She is known for her modern photography style interwoven with acrylic poetry and was a nominee for the ‘Pushcart Prize’ The exhibition will open tomorrow at 7 pm. The opening hours will be from 10 am-2 pm and 6 pm-10 pm. It will run from November 2-11, 2010 and will remain closed on Fridays. On Saturdays, it will be by appointment only.

Send to What’s On upcoming events, birthdays or celebrations by email: local@kuwaittimes.net Fax: 24835619 / 20

WHATʼS ON IN KUWAIT

Sunday, October 31, 2010

Abdul-Aziz Al-Babtain delivering his speech.

Al-Babtain with Sheikh Dawood Al-Sabah.

Najla Al-Naqi is seen with Sheikh Duaij Al-Khalifa Al-Sabah on her left, as well as consultant Intisar Nu’man and Amal Al-Laifan.

31

The Iraqi Ambassador Mohammad Bahrululum awards Al-Babtain with the forum’s memorial plaque.

Representative of the American Embassy, Catherine Smith, is seen with the Spanish Ambassador at the event.

Al-Babtain is awarded by the attendees.

Al-Babtain honored at Al-Naqi Forum Najla Al-Naqi forum recently hosted a ceremony to honor prominent poet and sponsor of the Arabic poetry revival movement, Abdul-Aziz Al-Babtain, in an event that was attended by various activists, scholars, and diplomats. In Tbyheaseveral speech he made during the event, Al-Babtain talked about his long experience in regards to his commitment to the Arabic language, while revealing intentions regarding future linguistic projects. After that, the poet was awarded guests, including Mr. Saleh Al-Huraibi who gave him a music album especially made for his praise, while Sheikh Dawood Al-Sabah awarded whim with the honorary presidency of the Kuwaiti Chess Association.

Announcement

Arpan Kuwait to present ‘Tune & Taste-2010’

NOV 4 ankaar Arts silver celebration: Fankaar Arts is organizing an event on Thursday, 4th November 2010 at the Kuwait Medical Association Hall, Jabriya to celebrate its Silver Jubilee year. The evening will start with glimpses of past plays re-enacted by the group along with staging of an experimental play ‘Phir bhi Mumbai Meri Jaan’ and screening of a short film ‘Rishtey’.

Dance and singing performances will add variety to the entertainment. For further details and enquiries please call on 97585764 or email at fankaararts@hotmail.com

F

rpan Kuwait will present ‘Tune & Taste2010’-a festival of food, music and heritage-to mark the 11th anniversary of the association at the Indian Community School (Senior Girls), Salmiya on December 3. The celebration presenting a potpourri of cultural programs will start at 9.30 am and conclude at 6.30pm.

Rajkalesh, the versatile television anchor and the producer of popular TV show, “Taste of Kerala” and “Taste of Dubai” will supervise cookery shows and competitions as part of the celebration.

Rajkalesh, who presented stage and television shows in and outside India, will adjudge the winners of the cooking compe-

A

NOV 17 rend setter Udupi Restaurant, Kuwait proudly presents “ Gandharva Ganam” a live carnatic classical concert by living legend & maestro Padmabooshan Dr. K.J.Yesudas with his troupe on 17th Nov. 2010 at American International School, Kuwait. Sri. Nagai Murali on violin, Sri. Bakthavalsalam on Mridangam and Sri. Thripunithura Radhakrishnan on Ghatam.

For more details, please contact 66752462 or 66784867.

T

rdering food online will never be O the same again, with www.ieatonline.com. With the privilege of choos-

G

he Filipino Badminton Committee is inviting all badminton enthusiast to join its 20th Badminton Tournament.

The event which is held for a cause will start on November 5 and will last until December 10 at the Kuwait Disabled Club, Hawally every Friday from 8 AM until 5 PM. The tournament will be a team event of 5 players. Each team must have Level 1 & 2 (Men’s), Level 1& 2 (Ladies’) and Level 3 (Ladies’). The deadline for submission of line up will be on October 15. Special prize will be given for Best Uniform, Best Team. For more information, call 97197268.

T

Football For All

ing from 8 of the best outlets in Kuwait, you can now have your favorite cuisine wherever you are.

New features, special offers, you name it and it is all there on the website, awaiting your order. Moreover, the latest feature is the Multi - ordering option for the very first time in Kuwait, where you can shop from all the restaurants at the same time, and combine it all into one order for your convenience.

Enjoy the perfection of Japanese cuisine with Ebi Tempura, the sushi variety and exotic makis from Sakura, and the signature Noukhaza cold platter and red tiger lagoon from the Noukhaza Seafood restaurant. Feel like the royals with Shabestan’s choices from the authentic Persian feast of Shabestan specialty platter. Enjoy a smothered steak char - grilled to perfection, done the way you like it, only from

Wednesdays (14-18 years) from 5pm to 7pm. Regular fixtures against Kuwait Club teams and tournaments in the Gulf, USA and Europe are also available for selected players. The Premier Goal Academy also offers coaching courses in Salwa, Hawally, Mangaf, Sharq (Girls Only) and Freestyle courses (13-18 years) at Shaab Park on Mondays. For further details of any of the P.G.A. Courses contact; Mike Finn, Director of Football Tel.99981327(English), Baker Al- Nazer, Director of Administration Tel.66918666 (Arabic) or Daniel Christensen 99128010 or email; premier_fa_kuwait@yahoo.com.

Kala Kuwait’s painting competition ala Kuwait, will hold a drawing and painting competition on Friday, November 5, 2010 at the Indian Community School, Khaithan Branch at 2 pm. The program will be conducted in four different age groups. Group A from LKG to 1st Standard, Group B from 2nd to 4th Standard, Group C from 5th to 8th Standard and Group D from 9th to 12th Standard. The media for Group A and B will be crayons while Group C and D are water colors. Crayons and

he Premier Goal Academy in associaT‘Football tion with Everton F.C. launches its K For All’ program at Shaab Park in October 2010. Expert guidance from professional English F.A./UEFA coaching team. Coaching courses for 3-14 years are held on Fridays 09-11 and Saturdays 3pm to 5pm. Advanced coaching for Centre of Excellence players aged 8 to 18 years also takes place on Fridays and Saturdays plus Mondays (812 years), Tuesdays (12-14 years) and

La Brasserie restaurant JW Marriott Hotel Kuwait City is Tsetheoftotherenowned make the weekends more exciting

Wish to dine? Do it online with ieatonline

DEC 3 erman Board of Oral Implantology: In cooperation with Kuwait Dental Association in its third year, and after graduating 33 dentists in the past two years from Kuwait and abroad. With Kuwait becoming the regional center for the German Board of Oral Implantology (GBOI) in the Gulf. We like to announce to all dentists in Kuwait and abroad that registration for the third batch 2010 - 2011 is being held at Kuwait Dental Association to begin study on December 3, 2010. There will be an orientation lecture on the German Board of Oral Implantology, which will be held at the Kuwait Dental Association (Official Assembly) Oct 27, at 8:30 pm.

Filipino Badminton Committee

JW Marriott Hotel Kuwait launches weekend Reef & Beef theme nights

titions that will be held in major centers in Kuwait prior to the final on December 3.

Also a magician, trained under world famous magician Gopinath Muthukad, Rajkalesh will mesmerize the audience with his spellbinding ‘Magic and illusions’ show.

The added attraction of the day-long celebration will be a musical extravaganza to be presented by well-known Idea Star singers Roshan, William Issac and Neelima along with upcoming playback singer Uma. Classical and folk dance performances, folk song presentations etc will add spices to the unique program ‘Tune & Taste -2010’. For details and participation in cooking competitions, email to: arpankwt@yahoo.com

the Rib Eye steak house along with the Jumbo sampler. Global choices of Crowne Plaza butter chicken and chef’s special portion ouzi from Al Ahmadi find the way to your home

water colors to be brought by the participants. Stamped drawing papers will be supplied by the organizers. Clay Modeling Competition also will be conducted for 7th to 11th Standard Students.

Global Goans Convention 2010 to be held in Kuwait nnouncing at the press briefing in Goa A yesterday, Hon. Commissioner of NRI Affairs (Cabinet Ranking) and former Minister of External Affairs, Government of India, Eduardo Faleiro stated ‘the next annual Global Goans Convention would be held in Kuwait on November 16 and 17, 2010 was being organised by the Goan Cultural Centre, Kuwait during which the Vishwa Konkani Sammelan too would be held along with a cultural programme with the involvement of Konkani speaking expatriate communities of Goa and elsewhere in India”. The annual Global Goans Convention 2010 will be held in the State of Kuwait in coordination with the Department of NRI Affairs, Government of Goa and the Embassy of India, Kuwait on November 16 & 17 and will be hosted by the Goan Cultural Centre at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, Kuwait. The Global Goans Convention

only through the website.

Appetizing mezzahs (both hot and cold) along with the Ayam Zaman harra fish make a complete meal from Ayam Zaman. The kids have

2010, whose theme this year is ‘The NRI Goan’, will, in its annual debates, present the NRI Goan community with an opportunity to discuss various issues pertaining to them in their countries of domicile as well as back home in Goa, and will mainly deal with issues related to their social, financial, investment and cultural aspirations and development. It is expected that delegates and eminent speakers from over 10 countries will be participating in the convention this year.

“We are happy and proud to be associated with this prestigious event”, in a statement confirming the news on its website www.goanculturalcentrekuwait.com. “We are overwhelmed by the response to the press statement, GCC chairman, Carmo Santos remarked. Last year, Goan Cultural Centre had the largest delegation attending the Global Goans Convention held in Muscat, Oman, added Suresh Naik, GCC President and Advisor . It may be recalled that Carmo Santos was bestowed with the NRI Leadership Award at the hands of former Minister of NRI Affairs Valayar Ravi at a glittering ceremony in the presence of Goa’s Chief Minister, Digamber Kamat, in recognition of his efforts and dedication towards the Indian expatriate community. He was

plenty of selection too - they can choose from the customized Kids’ menu that has been created exclusively for them, featuring the lion’s feast and tiger’s snack.

Using the web to dine wherever you are has never been easier!

Simply logon to www.ieatonline.com and follow these easy steps to order your meal today: ● Login with your user id and password ( if you are not a member already, you can easily create by registering in the new user section) ● Choose your location to order your meal ● Make your selection of dish from any outlet of choice (you can order from all the restaurants at the same time) ● Add them to your shopping cart and enjoy a delicious meal!

Go online today and have a feast to celebrate technology in the world of dining with the restaurants of Crowne Plaza Kuwait, Ruby Tuesday and Peppes Pizza!

among a galaxy of Goan personalities chosen by Goa’s Department of NRI Affairs from Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and Delhi. The Convention will be held in coordination with the Embassy of India at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, Farwania. A special Brochure will be launched during the Convention.

Ties Center International Bazar rop by and enjoy the free activities, delicious food, good company and international items for sale! Free activities include henna painting, having your name written in Arabic and trying out Arabic ice cream. Various goods will be available for purchase, such as Bashima shawls, accessories, Mexican food, cosmetics, cookies, handbags, traditional Kuwaiti-style dresses, Kenyan clothes, Kenyan food and more. Everyone of all ages is welcome. DATE: Saturday, October 30, from 10 am to 5 pm. LOCATION: TIES Center (www.tiescenter.net), Shuhada area of South Surra, Block 4, Street 413, House 67. For more information, call 97144138/97798222 or e-mail amina.ties@gmail.com

D

for all meat & Seafood lovers. Diners visiting the restaurant can enjoy the delectable and wide variety of foods in both buffet style and live cooking stations.

“All food lovers can enjoy a wide and exciting dinner buffet featuring a huge array of meat cuts and selected seafood dishes, all at remarkably discounted prices,” says Hany Emam, Director of restaurants, JW Marriott Kuwait Hotel.

We are confident that all diners will enjoy this culinary experience,” he adds.

Delectable dishes have been prepared for the themed nights, due to be held every Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

Diners can enjoy Chaffing dishes ranging from Braised lamb shank tagine to Chicken biryani with Raita and Daccous or chicken tikka. The Carving station at the restaurant will offer diners a wide choice ranging from Salt crusted whole fish or puff crusted beef tenderloin. A separate live cooking station with fish and meat will also be on display for diners who enjoy getting their dishes prepared right in front of them.

This exclusive and exotic theme buffet is being offered at a reduced price of only KD 8, including tea and coffee as well as a 50% discount for kids from ages 6 to 12.

Diners visiting the La Brasserie restaurant can select from a wide variety meat cuts and seafood and have the Sous chef prepare the dish to their taste.

The dinner timings at the La Brasserie restaurant are 7pm till 11pm.

Come and enjoy the finest mix of fresh meat cuts and seafood with your family and friends.

TIES Center announces Winter schedule IES Center announces its schedule of Winter Arabic Courses which will extend from October 29, 2010 through December 23, 2010. The courses are offered with the following options: Level 1 Level 2 Level 3 Level 4 The Arabic courses at TIES Center are designed according to the students’ needs and requirements. These courses are intended for all expatriates who wish to learn the Arabic language and culture.

Upon completion of these courses the student will have a) Confidence in conducting basic Arabic communication (speaking, reading & writing) b) A basis for developing Arabic as a second language c) A better understanding of Arabic Culture d) Ability to interact with their classmates and learn about their background and culture For more information please contact us on 97144138 or visit our website www.tiescenter.net.

T

TV PROGRAMS

32

Sunday, October 31, 2010

Orbit / Showtime Listings

00:00 Burn Notice 01:00 Warehouse 13 02:00 Ghost Whisperer 03:00 GMA Live RPT 04:00 Kathy Griffin 05:00 Royal Pains 06:00 Smallville 07:00 The Ellen de Generes Show 08:00 Ghost Whisperer 09:00 Warehouse 13 10:00 Burn Notice 11:00 Good Morning America Live 12:00 Kathy Griffin 13:00 Royal Pains 14:00 Smallville 15:00 The Ellen de Generes Show 16:00 The Bachelor 17:00 Eureka 18:00 Cold Case 19:00 Sons of Anarchy 20:00 The Janice Dickinson Modelling Agency 21:00 The Ellen de Generes Show 22:00 GMA Live RPT

00:00 Maneaters 01:00 Human Prey 02:00 Untamed And Uncut 03:00 Untamed And Uncut 04:00 I Shouldn’t Be Alive 05:00 The Crocodile Hunter Diaries 05:50 The Planet’s Funniest Animals 07:05 Project Puppy 07:35 Animal Battlegrounds 08:00 Cats 101 08:55 Monkey Life 09:20 Rspca: Have You Got What It Takes?

09:50 Animal Precinct 10:45 E-Vets: The Interns 11:10 Pet Rescue 11:40 Animal Cops Houston 12:35 Wildlife SOS 13:00 Rspca: Have You Got What It Takes?

13:30 The Pack 13:55 The Pack 14:25 Dogs 101 15:20 Dogs/Cats/Pets 101 16:15 Snake Crusader With Bruce George 16:40 Snake Crusader With Bruce George 17:10 Venom Hunter With Donald Schultz 18:10 Planet Earth 19:05 World Wild Vet 20:00 Whale Wars 20:55 Maneaters 21:50 Bull Shark: World’s Deadliest Shark...

