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Al-Assad dismisses Houla massacre accusationsDAMASCUS: President Bashar Al-Assad

dismissed on Sunday accusations his govern-ment had any role in the brutal Houla massacre, as he charged forces outside Syria of plotting to destroy the country.

In a rare televised address to parliament, Al-Assad, dressed in a smart suit and tie, said even “monsters” were incapable of carrying out massacres such as last month’s killings near the town of Houla in central Syria.

At least 108 people, including 49 children and 34 women, were slaughtered in the massa-cre which started on May 25 and spilled into the next day, triggering international outrage.

Assad’s defiant speech came as Arab lead-ers called on the United Nations to act to stop bloodshed in Syria, and France raised the pros-pect of military action against Damascus un-der a UN mandate. “What happened in Houla and elsewhere are brutal massacres which even monsters would not have carried out,” the Syr-ian leader said.

“The masks have fallen and the internation-al role in the Syrian events is now obvious,” he said in his first address to the assembly since a May 7 parliamentary election, adding the polls

were the perfect response “to the criminal kill-ers and those who finance them”.

Al-Assad also paid tribute to civilian and military “martyrs” of the violence in Syria, say-ing their blood was not shed in vain.

“We are not facing a political problem but a project to destroy the country,” Al-Assad said, adding there would be “no dialogue” with op-position groups which “seek foreign interven-tion.”

“Terrorism cannot be part of the political process,” said Al-Assad, who had last spoken in public in January.

In Sunday’s speech which lasted more than an hour, he dismissed the impact in Syria of up-risings sweeping the Arab world, saying those demonstrating and fighting against his rule were paid to do so.

“Some are unemployed, they receive money for participating in demonstrations,” he said.

As Arab leaders called for UN action, France, which spearheaded a NATO air assault against Libyan dictator Muammar Gadhafi last year, said it has not excluded military interven-tion in Syria.

France “has not excluded military interven-

tion” in Syria, but only under a UN mandate, Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said, while urging Russia to drop its backing for Al-Assad.

He said that “the Russians have to under-stand that the future of Syria is not to be con-sidered” with Al-Assad still in power.

“Until then we have to increase pressure, increase sanctions, mobilize public opinion and isolate (Assad) as much as possible - and make those who still support him lose interest, and I’m thinking of Russia of course,” Le Drian said.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon called on Sunday for broad international talks on the rising Syr-ian crisis, urging Security Council members to consider Arab League demands for stronger UN action in the strife-torn country.

“Our priority at this time is to help the Syrian people... I want to welcome a wider in-ternational discussion on the future course of actions,” Ban told reporters after a meeting with Organization of Islamic Cooperation chief, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, in the Saudi port city of Jeddah.

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Progress rate of Jaber Al-Ahmad Hospital estimated at 32%: Safar

Lebanese army deploys in Tripoli after 15 killed

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Al-Rujaib faces second grillingStaff Writers

KUWAIT: The Parliament on Sunday witnessed heated debates, as MPs launched scathing attacks on the government. Amid this atmosphere, MP Riadh Al-Adasni filed a new motion to question the Minister of Social Affairs and Labor Ahmad Al-Rujaib, which revolves around five main issues, including al-leged irregularities at Orphans Care, the deterioration of the sports situation in the country, bogus companies, weak oversight and malpractices involving the operations of cooperative societies. This makes Al-Rujaib’s interpellation akin to the one filed earlier against the former Finance Minister Al-Shamali, who later resigned following a grueling questioning session.

Speaking to reporters at the National Assembly, the lawmaker stated that his interpellation motion is backed up by supporting documents, while claiming a sharp increase in the level of corruption under the new minister.

Al-Adsani also brushed aside the idea of merging his interpellation with that of MP Al-Saifi Al-Saifi who also filed a motion to grill the same minister. He informed the press that his motion has been included in Parliament’s scheduled session for June 19. For his part, Al-Saifi affirmed that the issues contained in his interpellation differ from Al-Adsani’s, even though both of them are targeting Minister Al-Rujaib.

Reportedly, the government is of the view that the motion is marred by constitutional and legal loopholes, particularly with regard to his claims over the issues of sports and cooperative societies.

Parliamentary sources reported that Al-Adsani’s interpellation will be an-nounced to lawmakers during the session tomorrow (Tuesday), so that it can be included in the agenda, though 48 hours have not passed since the motion was filed. The precedent, according to the sources, reflects the intention to merge the two interpellations or discussing them during the scheduled June 19 session.

The sources, in the meantime, alluded to differences among MPs regarding the legality of this step.

Moreover, MP Obeid Al-Wasmi hinted at a possible motion to question His Highness the Prime Minister Sheikh Jaber Al-Mubarak Al-Sabah over press re-ports suggesting that the government is likely to rebuff the Jaber University and blasphemy Laws, as well as backtrack on plans to set up a fund to support owners of small businesses.

The lawmaker posted on his twitter that the move can be interpreted as re-flective of the government’s lack of respect for its own decisions or that it is not the real government. “In both cases, this is unacceptable,” the MP said.

KSE price index down 71.86 points, largest drop in 10 months

Compiled by Al Watan Daily

KUWAIT: Kuwait’s index experiences its largest drop in 10 months as global market declines and a downbeat outlook for the local economy spur investors to sell. Price index decreased 71.86 points rising to the level of 6,121.96 points, weighted index down 3.8 points declining to 400.9 and the KSX index put on 9.4 points reaching 960 points. Number of trades amounted to 3,594, value of traded stocks 18,452,509.488 Kuwaiti dinars and volume of exchanged shares 186,060,558.

Telecoms operator Zain drops 1.4 percent and Islamic lender Kuwait Fi-nance House (KFH) dips 1.3 percent, with both stocks now trading at around 2009 levels. “In Kuwait, not much is happening economically and that is weigh-ing on the market,” says Shahid Hameed, Global Investment House head of asset management for the Gulf region. “First-quarter corporate results were not strong. The main index is an all-price index so it doesn’t really show what has happened to bluechip stocks.” Three main indices of the national bourse were red upon closing Sunday’s session. Trading started at Kuwait Stock Exchange (KSE) with an all-red board on Sunday, with the price index reading 6,092.8 points at 9:45, on a down of 101.02 points, the weighted index reading 397.75 points on a slip of 6.95 points, and the KSX 15 index reading 952.03 on a loss of 17.37 points. More on 6

CAIRO: Hundreds of Egyptians occu-pied Cairo’s Tahrir Square on Sunday af-ter a night of rage as the state prosecutor said he would appeal sentences handed down to Hosni Mubarak and his security chiefs.

A judge sentenced Mubarak, 84, and his interior minister Habib al-Adly to life in prison on Saturday for involvement in the killing of hundreds of protesters dur-ing the uprising that ousted them from power last year.

Mubarak was cleared of graft charg-es, six police chiefs were acquitted, and Mubarak’s sons Alaa and Gamal had cor-ruption charges against them dropped on a technicality, prompting protesters to take to the streets in Cairo, Alexandria and other Egyptian cities.

The state prosecutor’s office said he had ordered “the start of the appeals procedure” against sentences in the trial, but did not clarify whether it would ap-peal all the verdicts or just the acquittals. Mubarak’s defense has also said it would appeal.

Around 20,000 people took to Cai-ro’s iconic Tahrir Square on Saturday af-

ter the verdicts were issued. Some of the demonstrators slept in tents or out in the open overnight on the vast intersection, epicenter of the 18-day revolt that forced Mubarak to resign on February 11 last year.

A tearful Mubarak, who enjoyed near absolute power for three decades, was flown by helicopter to Tora prison on Cairo’s outskirts after the verdict but then refused to leave the aircraft. A secu-rity official said Mubarak “suffered from a surprise health crisis” but was finally convinced to go to his cell.

Chants of “Void, void” and “The peo-ple want the judiciary purged” erupted after the sentencing. There were similar protest rallies in Alexandria, on the Medi-terranean coast, and other parts of Egypt, where many were in shock at the police chiefs’ acquittal.

Rights groups also slammed the ver-dict. Mubarak’s sentence “is a significant step towards combating long-standing im-punity in Egypt” but the security chiefs’ acquittal “leaves many still waiting for full justice,” Amnesty International said. More on 3

Protests sweep Egypt, prosecutor to appeal sentences

Indian guitar players raise their instruments in unison after making a new Lim-ca record for “largest guitar ensemble” in Guwahati on June 3, 2012. (AFP)

Judge Kamal Bashir Dahan (center), head of Libya’s Supreme Court, meets with members of the Constitutional Chamber in Tripoli June 3, 2012, in which the court agreed to review the constitutionality of a new law that criminalizes the glorification of ousted leader Muammar Gadhafi or any of his supporters. (Reuters)

Participants start the National Cancer Survivors Day march in Chicago, June 3, 2012. The participants, which included cancer survivors, as well as mem-bers of the health community, family and friends, walked a distance of three miles (5 km) during the morning’s festivities. (Reuters)

ACCRA: A cargo plane has crashed while attempting to land at an airport in Ghana’s capital, slamming into cars and a bus loaded with passengers on a nearby street and killing at least 10 people, of-ficials said.

The crash on Saturday night happened in Accra near the Kotoka International Airport, which sits near newly built high-rise buildings, hotels and the country’s defense ministry.

Al Jazeera’s Yvonne Ndege said that witnesses had described the aircraft smashing through the airport perimeter fence before hitting the bus.

At least 10 people were killed in the crash, all in vehicles on the road struck by the plane, said Billy Anaglate, a spokes-man for the Ghana Fire Service.

Ambulances took the injured to near-by hospitals.

The Boeing 727-200 was operated by Nigerian cargo airline Allied Air, Doreen Owusu Fianko, managing director of Gha-na Airport Company, told reporters.