22:45 Untamed And Uncut 23:40 Killer Crocs Of Costa Rica

00:00 00:00 00:50 01:00 01:10 01:25 01:45 02:05 02:25 02:35 02:50 03:10 03:30 03:40 04:00 04:12 04:35 04:55 05:15 05:30 05:40 06:00 06:20 06:40 08:00 08:50 09:40 10:40 11:25 12:20 13:20 14:20 15:05 16:35 18:40 19:35 20:25 21:15 22:45

Holby City Mutual Friends Doctor Who Confidential Tellytales Penelope K, By The Way Fimbles Me Too Balamory Tellytales Penelope K, By The Way Fimbles Me Too Tellytales Balamory Penelope K, By The Way Fimbles Me Too Balamory Penelope K, By The Way Tellytales Fimbles Me Too Balamory Strictly Come Dancing Casualty Casualty Holby City Robin Hood Holby City Green Green Grass Doctors Robin Hood Doctors Strictly Come Dancing Mutual Friends Holby Blue New Tricks Blackjack4 Casualty

00:00 00:45 01:45 02:30 03:00 03:50 04:35 05:30 06:20 10:05 10:30 10:55 11:45 12:30 13:15 14:00 14:45 15:05 18:05 20:10 20:40 21:20 21:45 22:10 22:35 23:30

00:10 00:35 01:00 01:25 02:00 02:25 02:50 03:15 03:40 04:05 04:30 05:00 14:00 14:20 14:45 15:00 15:30 16:00 16:30 17:00 17:20 17:45 18:10 18:35 19:00 19:25 19:50 20:15 20:40 21:00 21:25 21:50 22:15 22:40 23:05 23:30 23:55

Cash In The Attic Fantasy Homes In The City The Home Show Indian Food Made Easy Rhodes Across China Living In The Sun Living In The Sun Antiques Roadshow Cash In The Attic Saturday Kitchen 2008/09 Saturday Kitchen 2008/09 Living In The Sun Fantasy Homes By The Sea The Home Show Cash In The Attic Fantasy Homes In The City Cash In The Attic USA Cash In The Attic Come Dine With Me Indian Food Made Easy Rhodes Across China Coastal Kitchen Saturday Kitchen 2008/09 Saturday Kitchen 2008/09 Living In The Sun Fantasy Homes By The Sea

The Jetsons Pink Panther And Pals The Flintstones The Jetsons Tom And Jerry Popeye Classics Scooby Doo Where Are You! Tom And Jerry Kids A Pup Named Scooby-Doo Yogi’s Treasure Hunt Tex Avery Show History Or Mystery Week Johnny Bravo Dexter’s Laboratory Tom And Jerry Top Cat Wacky Races Dastardly And Muttley The Scooby Doo Show Looney Tunes Duck Dodgers The Garfield Show The Flintstones The Jetsons Looney Tunes Tom And Jerry The Scooby Doo Show Hong Kong Phooey Top Cat The Garfield Show The Scooby Doo Show Wacky Races Dastardly And Muttley Top Cat Popeye King Arthur’s Disasters Droopy: Master Detective

00:00 The Powerpuff Girls 00:15 Foster’s Home For Imaginary Friends 00:40 The Secret Saturdays 01:05 The Powerpuff Girls 01:20 Foster’s Home For Imaginary Friends 01:45 The Secret Saturdays 02:05 Codename: Kids Next Door 02:30 Ben 10 02:55 Best ED 03:20 Samurai Jack 03:45 Cramp Twins 04:10 Eliot Kid 04:35 The Marvelous Misadventures Of Flapjack 05:00 Casper’s Scare School 05:25 Chop Socky Chooks 05:50 Chowder 06:15 Ben 10: Alien Force 06:40 Bakugan: New Vestroia 07:05 Batman: The Brave And The Bold 07:30 Chop Socky 60 08:30 The Secret Saturdays 08:55 Best ED 09:20 Eliot Kid 09:45 Fantastic Four: World’s Greatest Heroes 10:10 Megas Xlr 10:35 Samurai Jack 11:00 Ben 10 11:25 Codename: Kids Next Door 11:50 The Marvelous Misadventures Of Flapjack 12:15 The Life And Times Of Juniper Lee 12:40 George Of The Jungle 13:05 Ed, Edd N Eddy 13:35 Chop Socky Chooks

14:00 Robotboy 14:25 Squirrel Boy 14:50 Chowder 15:15 The Secret Saturdays 15:40 Ben 10: Alien Force 16:05 Bakugan: New Vestroia 16:30 The Marvelous Misadventures Of Flapjack 17:00 Best ED 17:25 Foster’s Home For Imaginary Friends 17:50 My Gym Partner’s A Monkey 18:05 The Powerpuff Girls 18:30 The Marvelous Misadventures Of Flapjack 18:45 Ben 10: Alien Force 19:10 Ed, Edd N Eddy 19:35 Robotboy 20:00 Camp Lazlo 20:25 Samurai Jack 20:50 Megas Xlr 21:15 Out Of Jimmy’s Head 21:40 Chowder 22:05 Cow And Chicken 22:30 Cramp Twins 22:55 George Of The Jungle 23:20 Adrenalini Brothers 23:45 Eliot Kid

00:00 02:00 03:45 06:00 08:00 10:00 12:00 14:00 16:00 18:00 20:00 22:00

The Longshots-PG15 American Teen-PG15 Coeurs-PG Seven Pounds-PG15 Tennessee-PG15 Meet Bill-PG15 The Children Of Huang Shi-PG15 Frozen River-PG15 The Hi-Lo Country-18 Sexy Beast-18 High Roller-18 Linha De Passe-18

00:00 Worst-Case Scenario 00:25 Wreckreation Nation 01:20 How It’s Made 01:50 How Do They Do It? 02:15 Deadliest Catch 03:05 Mythbusters 04:00 Fifth Gear 04:25 Wheeler Dealers 05:15 Battle Machine Bros 06:10 X-Machines 07:05 How It’s Made 07:35 Dual Survival 08:30 Deadliest Catch 09:25 Mythbusters 14:55 How It’s Made 15:20 Science Of The Movies 16:15 Stephen Hawking’s Universe 17:05 Through The Wormhole With Morgan Freeman 18:00 Mythbusters 18:55 Wreckreation Nation 19:50 Worst-Case Scenario 20:20 Worst-Case Scenario 20:45 Police Women Of Broward County 21:40 Destroyed In Seconds 22:10 Destroyed In Seconds 22:35 Battle Machine Bros 23:30 Wheeler Dealers

00:00 Space Pioneer 01:00 Space Pioneer 02:00 The Future Of...

02:50 What’s That About?

03:45 How Stuff’s Made 04:10 Superships 05:00 Junkyard Mega-Wars 06:00 Scrappy Races 07:00 Ten Ways 07:55 Brainiac 08:50 Through The Wormhole With Morgan Freeman 12:30 Mission Critical: Hubble 13:25 Sci-Fi Science 13:55 The World’s Strangest Ufo Stories 14:50 The Gadget Show 15:15 The Gadget Show 15:45 Stephen Hawking’s Universe 16:40 Science Of Storm Chasing 17:30 Perfect Disaster 18:20 Engineered 19:10 How The Universe Works 20:00 Nasa’s Greatest Missions 20:50 Science Of Storm Chasing 21:40 Perfect Disaster 22:30 Engineered 23:20 How The Universe Works

03:00 Kid Vs Kat 03:25 Kid Vs Kat 03:50 American Dragon

04:15 04:40 05:05 05:30 05:55 06:00 06:25 06:50 07:15 07:35 07:40 08:05 08:30 09:00 10:30 11:00 11:25 11:45 11:50 12:15 12:45 13:15 13:40 14:05 14:30 14:50 14:55 15:20 15:45 16:10 16:35 17:00 17:30 17:55 18:00 18:25 18:55 19:20 20:00

American Dragon Phineas And Ferb Aaron Stone I’m In The Band Have A Laugh Kick Buttowski The Super Hero Squad Show Phineas And Ferb Zeke And Luther Have A Laugh Zeke And Luther The Suite Life Of Zack And Cody The Suite Life Of Zack And Cody Pokemon Movie Phineas And Ferb The Super Hero Squad Show Kick Buttowski Have A Laugh The Suite Life Of Zack And Cody Phineas And Ferb I’m In The Band Zeke And Luther Zeke And Luther The Super Hero Squad Show Pokemon Have A Laugh Suite Life On Deck Suite Life On Deck Phineas And Ferb Phineas And Ferb Kid Vs Kat Aaron Stone Kick Buttowski Have A Laugh Zeke And Luther Zeke And Luther Shreducation Pokemon Programmes Start At 6:00am KSA

00:15 25 Most Stylish 01:10 Sexiest 02:05 Battle of the Hollywood Hotties 02:30 Streets of Hollywood 03:00 50 Most Shocking Celebrity Confessions 04:45 Behind the Scenes 05:10 Behind the Scenes 05:35 E! News 06:25 E! Investigates 07:15 E! Investigates 08:05 Kourtney & Khloé Take Miami 08:30 Kourtney & Khloé Take Miami 09:00 E! News 09:50 Keeping Up with the Kardashians 10:15 Keeping Up with the Kardashians 10:40 E!ES 11:30 Kendra 11:55 Pretty Wild 14:10 Behind the Scenes 14:35 Pretty Wild 16:15 E!ES 16:40 The Spin Crowd 18:20 Keeping Up with the Kardashians 18:45 Keeping Up with the Kardashians 19:10 E! News 20:00 Chelsea Lately 20:25 The Soup 20:50 Extreme Hollywood 21:40 Dr 90210 22:30 E! Investigates

00:20 Shark Park 1 01:10 Winter X Games 02:00 Winter X Games 02:50 Mantracker 03:40 One Winter Story 04:30 I-Ex 06:00 Tread Bmx 09:20 Winter X Games 10:10 Winter X Games 11:00 On Any Sunday 12:40 Winter X Games 13:30 Winter X Games 14:20 Lucas Oil Ama Motocross Championships 20 15:10 Lucas Oil Ama Motocross Championships 20 16:00 Winter X Games 16:50 Winter X Games 17:40 On Any Sunday 19:20 Eds Up 21:00 M1 Challange 23:30 Eds Up 23:55 Eds Up

00:00 00:30 01:00 02:00 02:30 03:00 04:00 05:00 05:50 06:15 06:40 07:05 07:30 08:00 08:30 09:00 09:30 10:30 11:00 12:00 12:30 13:00 13:30 14:00 15:00 15:30 16:30 17:00 18:00 19:00 19:30 20:00 21:00 21:30 22:00 23:00 23:30

Barefoot Contessa Unwrapped Food Network Challenge Throwdown With Bobby Flay Guy’s Big Bite Unwrapped Chopped Unwrapped Guy’s Big Bite Barefoot Contessa Everyday Italian 30 Minute Meals Tyler’s Ultimate Diners, Drive-Ins And Dives Barefoot Contessa Unwrapped Paula’s Party Guy’s Big Bite Unwrapped Barefoot Contessa Everyday Italian 30 Minute Meals Throwdown With Bobby Flay Iron Chef America Barefoot Contessa Unwrapped 30 Minute Meals Paula’s Party Food Network Challenge Giada At Home Everyday Italian Unwrapped 30 Minute Meals 30 Minute Meals Food Network Challenge 30 Minute Meals Tyler’s Ultimate

00:00 MLB: World Series Game 4, Teams TBA 02:30 NFL Game Day 03:00 The Golf Channel - TBA 03:30 Golf Central International 04:00 The Golf Channel - TBA 06:00 PGA Tour: CIMB Asia Pacific Classic, Final Rd. MINES Resort City, Malaysia 08:00 Champions Tour AT&T Championship Rd. 2 from San Antonio, TX 10:00 MLB: World Series Game 3, Teams TBA 13:00 European Tour Andalucia Masters Final Rd. Sotogrande, Spain 16:00 FOX NFL Sunday 17:00 NFL TBA at TBA 20:15 NFL TBA at TBA 23:30 World Sport 2010

One Week on Show Movies

00:00 01:00 02:00 02:55 03:20 04:10 04:35

A Haunting A Haunting Psychic Witness Crime Scene Psychics Ghost Lab Real Emergency Calls Real Emergency Calls

05:00 Mystery ER 05:50 Real Emergency Calls 06:15 Real Emergency Calls 06:40 Forensic Detectives 07:30 Solved 08:20 Accident Investigator 09:10 FBI Files 10:00 On the Case with Paula Zahn 10:50 Murder Shift 11:40 Mystery ER 12:30 Real Emergency Calls 12:55 Real Emergency Calls 13:20 On the Case with Paula Zahn 14:10 Forensic Detectives 15:00 FBI Files 15:50 Solved 16:40 Mystery ER 17:30 Real Emergency Calls 17:55 Real Emergency Calls 18:20 Ghost Lab 19:10 The Haunted 20:00 The Haunted 20:50 A Haunting 23:20 Natalee Holloway: Lost in Paradise

04:00 New Adventures of Madeline 04:25 Max and Ruby 04:45 Jass Time 04:50 Dennis The Menace 05:00 Tales from the Cryptkeeper 15:30 Beverly Hills Teen Club 15:55 The Beach Crew 16:00 Sabrina 16:25 Inspector Gadget 17:00 Merlin: Part 2 18:30 Dennis The Menace 18:45 Sabrina 19:10 Dino Squad 19:35 Beverly Hills Teen Club 20:00 Merlin: Part 2 21:30 Dennis The Menace 21:45 Sabrina 22:10 Dino Squad 22:30 Inspector Gadget 23:00 Tales from the Cryptkeeper Marathon

00:30 02:10 04:00 05:40 07:00 08:25 09:45 11:15 12:50 14:25 16:00 17:35 19:00 20:40 22:40

The Mean Season The Perez Family Last Embrace Strictly Business Johnny Be Good Napoleon The Legend Of Johnny Lingo Canadian Bacon Italian Movie High Spirits Love Bites The Spring Spellbinder The Dark Half Coca Cola Kid

Julie And Julia on Super Movies 00:00 SNL 01:00 Life & times of Tim 01:30 Tonight Show with Jay Leno 02:30 Yes Dear 03:00 Frasier 03:30 The Drew Carey Show 04:00 Late night with Jimmy Fallon 05:00 Brothers 05:30 Yes Dear 06:00 Frasier 06:30 The Drew Carey Show 07:00 My Name is Earl 07:30 How I met your mother 08:00 Everybody Loves Raymond 08:30 Frasier 09:00 Tonight Show with Jay Leno 10:00 Brothers 10:30 Everybody Loves Raymond 11:00 Frasier 11:30 How I met your mother 12:00 New adventures of Old Christine 12:30 The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (repeat) 13:00 The Colbert Report (repeat) 13:30 The Drew Carey Show 14:00 Frasier 14:30 8 Simple Rules 15:00 My name is Earl 15:30 Will & Grace 16:00 Simpsons 16:30 Simpsons 17:00 Entourage 17:30 Curb your Enthusiasm 18:00 The Office 18:30 The Office 19:00 Saturday Night Live 20:30 Better Off Ted 21:00 Community 21:30 Simpsons 22:00 The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (repeat) 22:30 The Colbert Report (repeat) 23:00 Entourage 23:30 Curb your Enthusiasm

04:00 04:25 04:50 05:15 05:30 05:45 06:05 06:25 06:50 07:15 07:40 Pooh 08:05 08:30 08:55 09:20 09:45 10:10 10:35 11:00 11:25 11:45 12:05 12:30 12:30 12:55 13:20 13:45 14:10 Pooh 14:35 14:45 15:10 15:35 16:00 Pooh 16:25 16:40 16:50

01:00 PG15 03:00 05:00 07:00 09:00 10:45 13:00 15:00 17:00 19:00 21:15 23:00

Lazytown Imagination Movers Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Handy Manny Special Agent Oso Handy Manny Jungle Junction Special Agent Oso Handy Manny Mickey Mouse Clubhouse New Adventures of Winnie the Imagination Movers Jungle Junction Special Agent Oso Little Einsteins My Friends Tigger and Pooh Handy Manny JO JO’S CIRCUS Higglytown Heroes Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Special Agent Oso Imagination Movers HAPPY MONSTER BAND Higglytown Heroes Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Handy Manny Mickey Mouse Clubhouse New Adventures of Winnie the Special Agent Oso Imagination Movers Handy Manny Mickey Mouse Clubhouse New Adventures of Winnie the Handy Manny Special Agent Oso Jungle Junction

Danielle Steel’s Safe HarbourFar North-PG Smart People-PG15 One Week-PG Up-FAM Shine A Light-PG15 Smart People-PG15 Land Of The Lost-PG15 Diary Of The Dead-18 Pride And Glory-18 Capturing Mary-PG15 Multiple Sarcasms-18

00:00 02:25 04:00 06:00 08:00 PG15 10:00 12:00 14:00 16:00 18:00 20:00 22:00

Alatriste-PG15 Ice Twisters-PG15 Fracture-PG15 The Bodyguard 2-PG15 Behind Enemy Lines : ColombiaDragonball: Evolution-PG The Bodyguard 2-PG15 Shadows In Paradise-PG15 Lakeview Terrace-PG15 Trick ‘r Treat-18 Halloween 2-18 Dark Ride-18

01:00 03:00 PG15 05:00 07:00 09:00 11:00 13:00 15:00 17:00 19:00 21:00 23:00

A Plumm Summer-PG15 Maneater: Part I-PG15 Maneater: Part II-PG15 Son Of Rambow-PG Still Crazy-PG15 Lymelife-PG15 Confessions Of A Shopaholic-PG How To Be A Player-18 The Lonely Guy-PG15 Lymelife-PG15

01:00 03:00 05:00 07:00 09:00 11:00 13:00 15:00 17:00 19:00 21:00 23:00

The Prince Of Dinosaurs-PG The Nameless Warrior-FAM Ulysses-PG The Prince Of Dinosaurs-PG Alexander The Great-FAM Igor-PG Madagascar 2-PG Wonder Woman-PG15 Young Fisherman-PG Alexander The Great-FAM Ulysses-PG Wonder Woman-PG15

00:00 03:00 03:30 04:00 05:00 06:00 07:00 08:00 09:00 09:30 10:00 11:00 12:00 13:00 14:00 15:00 15:30 16:00 17:00 18:00 20:00 21:00 22:00 23:00

Ugly Betty Emmerdale Coronation Street Mercy Martha Stewart Downsize Me Mercy The View Emmerdale Coronation Street Martha Stewart CSI Treme Downsize Me The View #9 Emmerdale Coronation Street CSI: NY Kings Mercy Downsize Me CSI: NY Kings Martha Stewart

01:30 03:30 05:30 07:30 08:00 10:15 12:15 14:30 16:30 18:30 20:30 22:30 23:00 23:30

The Coneheads-PG15 Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins-

Rugby Union Currie Cup Rugby League 4 Nations Futbol Mundial Live Rugby League 4 Nations Scottish Premier League Live Scottish Premier League Live Aviva Premiership International Twenty20 Cricket Scottish Premier League Aviva Premiership Brazil League Highlights World Sport Triatholn

01:00 Aviva Premiership 03:00 Triathlon 04:00 PGA European Tour 08:30 Live International Twenty20 Cricket 12:00 Live PGA European Tour

16:00 18:00 22:30 23:00 23:30

Rugby League 4 Nations PGA European Tour ICC Cricket World World Hockey Futbol Mundial

00:00 02:00 03:00 04:00 05:00 06:00 07:00 09:00 10:30 12:00 13:00 15:00 16:00 17:00 20:00 22:00 23:00

WWE Smackdown UFC Unleashed UFC Unleashed WWE Vintage Collection WWE Bottom Line WWE NXT WWE Smackdown Red Bull X-Fighters Highlights FIA GT1 World Championship V8 Supercars Championship WWE Smackdown WWE Vintage Collection UFC Prelims UFC 121 WWE Smackdown WWE Bottom Line WWE NXT

00:00 It’s A Free World-PG15 02:00 Imagine That-PG 04:00 Racing For Time-PG15 06:00 Witness: The Kidnapping Of Patty Hearst-PG15 08:00 Sisterhood Of The Travelling Pants 2-PG15 10:00 Last Chance Harvey-PG15 12:00 Sins Of The Mother-PG15 14:00 Witness: The Kidnapping Of Patty Hearst-PG15 16:00 Night At The Museum : Battle Of The Smithsonian-PG15 18:00 Julie And Julia-PG15 20:00 Phoebe In Wonderland-PG 22:00 Heart Of Fear-18

02:00 02:25 04:15 05:00 06:55 08:55 10:30 12:45 14:50 15:15 17:05 17:30 20:00 22:00

The Screening Room X Y And Zee The Screening Room The Year Of Living Dangerously The V.I.P.S Ride The High Country North By Northwest The Unsinkable Molly Brown The Screening Room Eight On The Lam The Screening Room How The West Was Won A Man For All Seasons Victor/Victoria

00:00 01:50 02:50 Tree 03:40 04:30 05:20 06:10 07:00 08:50 Tree 09:40 10:30 11:20 12:10 13:00 14:50 Tree 15:40 16:30 17:20 18:10 19:00 20:50 21:40 22:30 23:20

Giants: Friend Or Foe? Deep Wreck Mysteries Bloodlines: The Dracula Family

00:00 01:00 02:00 03:00 03:30

Whose Wedding Is It Anyway?

Whose Wedding Is It Anyway?

Married Away Style Her Famous Area

Jack The Ripper Ax Men Modern Marvels Investigating History Giants: Friend Or Foe? Bloodlines: The Dracula Family Jack The Ripper Ax Men Modern Marvels Investigating History Giants: Friend Or Foe? Bloodlines: The Dracula Family Jack The Ripper Ax Men Modern Marvels Investigating History The Real Wolfman Clash Of The Gods Ancient Discoveries How The Earth Was Made The Universe 3

04:00 How Do I Look?

05:00 Millennium Fashion: The Year In Fashion 06:00 Clean House 07:00 My Celebrity Home 08:00 Homes With Style 08:30 Homes With Style 09:00 Tacky House 09:30 Tacky House 10:00 Jerseylicious 11:00 How Do I Look?

12:00 How Do I Look?

13:00 How Do I Look?

14:00 How Do I Look?

15:00 How Do I Look?

16:00 How Do I Look?

17:00 How Do I Look?

18:00 Fashion Police 18:30 Fashion Police 19:00 How Do I Look?

20:00 Style Her Famous 20:30 Style Her Famous 21:00 The Dish 21:30 Fashion Police 22:00 Clean House 23:00 My Celebrity Home

00:15 00:17 04:15 04:17 05:00 05:45 06:15 06:17 10:00 12:00 12:15 12:17 13:00 13:30 14:00 15:00 15:45 17:00 17:45 19:15 19:17 21:15 21:17 22:00 22:45 23:00 23:45

Top Money Playlist Monthly Top Playlist Africa 10 Playlist Top Sexy Playlist Urban Hit 30 Playlist Top Mobile Playlist New Playlist Focus Urban Hit Playlist French Only Playlist Top Fashion Playlist Top Gossip Playlist Africa 10 Playlist Urban Hit Playlist

00:00 Culinary Asia 01:00 Travel Today 01:30 48 Hours In 02:00 Globe Trekker 03:00 Working Holiday 04:00 Hollywood and Vines 04:30 Sophie Grigson In The Orient 05:00 Globe Trekker 06:00 Swiss Railway Journeys 07:00 Raider Of The Lost Snow 07:30 Skier’s World 08:00 Surfari 08:30 Essential 09:00 World’s Greatest Motorcycle Rides 10:00 Globe Trekker 11:00 Planet Sports 12:00 Essential 12:30 Hollywood and Vines 13:00 Inside Luxury Travel-Varun Sharma 14:00 Globe Trekker 15:00 Hollywood and Vines 15:30 Hollywood and Vines 16:00 Culinary Asia 17:00 Food Tripper 18:00 Down the Line 19:00 Word Travels 19:30 Culture Shock 20:00 Travel 360 21:00 Globe Trekker 22:00 World’s Greatest Motorcycle Rides 23:00 Down the Line

Sunday, October 31, 2010

33

heel, near Mangaf traffic signal. Contact: 99384160 (C 2801)

ACCOMMODATION Flat available, Riggae, 3 bedroom, selling bedroom set, full flat carpet, washing machine, dining table. Call: 66540312. (C 2816) 31-10-2010 Keralite business bachelor living every 2 months, one month in India, looking for nice accommodation during stay in Kuwait. Around Salmiya, Hawally areas. Tel: 99530247 / 22434267.

(C 2812) Room available in Jleeb near Indian Central School, petrol pump road for Indian or any Asian only. Tel: 99878030. (C 2813) 30-10-2010 Small room available for a decent bachelor till March 2011, for a reasonable rent.

Behind Hawally American Creativity School, close to Road No. 30 & AlMuththana Road. Please call: 97804854. (C 2809) 28-10-2010 Sharing accommodation available, near Amiri Hospital, Sharq. Bachelor or single family.

Contact: 55941621. (C 2804) 27-10-2010

Sharing accommodation available for one executive bachelor, near United Indian School, Abbassiya. One single room.

Contact: 94917087. (C 2803) 26-10-2010

FOR SALE 2001 Nissan Pathfinder full option (sunroof - wood decoration - Zenon - CD) excellent condition, golden color, ready for checking, price KD 2000 (negotiable). Call: 55859325. (C 2817) 31-10-2010 Mitsubishi Canter half lorry 2007, 85000 km. Call: 97231605. (C 2811) Half lorry delivery van, Toyota Dyna diesel, 2004 model, Citroen Jumper diesel.

Ph: 66052331. (C 2814) 30-10-2010 Toyota Corolla 1.8 XLi, model 2006, color white, excellent condition, done 64000 km, installment possible, cash price KD 2550.

Contact: 99934965. ( C 2807)

MISCELLANEOUS Sharing accommodation available for an Indian executive bachelor in C-A/C room, attached bathroom, with Keralite family in Faha-

Wanted used car or jeep.

Contact: 66546767.

(C 2805) 27-10-2010

SITUATION WANTED

Administrative assistant (Indian) BBA + MBA (Marketing & Finance) with experience in Business Administration and Marketing Management seeks immediate job. Visa - 18 transferable.

Contact: 97865130. (C 2808) 28-10-2010 Accountant (Indian) well versed in all Accounts / Finance and Banking jobs, and capable of supporting business, seeks immediate job. Job seeker has sufficient experience in Kuwait in entire Accounts / Finance functions. Tel: 66126258.

(C 2797)

from parents of well employed and professionally qualified Marthomite Grooms having reputable family background. Please contact with profile to email: proposalkuwait@hotmail.com 26-10-2010 27 yrs Christian (Orthodox) B Tech boy, working in Kuwait seeking alliance from girls working in Kuwait.

Please contact E-mail: abraham.robin@gmail.com

CHANGE OF NAME I, Mohan Kumar Rama Krishna, holder of Indian Passport No. H1830457, has converted to Islam with the name of Syed Sulaiman.

(C 2806) 27-10-2010

MATRIMONIAL NRI parents from Central Travancore, seeking alliance for their daughter born and brought up in Kuwait, (24, fair, God fearing) B.Com, MBA (Finance)

SITUATION VACANT

Wanted an Asian driver to work for a Kuwaiti family.

Tel: 66600625. (C 2815) 31-10-2010

FOR AIRPORT INFORMATION 161

FLIGHT SCHEDULE

In case you are not travelling, your proper cancellation of bookings will help other passengers to use seats Airlines Ariana Wataniya Airways Jordanian Kuwait Kuwait Wataniya Airways Gulf Air Turkish Jazeera Egypt Air Jazeera DHL Emirates Etihad Jazeera Qatari Air Arabia Egypt Falcon Jazeera Kuwait Jazeera British Kuwait Kuwait Kuwait Kuwait Fly Dubai Kuwait Kuwait Kuwait Emirates Iran Air Arabia Qatari Iran Air Etihad Jazeera Falcon Gulf Air Middle East Iran Aseman Jazeera Egypt Air Kuwait Oman Air Kuwait United Jordanian Wataniya Airways Fly Dubai Jazeera Wataniya Airways Kuwait Kuwait

Arrival Flights on Sunday 31/10/2010 Flt Route 405 Kabul/Dubai 188 Bahrain 802 Amman 306 Cairo 544 Cairo 434 Damascus 211 Bahrain 772 Istanbul 241 Amman 614 Cairo 267 Beirut 370 Bahrain 853 Dubai 305 Abu Dhabi 513 Sharm El Sheikh 138 Doha 553 Alexandria 201 Dubai 503 Luxor 412 Manila/Bangkok 527 Alexandria 157 London 206 Islamabad 382 Delhi 302 Mumbai 332 Trivandrum 053 Dubai 676 Dubai 286 Chittagong 284 Dhaka 855 Dubai 615 Shahre Kord 121 Sharjah 132 Doha 603 Shiraz 301 Abu Dhabi 425 Bahrain 203 Dubai 213 Bahrain 404 Beirut 6801 Ahwaz 447 Doha 610 Cairo 672 Dubai 645 Muscat 774 Riyadh 982 Washington DC Dulles 800 Amman 332 Alexandria 057 Dubai 257 Beirut 422 Amman 562 Amman 512 Tehran

Time 00:05 00:30 00:30 00:50 00:50 00:55 01:05 01:15 01:45 02:05 02:10 02:15 02:25 02:55 05:05 03:20 03:40 05:25 05:50 06:15 06:20 06:30 07:15 07:20 07:50 07:55 07:55 08:00 08:05 08:10 08:25 08:35 08:40 09:00 09:20 09:20 10:25 10:30 10:45 10:50 11:20 11:20 12:55 13:15 13:15 13:20 13:35 13:35 13:35 13:50 14:05 14:10 14:20 14:20

Saudia Qatari Jazeera Wataniya Airways Etihad Emirates Gulf Air Wataniya Airways Saudia Wataniya Airways Wataniya Airways Arabia Jazeera Watnaiya Airways Jazeera Jazeera Wataniya Airways Kuwait Wataniya Airways Kuwait Kuwait Kuwait Kuwait Jazeera Kuwait Kuwait Kuwait Kuwait Kuwait SriLankan Fly Dubai Kuwait Airways Oman Air Middle East Rovos Jet A/W Wataniya Airways Wataniya Airways DHL Gulf Air Emirates Kuwait Qatari United Indian Jazeera Safi Jazeera Lufthansa Jazeera Jazeera KLM India Express Wataniya Airways Pakistan

500 134 481 104 303 857 215 402 510 202 202 125 239 432 367 511 304 166 106 502 542 618 786 177 744 674 614 102 552 267 061 186 647 402 081 572 642 404 372 217 859 172 136 981 981 459 215 449 636 185 429 0447 389 108 205