“The aircraft collided with a mini Mercedes van resulting in 10 confirmed fatalities,” she said, adding that all four crew of the aircraft had survived the accident. More on 5

Ghanaian plane crashes, at least 10 dead

Blast at Nigerian church kills 15KANO: A suicide bomber who tried to drive an explosives-packed car into

a church in northern Nigeria on Sunday killed at least 15 people, including himself, and injured 40, officials said. Speeding up his vehicle, the attacker ap-proached a checkpoint near the church in Bauchi State, which has previously been hit by Islamist group Boko Haram and where tension between Muslims and Christians has led to violence in the past. “We have a checkpoint not far from the church which prevented the bomber from gaining access to his target,” said state police commissioner Mohammed Ladan. “So he rammed the car into a security gate and the car exploded,” Ladan added.

Bauchi’s State Emergency Management Agency said in a statement that it found 15 dead bodies at the blast site and evacuated 40 injured people to a nearby hospital, adding that the area around the church had been cordoned off by police. Witnesses said the force of the blast near the Harvest Field of Christ church on the outskirts of Bauchi city caused the building to collapse on the worshippers inside. Residents said that when the building came down, some fled outside seeking refuge, but ran into a raging fire. “There was confusion as resi-dents and churchgoers tried to flee. Some of them out of fright fell into the fire caused by the explosion,” said resident Timothy Joshua. Another witness, who requested anonymity, said the bomber had an accomplice who tried to escape the scene after the blast went off, but was chased down and killed by enraged residents. Police could not confirm this account. -AFP

The royal barge ‘Spirit of Chartwell’ carrying Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II and other members of the royal family sails during the Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant on the River Thames in London on June 3, 2012. (AFP) More on 9

CHICAGO: Doctors have success-fully dropped the first “smart bomb” on breast cancer, using a drug to deliver a toxic payload to tumor cells while leaving healthy ones alone.

In a key test involving nearly 1,000 women with very advanced disease, the experimental treatment extended by sev-eral months the time women lived with-out their cancer getting worse, doctors planned to report Sunday at a cancer con-ference in Chicago.

More importantly, the treatment seems likely to improve survival; it will take more time to know for sure. After two years, 65 percent of women who re-ceived it were still alive versus 47 percent of those in a comparison group given two

standard cancer drugs.That margin fell just short of the very

strict criteria researchers set for stopping the study and declaring the new treat-ment a winner, and they hope the benefit becomes more clear with time. In fact, so many women on the new treatment are still alive that researchers cannot yet de-termine average survival for the group.

“The absolute difference is greater than one year in how long these people live,” said the study’s leader, Dr. Kimberly Blackwell of Duke University. “This is a major step forward.”

A warning to hopeful patients: the drug is still experimental, so not available yet. Its backers hope it can reach the mar-ket within a year. More on 8

‘Smart bomb’ drug attacks breast cancer

Michel Suleiman departs after one-day visit

His Highness the Amir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah (right) greeting the Lebanese president Michel Suleiman upon his arrival on a one-day visit on Sunday, June 3, 2012. (KUNA)

Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Sabah Khaled Al-Hamad Al-Sabah at the Arab League meeting held on Saturday, June 2, 2012. (KUNA)

KUWAIT: The President of Lebanon Michel Suleiman arrived here Sunday for an official one-day visit to the State of Kuwait, during which he is to hold talks with His Highness the Amir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah.

The Lebanese leader was accompa-nied by his Deputy Prime Minister Samir Moqbil.

The president was greeted upon ar-rival by His Highness the Amir, along with a host of officials including His High-

ness the Crown Prince Sheikh Nawaf Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, Parliament Speaker Ahmad Al-Saadoun, Deputy Chief of the National Guard Sheikh Me-shaal Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, and His Highness the Prime Minister Sheikh Jaber Al-Mubarak Al-Hamad Al-Sabah.

Also greeting the president were Dep-uty Minister of the Amiri Diwan Sheikh Ali Jarrah Al-Sabah, ministers, senior state officials, and senior officers of the Army, Police, and National Guard. -KUNA

DOHA: Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Sabah Khaled Al-Hamad Al-Sabah cautioned late Sat-urday against the grave dangers of con-flict in Syria on the whole region.

“No country in the region is pro-tected against the grave repercussions of deteriorating situation in Syria,” Sheikh Sabah, also Minister of State for Cabinet Affairs, said in a joint press conference with Arab League Secretary General Nabil Al-Araby following the extraordi-nary ministerial meeting of the Kuwait-chaired Arab League Council.

“We are working to avoid these dan-gers and to protect Syria against a civil war which will have extreme impacts on the Arab region, including Gulf states,” he added.

The Kuwait foreign minister under-lined that Arab Gulf states are cooper-ating and coordinating with other Arab countries to put an end to violence in Syria and help meet Syrian people’s as-pirations for better future.

With regard to latest developments in Sudan, Sheikh Sabah Al-Khaled said that the Arab League Council has expressed support to all measures to retain the sovereign and protect se-curity and stability of the Republic of Sudan.

He revealed that the Arab League is mediating between Sudan and South Sudan to ease tension and avoid any new confrontations between the two neighbors.

For his part, Arab League Chief Al-Araby admitted the need for reconsid-ering the deadline of UN-Arab League Envoy Kofi Annan’s mission as the vio-

lence continues unabated against des-perate Syrians.

Al-Araby pointed out that the Arab ministerial council has asked the UN Security Council to consider using Ar-ticle VII to press the Syrian regime to abide by some of the Annan’s six-point plan.

He, however, stressed that the Arab council’s statement did not ask for mili-tary intervention in Syria but urge the international community to pile more pressures on President Bashar Al-Assad regime.

Al-Araby also disclosed intensive contacts with China and Russia to press them to change their staunch support to Al-Assad regime.

These contacts have already helped make a slight change in Moscow and Beijing’s policy towards the crisis in Syria, he said.

The Arab League Chief noted that the council’s statement demanded the Syrian opposition to unite and close ranks, adding that the Arab League will host a meeting for the Syrian National Council and other Syrian opposition powers on June 9 to help achieve this goal.

The Arab League Council held its extraordinary meeting in Doha Satur-day to mull the deterioration Syrian conflict, particularly with the failure of the UN observers mission to bring to halt 15-month violence.

Monitors say more than 13,400 people have been killed across Syria since an anti-regime uprising erupted in March 2011, including nearly 2,300 since April 12. -KUNA

kuwaitMONDAy, JUNE 4, 2012

aLwataN DaiLY

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Mutairan Al-Shamali and Mohammad Al-HajeriStaff Writers

KUWAIT: During its weekly session today, under the chairmanship of His Highness the Prime Minister Sheikh Jaber Al-Mubarak Al-Sabah, the Cabinet is scheduled to discuss MP Al-Saifi Al-Saifi’s interpellation against the Minister of Social Affairs and Labor Ahmad Al-Rujaib and the latter’s stance over the issue.

Sources have indicated that the government is of the view that there are constitutional and legal loop-holes in the motion, particularly with regard to sports and cooperative societies, and that the minister will make this clear during the Cabinet session.

In addition, the Cabinet is expected to assess the constitutional perspective pertaining to the rejection of a number of laws, including blasphemy, the construc-tion of Jaber University and a fund for initiatives and entrepreneurships. According to the sources, in the event that the government sends back the said laws, it will voice skepticism over the operational mechanism for these projects.

While the Housing Minister Shuaib Al-Muwaizri is due to brief the Cabinet about the expedition of new housing cities, the Minister of Electricity and Water Abdul-Aziz Al-Ibrahim will present progress report on the Northern Zour Power Station.

Further, the ministers will discuss government’s handling of the Dow issue.

Fadha Al-MuailiStaff Writer

KUWAIT: The United Kingdom Ambassador to Kuwait Frank Baker said that the British-Kuwaiti rela-tions are “strong and historic”, adding that selecting Dixon House as the place to exhibit the coronation of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II “is an excellent choice since it symbolizes the deep ties between the State of Kuwait and Great Britain.”

Baker’s statement came during the launch of the exhibition held and organized by the Kuwaiti Society for Stamp and Coins Collectors in coordination with

the National Council for Arts and Literature.Kuwaiti Society for Stamp and Coins Collectors

Deputy President Waleed Al-Sayf said that the soci-ety adopted the idea as it celebrates the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953 as Queen of Great Britain.

“The exhibition underscores the unique ties be-tween Kuwait and Britain. Dixon House was chosen because it was the house of the British representative between the years 1904 and 1915, which was also the post office then,” he remarked.

He added that the relations between the two coun-tries go all the way back to 1775 when the postal route was altered through Kuwait.

SARAJEVO: Kuwaiti lawmakers from the Friend-ship Parliamentary Committee underlined Sunday the importance of people’s role in pushing ahead and giv-ing impetus for relations between Kuwait, Bosnia and Herzegovina. In statements to Kuwait News Agency (KUNA), Kuwait’s Deputy Parliament Speaker Khalid Sultan Bin Essa, who heads the delegation, said that Bosnia and Herzegovina has great natural and hu-man potential that can be used by businesspeople to strengthen economic gains for both countries.

He added that the Kuwaiti lawmakers visit also seeks to buttress legislative cooperation and exchange

of democratic experiences, as well as to achieve greater convergence between the peoples of the two countries. Bin Essa stressed that there is a good opportunity to achieve integration in several areas between the two friendly countries in several domains, particularly tour-ism. The Kuwaiti MP also noted there are great invest-ment opportunities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, par-ticularly in the property sector.

In addition to MP Bin Essa, the delegation includes MPs Waleed Al-Tabtabaie Ahmad Al-Azmi, Bader Al-Dahoum, Adel Al-Damkhi, Mohammad Al-Hatlani and Mohammad Al-Mutairi. -KUNA

KUWAIT: The country’s National Guards Under-secretary Lieut. General Nasser Al-Daie discussed on Sunday ways of bolstering military cooperation with the United Kingdom during a meeting held with Lieut. General Simon Mayall, Middle East Adviser at the Min-istry of Defense.