Jeddah Doha Sabiha Dubai Abu Dhabi Dubai Bahrain Beirut Riyadh Jeddah Jeddah Sharjah Amman Damascus Deirezzor Sharm El Sheikh Cairo Paris/Rome Dubai Beirut Cairo Doha Jeddah Dubai Dammam Dubai Bahrain New York/London Damascus Colomba/London Dubai Bahrain Muscat Beirut Baghdad Mumbai Vienna Beirut Bahrain Bahrain Dubai Frankfurt Doha Bahrain Chennai/Hyderabad/Ahmedabad Damascus Kabul Doha Frankfurt Dubai Bahrain Amsterdam/Bahrain Kozhikode/Mangalore Dubai Lahore

14:30 15:05 16:05 16:30 16:50 16:55 17:15 17:15 17:20 17:35 17:35 17:40 17:40 17:50 17:55 18:15 18:35 18:40 18:45 18:50 18:50 18:55 18:55 19:05 19:15 19:20 19:20 19:25 19:40 19:25 20:05 20:15 20:15 20:20 20:30 20:30 20:45 20:50 21:00 21:05 21:15 21:20 21:35 21:55 22:05 22:20 22:30 22:30 22:35 22:40 22:45 23:10 23:10 23:55 23:55

Departure Flights on Sunday 31/10/2010 Airlines Flt Route Egypt Air 607 Luxor India Express 394 Cochin/Kozhikode Indian 994 Mumbai/Chennai Lufthansa 637 Frankfurt Ariana 406 Dubai/Kabul Turkish 773 Istanbul Egypt Air 615 Cairo DHL 371 Bahrain Emirates 854 Dubai Etihad 306 Abu Dhabi Air Arabia Egypt 554 Alexandria Qatari 139 Doha Jordanian 803 Amman Wataniya Airways 331 Alexandria Jazeera 422 Bahrain Jazeera 446 Doha Gulf Air 212 Bahrain Jazeera 256 Beirut Jazeera 480 Sabiha British 156 London Fly Dubai 054 Dubai Kuwait 171 Frankfurt Kuwait 671 Dubai Wataniya Airways 421 Amman Kuwait 561 Amman Arabia 122 Sharjah Iran Air 614 Shahre Kord Emirates 856 Dubai Wataniya Airways 641 Vienna Kuwait 117 New York Qatari 133 Doha Kuwait 773 Riyadh Kuwait 511 Tehran Etihad 302 Abu Dhabi Iran Air 602 Shiraz Gulf Air 214 Bahrain Wataniya Airways 401 Beirut Falcon 204 Baghdad Wataniya Airways 303 Cairo Middle East 405 Beirut Kuwait 541 Cairo Jazeera 510 Sharm El Sheikh Jazeera 238 Amman Jazeera 366 Deirezzor Kuwait 103 London Iran Aseman 6802 Ahwaz Wataniya Airways 201 Jeddah Wataniya Airways 431 Damascus Wataniya Airways 201 Jeddah Kuwait 103 London Kuwait 501 Beirut Kuwait 785 Jeddah

Time 00:15 00:25 00:50 00:50 01:45 02:15 03:05 03:15 03:45 04:00 04:20 05:00 07:00 07:00 07:30 07:40 07:45 08:05 08:25 08:25 08:40 08:55 09:00 09:10 09:15 09:20 09:35 09:40 09:45 10:00 10:00 10:00 10:00 10:10 10:20 11:35 11:35 11:45 11:50 11:50 12:00 12:05 12:10 12:15 12:15 12:20 12:25 12:25 12:25 12:30 13:00 13:30

Directorate General of Civil Aviation Home Page (www.kuwait-airport.com.kw)

Egypt Air Oman Air Kuwait Jordanian Wataniya Airways Fly Dubai United Jazeera Kuwait Wataniya Airways Kuwait Saudia Qatari Kuwait Kuwait Jazeera Rovos Wataniya Airways Etihad Wataniya Airways Emirates Gulf Air Arabia Jazeera Saudia Jazeera Wataniya Airways Jazeera Kuwait Jazeera Kuwait Fly Dubai Kuwait Kuwait SriLanka Oman Air Middle East Jet A/W Wataniya Airways Gulf Air DHL Kuwait Emirates Falcon Kuwait Qatari Kuwait Kuwait Jazeera Jazeera United Jazeera Kuwait Kuwait

611 646 551 801 105 058 982 176 673 403 617 503 135 613 743 458 082 185 304 306 858 216 126 184 511 448 107 428 283 266 361 062 343 351 267 648 403 571 187 218 373 675 860 102 381 137 203 301 526 636 981 502 411 415

Cairo Muscat Damascus Amman Dubai Dubai Bahrain Dubai Dubai Beirut Doha Medinah/Jeddah Doha Bahrain Dammam Damascus Baghdad Bahrain Abu Dhabi Cairo Dubai Bahrain Sharjah Dubai Riyadh Doha Dubai Bahrain Dhaka Beirut Colombo Dubai Chennai Cochin Colombo Muscat Beirut Mumbai Bahrain Bahrain Bahrain Dubai Dubai Bahrain Delhi Doha Lahore Mumbai Alexandria Aleppo Washington DC Dulles Luxor Bangkok/Manila Kuala Lumpur/Jakarta

13:55 14:15 14:20 14:30 14:30 14:35 14:50 14:55 15:10 15:10 15:35 15:45 16:20 16:20 16:25 16:55 17:00 17:20 17:35 18:05 18:05 18:05 18:20 18:30 18:35 18:50 19:40 19:50 20:00 20:10 20:20 20:50 21:00 21:05 21:10 21:15 21:20 21:30 21:35 21:55 22:00 22:10 22:25 22:30 22:30 22:35 22:40 22:45 23:20 23:35 23:40 23:40 23:40 23:50

SPECTRUM

34

Sunday, October 31, 2010

Calvin

CROSSWORD 126

Aries (March 21-April 19) Others may find you especially witty and eccentric just now. You may have insights or breakthroughs concerning your living situation or life circumstances. Others value you for your unique qualities. An outgoing and very expressive cycle of experience has begun for you.

Now more than ever, you want to be admired and appreciated by others, to do and create things that stir their hearts. This is child’s play; this is romance; this is taking a chance. Now is a great time to reflect and understand your own situation, just how you feel about yourself. The feelings and emotions of those around you are very clear—a good time. This is another good day to start a diet or perhaps, a new and positive habit. There are favorable aspects pointing to success.

Taurus (April 20-May 20) This is not a good time to

seek big changes. It is a good day to get things done.

Good eye-hand coordination and sustained effort makes almost any task run well. You may feel like exercising or getting outside sometime today. The more you get into the habit of exercising, the more you miss it when you skip a day or two. This is an important part of your day and today you may have someone join you in your endeavors. You may find yourself enjoying a long conversation, writing a letter or making a special phone call today. Getting caught up on a friend’s activity is fun as you cook or do some menial work around your living quarters. Romance and social interaction takes on a greater importance this evening. An art show could quicken your pulse.

Pooch Cafe

ACROSS 1. A caustic detergent useful for removing grease.

4. (of securities) Bought and sold on a stock exchange.

10. The ratio of the distance traveled (in miles) to the time spent traveling (in hours).

13. Airtight sealed metal container for food or drink or paint etc..

14. Naturally occurring crystalline sodium chloride.

15. A constellation in the southern hemisphere near Telescopium and Norma.

16. 100 avos equal 1 pataca.

17. A spirit believed by Muslims to inhabit the earth and influence mankind by appearing in the form of humans or animals.

18. A coral reef off the southern coast of Florida.

19. A Chadic language spoken south of Lake Chad.

21. A public promotion of some product or service.

22. Filled with fear or apprehension.

24. Cubes of meat marinated and cooked on a skewer usually with vegetables.

26. A resident of Iowa.

27. A member of the Siouan people formerly living in the Missouri river valley in NE Nebraska.

30. Being one hundred more than three hundred.

31. A large galleon sailed in the Mediterranean as a merchantman.

34. Long green edible beaked pods of the okra plant.

35. Unknown god.

38. Hormones (estrogen and progestin) are given to postmenopausal women.

39. A white soft metallic element that tarnishes readily.

40. Reveal the true nature of.

41. Swedish chemist (born in Germany) who discovered oxygen before Priestley did (1742-1786).

44. Break the seal of.

50. A lyric poet.

52. Distinctive and stylish elegance.

54. The elementary stages of any subject (usually plural).

55. The blood group whose red cells carry both the A and B antigens.

58. A city in the Asian part of Russia.

59. A piece of furniture that provides a place to sleep.

61. (poetic) "the orient sun" n 1.

63. Any of numerous hairy-bodied insects including social and solitary species.

64. A condition (mostly in boys) characterized by behavioral and learning disorders.

65. A position on a scale of intensity or amount or quality.

66. Used of a single unit or thing.

DOWN 1. Someone who works (or provides workers) during a strike.

2. Rock that in its molten form (as magma) issues from volcanos.

3. A person regarded as arrogant and annoying.

4. A doctor's degree in theology.

5. The seventh month of the Moslem calendar.

6. Surveying instrument consisting of the upper movable part of a theodolite including the telescope and its attachments.

7. A loud harsh or strident noise.

8. An inactive volcano in Sicily.

9. Characterized by divine or godlike nature.

10. Long-tailed brilliantly colored parrot of Central and South America.

11. The capital of Cape Verde on Sao Tiago Island.

12. Austrian composer who influenced the classical form of the symphony (17321809).

20. A Loloish language.

23. Genus of Australian ladybugs.

25. Imperial moths.

28. Made from residue of grapes or apples after pressing.

29. Elected Vice President and became 21st President of the United States when Garfield was assassinated (1830-1886).

32. Informal terms for money.

33. Half the width of an em.

35. A blow that renders the opponent unconscious.

36. An intensely radioactive metallic element that occurs in minute amounts in uranium ores.

37. A state in northwestern North America.

42. Either extremity of something that has length.

43. King of England who was renounced by Northumbria in favor of his brother Edgar (died in 959).

44. Not out.

45. (Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation) Optical device that produces an intense monochromatic beam of coherent light.

46. A gonadotropic hormone that is secreted by the anterior pituitary.

47. Arboreal snake of central and southern Africa whose bite is often fatal.

48. Realistic Norwegian author who wrote plays on social and political themes (1828-1906).

49. Red pear-shaped tropical fruit with poisonous seeds.

51. In bed.

53. 100 sene equal 1 tala.

56. An open box attached to a long pole handle.

57. A unit of surface area equal to 100 square meters.

58. A public promotion of some product or service.

60. A doctor's degree in religion.

62. A brittle silver-white metalloid element that is related to selenium and sulfur.

Gemini (May 21-June 20) Your career and life direction are putting some real pressure on your home and emotional life. Obviously, you can’t live without both, so some kind of self-control on your part is indicated. A bit of frustration is at the forefront and it may be difficult to know which pathway to focus your thinking, as well as your energy. If you can, enlist a friend or family member to exercise with you this morning, you will be pleased by how well your own thinking returns to a center point as you expel some of that chaotic energy. A bicycle ride will be sufficient but it would be good to begin a regular workout routine. Keep moving toward the completion of your goals and results will be self-evident. This is a good afternoon to help the young people in your life.

Non Sequitur

Cancer (June 21-July 22) Family and security are things that rattle your chain more than ever now. You are at your most practical when it comes to knowing what others need; you are a good listener. You know just what to do and can act without haste and emotion. If you are living in your own home, today may be a good time to list any changes or upkeep you will want to make in the future. Sometime in the next few days, you may want to change the filter and check on the heating. Keep these things noted on a calendar so you will know the last time you did these chores. If the winter season is a time of celebration for your family, start now to purchase the gifts you will want to give. Create for yourself plenty of time to purchase gifts for people that are at a distance.

Leo (July 23-August 22) Today you may realize that you are actually reaching new highs of accomplishment. You have enough money for that down payment on a home, a car or some other investment you feel you and your family may need. Ask yourself what you want and then ask yourself what your family needs. Look for a compromise of some sort.

Depending upon the age of the children, you may want to travel next year. An investment of some sort will be the connection that gets you there. Do your kids a favor and make it a fun-learning type of vacation. Merit badges, geography, history and animal rights can all be worked in to the scene. An item you have been looking for recently will soon be recovered. You will also collect from a hobby by selling it or teaching it.

Zits

Virgo (August 23-September 22) Some antique store has just what you were looking for earlier this spring. You might consider refurbishing the piece and selling it above the price you paid. This can be your most rewarding day in many areas of your life. Here and now is where your most exciting, lifefulfilling dreams can be met. This is the time to come to an understanding of just where you are in life and where you want to go next—create a focus, achieve and appreciate. The energies that are available are hot and ready to be used; however, you must give your choice plenty of thought before you become too absorbed in one path. Outer circumstances are favorable and it should be easy for you to push forward in projects and in all aspects of your life. Life may seem almost magical.

Libra (September 23-October 22) Your sense of direction is perhaps the key element in your personality make-up. How you manage difficulties, find that diplomatic solution or come up with the right approach all are built around your talent. Traveling to a nearby city or to a friend’s house today, you may find yourself getting sidetracked.

You have been forewarned, so pull over and take notes of something you might want to see later or perhaps with your friend, but do not make your friend or appointment wait. Your outward charm and ability to be all things to all people are most central to your personality; you enjoy your relationships.

There is a greater than usual interest in social connections and the arts now—perhaps, on a more intellectual level than in the past.

Mother Goose and Grimm

Scorpio (October 23-November 21) You may want to

attend a lecture or speak in a conference today. There is a yearning to broaden horizons and reach for the ultimate.

Law, politics, education, travel and religion are some of the areas where an emotionally charged drama will be played.

Ideas are flowing and come with ease. You can talk, talk, talk.

Circumstances bend to your will and things have a way of working out smoothly. There are real opportunities to complete and work out difficulties and projects that require both long-term effort and a high degree of discipline. You could receive unexpected help or support from those around you, especially someone younger or a woman. This evening, you may get insights into your family support system.

Sagittarius (November 22-December 21) You may be asked to socialize with guests and make them comfortable by introducing them to people and acquainting them with their surroundings before a meeting begins. You know just how to make someone comfortable, even when a situation is difficult for him or her. You understand the newcomer’s needs and they feel comfortable communicating with you; even in a case of language difficulties. This will not be a regular job but if you do not want to be the first on the list of people called to step up and help newcomers or guests . . . let your wishes be known. Perhaps instead of saying you don’t want the job, you could suggest that a person who might not have as many responsibilities in the workplace would appreciate the opportunity.

Yesterday’s Solution

Capricorn (December 22-January 19) You

appear more charming and refined than usual. This may be the time you have decided to spruce up your wardrobe. Now is also a good time to ask someone out for a date, apply for a particular job or otherwise make yourself known. A sense of belonging to something bigger than the merely personal becomes a greater focus now.

Relationships—romantic, business, social—are the arena where many successful interactions are played. In coming to know the other person, forging ties that bind two people; you come to a better understanding of yourself. It’s easy in theory, but it’s only in practice that it comes to mean anything real—so practice until you get it right! Vacationing at this time is favorable. The stars gain your attention tonight.

Yesterday’s Solution

Aquarius (January 20- February 18) The power of organization on a social scale; business, political, etc., seems to be most important to you at this time. A piece of property has your attention and if you are not planning to start a business it may be a place to enjoy as a home site. It is time to set some goals and decide on what you want; write these goals down in a clear but short form. You may also want to give thought today to your motives or inner feelings about a romantic attraction you have had lately. This may be a time in which you are romantically motivated with no real understanding of why you are attracted to a particular person. Before going on with this relationship, give your feelings a real once-over. A young child has a sweet voice and you may want to encourage vocal lessons.

INTERNATIONAL CALLS Kuwait Qatar Abu Dhabi Dubai Raas Al Khayma Al-Shareqa Muscat Jordan Bahrain Riyadh Makkah - Jeddah Cairo Alexandria Beirut Damascus Allepo

00965 00974 009712 009714 009717 009716 00968 009626 00973 009661 009662 00202 00203 009611 0096311 0096321

Tunisia Rabat Washington New York Paris London Madrid Zurich Geneva Monaco Rome Bangkok Hong Kong Pakistan Taiwan Bonn

0021610 002127 001212 001718 00331 004471 00341 00411 004122 0033 00396 00662 00852 0092 00886 0049228

Word Sleuth Solution

Pisces (February 19-March 20) Challenges will be handled with much energy today. Make sure this is positive energy. Insert flexibility into your day today. If something is not working, change direction or styles of working. Others may disagree with what you say or think or in some way oppose your ideas and thoughts. Your current situation may demand some reevaluation. It may be very hard for you to communicate what you mean to others. Do not dwell too long on a situation you cannot change and did not cause. Be prepared—this could be a stressful day. The positive results will depend on your actions. This is a good day to seek any advice you may feel you need. Someone admires your honesty and may tell you this today.

INFORMATION

Sunday, October 31, 2010

35 FIRE BRIGADE Operation Room 112 Al-Madena 22418714 Al-Shohada始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

Ministry of Interior website: www.moi.gov.kw

For labor-related inquiries and complaints: Call MSAL hotline 128 HOSPITALS Sabah Hospital

24812000

Amiri Hospital

22450005

Maternity Hospital

24843100

Mubarak Al-Kabir Hospital

25312700

Chest Hospital

24849400

Farwaniya Hospital

24892010

Adan Hospital

23940620

Ibn Sina Hospital

24840300

Al-Razi Hospital

24846000

Physiotherapy Hospital

POLICE STATION Al-Madena Police Station Al-Murqab Police Station Al-Daiya Police Station Al-Fayha始a Police Station Al-Qadissiya Police Station Al-Nugra Police Station Al-Salmiya Police Station Al-Dasma Police Station

24874330/9 CLINICS

Roudha

22517733

Adhaliya

22517144

Khaldiya

24848075

Keifan

24849807

Shamiya

24848913

Shuwaikh

24814507

Abdullah Salim

22549134

Al-Nuzha

22526804

Industrial Shuwaikh

24814764

Al-Khadissiya

22515088

Dasmah

22532265

Bneid Al-Ghar

22531908

Al-Shaab

22518752

Al-Kibla

22459381

Ayoun Al-Kibla

22451082

Al-Mirqab

22456536

Sharq

22465401

Salmiya

25746401

Jabriya

25316254

Maidan Hawally

25623444

Bayan

25388462

Mishref

25381200

W.Hawally

22630786

Sabah

24810221

Jahra

24770319

New Jahra

24575755

West Jahra

24772608

South Jahra

24775066

North Jahra

24775992

North Jleeb

24311795

Al-Ardhiya

24884079

Firdous

4892674

Al-Omariya

4719048

N.Kheitan

4710044

Rabiya

4732263

Fintas

3900322

THE PUBLIC AUTHORITY FOR CIVIL INFORMATION Automated enquiry about the Civil ID card is 1889988 AIRLINES

PHARMACIES ON 24 HRS DUTY GOVERNORATE Ahmadi

PHARMACY Sama Safwan Abu Halaifa Danat Al-Sultan

ADDRESS Fahaeel Makka St Abu Halaifa-Coastal Rd Mahboula Block 1, Coastal Rd

PHONE 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

Salmiya-Hamad Mubarak St Salmiya-Amman St Hawally-Beirut St Hawally & Rawdha Coop Jabriya-Block 1A Jabriya-Block 3B

25726265 25647075 22625999 22564549 25340559 25326554

EMERGENCY 112

PRIVATE CLINICS Ophthalmologists: Dr. Abidallah Al-Mansoor Dr. Samy Al-Rabeea Dr. Masoma Habeeb Dr. Mubarak Al-Ajmy Dr. Mohsen Abel Dr Adnan Hasan Alwayl Dr. Abdallah Al-Baghly

25622444 25752222 25321171 25739999 25757700 25732223 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-Awadi22616660 Dr. Adel Al-Hunayan FRCS (C) 25313120 Plastic Surgeons: Dr. Mohammad Al-Khalaf 22547272

22434064 22435865 22544200 22547133 22515277 22616662 25714406 22530801

Dr. Abdal-Redha Lari Dr. Abdel Quttainah

22617700 25625030/60

Family Doctor: Dr Divya Damodar 23729596/23729581

Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr.

Zahra Qabazard Sohail Qamar Snaa Maaroof Pradip Gujare Zacharias Mathew

25710444 22621099 25713514 23713100 24334282

(1) Ear, Nose and Throat Psychiatrists Dr. Esam Al-Ansari 22635047 Dr Eisa M. Al-Balhan 22613623/0 Gynaecologists & Obstetricians: Dr Adrian Harbe 23729596/23729581 Dr. Verginia s.Marin 2572-6666 ext 8321 Dr. Fozeya Ali Al-Qatan 22655539 Dr. Majeda Khalefa Aliytami 25343406 Dr. Ahmad Al-Khooly 25739272 Dr. Salem soso 22618787 General Surgeons:

Dr. Amer Zawaz Al-Amer 22610044 Dr. Mohammad Yousef Basher 25327148

Paediatricians: Dr. Abd Al-Aziz Al-Rashed 25340300

Rheumatologists: Dr. Adel Al-Awadi 25330060 Dr. Khaled Al-Jarallah 25722290

(2) Plastic Surgeon Dr. Abdul Mohsin Jafar, FRCS (Canada)

25655535 Dentists:

Dr Anil Thomas

3729596/3729581

Dr. Shamah Al-Matar

22641071/2

Dr. Anesah Al-Rasheed

22562226

Dr. Abidallah Al-Amer

22561444

Dr. Faysal Al-Fozan

22619557

Dr. Abdallateef Al-Katrash

22525888

Dr. Abidallah Al-Duweisan

25653755

Dr. Bader Al-Ansari

25620111

Neurologists:

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 Tel: 25339667 Dr. Farida Al-Habib MD, PH.D, FACC Consultant Cardiologist Tel: 2611555-2622555 Inaya German Medical Center Te: 2575077 Fax: 25723123

Dr. Sohal Najem Al-Shemeri 25633324 Dr. Jasem Mola Hassan

Internists, Chest & Heart: Dr. Adnan Ebil 22639939 Dr. Mousa Khadada 22666300 Dr. Latefa Al-Duweisan 25728004 Dr. Nadem Al-Ghabra 25355515 Dr. Mobarak Aldoub 24726446 Dr Nasser Behbehani 25654300/3

Physiotherapists & VD: Dr. Deyaa Shehab 25722291 Dr. Musaed Faraj Khamees 22666288

25345875

Gastrologists Dr. Sami Aman

22636464

Dr. Mohammad Al-Shamaly 25322030 Dr. Foad Abidallah Al-Ali

22633135

Endocrinologist: Dr. Abd Al-Naser Al-Othman 25339330 Dr. Ahmad Al-Ansari

25658888

Dr. Kamal Al-Shomr

25329924

Psychologists/Psychotherapists Soor Center Tel: 2290-1677 Fax: 2290 1688 info@soorcenter.com www.soorcenter.com Dr. Naif Al-Mutawa, Ph.D. 2290-1677 Susannah-Joy Schuilenberg, M.A. 2290-1677 William Schuilenberg, RPC 2290-1677 Zaina Al Zabin, M.Sc. 2290-1677

Kuwait Airways Wataniya Airways Jazeera Airways Jet Airways 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

22433377 24379900 177 22924455 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 22412284/5 22453820/1

INTERNATIONAL CALLS Afghanistan Albania Algeria Andorra Angola Anguilla Antiga Argentina Armenia Australia Austria Bahamas Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados Belarus Belgium Belize Benin Bermuda Bhutan Bolivia Bosnia Botswana Brazil Brunei Bulgaria Burkina Burundi Cambodia Cameroon Canada Cape Verde Cayman Islands Central African Republic 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)

0093 00355 00213 00376 00244 001264 001268 0054 00374 0061 0043 001242 00973 00880 001246 00375 0032 00501 00229 001441 00975 00591 00387 00267 0055 00673 00359 00226 00257 00855 00237 001 00238 001345 00236 00235 0056 0086 0057 00269 00242 00682 00506 00385 0053 00357 0090392 00420 0045 00246 00253 001767 001809 00593 0020 00503 0044

Equatorial Guinea Eritrea Estonia Ethiopia Falkland Islands Faroe Islands Fiji Finland France French Guiana French Polynesia Gabon Gambia Georgia Germany Ghana Gibraltar Greece Greenland Grenada Guadeloupe Guam Guatemala Guinea Guyana Haiti Holland (Netherlands) Honduras Hong Kong Hungary Ibiza (Spain) Iceland India Indian Ocean Indonesia Iran Iraq Ireland Italy Ivory Coast Jamaica Japan Jordan Kazakhstan Kenya Kiribati Kuwait Kyrgyzstan Laos Latvia Lebanon Liberia Libya Lithuania Luxembourg Macau Macedonia

00240 00291 00372 00251 00500 00298 00679 00358 0033 00594 00689 00241 00220 00995 0049 00233 00350 0030 00299 001473 00590 001671 00502 00224 00592 00509 0031 00504 00852 0036 0034 00354 0091 00873 0062 0098 00964 00353 0039 00225 001876 0081 00962 007 00254 00686 00965 00996 00856 00371 00961 00231 00218 00370 00352 00853 00389

SPECTRUM

Sunday, October 31, 2010

Swift ‘optimistic about love’

36

Felton loses his childhood to om Felton lost his childhood to the ‘Harry Potter’ movie series.

The 23-year-old actor - who plays evil wizard Draco Malfoy in the film franchise - insists the amount of money he was paid for portraying the villain does not make up for the experiences he missed. He said: “I feel a real mixture of emotions. There is a little bit of sadness, but at the same

T

aylor Sw ift is “optimistic about love” at the moment. The 20year-old country singer - who is reportedly dating movie star Jake Gyllenhaal - has refused to confirm a romance with the actor but admits she is very happy with her love life right now.

Asked by Ellen DeGeneres how she feels about love, Taylor answered: “I’m always optimistic about love. Well, why wouldn’t anyone be?” To which Ellen said: “Especially if your boyfriend is Jake Gyllenhaal, because he is very handsome. Y’all are just hanging out though, right?” Despite the ‘Love Story’ singer’s refusal to acknowledge the relationship, chat show host Ellen gave her approval to the new couple. She said: “I’m just saying he’s adorable and I like him very much, and so if that is the case that he’s your boyfriend, I think that’s fantastic.” Referring to Taylor’s recent revelation that she uses her romantic experiences as inspiration for her songs, Ellen asked: “Wouldn’t he be nervous if anything goes wrong?” Taylor and Jake, 29, were spotted holding hands and appeared smitten with each other whilst on a romantic walk around Brooklyn, New York, last Sunday. The pair also attended a taping of comedy sketch show ‘Saturday Night Live’ on Saturday.

Taylor has previously dated Joe Jonas and Taylor Lautner and was linked to 33-year-old singer John Mayer last year. Jake has been single since his relationship with actress Reese Witherspoon ended 10 months ago.

T

‘Harry Potter’ time there is excitement. “For the past decade we haven’t had much freedom to do other projects. I certainly haven’t had much freedom to keep my own hair color, or lay in the sun, or do anything remotely dangerous like skiing. “One thing that people keep on saying to me is that the wealth and the fame must have made up for missing out on my childhood.

Cannon not

But the idea of money - putting a price on your childhood - is ridiculous.

You will never get those years back and you can’t put a price on them.”

Despite his excitement the British star is concerned work may dry up and he won’t be able to pay his bills.

He said “It’s a nervous time after having such a sure thing for 10 years.

Suddenly you are on your own and

there is no guarantee of future work.

I’ve got bills to pay and I’ve got to work. “My last audition was when I was 12, but now I have to put myself out there again and it’s not easy. I went to Los Angeles for two weeks to see what it was like, and after my first audition I came out and nearly fainted.

My legs were shaking and I needed to neck three glasses of water.”

pregnant with triplets

nervous to be a dad

N

got to get up at 4 am to do it, but I’m always up at that hour anyways. “Even if I stay out late, I go straight to work. In New York, you’ve got to be true to the listeners. People want to hear honesty. You’ve got to get straight to the point. That’s the biggest difference between here and anywhere else.” 41-year-old Mariah - who married Nick, 30, two years ago - ended months of speculation by making the announcement this week she is pregnant.

She said: “Yes, we are pregnant. This is true. It’s been a long journey. It’s been tough because I’ve been trying to hold on to a shred of privacy.”

The ‘We Belong Together’ hitmaker has refused to give away details of when she will give birth, and also said the couple aren’t aware of the sex of the baby.

Hendricks’ eye-catching hair hristina Hendricks dyed her hair red to get attention. The ‘Mad Men’ star - who is a natural blonde - admitted she was “obsessed” with children’s book ‘Anne Of Green Gables’ as a child and while she originally changed hair color to look like her literary heroine, she realized the shade attracted attention. She said: “When I was 10, I was obsessed with ‘Anne Of Green Gables’ and I wanted to have her beautiful red hair. So my mother said, ‘Let’s just go to the drugstore and get one of those cover-the-grey rinses!’ My hair was very blonde at the time but it went carrot red. I was over the moon - and I went back to that

C

color again and again. “I’ve always attracted attention for the way I look and that’s not a bad thing if you’re trying to make your mark in the business. But after a while you just want people to notice you for your work!”

The curvaceous beauty revealed while her UK size 14 figure makes it difficult to find designers who will give her dresses, she always chooses outfits she thinks are “pretty”, regardless of their style. Christina added: “At the end of the day, you have to remind yourself to wear the things you love - go with what you think is pretty. I’m still struggling to get designers to give me some dresses.” —Bang Showbiz

Moore happy to age

T

ick Cannon is not nervous about becoming a father. Mariah Carey’s husband said he’s totally relaxed about the singer’s pregnancy - which she announced this week and looking forward to becoming a dad for the first time. He said: “I’m not nervous to be a dad. I haven’t really thought about it like that yet. “When the time happens, maybe I will be, but I’ll always be a kid at heart. I feel like I was the same dude 10 years ago that I am today.”

‘America’s got talant’ host Nick also said he doesn’t think a newborn baby’s sporadic sleeping habits will have too much effect on him, as he’s already used to early starts for his breakfast time radio show on New York station 92.3 NOW. He added: “It’s work. It’s not easy. I’ve

ulianne Moore has vowed not to have cosmetic surgery. The 49-yearold actress insists she would still feel her age, regardless of how her appearance changes, and she is unsure any medical procedures would even make her look younger. She said: “First and foremost, I’m an actor and so I don’t want to do anything to my face. “I can do whatever I want, and I’m still going to be 49 years old, it’s not going to change anything. “I don’t know that I’m going to look any younger, I’m just going to look like I’ve had something done to my face.” The ‘Kids Are

J

he singer gave birth to twin boys via Caesarean section last Saturday but has revealed she was initially expecting three sons after conceiving via in vitro fertilization (IVF). In an interview with a French news station - which was recorded before she delivered the tots - Celine said: “He chose to let go to give space to his brothers to grow.” It is not yet known at what stage of the pregnancy she lost the third child. The 42year-old music star and her 68-year-old husband Rene Angelil - who also have a nine-year-old son Rene-Charles together - underwent six in vitro fertilization (IVF) attempts before Celine got pregnant. The couple have named the boys Eddy and Nelson, after record producer Eddy Marnay and human rights campaigner and former South African President Nelson Mandela, who Celine met two years ago. Celine’s representative told People: “Eddy is a major influence in both Celine and Rene’s lives. “Rene said that in just the few minutes they were able to spend with Nelson Mandela they were impressed by the human being he is. “Celine and Rene want their children to be inspired by their names, because they were so inspired by these men.”