The meeting would buttress means of bilateral

cooperation that would deep-seat Kuwaiti-British re-lations even further, Al-Daie said during the encoun-ter attended by British military attache Colonel John Ensor. The meeting was also attended by the Guards’ commander of military affairs Major General Waleed Al-Nuwayef and head of contracts and tenders sector lieut. colonel Abdullah Khalid Faisal. -KUNA

Cabinet to discuss Dow, interpellation

Queen Elizabeth coronation in Dixon House

Lawmakers explore cooperation opportunities with Bosnia

National Guards undersecretary discusses cooperation with British official

United Kingdom Ambassador to Kuwait Frank Baker (left) with Waleed Al-Sayf (right) during the launch of the exhibition held to celebrate the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II on Sunday, June 3, 2012. (Al Watan)

National Guards Un-dersecretary Lieut. General Nasser Al-Daie (right) with Lieut. General Simon Mayall during a meeting on Sunday, June 3, 2012. (KUNA)

Progress rate of Jaber Hospital

estimated at 32%: SafarMervat AbduldayemStaff Writer

KUWAIT: Minister of Public Works and Minister of State for Planning and Development Dr. Fadhil Safar said in a statement on Sunday that preparations to construct two bridges linking Al-Subiyah Creek and Bubyan Island are underway.

He explained that a 4.2 km long bridge will be designated for railway, while the other bridge will be a 1.42km for the main road. He noted that the main aim of building the two bridges is to link the Bubyan Island to Subiyah City through Subiyah Creek.

In his speech during the opening of the exhibition of the ministry’s cam-paign, in cooperation with Dar Al Watan for Press and Publication, Safar said that the ministry is implementing a number of major projects as part of the develop-ment plan, which includes several proj-ects such as the new terminal at Kuwait International Airport that will accom-modate 13 million passengers a year and is expected to be completed within four years. Safar said that the ministry organized the exhibition as part of its media campaign to present the projects to the citizens.

He added that the progress rate of Jaber Al-Ahmad Hospital is estimated at 32 percent, noting that no changes have been done to the project.

Safar said that expenditure rate in the last fiscal year reached 94 percent of the budget. He added that the Jaber Al-Ahmad Bridge project is being dis-cussed by the Cabinet, adding that the project is expected to be finalized by the Cabinet in near future.

Traffic at Kuwaiti ports paralyzed for second day of dust

KUWAIT: Operations continued to be on halt for the second day in a row at Kuwait’s two major seaports Shuwaikh and Shuaiba due to the extremely dusty weather conditions, said a port official on Sunday. Wind speeds exceeded 60 kmph, while horizontal sight was left below 300m, leaving port authorities with no choice but to halt all operations at the fa-cilities, Suliman Al-yahya, head of marine operations at Shuwaikh port told Kuwait News Agency (KUNA).

The cease continued for the second day running as the extreme dust storm in the country resumes. Five incoming ves-sels were on hold as well as another out-going, which was told not to move until weather conditions improve.

For his part, acting marine operations chief at Shuaiba port Tawfiq Shehab re-iterated his colleague’s statement on the state of the weather and sight. -KUNA

Kuwaiti, Jordanian officials meet in Amman, discuss

investmentsAMMAN: Kuwaiti investors and Jor-

danian officials met here late Saturday at the residence of the Kuwaiti Ambassador Dr. Hamad Al-Duaij, discussing means to bolster relations within the investment domain.

Jordanian Minister of Trade and In-dustry Shabib Ammari told Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) that the meeting focused on means to boost relations between Ku-waiti and Jordanian investors, addressing issues that would hinder cooperation.

On his part, Ambassador Al-Duaij hoped that the meeting would help find solutions towards issues facing Kuwaiti investments here.

Kuwaiti and Jordanian investors said that the meeting, held in a relaxing and casual atmosphere, was a step in the right direction that would help resolve any dif-ferences, pointing out that both countries have a lot to offer. -KUNA

Army chief-of-staff, US senior officer

discuss cooperationKUWAIT: Kuwait Army Chief-of-

Staff, Lieut-General Khalid Al-Jarrah Al-Sabah on Sunday met with Lieutenant General Thomas Bostick, US Army Chief of Engineers and Commanding General of the US Army Corps of Engineers, and discussed issues of mutual interests.

During the meeting, Lt.-Gen Staff Sheikh Khalid exchanged friendly talks with Bostick, who is currently visiting the country along with an accompanied delegation, as well as discussing impor-tant joint issues, particularly regarding military aspects and ways of enhancing them. -KUNA

FM warns against ‘extreme dangers’ of situation in Syria

WORLD mondAY, June 4, 2012

ALWATAN DAILY

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CAIRO: Hundreds of egyptians occupied Cairo’s Tahrir Square on Sunday after a night of rage as the state prosecutor said he would appeal sentences handed down to Hosni mubarak and his security chiefs.

A judge sentenced mubarak, 84, and his in-terior minister Habib al-Adly to life in prison on Saturday for involvement in the killing of hundreds of protesters during the uprising that ousted them from power last year.

mubarak was cleared of graft charges, six po-lice chiefs were acquitted, and mubarak’s sons Alaa and Gamal had corruption charges against them dropped on a technicality, prompting pro-testers to take to the streets in Cairo, Alexandria and other egyptian cities.

The state prosecutor’s office said he had ordered “the start of the appeals procedure” against sentences in the trial, but did not clarify whether it would appeal all the verdicts or just the acquittals. mubarak’s defense has also said it would appeal. Around 20,000 people took to Cairo’s iconic Tahrir Square on Saturday after the verdicts were issued. Some of the demon-strators slept in tents or out in the open over-night on the vast intersection, epicenter of the 18-day revolt that forced mubarak to resign on February 11 last year.

A tearful mubarak, who enjoyed near abso-lute power for three decades, was flown by he-licopter to Tora prison on Cairo’s outskirts after the verdict but then refused to leave the aircraft. A security official said mubarak “suffered from a surprise health crisis” but was finally convinced to go to his cell.

Chants of “Void, void” and “The people want the judiciary purged” erupted after the sentencing. There were similar protest rallies in Alexandria, on the mediterranean coast, and other parts of egypt, where many were in shock at the police chiefs’ acquittal. Rights groups also slammed the verdict. mubarak’s sentence “is a significant step towards combating long-stand-ing impunity in egypt” but the security chiefs’ acquittal “leaves many still waiting for full jus-tice,” Amnesty International said.

meanwhile, egypt’s presidential candidate and former Hosni mubarak premier, Ahmed Shafiq, on Sunday tried to establish his demo-

cratic credentials and said his muslim Brother-hood rival would bring back the “dark ages”.

Shafiq urged egyptians “to choose for egypt a president who will make it a country for all, not a state for one faction.”

The ex-air force commander, who will face the Brotherhood’s mohammed mursi in a presi-dential run-off later this month, said egypt un-der his leadership would respect human rights.

“no one will be detained for their opinion... Security services will be committed to the law and to human rights standards,” Shafiq told a news conference.

“I represent a secular state... the Brother-hood represents a sectarian state.”

“I represent progress and light, they rep-resent backwardness and darkness,” he said. Shafiq said he would strive for a “modern, civil,

fair state” while the muslim Brotherhood will “take it to the dark ages.”

Shafiq gained support as a candidate in the country’s first post-revolt presidential election thanks to a strong law-and-order campaign in a country where many crave stability. But Shafiq, who served as the last prime minister under ousted president mubarak, is reviled by activists who spearheaded the 2011 revolt. -AFP

Protests sweep Egypt, prosecutor to appeal sentences

Egyptian protesters gather in Cairo’s landmark Tahrir Square on June 3, 2012. Hundreds of demonstrators are occupying Tahrir Square after a court sentenced ousted president Hosni Mubarak and his interior minister Habib Al-Adly to life in prison but acquitted six security chiefs in the deaths of protesters last year. (AFP)

Reviving the revolution!

We apologize to all the families and relatives of martyrs who sacrificed themselves during the great egyptian revolution and we feel sorry for losing such great youths who sacrificed for defending our rights and freedom.

We feel sorry for the laws that acquitted the per-sons who killed them due to the lack of evidence! In any case, we might find some positive points in the sentence that quitted Alaa and Gamal - the sons of mubarak - as well as the assistants of the former minister of interior.

The positive points of the historic sentence in-clude reviving the dying revolution and we hope politicians will understand this lesson. Some people took to the streets to reject the acquittal of the sons of the former presidents and assistants of the interior minister, while others headed to the posters of the presidential candidate Shafiq to tear them down and express their wrath.

other people showed a different stance, planning to avoid committing more mistake which might lead to replicating the former regime, especially when the followers of the former regime gained a substantial morale boost from the recent sentence which acquit-ted the sons of mubarak in addition to other icons of the former regime.

hossam@alwatan.com.kwTwitter:@hossamfathy66

By Hossam FathiStaff Writer

West talks of nuclear Iran to

hide own problems, says Khamenei

DUBAI: Iran’s ruling cleric, Ayatollah Ali Khame-nei, on Sunday accused the united States and its al-lies of lying about the threat of a nuclear Iran to cover up their own problems, state television reported.

In a televised address marking the 23rd anniver-sary of the death of Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, Khamenei also warned Israel against any attack on Iran, saying it would receive a “thunderous blow”.

Khamenei - who has total command over Iran’s nuclear policy - has publicly forbidden the develop-ment of nuclear weapons, but Western nations sus-pect that Tehran is developing in isolation each of the components required for an atomic bomb capability.

“What Americans and Westerners do is idiotic. They magnify the nuclear issue to cover up their own problems,” Khamenei said, referring to the continu-ing economic gloom in the uS and europe.

“They are deceitfully using the term nuclear weapons,” he added.

Iran’s supreme leader said Israeli talk of military strikes showed it felt vulnerable after the fall of for-mer egyptian President Hosni mubarak, a uS and Western ally, last year. “If they take any calculated action, they will receive a thunderous blow.” on Sat-urday a senior military commander said Iranian mis-siles could reach all parts of Israel and threatened uS bases in the region if Iran was attacked.