Alright’ star - who has children Caleb, 12, and eight-year-old Liv with husband Bart Freundlich - also spoke of how much more pleasure she gets from life now she is a mother. She added: “Motherhood makes it bigger and fuller and larger. “I don’t think you really understand as a younger person that your life experience is going to be that meaningful. I had no idea that all this experience and all my interactions, and my parenting, and my marriage, how all that profoundly changes you, how far forward you go emotionally, with all of them.”

Sunday, October 31, 2010

SPECTRUM

37

Lifestyle

American teen crowned

Miss World 2010

By Liu Jin londe, blue-eyed American teenager Alexandria Mills won the Miss World crown for 2010 yesterday, defeating more than 100 other hopefuls at a glittering ceremony in southern China. Mills, an 18-year-old from the southern US state of Kentucky, wept as outgoing Miss World Kaiane Aldorino of Gibraltar placed the tiara on her head and led her to a diamond-shaped throne marking the pageant’s 60th anniversary. The 1.75-metre (5’9”) beauty in white-a professional model listed with the Elite Models agency-waved to the cheering crowd at the 2,000-capacity Beauty Crown Theatre in the resort town of Sanya on Hainan island.

During the two-hour competition, which annually draws a global television audience of about one billion, Mills said her month spent touring China with the other 114 Miss World hopefuls had made a “big impact” on her life.

Botswana’s Emma Wareus was second, and Venezuela’s Adriana Vasini placed third in the pageant, which was first held in 1951. The pageant got off to a colorful start with a performance by dancers and drummers from China’s Li ethnic minority group, who mainly live on Hainan island, which was hosting the event for the fifth time in eight years.

Before the contestants whirled in national costume for the “Dances of the World” segment, viewers were treated to a video montage of the women’s whirlwind tour of China-from the Great Wall to the shopping malls. Early favorite Mariann Birkedal of Norway, listed by British bookmaker William Hill as the woman to beat ahead of Mills, finished in the top seven.

A win for Norway could have caused a stir in Beijing, where the government is furious that the Oslo-based Nobel committee awarded this year’s Nobel Peace Prize to jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo.

Aldorino, 24, said she had enjoyed her year as Miss World, saying that in all the countries she had visited, one thing had remained the same: “The smile on a child’s face, and that’s what has captured the moment”. The competition emphasizes the importance of charity work.

Miss “Beauty with a Purpose”-Kenya’s Natasha Metto, who has worked on combating an epidemic of parasitic Jigger fleas in her countryearned a “fast-track” spot in the final group of 25, but was then eliminated.

Ireland’s violin-playing Emma Waldron, who won the talent contest and finished in the top five, wowed the audience by greeting them in Chinese, while Miss China, Xiao Tang, spoke mostly in English. The event rivals the Miss Universe pageant owned by US tycoon Donald Trump, which was won by Mexico’s Jimena Navarrete in August. In 1951, Sweden’s Kiki Hakansson became the first Miss World. Oscarwinning American actress Halle Berry was a finalist in 1986. Venezuela and India have produced the most Miss Worlds, with five titleholders each. Bollywood star Aishwarya Rai took the crown in 1994.

In 2002, the pageant was moved from Nigeria to Britain after more than 200 people died in clashes sparked when a newspaper suggested the Muslim prophet Mohammed would have chosen a wife from among the contestants had he been alive. — AFP

B

(Left) Alexandria Mills of USA, center, holds hands with Miss Botswana Emma Wareus, left, and Miss Venezuela Adriana Vasini, after crowned as winner of the 2010 Miss World pageant contest at the Beauty Crown Cultural Center in Sanya, in southern China’s island province Hainan, yesterday.

(Above) Alexandria Mills of the US reacts after crowned as the 2010 Miss World.

— AP/ AFP photos

Miss China Tang Xiao

(From left) Miss Venezuela, Miss Botswana, Miss United States, Miss Ireland, Miss China take part in the Miss World 2010 Beauty Pageant finals at the Beauty Crown Theatre in the southern Chinese resort town of Sanya yesterday.

• (Left) Miss Venezuela Adriana Vasini gestures after being announced 3rd place at 2010 Miss World pageant contest.

• (Right) Miss Botswana Emma Wareus gestures after being announced 2nd place at 2010 Miss World pageant contest.

Hollywood doctors face fallout from Smith case

By Linda Deutsch n hospitals, medical offices and pharmacies, Anna Nicole Smith was routinely registered under pseudonyms to protect her privacy. But in the wake of the convictions of her psychiatrist and lawyer-boyfriend for using false names on her drug prescriptions, the Hollywood medical community awoke to the realization Friday that the practice might be off limits and some doctors could avoid treating celebrity clients rather than risk criminal charges. “This is a shocker,” criminal defense attorney Harland Braun, who has represented celebrities and doctors, said of Thursday’s verdicts.

He said the convictions of Dr. Khristine Eroshevich and Howard K Stern for obtaining drug prescriptions for Smith under false names contradicts common practice. “It’s absolutely neces-

I

sary for survival in Hollywood,” he said, noting that in the age of paparazzi and celebrity gossip websites, information on star illnesses can be worth a lot of money.

Medical professionals routinely use pseudonyms for celebrities to protect their privacy and until now no one was being prosecuted for doing it, he said. “If it stands that keeping these people anonymous is a criminal act, a lot of doctors will have to refuse to take celebrity patients because they can’t protect them,” he said.

Smith, the late Playboy model and reality TV star, was known as Jane Brown, Susie Wong and Vickie Lynn Marshall, her true name. She was not the only star with a medical pseudonym.

Michael Jackson had several, although the doctor who pleaded not guilty to involuntary manslaughter in his death is not charged with using a false name to

get him drugs. Performers such as Britney Spears and Mariah Carey also were known to use aliases when seeking medical care. Attorney Ellyn Garofalo, whose client Dr. Sandeep Kapoor was acquitted of all charges including false name allegations in the Smith case, said “these statutes involving use of fake names have never been enforced in this context.” She said it was so unusual that she was unable to find case law on the subject when doing research for the trial.

“There are doctors in Beverly Hills today saying, ‘Oh, my God, this is illegal?’... It just goes on all the time,” Garofalo said.

If the convictions of Stern and Eroshevich stand, “this whole process of helping celebrities protect their privacy is in jeopardy. What physician in his right mind wants to take on a celebrity when they will get charged criminally,” she said. Kapoor was continuing a fictitious

name, Michelle Chaseused, for Smith by another doctor who treated her, then sold his practice to Kapoor. The other doctor was not charged and testified for the prosecution. Testimony in the trial also showed that when Smith was admitted to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, she was automatically given a pseudonym, Jane Brown. When she left the hospital, she was given a prescription under that name.

Garofalo said UCLA Medical Center also has given aliases to stars including Britney Spears and Mariah Carey, attempting to avoid repeats of a scandal that erupted when an employee accessed records of the dying Farrah Fawcett and sold them to the tabloids.

Nicole White. a spokeswoman for Cedars Sinai, and Dale Tate, a spokeswoman for UCLA Medical Center, said they were seeking comment from officials about the issue and had no immediate

response. Steve Sadow, the lawyer for Stern, expressed hope that the verdicts will be overturned or reduced to misdemeanors by Superior Court Judge Robert Perry.

“The judge has the authority to consider the well-known and commonly accepted practice of doctors and hospitals using aliases and so-called false names,” Sadow said. Brad Brunon, the attorney for Eroshevich, said doctors treating stars have a dual obligation to provide good medical care but also to protect their privacy. “I don’t think most physicians know that writing a prescription under a pseudonym is a felony,” he said. Judge Perry has scheduled a hearing for Jan. 6 for further action in the case and possible sentencing. Brunon said he will urge the judge to reduce the charges or order a new trial. He said he would cite Eroshevich’s good faith.

“No one said she was doing this out of ill will,” he said. “She certainly didn’t do it for money.” As for Stern’s penalty, Sadow said he hopes the judge will dismiss the charges on grounds that the evidence is insufficient to sustain the verdicts. If not, he said he will urge reduction to a misdemeanor with probation.

The professional licenses of both defendants also are in jeopardy. Brunon said that in lieu of suspension, the medical board could allow Eroshevich to practice with a monitor overseeing all of her prescriptions. He said she could also be ordered to go through a reeducation program on prescriptions. Sadow said that even if Stern receives misdemeanor probation, his prospects as a lawyer are bleak. “Howard’s law license is in jeopardy,” said Sadow, “because the State Bar of California will likely still treat him as a convicted felon.”—AP

World’s ‘largest Jesus’ being built in Poland A

Hands of the Christ statue to be erected on a hill, rest in Swiebodzin, (south-west Poland) on October 29, 2010. (Inset) Priest Sylwester Zawadzki stands in front of the head Christ statue. — AFP

Polish priest said Friday he is nearing completion of what will be the world’s largest statue of Jesus Christ, bigger than the current tallest ones in Bolivia and Brazil. Father Sylwester Zawadzki told AFP that the statue he is constructing at Swiebodzin in western Poland, 50 kilometers (31 miles) from the Polish-German border, will be finished by November 21. “The statue will be a total 58 meters (190 feet) high from the base and 24 meters wide at the arms,” added Jan Zawadzki, foreman on the project and brother of the priest.

The Roman Catholic pastor came up with the idea to build a statue of Christ larger than any other in the world five years ago. He purchased a four-acre (1.6hectare) plot for the project from a state farmland agency and acquired sponsors, aiming to fulfill a cherished ambition. “My first vocation was to become a priest. My second was to build the statue,” the priest told AFP. Zawadzki has had trouble finding a crane strong enough to hoist the head up onto the shoulders of the Christ figure and has considered using a helicopter. The statue will be visible from the A2 highway linking Warsaw and Berlin. Like Christ of Concordia in Bolivia and the Christ of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil-both of which measure about 33 metres without their pedestals, the Christ of Swiebodzin is entirely white. Unlike the other two statues, the figure in Poland will have a golden crown. —AFP

( From Right) Elizabeth Smith, the official Guinness World Record adjudicator hands a certificate for the largest wine glass in the world to event organizer Neda Farah in Beirut. The glass is made of plexiglass measuring 94.48 inches (2.40 meters) tall and 65 inches (1.65 meters) at its widest point on Friday, Oct 29, 2010. —AP

SPECTRUM

38

Sunday, October 31, 2010

Fashion

Language no barrier for bilingual rapper Pitbull

By Leila Cobo uring an early afternoon in Miami in January, over drinks with two local radio program directors, the conversation turned to rapper Pitbull. “He should come over and join us,” said one, and impulsively picked up his cell phone and dialed. No more than 20 minutes later, there was Armando Christian Perez, aka Pitbull-sans entourage or management-chilling over martinis in a nearly empty restaurant overlooking Biscayne Bay. Pitbull’s “I Know You Want Me (Calle Ocho)” was peaking on the charts, and his face was plastered on billboards that were

D US jazz band Yellowjackets performs during the opening of the International Jazz Festival “Jazz in Kiev-2010” on October 29, 2010. —AFP

ʻChristmasʼ wishes come true for Annie Lennox

By Craig McClean nnie Lennox was born on Christmas Day 1954 — and her plans for a holiday album have been gestating almost ever since. “I remember hearing all these beautiful Christmas carols in choir when I was 6,” she recalls with a laugh. Five decades on, the singer-songwriter, activist and ‘80s icon, born and raised in Aberdeen, Scotland, has finally parlayed her childhood musical love into “A Christmas Cornucopia,” due Nov 16 in the United States on Decca and a day earlier throughout the rest of the world on Island.

Whether or not an artist is a global superstar of Lennox’s stature-as both a solo per-

A

former and through her work with Eurythmics — 50-odd years of thinking about a collection of songs is unusual. But Lennox, newly signed to Universal after almost 30 years with Sony and BMG, is that kind of musician: thorough, impassioned, committed. “I just wanted to do it-I’d held onto this idea for many years,” Lennox says of her motivation in recording traditional festive songs like “Silent Night,” “The Holly and the Ivy” and “The First Noel.”

The gently ornate instrumentation, mostly the work of Lennox’s keyboards but also featuring a 30-piece orchestra, is topped off by her rich, instantly recognizable voice.

The set is rounded out by one new song by Lennox, the non-

T.I.’s wife charged with drug possession rosecutors have charged rapper T.I.’s wife with one count of misdemeanor drug possession stemming from an arrest last month on the Sunset Strip.

Prosecutors charged Tameka Cottle with possession of ecstasy on Friday and she is due in court for an arraignment on Nov 1 in Beverly Hills.

The 35-year-old was arrested along with her husband on Sept 1 during a traffic stop.

Prosecutors last Monday declined to charge T.I., citing a federal judge’s decision to send him to federal prison for 11 months for violating his probation on weapons charges and the small amount of drugs found on him. A charge evaluation sheet said deputies found four ecstasy pills on the Grammy Award winner. It was not immediately clear whether Cottle had an attorney. — AP

P

‘Housewives’ star Kandi reboots singing career

By Gail Mitchell andi Burruss, former Xscape member and co-writer of such hits as TLC ’s “No Scrubs” and Destiny’s Child’s “Bills, Bills, Bills,” has returned to the charts with the digital single “Leave U.” Debuting at No 89 on Billboard’s Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, the Oct 5 release is the lead single from the singersongwriter’s second solo album, “Kandi Koated” (Kandi Koated /Asylum/Warner Bros.), due Dec 14. During the past several years, Kandiwho goes by the singlename moniker-attempted to release a follow-up to her pop-leaning Columbia solo debut, 2000’s “Hey Kandi ...” But the project was put on hold. Then, just as she decided to record

K

her own independent album, Kandi was asked to join the 2009 second-season cast of Bravo’s “Real Housewives of Atlanta.”

That same year, she released the digital EP “Fly Above,” catching the attention of Asylum/Warner Bros.

“The show definitely helped as far as being in a position to do a solo album; it’s a big infomercial,” Kandi says with a laugh.

“Having not done an album in so long and wondering who’s going to be interested in what you’re doing can be discouraging. But you never know what’s going to fall into your lap.”

Comprising midtempos and ballads influenced by the timeless R&B that was Xscape’s hallmark, “Kandi Koated” revolves around the concept of life’s relationships. —Reuters

Annie Lennox seasonal “Universal Child.”

Lennox and producer Mike Stevens began work in his London home studio in October 2009, continuing on and off during much of the fol-

lowing year. When the project started, she says, “I was out of a contract, and had this moment to take a breath and think, ‘What would I like to do next?”“

Business-wise, she also felt “it would be good for me have a change,” noting that, at Sony, “I did start to feel too much part of the furniture.” Universal Music UK chairman/CEO David Joseph, whom Lennox has known for many years, heard about the self-started project and asked her to come in and play some music.

“It’s always nice when people show an interest and they didn’t have to. It just touched me,” says Lennox, who officially signed with Universal on Aug 23. Clearly, Universal is hoping for a hit, “but this has been a labor of love for Annie for quite some time,” Island UK copresident Ted Cockle says, “rather than a smash-and-grab raid for a particular seasonal sales spike.”

It’s a point reiterated by Lennox. She’s unconcerned by the prospect of releasing an album into a crowded year-end market, even alongside similarly inclined sets from Mariah Carey and Susan Boyle.

Multiplatinum success may be a sincere wish on Universal’s part, but Lennox is more focused on giving a voice to the African Children’s Choir, which is featured on the album, and giving fresh life to songs she’s cherished since she was a child.

“I loved doing this,” she says.

“My heart and soul are in the instrumentation, the interpretations and the arrangements.

Even when you make music as I’ve been doing all these years, you just hold your breath and hope everybody’s going to fall in love with it.” — Reuters

Brazilian singer Carlos Sotto Mayor poses in Los Angeles, California, on October 29, 2010. Carlos Sotto Mayor, former girlfriend of French movie star Jean-Paul Belmondo, is the leader of the rock band “the Atomik Fairy”. —AFP

DJ pays tribute to his techno past as Plastikman

By Kerri Mason or nearly a decade, Richie Hawtin has crisscrossed the globe as one of dance music’s most in-demand DJs, playing everywhere from 100,000-plus outdoor festivals to exclusive clubs. But in 1993, Hawtin helped launch the techno movement as Plastikman, a mysterious producer/performer who manipulated synthesized beats and acid loops into a kinetic form of minimalism.

Through a series of Detroit warehouse parties that are the stuff of dance music legend and six albums on Mute (some of which are now out of print and go for upward of $100 per copy), Plastikman captured the ear and imagination of the burgeoning electronic music community worldwide. Now, Hawtin is bridging the gap between his person and his persona, the past and the present, and his old and new fans

F

with “Arkives” (Minus), a multimedia retrospective that will comprehensively captures every bleep that Plastikman ever recorded, plus videos, photos and other artifacts. The ambitious project will be available on Hawtin’s own label in four editions, each of which is strictly limited: Only the number of copies preordered between Oct 10 and Dec 31 will be manufactured.

“The path to that decision was the sheer workload and high costs involved to produce (the physical editions),” Minus managing director Philip Soeffker says. “You don’t want to just guess and possibly over manufacture.

But you also want to give people something really unique and special.” All formats of “Arkives”“ include the six Plastikman albums.

Additional material is doled out among them depending on the format. This includes rare and unreleased tracks, like an in-studio live

session with John Peel, the BBC Radio host who died in 2004; new remixes of Plastikman favorites by a slate of DJ/producer luminaries like Moby and Dubfire, commissioned just for this project; videos of Plastikman performances, including his 1995 Glastonbury Festival set; and “Slinky,” a new single. In total, there are 170 tracks and 10 videos.

Collectible collections “Analog” includes the albums on heavyduty, 180-gram vinyl, in a deluxe box with a poster. “Digital,” the downloadable version, contains the albums plus some of the new remixes. But “Reference” has it all: an 11CD/one-DVD package with all the content, plus a 64-page book, personalized with the purchaser’s name. And for the super-fan, “Collection” has all of that, plus the vinyl collection and bonus downloads. It’s expected to go for about 150 euros ($240). —Reuters

popping up all around Miami.

Still, Pitbull seemed immune to the celebrity. This was his town, his turf, his place to stroll about as he pleased.

He was, after all, a performer who had hustled his way to popularity, unabashedly seeking out DJs and artists, distributing mixtapes, endlessly posting online, playing parties and doing charity appearances.

There seemed to be nothing too big or too small for Pitbull to do.

More than nine months later, that frenzy of activity is set to explode. In the year since the gimmicky “I Know You Want Me” (a remix of the song “75 Street Brazil,”

by Nicola Fasano featuring Pat Rich) became a worldwide hit, Pitbull has become ubiquitous. Look at the charts and you’ll see that his melange of dance beats, borrowed hooks, catchy phrases and entreating, party-flavored raps have become must-haves for an evergrowing list of superstars, from Enrique Iglesias and Shakira to Usher and T-Pain.

“You always have to be relevant,” Pitbull says, defending his habit of releasing records seemingly any time, any place. “I’ve never been a traditional artist. I’m a survivor. And for me it’s kind of scary when people try to make plans.”

Multipronged plan But now there is a plan.

On Tuesday , Pitbull releases his first all-Spanish-language set, “Armando” (so named after his father), with the bilingual “Planet Pit” due in early 2011. Intertwined with the albums are two major sponsorship deals featuring Pitbull’s image and music.

One, for Kodak’s Easy Share cameras, includes 15-second TV spots with Pitbull, Drake and Trey Songz. Pitbull’s spots feature his single “Hey Baby” from “Planet Pit,” featuring T-Pain.

The second deal has Pitbull as the face and voice of Dr Pepper’s 2011 Spanishlanguage marketing campaign, “Vida a la 23.” Pitbull will be featured in the “Vida” radio and TV spots with the song “Good Times (Vida 23),” which he wrote specifically for the campaign. Plans are under way to make the track the second single from “Armando,” coinciding with the launch of the campaign in January.

The simultaneous push in two languages may be what finally clinches Pitbull’s popularity at all levels. For although his singles are extraordinarily successful-”I Know You Want Me” has sold 2.5 million downloads in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan-his album sales haven’t always kept pace. Pitbull’s top-selling set was his 2004 debut, “Miami,” which has sold 634,000 copies, according to SoundScan. But his two latest, 2007’s “Boatlift” and 2009’s “Rebelution,” which included “I Know You Want Me,” have sold fewer than

200,000 copies each in the United States.

“Any superstar, particularly in rap, appears on 50 million records, but the hits are the ones that shine through,” says Bryan Leach, president of Polo Grounds Music, which partnered with Pitbull’s Mr. 305 Records to release his English-language albums through Sony’s RCA/J Records. In Pitbull’s case, Leach adds, “whether it’s the current single from the ‘Armando’ album or ‘Hey Baby’ from ours, we just need to be very clear and make sure each album has its own identity.”

As a white, light-eyed Cuban-American who raps, Pitbull is an anomaly. The

urban audience initially eluded him, but has now embraced him, thanks in part to the company he keeps.

“He was ahead of his time,” Leach says. “If you look at what’s popular in rhythm and pop radio, it’s stuff that’s fun, and Pit’s been making those records his entire career.

People are a lot more open now to the music he’s always made. And he also brings his own twist, making huge pop records in Spanglish.” “I have known Pit for years and have always respected his hustle and talent,” T-Pain says. “He’s one of the few artists that really understands the music and business sides of this industry.”

Unprecedented support Pitbull is featured on two current top 10 singles on the Hot 100: Enrique Iglesias’ “I Like It” and Usher’s “DJ Got Us Fallin’ in Love.” And while the singles “Bon, Bon” from “Armando” and “Hey Baby” from “Planet Pit” are still bubbling under the charts, the setup for Pitbull’s two upcoming albums is unprecedented for him. In fact, Pitbull says, he’s never had the full muscle of a major label behind him before, much less in Latin America, where Sony is in charge of the album release.

Nor has he ever had sponsorship deals before.

“And the beauty is showing how major corporations want to be involved with people whose last names are Gutierrez, Perez. People whose names end with a ‘z,”“ Pitbull happily says on a recent afternoon at a recording studio in Davie, Fla., where he plays tracks from both of his upcoming albums.

The atmosphere is one of controlled chaos, with a steady stream of peoplefrom members of his team to fans to a camera crew-filtering in and out.

Although the finishing touches are still being applied to “Planet Pit,” “Armando” is a done deal; it’s rich with dance beats, cultural references and sly humor. First single “Bon, Bon,” for example, samples “Me No Speak Americano,” the Yolanda Be Cool hit that DJ Buddha, head of Mr. 305 Records, first heard in Europe. On top of the beat, Pitbull spoofs Lady Gaga, saying, “I’m not Alejandro, Roberto or Fernando. I’m Armando.”

The album also turns around the Cuban classic “Guantanamera,” “not just modernizing it, but making it also- how should I sayhumorous,” Pitbull says, referring to lyrics that coax a farm girl to leave shyness behind and catch up with the times. There’s also a collaboration with Cuban-American heartthrob JenCarlos Canela on the latter’s song “Tu Cuerpo.” “Every track has its own way of coming together, but essentially, I just say, ‘I like this,’ and Buddha says, ‘You’re crazy,”“ Pitbull says with a laugh. “And I say, ‘I don’t care.” — Reuters

SPECTRUM

Sunday, October 31, 2010

39

Movies

Boyle takes cue from his bold subject

Actor James Franco stars in a scene for movie “127 Hours.” — MCT

By John Horn anny Boyle could barely be heard over the low-flying helicopter. “It’s like ‘Apocalypse Now,’” he yelled as he fastened his helmet and tightened a climbing harness around his waist, preparing to descend into a narrow canyon.

The British director had brought his moviemaking team to this remote locale just outside Canyonlands National Park to film several key scenes in “127 Hours,” Boyle’s first feature since 2008’s “Slumdog Millionaire.” Every supply-sleeping bags, tents, toilets, cameras, makeup, forks, beef jerky-had to be flown in, and the latest delivery had just noisily arrived.

Yet as soon as the chopper lifted off again that April day, a stillness settled over the Utah landscape-the same haunting quiet that surrounded hiker Aron Ralston after he was pinned by a falling chockstone here in 2003, famously forcing him to amputate his right forearm to escape.

Boyle climbed down a series of ladders to the precise spot of Ralston’s solitary, five-day ordeal of dehydration, starvation, hypothermia and sleep deprivation. The actual rock that trapped the hiker was removed years ago so that Ralston’s hand could be recovered and cremated; in its place was an artificial boulder, splattered with fake blood added for the scene.

In the sequence being filmed, Ralston (played

by James Franco) had just severed his forearm with a dull multi-tool. In the next shot, he was to stagger out of the tight coulee, only to be faced with another unthinkable task: to rappel about 70 feet down a sheer cliff, using one hand.

Cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle, tethered by a rope to a large shrub, leaned over the gorge from an opposing precipice to shoot Franco’s walk from the dark slot to the sunny rappel spot — “into God’s light,” as Boyle described it.

“His last, worst fear is that he’ll lose control of it,” Boyle instructed a gaunt Franco, who had lost 25 pounds for the role. “And he’s got to be careful that he doesn’t pass out from the blood loss.”

A middle-of-nowhere location, precarious camerawork and physical strains were hardly the only challenges Boyle’s team faced in filming “127 Hours,” a Fox Searchlight release arriving in theaters Nov 5. They also dodged scorpions and weathered a freak late-season snowstorm that delayed production.

Yet those were all trivial tribulations compared to what Boyle, screenwriter Simon Beaufoy and producer Christian Colson had to wrestle with even before the “127 Hours” cameras rolled: first, sell a reluctant Ralston on any number of dramatic liberties; second, craft a compelling narrative in which the hero has no one to talk to and can’t move; and third, figure out how to depict a grisly procedure that wouldn’t make moviegoers pass out or run for the exits. Even if Boyle succeeded on all those fronts, the “127 Hours” director admitted, “This will be a difficult movie to sell.”

Boyle’s filmography is extraordinarily varied: the zombie thriller “28 Days Later,” the sci-fi story “Sunshine,” the children’s fantasy “Millions,” the dystopian drama “The Beach,” the crime movie “Shallow Grave,” and the hallucinatory “Trainspotting.” The 54-year-old has tackled every genre, it seems, outside of musicals and biography.

Six years ago, he tried to adapt “3000 Degrees: The True Story of a Deadly Fire and the Men Who Fought It,” a book about six firefighters who died in a 1999 Massachusetts blaze.

But he and Universal Pictures canceled production at the last minute when some survivors objected.

“I remember thinking after ‘3000 Degrees’ that I’ll never do another real-life story,” Boyle said. “It’s just too complicated. You don’t have control over the material.” After turning “Slumdog Millionaire” into an art-house chartbuster and Academy Awards champion, Boyle contemplated directing the next James Bond film or remaking “My Fair Lady.” But he kept thinking about Ralston’s near-death experience, having previously given the hiker’s 2004 book, “Between a Rock and a Hard Place,” to Colson.

“I read it and said, ‘There’s no way you can do this,’” the producer said. “It’s one bloke with his arm stuck. How could you make that dramatic?”

Boyle had an answer, albeit a strange one, and gave Colson his outline for the film. Rather than focus as much on the mounting rescue effort as on Ralston’s predicament, as some filmmakers might, Boyle said his cameras would never leave the hiker. That way, spectators in a multiplex could be transported to the canyon.

“I wanted it to be a subjective experience for the audience,” Boyle said. “My feeling is that we’re all capable of what Aron did. So if it’s subjective, you won’t avert your eyes. You’ll say, ‘Go on, do it!’”

But Ralston wasn’t initially buying Boyle’s vision. Smitten with the Andean survival movie “Touching the Void,” a 2003 feature combining

D

interviews with the real climbers and reenactments by actors, Ralston thought the same fact/fiction mash-up would best serve his story.

He joined forces in 2004 with “Touching the Void” producer John Smithson and filmmaker Alex Gibney, the documentarian behind the Oscar-winning “Taxi to the Dark Side.” But their movie went nowhere for two years.

“We had a vision, and still we couldn’t get financing,” Ralston said. “So we had to challenge that initial assumption that I was the best person to tell the story.” Ralston met Boyle in 2006, before the making of “Slumdog Millionaire,” and the director told him how he would tell his tale.

“He wanted to work within that very challenging framework. It’s a tight space. There’s one guy.

And he’s not moving for two-thirds of the movie,” Ralston said.

What’s more, Boyle told Ralston, he needed to dramatize Ralston’s state of mind, embellishing small details-such as Ralston’s fleeting mention in his book of a girlfriend-into larger narrative passages with emotion. “If you want me to do it,” Boyle told Ralston, “you have to lend us your story.”

In other words, the filmmakers would make sure the climbing gear was right, and would resist the studio’s suggestions for product placements like candy bars, but they would have to make stuff up. “You have to sacrifice the small truths,” Colson said, “to honor the larger one.”

Ralston still wasn’t convinced. “I thought accuracy was the channel to inspiration-that it had to be absolutely the truth to touch people and inspire audiences,” said Ralston, who has been a popular motivational speaker. “And then I started realizing that’s not the only avenue to get to that goal.” After “Slumdog Millionaire” swept the Oscars in early 2009, he was willing to let “127 Hours” proceed.

So with screenwriter Beaufoy, Boyle sketched out a story that attempted to answer the big questions of how the experience transformed Ralston, while including moments that Ralston never discussed or actually didn’t happen: In one scene, the trapped hiker masturbates. “Come on, he must have tried to,” Boyle said, though Ralston has remained silent on the issue.

Ralston had quit an engineering job at Intel in 2002 to dedicate himself to mountain climbing.

Before the accident, he said, he was “more hedonistic, more narcissistic and more concerned with ego-fulfillment.” But Boyle needed to capture that evolution in the compressed time span of a 90-minute movie. So, for example, his script employs the girlfriend character of Rana (Clemence Poesy) to dramatize Ralston’s selfishness and remind the hiker of what he had left behind. In reality, the 34-year-old said, it was his family, not a former flame, that filled his thoughts during his ordeal. “Basically, they needed more girls in the movie,” Ralston said.