Away from what is common-place fiery rhetoric in Tehran, Iran held negotiations with world powers in Baghdad on may 23-24 in an attempt to reach agreement over concerns about its nuclear program.

diplomats say Iranian negotiators were more forthcoming than in previous attempts to find a solu-tion, and believe Khamenei has given his negotiating team a wider hand to explore a deal as sanctions con-tinue to bite deep into the Iranian economy.

Iran maintains he will not give up its rights to es-tablish a peaceful nuclear program but has at times appeared flexible to curbing high-grade uranium en-richment that is the West’s most pressing concern.

Another round of talks has been scheduled for June 18-19 in moscow. -Reuters

UAE donates $136 mln urgent food aid to Yemen

DUBAI: The uAe on Sunday announced food aid worth 500 mil-lion dirhams ($136 million) for Yemen where aid groups say around 44 percent of the population do not have enough to eat, state news agency WAm reported. President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al-nahayan “has approved allocating 500 million dirhams to buy food and distribute it urgently to the brotherly Yemeni people,” WAm said. The move is to “alleviate the suffering and ensure the availability of basic needs” to enable Yemenis to achieve “better security, stability and prosperity,” said the statement. The food items include “rice, sugar, cooking oil, baby milk, canned food and other basic items of daily use,” it said.

Last month, seven aid groups warned diplomats that Yemen was on the brink of a “catastrophic food crisis.” At least 10 million people, some 44 percent of the population, do not get “enough food to eat”, they said, adding that one in three children was “severely malnour-ished.” on may 21, the european union unblocked an extra five million euros (6.2 million uS dollars) for Yemen to help fight mounting malnu-trition in what it said was a “desperate” food crisis affecting almost half of the population. The Commission has already mobilized 20 million euros ($24.9 million) in humanitarian aid for Yemen this year, directed at increasing and improving access to clean water, supporting feeding programs, developing cash-for-work schemes and providing cash grants for 200,000 people.

deadly anti-regime protests swept Yemen last year, finally forcing president Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down in February after 33 years in power. The political crisis has left the country’s economy in tatters and aggravated the dire security situation, with Al-Qaeda militants launch-ing a wave of attacks in the mostly lawless south since Saleh’s depar-ture. Yemen is the poorest country in the Arabian peninsula, with more than 40 percent of people living below the poverty line. -AFP

Netanyahu weighs options on disputed settler homes

JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime minister Benjamin netanya-hu sought on Sunday a way to implement a Supreme Court ruling to remove five settler buildings erected on private Pal-estinian land without alienating his political supporters.

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

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

Government officials said on Sunday netanyahu had proposed a plan that would avoid demolishing the homes. engineers would instead cut through their foundations and move them to another part of the settlement where no land ownership claim is pending in court. He also plans to build 10 homes in Beit el for each of the five apartment buildings that is moved, the officials said, in an apparent attempt to appease the Jewish families and their supporters. Palestin-ians fear Israeli settlements, built on land Israel captured in a 1967 war, will deny them a viable state. The un World Court considers the settlements illegal but Israel, citing historical and Biblical links to the territory, disputes this.

Before making a final decision on his plan, netanyahu has asked Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein to advise whether it would hold up to court challenges, the officials said. The prospect of forcing settlers from their homes has turned into a political minefield for netanyahu, who heads the right-wing Likud party and has long banked on the sup-port of settlers and their backers. But netanyahu would also likely face a public outcry should he be seen as defying the Supreme Court, which many Israelis regard as an important independent watchdog over the government. -Reuters

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

Ban said he had “taken note” of Arab League calls for more peace monitors on the ground in Syria and “setting a certain time limit” for implementing international envoy Kofi Annan’s six-point Syria peace plan.

“All these are very important recommendations and I hope that these will be discussed by the Security Council members,” he said, adding that the un and oIC will “do all what we can in close coordination...to support (An-nan’s) efforts.”

Qatari Prime minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim Al-Thani, who heads the Arab League Syria committee said on Saturday that it was “unacceptable that massacres and bloodshed continue while (Annan’s) mission is ongoing indefinitely.”

Speaking during a meeting attended by Annan in doha, he said the Arab League “demand the un Security Council refer (the peace plan) to Chapter VII so that the international community could assume responsibilities.” Chapter VII outlines action the Security Council might take, including military force, in response to threats to in-ternational peace, breaches of the peace and acts of ag-gression.

meanwhile, Syrian troops and rebels clashed on Sun-day in the countryside of damascus province and near the northern city of Aleppo, the Syrian observatory for Hu-man Rights reported. opposition fighters attacked regime forces overnight at a checkpoint in damascus province near the border with Lebanon, the Britain-based watch-dog said.

And in Aleppo, violent clashes broke out between the army and rebel forces in at least two villages, the moni-toring group reported, without reporting casualties. But a

civilian was killed in shelling of Antareb, a town in Aleppo province near Idlib where rebel forces are concentrated. Another civilian was killed in bombing of Kafr Sita town in the central province of Hama.

In douma, near the capital, activist and doctor Adnan Wehbeh was shot dead in front of his clinic, the observa-tory said, blaming security forces for what it said was an assassination.

The observatory also reported that a convoy of 45 tanks and armored vehicles transporting soldiers was seen heading east on the Palmyra-deir el-Zor road.

In the northwest province of Ar-Raqqah, hundreds of people took part on Sunday in the funeral of a man killed the previous day in bombardment of the town of Tabka, according to the group.

And at a funeral in damascus province, it said, thou-sands of mourners chanted anti-regime slogans at the fu-neral of a man killed by sniper fire in the town of Irbin.

on Saturday, violence in Syria killed 89 people, in-cluding 57 soldiers, the largest number of casualties the military has suffered in a single day since an uprising be-gan in march 2011, the watchdog said.

The observatory’s head Rami Abdel-Rahman ex-plained that regular troops were fighting in unfamiliar ter-ritory.

“What exacerbates those losses is that the army is fighting locals of those towns and villages, whether mili-tary defectors or civilians who took up arms against the regime, who know the area inside out and enjoy public support.”

The observatory says as many as 2,400 of the more than 13,500 people killed in Syria since the uprising erupt-ed in march 2011 have died since a un-backed ceasefire began on April 12. -AFP

Al-Assad dismisses Houla massacre accusations

TRIPOLI, Lebanon: Lebanese troops deployed in the city of Tripoli on Sunday after 15 people were killed in clashes be-tween supporters and opponents of Syr-ian President Bashar Al-Assad, local med-ics said, the deadliest fighting in Lebanon since Syria’s uprising began.

Residents said relative calm had re-turned to the mediterranean city since the soldiers took up positions around the city at around 7 a.m. (0400 GmT), after gunmen exchanged heavy machinegun fire and rocket-propelled grenades.

Two people wounded in the fighting died on Sunday, adding to the 13 killed on Saturday. occasional gunfire could still be heard but was less intense than earlier exchanges.

Prime minister najib mikati and oth-er local politicians held a crisis meeting in Tripoli at the weekend and instructed se-curity forces to use an “iron fist” to quell the violence. The mainly Sunni muslim protests against Assad have polarized Tripoli, where a small community of Ala-wites - from the same offshoot of Shiite Islam as Assad - have frequently clashed with majority Sunni muslims who sup-port the uprising.

Gunmen from the Jebel mohsen dis-trict, home to Tripoli’s Alawites, have fought intermittent skirmishes over re-cent weeks with Sunni muslim fighters in the Bab Al-Tabbaneh area.

The latest clashes began after mid-night on Friday and continued through-

out Saturday until the army deployment.The death toll was the highest in a sin-

gle day in Tripoli, reflecting the increasing threat to stability in Lebanon caused by tensions over neighboring Syria.

Sunni muslim fighters have also fought street battles in the capital Bei-rut, and the kidnapping last month of 11 Lebanese Shiites in Syria has further fu-elled tensions. Residents said those killed in Tripoli included civilians caught in the crossfire and that a Lebanese soldier was among dozens who were wounded, at least 10 of them seriously.

The Lebanese national news Agency said there was “shelling across both areas heard every five minutes, and snipers tar-geting civilians” on Saturday. -Reuters

Lebanese army deploys in Tripoli after 15 killed

Lebanese army armored vehicles patrol in Tripoli’s Sunni neighborhood of Bab Al-Tabbaneh on June 3, 2012. (AFP)

Palestinians threaten to relaunch prisoner hunger strike

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

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

Administrative detention is a procedure that allows suspects to be held without charge for renewable periods of up to six months. But Qaraqaa said Israel was not keeping its end of the deal.

“Israel has begun to violate the deal it signed with the prisoners, and within ten days after announcing the end of the strike, Israel renewed administrative detention orders for approximately 30 pris-oners,” Qaraqaa charged.

“Israel wants to punish the prisoners for striking with these re-newed orders,” he said. Qaraqaa also said he doubted Israel would allow the Gaza visits it had committed to.

“So far, we don’t know if Israel will even allow families of prison-ers from Gaza to visit their imprisoned relatives,” he said. An Israeli defense official who wished to remain unnamed rejected Qaraqaa’s claims. “As of the end of last week, three administrative detention orders were renewed,” the official told AFP.

Regarding the visits from Gaza, the official said that Israel was indeed working toward enabling visits, but it was a process that “would take some time” as it “involves many different bodies.”

Qaraqaa also addressed the issue of two prisoners, mahmud Sar-sak and Akram Rikhawi, who have been on extended hunger strikes. He said they “were on the verge of a coma and have a low heart rate.” Israel Prison Service spokeswoman Sivan Weizman said that the two were under medical supervision in the infirmary in Ramle prison near Tel Aviv, and if the need arose, would be transferred to a civilian hospital for further care. -AFP

OPINION / VIEWSMONDAY, JUNE 4, 2012

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In Africa, a militant group’s growing appeal

Would I lie to you? The Need for Independent Certification

William MacleanNoor KhamisMohamed AhmedReuters

When Abdullahi slipped across the Kenya-Somali border to join the fighters of Islamist militant group Al- Shabaab in 2009, the livestock herder from

northern Kenya found himself among recruits from around the globe. There were ethnic Somalis who had grown up in Australia, Britain, France and the United States. But there was also a large number of fellow Kenyans in the group’s ranks. They included, unexpectedly, dozens of young men who did not share his Somali ancestry or language but came instead from the green, tropical heartland of Kenya where Christianity is the dominant religion.

Washington and London have long worried the Somali group aimed to expand its influence in Africa. That suspicion was confirmed last July when a United Nations investigation found Al-Shabaab had created extensive funding, recruit-ing and training networks in Kenya. Much remains unclear about the strength of the group’s following outside Somalia. Abdullahi’s story about his time in Al-Shabaab couldn’t be independently verified.

Going OverPinning down the number of non-Somalis who have

joined Al-Shabaab is difficult. Boniface Mwaniki, head of Kenya’s Anti-Terrorist Police Unit, said it was impossible to compile accurate figures because the Kenyan-Somali border is porous and long. The militant group is also using its con-nections and social media to inspire the creation of loose networks of sympathizers in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. Kenya’s Security Minister George Saitoti worries that this support could allow Al-Shabaab to threaten East Africa, and especially Kenya, the region’s economic hub.

Non-Somali East Africans have taken part in Al-Qaeda

attacks before, including the 1998 bombings of the US em-bassies in Kenya and Tanzania and the suicide bomb attack on an Israeli-owned hotel near Mombasa in 2002. In Sep-tember last year Kampala’s High Court jailed two Ugan-dans on charges connected to the attack. Concern over Al-Shabaab’s growing East African contingent was one of the motives for Kenya’s decision to send troops into Somalia last October.

Elders Lose ControlThe pull of militancy is placing new strains on the re-

gion’s Muslim communities, say elders, clerics and young-er Muslims. “The older generation has lost control of the youngsters. They’ve lost it completely,” said Kimathi, who was born a Christian in Nyeri in Kenya’s central highlands and converted to Islam in his mid-30s. But Kenya’s police have made life harder for the group’s recruiters.

Back in April 2009, when Abdullahi joined Al-Shabaab, it was possible for recruiters to carry out indoctrination ses-sions in a mosque. Abdullahi met Al-Shabaab clerics from Somalia when they came to preach in his home town of Mandera. “It was after afternoon prayers. We went to a cor-ner of the mosque where we could talk quietly,” he said. “They said Islam was under attack, and they mentioned Ethiopia. They told us the Ethiopians and other Christians were attacking Islam and they wanted to wash Islam out of the country.

You Want To AttackAl-Shabaab may have lost Abdullahi, but there are oth-

ers ready to take his place, many of them not ethnic Soma-lis. In the port city of Mombasa on Kenya’s Indian Ocean Coast, sermons by fiery clerics stoke anti-Western senti-ment. Suleiman Adam, a 25-year-old mobile-phone card salesman, says his radicalization began in 2002 when he en-rolled in an Islamic boarding school north of the city. Adam, whose forefathers came from Sudan, is the son of a truck driver who could not afford to send his son to a regular high school.

But even in his radical days Adam was not as extreme as some of his classmates, who included non-Somali Kenyans like him. “There are some... who are 50-50. We felt it’s not a jihad, going to explode yourself, that’s not a jihad. It wasn’t making sense. But there were those who were 100 percent. They believed in that.” That faith is exploited by unscrupu-lous radical preachers, say community leaders like Imam Mustafa Bakari.

The Salafi InfluenceFinancial considerations also play in Kenya’s capital

Nairobi. It’s not hard to find Al-Shabaab sympathizers in the Eastleigh district, which teems with ethnic Somalis. But over the past few years the group’s influence has extended to other areas, including Majengo, a huddle of streets be-side the downtown area. One of the most vocal of its sup-

port bases is a group called the Muslim Youth Centre, once headed by radical preacher Ahmed Iman Ali, who now lives in Somalia.

Omar and many of his congregation are Salafis, follow-ers of an ultra-conservative brand of Islam that has its roots in Saudi Arabia. Salafis are in the minority among Kenya’s 4.3 million Muslims, but are beginning to flex their muscles. Older, non-Salafi Muslims in Majengo view Omar’s congre-gation with suspicion, in part because Omar’s followers have recently asserted control over the district’s main mosque, the Pumwani Riyadh, one of Nairobi’s oldest. Imam Yahya Hussein, deputy imam of Pumwani, insists his followers will retake control of the mosque once current renovations are finished.

Police ProblemsIt doesn’t help that the police response to radicalism is

often heavy-handed and corrupt, community activists say. Diplomats say that poor Muslim coastal areas of East Africa such as Mombasa or Tanzania’s Zanzibar islands are partic-ularly vulnerable. It’s “not far-fetched at all” to suggest that political stability on the East Africa coast could be threat-ened, a Western official said.

Kimathi, the Kenyan human-rights activist, also blames counter-terrorist activities by Western and African forces. He spent almost a year in detention, much of it in solitary confinement, on suspicion of involvement in the Kampala bombings.

He had visited Uganda to advise several Kenyans trans-ferred there by Kenyan authorities after they had been picked up for the attacks. The prosecutor dropped murder and terrorism charges against him in September 2011 and released him.

* William Maclean, Noor Khamis and Mohamed Ahmed are Reuters correspondents. The views expressed here are their own.

Nader Henein Security Advisor, RIM EMEA

Advisors, evangelists or consultants. Companies have long tried to repackage the way they deliver their message on security so that it doesn’t sound like a

sales pitch. But the simple fact is that there is no reason why you should gamble the security and future of your organiza-tion on the promises of an employee tasked with portraying their product in the best possible light. I myself work within the Advisory Division of the BlackBerry Security Group and before speaking at an event or to a customer I make it a point of saying “please don’t take my word for it - due diligence is key.”

Let’s look at the typical scenario, Mr. John Doe shows up at the office of your CTO, on time, wearing a freshly pressed suit with a stack of crisp business cards. His title

boasts impressive accolades such as “Senior Architect” and “CIISP”, he’s an older gentleman who demands respect and exudes wisdom, still is there any reason to trust him when it comes to your organization’s security?

Over the better part of the past decade we have worked very hard to build a product at the forefront of mobile se-curity. We have dedicated hundreds of thousands of man-hours in architecture, development and testing, the result of which is a solution widely regarded as the “Gold Standard” of mobile security.

But how can clients who are concerned about the security of their network and their data differentiate the truth in the previous paragraph from a well-crafted marketing message? Quite simply, they shouldn’t have to. Trust should never enter into the equation and therein lays the need for independent third-party accreditation. Traditionally, this is conducted by well resourced, government certified labs to thoroughly test

claims made by vendors about their products.Within the BlackBerry Security Group we have a grow-

ing team dedicated to certification, they work tirelessly with labs in Canada, the US, the UK, Germany, China and many more on various government and industry certifications to effectively remove the need for “TRUST” from the equa-tion. This is not a one-off process: we have to certify all ma-jor versions of our devices and sever software so that the entire lifecycle of the data as it travels from your network to the mobile device and back is covered. The process of cer-tification is an expensive and lengthy process that requires, amongst other things, code reviews, penetration testing and a close working relationship with these certification labs, which are more often than not, part of the sponsoring gov-ernment.

So how does this affect you and the decisions you make? First of all, the next time Mr. John Doe comes to visit and

makes a claim about the security provided by his product, perhaps you can ask him who has certified these claims and when was the last time they did an independent code re-view, or if the current version is covered? The lack of certifi-cation is quite telling as well, asking if they had started but not completed the process of certifying their product may indicate an undisclosed security flaw.

Secondly, only a handful of labs across the globe have the capacity and expertise to certify a complex product with millions of lines of code, so why try to do it in-house? Make a policy that “prefers” products that have passed certain in-ternationally accepted certifications, this way you and your company can leverage a substantial amount of work to ul-timately ensure you maintain a consistent security posture throughout the lifecycle of your data, from server, to laptop, to smartphone to USB drive and beyond that on private clouds.

The pull of militancy is placing new strains on the region’s Muslim communities, say elders, clerics and younger Muslims.

Smart TaxesHans EichelYannis PalaiokrassasProject Syndicate

Governments throughout the European Union and around the world confront a seeming Catch-22: the millstone of na-

tional debt around their necks has required them to reduce deficits through spending cuts and tax increases. But these are impeding the consumer spending needed to boost economic activity and kick-start growth. As the debate shifts from austerity towards measures aimed at stimulating growth, smarter taxation will be essential to get-ting the balance right.

When governments think about the difficult task of raising taxes, they usually think about income tax, business taxes, and value-added tax (VAT). But there are other taxes that can raise significant amounts of revenue with a much less negative impact on the economy. These are the taxes that governments already levy on electric-ity and fossil fuels.

Such taxes play a crucial role in cutting the carbon emissions that cause climate change. But recent research shows that they can also play a useful role in raising government revenue at little cost in terms of economic growth. Euro for euro, dollar for dollar, yen for yen: energy and carbon taxes have a lower negative impact on a nation’s economy, consumption, and jobs than income tax and VAT. For example, an increase in direct taxes, such as income tax, can reduce consumption by twice as much as energy and carbon taxes that raise the same amount of revenue.

Maintaining consumption at as high a level as possible is vital to reviving economic activity, which means that freeing money for consumers to spend is just as important. Energy and carbon taxes can raise revenue while leaving the econo-my in a stronger state to sustain a recovery. Con-ventional taxes raise revenue, but pose a much greater risk of depressing growth in the process.

This is not the only reason why looking more closely at energy and carbon taxes makes sense. The current framework for energy taxation, par-ticularly in Europe, is not sustainable. Tax rates

on different fuels vary by more than 50 percent across the EU, causing major distortions in the single market. Creating a level playing field on energy taxation in the EU would harmonize eco-nomic incentives, eliminate gas-tank tourism by drivers crossing borders for lower prices, and improve the business climate in all of Europe’s economies.