Because the narrow confines of Blue John Canyon made it impossible to film the entire movie there, production designer Anne Suttirat Larlarb built a precise replica of the crevasse in a Salt Lake City warehouse. On that set in late March, before the team headed to Blue John Canyon, Franco was taking the first step in Ralston’s backcountry surgery.

With a prosthetic arm in place of his own, Franco folded out a knife from the multi-tool and plunged it into his (fake) flesh, the blade stopping when it hit (fake) bone. Syrupy imitation bloodthick, like Ralston’s would have been due to dehydration-oozed from the wound. Looking exhausted, the actor took a swig of the only drink the hiker had left: his own urine (fake), stored in a CamelBak hydration pouch. “Oh that’s it, James, brilliant,” Boyle said after Franco finished gagging. “If you can get in that position again, you can see it moving through the tube into your mouth.”

Boyle knew that a movie focused almost exclusively on one stuck man, even with some flashbacks and an encounter with two female hikers before the fateful moment of entrapment, could quickly turn tedious. So he used an array of visual flourishes to keep the story moving — like putting a lens in the CamelBak so that the audience would see the urine traveling toward Ralston’s mouth. He also takes the viewer into Ralston’s arm, to witness knife hitting bone.

Boyle also took the highly unusual step of employing two cinematographers: “Slumdog Millionaire’s” Dod Mantle and Enrique Chediak, who shot “28 Weeks Later.” While Dod Mantle was setting up one shot, Chediak was filming another-giving Franco little time to rest. “It’s partly about harnessing Danny’s energy. He doesn’t like sitting around,” Colson said.

While Ralston was trapped, he recorded himself on video, including moments where, convinced of his impending death, he made an impromptu will and offered instructions about where his ashes should be scattered. While Ralston hasn’t shown the videos publicly-”I promised my mom not to,” he said-he shared them with Franco and the “127 Hours” team.—MCT

US actress Eva Mendes poses, flanked by French film director Guillame Canet and film director IranianAmerican Massy Tadjedin of the movie “Last Night”, on the red carpet as she arrives for the screening of the film “Le petit mouchoirs” (The small tissue) at the 5th Rome Film Festival in Rome on October 29, 2010. —AFP

Playing dad the biggest role for Hollywood star Slater ollywood actor Christian Slater says his top priority in life now is being a good father to his two children-and that means not letting them watch some of his movies. The 41-year-old said his children had seen some of his television work, which he described as “more PG”, but a number of his more violent action movies, such as the Quentin Tarantino-scripted “True Romance”, were off-limits. In contrast to the high-octane films which helped make his name, camping trips are the order of the day for Slater now. “I have a beautiful 11-year-old son and a nineyear-old daughter and having adventures with them is the most important thing I can do right now,” he told reporters at a golf event in China.

“I try to be a fun dad. I took them white-water rafting in Idaho over the summer and spent five days camping.” But the actor said his upbringing in Manhattan had not left him well equipped for the great outdoors.

“Camping was not something we did on a regular basis, so for me building a tent and getting all that stuff together was quite challenging. “The white water stuff was great. We had some good adventures. I fell out of the boat at one point and my son looked a little panicked.”

Slater, who is playing in the Mission Hills Star Trophy celebrity pro-am golf tournament in Hainan, southern China, said he kept an eye on what his children watched.

H

Chinese golfer Feng Shan Shan and US actor Christian Slater react to a shot on the second day of the Mission Hills Star Trophy golf tournament at the Mission Hills Golf Course in Haikou on the southern Chinese island of Hainan on October 29, 2010. — AFP

“They’ve certainly watched some of the TV stuff that I have done, because it’s definitely much more PG (parental guidance rating) than a lot of the movies that I’ve done,” he said. “But I haven’t shown them ‘True Romance’ or ‘Very Bad Things’ or any of that stuff.” Slater played Will Scarlett alongside Kevin Costner in the 1991 blockbuster “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves” and he gave his backing to this year’s retelling of the outlaw legend starring Russell Crowe. “I thought he did a great job. It was kind of cool to see the pre-story of Robin Hood, that was fun,” he said.

“The one he (Crowe) was in kind of preceded the one I was in, I guess that’s how we can look at it. The one I was in was special for the time it had and I think the one Russell Crowe did was great.” Crowe came under fire from some quarters for his accent in the film, and stormed out of a BBC interview after the presenter suggested he had made Robin Hood sound Irish but Slater said he thought the Australian actor’s accent was “great”.

Other Hollywood A-listers playing in the Star Trophy include Catherine Zeta-Jones-whose husband Michael Douglas is battling throat cancerHugh Grant and Matthew McConaughey. A field of 18 professionals including Nick Faldo and Europe’s victorious Ryder Cup captain Colin Montgomerie will play for a 1.28 million dollar winner’s cheque over the weekend. — AFP

Chinese director defends break from art-house

By Min Lee Golden Lion-winning Chinese director best known for portraying working-class struggles defended yesterday his decision to try his hand at commercial cinema as he prepares to make his first kung fu epic. Jia Zhangke made his name with realist films that describe how China’s youth and workers cope with the country’s rapid economic growth. The 40-yearold filmmaker won the top prize at the 2006 Venice Film Festival with “Still Life,” a drama set against the destruction of a Chinese village to make way for the Three Gorges Dam. But now Jia, whose credits also include “Pickpocket, “The Platform” and “The World,” is getting ready to shoot a bigbudget martial arts epic set at the beginning of the 20th century. The native of the northern city of Fenyang says the budget will be at least several million US dollars-huge for the once underground director-and he will hire a Hong Kong fight choreographer.

Veteran Hong Kong director Johnnie To, best known for his stylish action thrillers, is his producer. Critics are wondering if Jia is abandoning his roots.

A

In this film publicity image released by Lionsgate, Thandie Newton, left, and Whoopi Goldberg are shown in a scene from, “For Colored Girls.” — AP

Women of ‘Color’ perform on film’s soundtrack album

By Ann Donahue anet Jackson, Whoopi Goldberg and other cast members from Tyler Perry’s new film, “For Colored Girls,” are performing double duty on the project-not only acting but also contributing to its soundtrack.

Loretta Devine, Kimberly Elise, Thandie Newton, Phylicia Rashad, Anika Noni Rose, Jackson and Goldberg are among those who recite poems in the film’s main-title sequence, with music scored by composer Aaron Zigman and performed by Joshua Bell and the Hollywood Studio Symphony Orchestra.

Coming to theaters Nov 5 from Lionsgate, the film is Perry’s adaptation of playwright/poet Ntozake

J

Shange’s Tony Award-nominated play, “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf.” First performed in 1975, it tells the story of nine women dealing with the vagaries of love and loss.

Atlantic will release the soundtrack Nov 2; snippets are now streaming on For ColoredGirlsSoundtrack.com, where the album is being offered as a digital preorder for $9.99 and as part of a gift pack with a CD and T-shirt for $12.99. The soundtrack also features performances by Janelle Monae, Laura Izibor, Ledisi, Estelle, Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, Lalah Hathaway and Gladys Knight.

Selections include a rendition of Nina Simone’s 1966 blues song “Four Women.” —Reuters

File photo shows Chinese film director Jia Zhangke speaks during a press conference of his new film titled “24 City” in Shanghai. —AP It’s the same charge that was leveled at Jia’s predecessors like Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou. Chen and Zhang won critical acclaim in the West with stark stories of rural hardship but have gravitated toward commercial blockbusters in recent years. Jia told The Associated Press in Hong Kong on Saturday that his fans have nothing to worry about. “I will be back. I will not be making period movies forever. Old China is just one part of my imagination. The reality of modern China still attracts me a great deal. I want to prove

over time that a director can enjoy a wide repertoire,” he said.

The Chinese director, who was visiting Hong Kong to promote his documentary “I Wish I Knew,” said he won’t follow the career paths of filmmakers like Chen and Zhang. “They have already taught us a very good lesson. Why would I want to take the same path? I have seen that that path is no fun,” he said. Jia said he will start shooting his new project, called “In the Qing Dynasty” in Chinese, in March or April in and near his hometown. —AP

www.kuwaittimes.net

Naughty nurse or wicked witch:

What a Halloween costume says about a girl

By Katie Crowe uys, pay attention: finding your “dream girl” may be easier than you think this season-all it takes is checking out her what she chooses to don on Halloween.

DeAnna Lorraine, HerWay.com dating expert, recently provided her take on what a woman’s Halloween costume says about her dating and relationship intentions as well as her personality. HerWay.com, unlike other traditional dating websites, takes a Sadie Hawkins

G

each year that make sense both analytically and emotionally.

“A costume can speak a lot about a woman’s intentions and what she is looking for,” Lorraine said in reference to her Halloween spin on the dating world. “It can tell you if she is looking to go wild, to just be fun and flirty, if she is a relationship-type of woman...”

Here are a few of her smart Halloween samples: A la d y b u g or b ee c ostume-She is fun and flirty, but doesn’t want to be too promiscuous and ‘put it all out there’

By Kathy Van Mullekom lumbing experts have some words of advice when it comes to turning pumpkins into glowing Halloween jack-olanterns: Don’t dump the pumpkin guts down your drains or you risk clogged pipes. “The seeds are hard and I’ve seen them jam a disposal,” says David Mason of Mason & Son Plumbing in Newport News, Va. “The guts are also stringy and slimy and cause other stuff to attach and stop up the drain.

Sometimes, there’s so much it won’t even make it around the turn of the trap.” Hampton Roads

P

A girl’s costume tells you a lot about her personality and what she’s looking for in a relationship. —MCT approach-women initiate contact with men, on their own terms, leaving men to just ‘hang back,’ said Lorriane.

Once initiated, men and women can then choose to take the traditional dating route if they so choose.

The website was created based on findings that determined it is five times more likely that matches will be successful when women do the choosing, said Rachel Mock, Atomic PR for HerWay. “It creates an atmosphere where women are comfortable doing the pursuing,” Lorraine said. This month, the site is featuring Lorraine’s take on costume analysis as a go-to guide for men on what women are looking for. Having been a relationship and dating expert for many years, Lorraine said she has been able to recognize trends among Halloween costumes

Sanitation District in southeastern Virginia also recommends jack-olantern creators think twice before putting all that potentially hardening pumpkin pulp where it doesn’t belong.

“It can also clog toilets and should not be flushed,” says Rhoda Bowen, recycling manager with the sanitation district. “Flushing could cause problems further down in the sewage system.”

Instead, work pumpkin pulp into your garden or compost pile. “Birds also like to feed on it,” says Bowen.

If you don’t have a compost pile, dispose of the pumpkin innards in the trash can. Separate out the seeds and roast them or dry them

for a treat, or save them for spring planting. Pumpkin seeds are also great for the bird feeder.

Tips for carving Spread out old newspapers in your carving work area, preferably outdoors. Create two piles-one for the gooey pumpkin guts and one for seeds.

Using a sharp knife (adults only), cut a circle around the stem and remove the top. Use a large strong spoon to scoop out the pumpkin pulp and seeds. Separate the stringy core from the seeds. Draw your pattern on the front of the pumpkin and carve your design.

Fun and frightful 18th century-

inspired patterns can be downloaded at www.history.org/kids/games/pumpkinpatterns.cfm.

Place a candle inside; consider using one of the new flameless wax candles, which are battery operated and safer to use. Save the seeds for roasting; you don’t even need to rinse them because a little pumpkin ooze enhances the flavor when baked.

If you do rinse the seeds, do it at an outdoor spigot to avoid the drain problem, according to Roto Rooter plumbing and drain service. See a photo gallery of how to properly carve a pumpkin at www.HRHomeandGarden.com.

TOAST THE SEEDS Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Spread 1 tablespoon of olive oil or butter over the bottom of a roasting pan. Sprinkle the pumpkin seeds in a single layer on the roasting pan. Add salt to taste. Bake on the top rack for 20-30 minutes, until the seeds begin to brown. When brown enough to your liking, remove the seeds and allow to cool.

Tip: You can add spices like cinnamon, cayenne, oregano or even hot sauce for more flavor options.

Recycle pumpkins After Halloween, bury your jack-olantern in the garden or compost pile where it will decompose into organic material. — MCT

Mask-maker seeing success with vintage-inspired line

Naughty nurse or French maid-She confident and comfortable with her sex appeal and not afraid to use it. This girl is out to seduce a man and get frisky with him-and may be happy to pull out all the stops to make sure she gets him B r ist ol Pa lin , a J er sey Shore character or a ‘Real Housew ife’-She has a great sense of humor and is more into dressing up for fun and to get laughs rather then to be sexy Witch costume from head to toe-On a first date, this says she is going through the motions but not looking to have much fun K a t y Per r y ’s c u p c a k e costume-On a first date, this says she is looking for a good time and not a relationship Bonnie and Clyde-she is presenting the couple to the world and is committed. —MCT

Chuy Ortiz checks the mask selection at the Woodworm Party Store in Watsonville, California, on October 24, 2010. —MCT

By Justine DaCosta he spirit of Oct 31 stirs in the Zephro household every day of the year. “I live for Halloween,” said Chris Zephro. “My brother was born on Halloween, and I’ve always hated him for it.”

Zephro has long been drawn to the eerie, collecting everything from vintage horror movie posters to monster lights and figurines. This past February he took his love of Halloween to a new level, quitting his longtime job to open Aptos, Calif.-based Trick or Treat Studios. The business specializes in masks, its line including classics such as Dr. Deadly and characters from “Toxictoon.” “We’re big fans of the kind of vintage Halloween look,” he said. “We like monsters.”

Most of the full-face masks are original concepts, such as the lifelike “Chimpanzee” and the green, one-eyed creation called “Shock,” which is described online as “classic horror from the graveyard.” The mask also happens to be a favorite of Zephro’s 6year-old daughter, Sydney. Business is booming for the 40-year-old, who left his position as a director of finance and supply chain management for a major hard drive company in pursuit of happiness.

Already immersed in the world of masks and Halloween goods, he found that quality products had been replaced over the years with pre-packaged kits. He knew he wasn’t alone in his search for quality classic masks,

T

Today’ show co-host Al Roker, ‘Today’ show co-host Natalie Morales, actress Tina Fey, actor Will Ferrell, ‘Today’ show co-host Ann Curry, and ‘Today’ show co-host Meredith Vieira appear on NBC ’s ‘Today’ Halloween episode at Rockefeller Plaza in New York City, NY, USA on October 29, 2010. —MCT

so he decided to assemble a team to bring those masks to the public. “I thought there might be an opportunity,” he said.

With the support of his wife, Lauren, a crime scene investigator, he took the leap of faith. And it seems to be paying off; at a recent tradeshow he sold 42,000 masks in just eight hours, he said. His masks are being snatched up by retailers all over the United States and beyond, and were featured in the annual Halloween haunt at Great America, which Zephro experienced firsthand. “It was so cool to be scared by my own stuff,” he said. Zephro works with designers and sculptors across the state to create pieces that echo the classic horror movies of the 1960s through ‘80’s.

Among the designers is David Hartman, who directed the Emmy-nominated “My Friends Tigger and Pooh,” and created the artwork for a pair of Rob Zombie videos.

Mississippi-based Justin Mabry is the Trick or Treat Studios art director. On a recent trip to California, he spotted some of the studio’s masks while out and about. “It’s pretty neat seeing your work 2,000 miles away in a store,” he said.

He, like Zephro, has long viewed Halloween as a way of life rather than a holiday. He began making masks almost 20 years ago, and has spent the past 12 years making them professionally, now through his own company, Nightowl Productions. As art director for Trick or Treat, Mabry wears various hats, including designer and sculptor. —MCT