Rising energy bills, driven by the cost of fos-sil fuels, are a massive political issue in many countries in Europe and elsewhere, including the United States, where consumer energy prices have become a major issue in the run-up to this year’s presidential election. But, relative to other forms of taxation, energy taxation tends to ben-efit consumers overall. The gains from avoiding the negative impact of conventional taxes work across the economy, particularly as the least well-off maintain a higher level of disposable house-hold income. Most energy and carbon taxes are levied by national governments. But in Europe there is another option for raising revenues: the European Union Emission Trading Scheme (ETS). In terms of the effect on GDP and jobs, the cost of increasing revenue from this source would be as much as one-third less than that of raising the same amount via income taxes or VAT.

Given Europe’s fiscal deficits and the eco-nomic impact of reducing them, that is a huge po-tential prize. But, first, the issues depressing the carbon price must be addressed. Taking the mas-sive over-allocation of carbon-emission permits out of the ETS will be vital. Finance ministers ev-erywhere need to think more imaginatively about their fiscal options. Energy and carbon taxes can produce less economic pain and more gain than conventional taxes can. Europe needs fiscal con-solidation, reductions in carbon emissions, and a strategy for economic growth. Greater reliance should be placed on energy taxes and an effective ETS to deliver all three.

* Hans Eichel is a former German finance minister.

* Yannis Palaiokrassas, a former Greek fi-nance minister, was European Commissioner for the Environment and Fisheries.

Ali Farzat

NEWS IN BRIEF

US drone strike kills10 in northwest PakistanWANA: The second US drone attack in as many days killed 10 people in northwest Pakistan on Sunday, intelligence officials said, an incident likely to raise tensions in the standoff between Washington and Islamabad over NATO supply routes to Afghanistan. The remotely-piloted air-craft fired four missiles at a suspected Is-lamist militant hideout in the Birmal area of the South Waziristan tribal region near the Afghanistan border, officials said. A drone strike in the same area killed two suspected militants on Saturday. -Reuters

China cracks downon Tiananmen anniversaryBEIJING: Police in China beat and de-tained political activists marking the 23rd anniversary of the brutal crackdown of the Tiananmen democracy protests on Sunday, rights campaigners said. Offi-cers used violence against rights defend-ers in the southeast Fujian province and detained them, while more than 30 peti-tioners were held in Beijing and forced to return to their home province, the activ-ists reported. “Around 20 rights defend-ers were stopped by police and beaten this morning on May First Square,” Shi Liping, the wife of activist Lin Bingxing, told AFP by phone from Fuzhou, capital of Fujian province. -AFP

Aid workerssaved after death threatKABUL: NATO and Afghan forces launched a daring operation to rescue two female foreign aid workers and their two Afghan colleagues after learning the Tali-ban planned to kill one of the hostages, an intelligence official said Sunday. The troops carried out the successful mission before dawn Saturday, swooping in on he-licopters to pluck the aid workers from a cave in a mountainous area of northern Badakhshan province. They killed the eight militants holding them captive as well, said Afghan intelligence spokesman Shafiqullah Tahiri. The militants hoped killing one of the hostages would pressure negotiators to accept their demands of a 1 million US dollar ransom and the release of five of their colleagues imprisoned in Kabul, said Tahiri. -AP

Ghanaian plane crash kills at least 10 people

US tries not to make waves with ‘Pacific Pivot’

Japan PM to reshuffle cabinet on MondayTOKYO: Japan’s Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda said

he will reshuffle his cabinet on Monday in an attempt to secure opposition support for passing legislation to in-crease a tax on sales.

Defense Minister Naoki Tanaka and Transport, Land and Infrastructure Minister Takeshi Maeda are widely ex-pected to lose their jobs.

The leading opposition Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has called for both to be dismissed after they were censured by the upper house in April for a series of gaffes and for trying to influence a local election respectively.

Farm Minister Michihiko Kano may also be replaced due to his alleged role in passing classified documents to a repatriated Chinese diplomat, whom police sus-pect of having engaged in spying activities, local media said.

The prime minister told reporters Sunday about his plan for a cabinet reshuffle after failing to convince Ichiro Ozawa, leader of the largest intraparty group of Noda’s

Democratic Party, of his plan to hike the sales tax.“I told (Ozawa) that I will reshuffle the cabinet to-

morrow,” he said.Noda met Ozawa on Sunday, for the second time in a

week, to enlist support in enacting the tax bill during the current parliamentary session.

But Ozawa, who has said economic growth should come before a tax hike, later told reporters he was “op-posed to” Noda’s position, making it inevitable the pre-mier will turn to the leading opposition for support.

Noda has already told the secretary-general of his ruling Democratic Party of Japan to coordinate with the LDP so that the tax bill will be presented to a lower house vote before the session ends on June 21, local me-dia reported.

By passing the bill, Noda hopes to increase the cur-rent five percent sales tax rate in two stages - to eight per-cent in April 2014 and to 10 percent in October 2015 - to rein in the public debt of the rapidly ageing nation. -AFP

Panetta arrives at former American base in Vietnam

SINGAPORE: As the United States moves to bolster its military position in Asia, it faces severe budget cuts from Congress, an increas-ingly powerful rival in China and a hornet’s nest of regional political sensitivities.

The shift in US policy puts Asia and the Pa-cific front-and-center of its strategic priorities and is driven by concerns that China has raced ahead in the world’s most economically dy-namic region while the US was tied up fighting its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But in a region rife with disputes and increasingly beholden to China’s economic engine, the Pentagon is being careful its “pivot to the Pacific” doesn’t create too many waves.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who is spearheading the US effort to sell the new strategy in Asia, told regional defense leaders at a major security conference in Singapore that it is only natural for the Asia-Pacific to be in

the spotlight because it is home to some of the world’s biggest populations and militaries.

Before moving on to Vietnam and India, Pa-netta said Washington will “of necessity” rebal-ance toward the Asia-Pacific region and vowed 60 percent of the Navy’s fleet will be deployed to the Pacific by 2020.

He said the US presence will be more ag-ile, flexible and high-tech. Troops may increase overall, but no major influx is expected. Long-term allies such as Japan, Australia and South Korea strongly support a robust US presence and see the shift as a welcome development.

“The US has made the Asia-Pacific its top priority to reflect the fact that the world eco-nomic center of gravity now resides in this re-gion,” said Carlyle Thayer, a professor at the University of New South Wales, in Australia.

But others worry the US could try to isolate China, at the rest of Asia’s expense.

“With their enormous economic potentials, it is natural that many countries want to build good relations with both China and the United States,” Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said at the three-day Singapore

meeting, which ended Sunday. “Asia is certain-ly big enough for all powers - established and emerging.”

US officials stress they are not seeking new permanent facilities on foreign shores and in-stead are looking at a slew of less-threatening and less-expensive deals to rotate troops into existing bases throughout the region, step up joint military maneuvers and push for access to key ports.

-Indonesia, which had only limited military relations with Washington in the 1990s because of US human rights concerns, is now looking to buy a broad range of American hardware and is joining in joint maneuvers.

The Philippines, which kicked US forces bases off their soil in 1992, is actively courting increased US military support, including allow-ing more troops in on a rotational basis.

Washington is already testing out that ap-proach in Australia, which has agreed to allow up to 2,500 Marines to deploy to the northern city of Darwin.

The Marines will use Australian facilities, not a new US base, and the plan has met with

little opposition. The first detachment of Ma-rines arrived in April.

Most of the troops going to Darwin were freed up by another deal aimed at placating a key ally - an agreement with Tokyo this year to move about 9,000 Marines off of the island of Okinawa.

Meanwhile, Panetta has arrived at a former US air and naval base at Cam Ranh Bay, Viet-nam, becoming the most senior American of-ficial to go there since the war ended.

Panetta says he hopes to encourage efforts with Vietnam to locate and identify more of the US war dead who are still missing.

He plans to visit the USNS Richard E. Byrd, a cargo ship operated by the Navy’s Military Sealift Command. The ship has a largely civil-ian crew and is used to move military supplies to US forces around the world.

The US military’s Joint POW/MIA Account-ing Command has six recovery teams and two investigative teams in Vietnam searching for troop remains. There are about 1,200 unac-counted for service members believed to be in Vietnam. -AP

ACCRA: A cargo plane has crashed while attempting to land at an airport in Ghana’s capital, slamming into cars and a bus loaded with passengers on a nearby street and killing at least 10 people, of-ficials said.

The crash on Saturday night happened in Accra near the Kotoka International Airport, which sits near newly built high-rise buildings, hotels and the country’s defense ministry.

Al Jazeera’s Yvonne Ndege said that witnesses had described the aircraft smashing through the airport perimeter fence before hitting the bus.

At least 10 people were killed in the crash, all in vehicles on the road struck by the plane, said Billy Anaglate, a spokes-man for the Ghana Fire Service.

Ambulances took the injured to near-by hospitals.

The Boeing 727-200 was operated by Nigerian cargo airline Allied Air, Doreen Owusu Fianko, managing director of Gha-na Airport Company, told reporters.

“The aircraft collided with a mini

Mercedes van resulting in 10 confirmed fatalities,” she said, adding that all four crew of the aircraft had survived the ac-cident.

The plane had taken off from Lagos, Nigeria, but failed to stop at the end of the runway after it touched down at Ac-cra’s Kotoka airport just after 19:00 GMT, she said.

The area is near to El-Wak Sports Sta-dium and Hajj Village, where Muslims in the country stay before they journey to Mecca.

Local television showed images of the plane lying across a road with its tail dam-aged as the flight crew jumped off and re-ceived help from emergency responders.

Ghana, a nation of more than 25 mil-lion in West Africa, has not had a major airplane crash in recent years.

The last air emergency the country had was in June 2006, when a TAAG Lin-has Aereas De Angola flight to Sao Tome hit birds during takeoff. The plane landed safely and none of the 28 people onboard were injured. -AFP

WORLD MONDAY, JUNE 4, 2012

ALWATAN DAILY

5

Emergency vehicles are seen at the site where a Boeing 727 cargo plane crashed into a bus, near Kotoka International Airport in Accra, Ghana, June 2. (AP)

Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda speaks to reporters after meeting with ruling party legislator Ichiro Ozawa, who opposes a proposed tax increase, June 3, in Tokyo. (AFP)

Hun Sen’s party poised to win

Cambodia electionsPHNOM PENH: Prime Minister Hun Sen’s ruling

party was expected to win Cambodia’s local elections Sunday in a vote that monitors say is tainted by vote buying and other irregularities.

The elections for local governing councils across the country are viewed as the key indicator of public opinion ahead of general elections in 2013.

Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party has ruled Cam-bodia for nearly three decades. It has strong rural sup-port and overwhelmingly won both previous local elec-tions in 2002 and 2007.

Ten political parties were vying for seats, but none have the means to compete with Hun Sen’s party, said Koul Panha, executive director of election monitoring group Comfrel.

“The ruling party has used state property and civil servants to help campaign for the sake of its own par-ty interests,” he said, adding that there have also been widespread reports of vote buying and intimidation to secure support.

King Norodom Sihamoni issued a statement ahead of the election urging voters not to bow to election-re-lated intimidation.

“I publicly call on compatriots, brothers and sisters, children, nieces and nephews not to fear oppression, intimidation or threats from any individual or political party,” the constitutional monarch said in a statement issued in March.

The country’s 9.2 million voters are eligible to choose councils to administer Cambodia’s 1,633 communes and urban sub-districts known as sangkats.

In the 2007 commune elections, the Cambodian People’s Party won 1,592 commune chief out of 1,633 communes. It was followed by the main opposition Sam Rainsy Party with 28 communes and royalist Funcinpec Party, which won two communes. -AP

Suu Kyi returns to Myanmar after

historic tripNAYPYIDAW: Myanmar op-

position leader Aung San Suu Kyi has returned to her homeland af-ter testing the boundaries of the country’s political reform with her first foreign trip in over two decades. Suu Kyi said her visit to Thailand was “very satisfactory” as she strode through Yangon air-port flanked by local journalists and photographers after being on Sunday readmitted to Myanmar. The democracy champion had previously refused to leave the country, even to visit her dying husband, because of fears the for-mer junta would never allow her to return. -AFP

mondAY, june 4, 2012

BUSINESS

KSE price index down 71.86 points, largest drop in 10 monthsCompiled by Al Watan Daily

KUWAIT: Kuwait’s index experiences its largest drop in 10 months as global market declines and a downbeat out-look for the local economy spur investors to sell.

Price index decreased 71.86 points rising to the level of 6,121.96 points, weighted index down 3.8 points declining to 400.9 and the KSX index put on 9.4 points reaching 960 points.

Number of trades amounted to 3,594, value of traded stocks 18,452,509.488 Kuwaiti dinars and volume of ex-changed shares 186,060,558

Telecoms operator Zain drops 1.4 percent and Islamic lender Kuwait Finance House (KFH) dips 1.3 percent, with both stocks now trading at around 2009 levels.

“In Kuwait, not much is happening economically and that is weighing on the market,” says Shahid Hameed, Glob-al Investment House head of asset management for the Gulf region.

“First-quarter corporate results were not strong. The main index is an all-price index so it doesn’t really show what has happened to bluechip stocks.”

Three main indices of the national bourse were red upon closing Sunday’s session.

Trading started at Kuwait Stock Exchange (KSE) with an all-red board on Sunday, with the price index reading 6,092.8 points at 9:45, on a down of 101.02 points, the weighted index reading 397.75 points on a slip of 6.95 points, and the KSX 15 index reading 952.03 on a loss of 17.37 points.

Trades came to 994 transactions, worth KD 6,097,783.832, and 39,650,110 shares changed hands till that time.

It was all red on the sector indices board as well, with only the utilities and insurance sector indices showing no change since last closing.

Dollar gainsThe US dollar opened the week on a strong footing

against most of its counterparts and continued to gain dra-matically as concerns over global growth and risks emerging from the Euro zone debt crisis prompted risk aversion in the market. Additionally, the greenback continued its momen-

tum as economic data from the Euro area and the UK disap-pointed the market. However, on Friday, the greenback lost steam due to disappointing figures from the labor market, adding concerns over the US economy and fuelling the pos-

sibility of further easing from the FED.The euro opened at 1.2574 and reached a high of 1.2624

due to thin trading at the beginning of the week.Worries over Spain’s banking sector combined with

talks of a Greek exit added more pressure on the single cur-rency. The Euro dropped to a low of 1.2286 on Friday amid a disappointing US job report. The Euro then closed the week at 1.2337.

The Sterling Pound followed suit with its European counterpart, opening the week at 1.5690 and reaching a high of 1.5717 in early trading sessions. The Sterling contin-ued to lose momentum gradually following the deteriora-tion in sentiment in the market.

On Friday, the currency reached a low of 1.5265 amid figures that showed that the manufacturing sector is con-tracting at a faster-than-expected pace and closed the week at 1.5361.

The Japanese Yen was the sole gainer against the US Dollar last week. It started the week at 79.54 and continued to gain gradually towards Friday. The USDJPY dropped dra-matically after the release of the US job data to reach a low of 77.65. The JPY continued to trade in a volatile manner and closed the week at 78.04.

The Australian Dollar lost its footing against the green-back amid figures that showed that the Chinese manufac-turing sector is growing at a slower than expected rate. The Aussie reached a low of 0.9579 but quickly recouped some of its losses and closed at 0.9711.

On the commodities side, US crude oil dropped more than nine percent last week, reaching the lowest point since the beginning of the year at $82.56 a barrel, after a weak US jobs report, and the EU region’s jobless rate reaching a record high, signaling a deeper recession across the region. Oil closed the week at $83.23.

Gold rose 2.5 percent to break above $1,600 for the first time since May 10 on Friday, after weaker-than-expected US payrolls data fuelled expectations that the Federal Re-serve could unleash another round of monetary easing to boost growth.

Spain calls for new euro fiscal authorityMADRID: Spain, the latest combat zone in Europe’s long-running debt wars,

urged the euro zone to set up a new fiscal authority to manage the bloc’s finances and send a clear signal to markets that the single currency project is irreversible.

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said the authority would also go a long way to alleviating Spain’s woes which, along with the prospect of a Greek euro exit, have threatened to derail the single currency project.

It is not the first time a European leader has proposed creating such an author-ity but the problems and the size of Spain - a country deemed too big to fail - have prompted EU policymakers to hurriedly consider measures such as creating a fiscal and banking union ahead of a EU summit on June 28-29.

US Crude $83.26 $0.03

London Brent $98.63 $0.20

Kuwait Crude $96.18 $0.82

Information Courtesy: KAMCO

market watch

KUWAIT DUBAI QATAR OMAN ABU DHABI BAHRAIN EGYPT SAUDI

cUrreNcIeSUS DollarBuy 0.2799Sell 0.2802

EuroBuy 0.348Sell 0.3485

British PoundBuy 0.43

Sell 0.4305Japanese YenBuy 0.003587Sell 0.003593

Saudi RiyalBuy 0.0746Sell 0.0747

UAE DirhamBuy 0.07621Sell 0.07629

Qatari RiyalBuy 0.07697Sell 0.07688

Bahraini DinarBuy 0.7423Sell 0.74342

Indian RupeeBuy 0.005045Sell 0.005039

Philippine PesoBuy 0.006448Sell 0.006435

Prices in Kuwaiti fils as of June 3, 2012 Courtesy: KAMCO

OIL marketS

1.16 %6122

2.02%1442

1.00%8333

0.58%5721

0.58%2427

0.12%1138 1.00%

6748

1.3%4626

See Page 7

Sri Lankan workers chop fire wood at a store in Colombo on June 3, 2012. Sri Lanka recorded an impressive 8.3 percent growth rate last year, up from 8.0 percent in 2010, the first full year after troops defeated Tamil separatist rebels in May 2009 and declared an end to nearly 40 years of fighting. (AFP)

Group seekingto buy EFG Hermes to appeal to regulator

KIPCO announces new HR appointmentKUWAIT: The Kuwait Projects Company (KIPCO)

has announced in a press release on Sunday the ap-pointment of Khaled Al-Sharrad as Group Chief Hu-

man Resources and Administration Officer.Al-Sharrad was previously Senior Executive Vice

President, Head of Human Resources and Administra-tion Division at KIPCO Asset Management Company (KAMCO). Al-Sharrad took up his new position with KIPCO on June 1.

Samer Khanachet, KIPCO’s Group Chief Operat-ing Officer, said, “We are delighted that Khaled has joined us. This is the first time we have appointed a head of human resources and administration across the KIPCO Group to oversee our HR and administration activities. Khaled will bring his vast experience and ex-cellent management skills to bear on our organization and throughout the KIPCO Group.”

Al-Sharrad said, “I am very pleased to be joining KIPCO because its corporate culture focuses on people and the sustainability of economic and social goals. I am looking forward to my new position where I will as-sist group companies develop their organizational cul-ture to help employees to do their jobs even better”.

International Investment Bankannounces Q1 total income at $3.2 million

CAIRO: Shareholders of Egyptian investment bank EFG-Hermes voted on Saturday against a group of in-vestors seeking to buy the bank, but the investors will appeal to Egypt’s regulator to suspend the decision, the group targeting the bank said.

The group, called Planet IB, said it intended to offer 13.50 Egyptian pounds (2.23 US dollars) per share to buy the Cairo-based investment bank, Egypt’s biggest. Shares in EFG closed at 10.99 pounds on Thursday, the last day of Egypt’s trading week.

EFG shareholders voted to go ahead with an earlier plan to form a joint venture with Qatar’s QInvest that would give the Qatari firm control over EFG’s main business, Planet’s chairman, Mahmoud Abdel Latif, told Reuters.

Alongside Abdel Latif, until recently chairman of Cairo-based AlexBank, Planet’s investors include Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris and the son of the ruler of the Gulf emirate of Sharjah, Tariq bin Faisal Al-Qassimi.

Abdel Latif said the EFG board had railroaded re-jection of the offer through the meeting at a time when many of the shareholders were out of the room watch-ing the verdict being read in the trial of Egypt’s ousted leader, Hosni Mubarak.

“Around 50 percent were there, and these 50 per-cent were mostly people who were directed by the management to attend,” Abdel Latif said. Before the vote, “some of the 50 percent who were in the meeting went outside into the lobby of the hotel to watch TV and listen to the Mubarak verdict.”

Neither of EFG’s two chief executives was answer-ing the phones.

Planet was asking the regulator to halt the process and have another vote taken after shareholders were allowed to hear Planet IB’s offer, Abdel Latif said.

“I think that is fair to everybody,” he said.“Our legal argument is the process in the general

assembly was not really transparent and did not give people time to think, and that the board of directors directed the shareholders who attended to take a deci-sion against Planet IB’s offer.”

He said his group had sent a letter to the regula-tor and planned to meet with Egyptian Prime Minister Kamal Al-Ganzouri on Sunday to gain support for its buyout offer.

Planet had earlier lined up investors and then asked EFG to give it a short amount of time to perform due diligence on the bank before making a tender offer on the Egyptian stock exchange, Abdel-Latif said.

EFG’s market value has more than halved to less than 870 million US dollars since the national uprising that ousted Mabarak last year. The joint venture with QInvest would give the Qatari firm control over EFG’s main business.

Sawiris, one of Egypt’s richest men, built a global telecoms empire by venturing into frontier markets with strong growth potential.

Now 57, he has eased off day-to-day management of his empire after selling assets including Italian op-erator Wind and his most lucrative business, Algeria’s Djezzy, to Russia’s Vimpelcom in a deal worth $6 bil-lion.

EFG has securities brokerage, investment banking, asset management, research and private equity op-erations and a controlling interest in Lebanese lender Credit Libanais.

Egyptian share prices have tumbled since Muba-rak’s ouster, and many investors have been looking to snap up assets seen as undervalued.

The bank came under further pressure on Wednes-day, when its two chief executives, Hassan Heikal and Yasser El Mallawany, were referred to trial alongside Mubarak’s two sons as part of a probe into illegal share dealings. EFG said it would defend the two chief execu-tive officers. -Reuters

MANAMA: International Investment Bank (IIB), a globally focused investment bank based in the Kingdom of Bahrain operating in line with Shari’ah principles has announced its results for the three months ended March 31 2012. This was stated in a press release on Sunday.

Total income for the first quarter was $3.2 million compared to $0.9 million a year earlier, mainly derived from invest-ment banking fees and profit earned on funds placed with financial institutions. Total expenses reduced to $1.4 million in the period, a reflection of management’s stringent ongoing cost control policy. Share of loss from associates was $0.2 million compared with $0.7 million in the first quarter of 2011. After booking Gains on foreign exchange of $0.1 million, the Bank earned Net income of $1.7 million in the period compared with a net loss of $1.3 million in the same period last year.

Total Assets at March 31 2012 were $151.4 million compared to $148.5 mil-lion at year end 2011.

The increase principally arises from the purchase of investments of $3.4 mil-lion in 2012 funded partially by the profit

made during the first quarter.Capital Adequacy Ratio was 36 per-

cent as at March 31 2012 versus the Central Bank of Bahrain’s minimum re-quirement of 12 percent, demonstrating IIB’s capacity to significantly increase its investment portfolio in the future from a regulatory capital perspective.

Commenting on the Bank’s results, Saeed Abdul Jalil Mohammed Al-Fahim, Chairman of IIB, said: “Trading conditions in 2012 continue to be very challenging for investment banks for two principal reasons. Firstly, many investors have in-curred significant losses during the past 3 years on their regional and global port-folios and have, therefore, been reluctant to commit to making new investments. Secondly, many regional banks have sus-pended the provision of financing of real estate development and private equity projects. Despite the challenging mar-ket environment, IIB’s stakeholders and investors have demonstrated their confi-dence in our strategy, that has resulted in IIB earning a net income of $1.7 million during the three-month period.

During the current difficult global con-

ditions, the Bank has adopted the strate-gies of prudent investing, strict liquidity management and capital protection. IIB’s asset position demonstrates core strength with 40 percent of Total Assets repre-sented by cash and short-term murabaha placements with financially-sound re-gional banks with a further seven percent invested in regional listed equities, giving a total liquidity position of 47 percent.”

Commenting on the 2012 results, Aabed Al-Zeera, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Board member said: “Our strategy has been to structure and market to clients a range of attractive investment offerings in the manufacturing, financial, energy and real estate sectors in various countries. During 2012, IIB has conclud-ed one investment banking transaction in Bahrain and also purchased shares in a regional quoted company. The Bank’s “pipeline” of potential transactions has enabled the Bank to evaluate several op-portunities for possible future launches or direct investment. IIB’s balance sheet con-tinues to be strong, evidenced by the fact that it had no borrowings or off balance sheet commitments during the year.”

Iraq’s oil exports drop

by 2.2 percent in May

BAGHDAD: Iraq’s Oil Minis-try says the country’s crude oil ex-ports dropped by 2.2 percent from April to May due to increased do-mestic demand.

Ministry spokesman Assem Ji-had said Sunday that oil exports averaged 2.452 million barrels a day in May, down from an average of 2.508 million barrels a day in April. Jihad says Iraq earned eight billion US dollars from oil exports in May, compared to $8.8 billion in April. Domestic demand in Iraq usually increases during the hot summer months.

Iraq holds the world’s fourth largest oil reserves, some 143.1 billion barrels. Oil income makes up nearly 95 percent of the gov-ernment’s revenues. -AP

Khaled Al-Sharrad, KIPCO’s new Group Chief HR & Admin Officer.

MSLGROUP consolidates its Middle East offering through Capital MSL

CAPITALS: MSLGROUP, the strate-gic communications and engagement net-work of Publicis Groupe has announced in a press release on Sunday that it will be consolidating its presence in the Middle East and North Africa through its Capital MSL brand.

Through the growing network of Capi-tal MSL offices in the region, MSLGROUP will provide the full range of strategic communication and engagement services building on Capital MSL’s reputation for delivering strong reputational manage-ment and powerfully effective outcomes for many of the region’s most ambitious companies, brands and organizations.

This move is a step in the wider ratio-nalization of Publicis Groupe PR brands following the launch of MSLGROUP in 2009. As part of this rationalization, MS&L MENA announced last week they would be re-branding to LeoComm to re-flect the agency’s relationship with parent the Leo Burnett Group.

“This new brand alignment will facili-tate the ongoing growth of two strong and differentiated Publicis Groupe PR brands in the region which is good for clients, good for Publicis and good for the PR in-

dustry as a whole,” said Anders Kempe, President for MSLGROUP’s EMEA op-erations.

The new alignment coincides with the announcement by Capital MSL of several significant new-business wins re-flecting the strength and breadth of the firm’s offering in the Middle East. Follow-ing closely on the appointment of Capital MSL by BlackRock (Asset Management) and Saudi Telecommunications Company (STC) in the last quarter of 2011, Capital MSL has also recently picked up the cor-porate communications business for Abu Dhabi National Insurance Company (AD-NIC), the World Economic Forum, Baring Asset Management, Warburg Pincus, the Rashid Centre for Diabetes Research and Delta Faucet.

Capital MSL has been making a number of key hires in recent months as part of a strategic re-structuring of its op-eration as it gears up for expansion and continuing growth. There is an extremely good fit between our specialist and stra-tegic communications expertise and the increasingly sophisticated requirements of clients across the MENA region.

Spain calls fornew euro fiscal authority

MADRID: Spain, the latest combat zone in Europe’s long-running debt wars, urged the euro zone to set up a new fiscal authority to manage the bloc’s finances and send a clear signal to markets that the single currency project is irreversible.

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said the authority would also go a long way to alleviating Spain’s woes which, along with the prospect of a Greek euro exit, have threatened to derail the single currency project.

It is not the first time a European leader has proposed creating such an authority but the problems and the size of Spain - a country deemed too big to fail - have prompted EU policymakers to hurriedly consider measures such as creating a fiscal and banking union ahead of a EU summit on June 28-29.

Germany, the paymaster of the euro zone, and others insist such a move can only happen as part of a drive to much closer fiscal union and relinquishing of national sovereignty.

Overspending in the regions and troubles with a banking sector badly hit by a property crash four years ago have sent Spain’s borrowing costs to record highs and pushed the country closer to seeking an international bailout.

The risk premium investors demand to hold Spanish 10-year debt rather than German bonds rose to its highest since the launch of the euro - 548 ba-sis points - on Friday. The Spanish government, which has hiked taxes, slashed spending, cut social benefits and bailed out troubled banks, argues that there is little else it can do and the European Union should now act to ease the country’s liquidity concerns.

In private, senior Spanish officials have said this could be done by using European money to recapitalize directly ailing banks or through a direct inter-vention of the European Central Bank on the bond market.

They have also said the euro zone should quickly move towards a fiscal union to complete its 13-year monetary union but Rajoy went a step further by making a formal offer.

“The European Union needs to reinforce its architecture,” Rajoy said at an event in Sitges, in the north-eastern province of Catalonia. “This entails moving towards more integration, transferring more sovereignty, especially in the fiscal field. “And this means a compromise to create a new European fiscal author-ity which would guide the fiscal policy in the euro zone, harmonies the fiscal policy of member states and enable a centralized control of (public) finances,” he added.

No taboosHe also said the authority would be in charge of managing European debts

and should be constituted by countries of the euro zone meeting strict condi-tions. Earlier this week, ECB President Mario Draghi said EU leaders should break away from the incremental approach that has failed to get ahead of the euro zone debt crisis for more than two years and quickly clarify their vision for the future of the currency.

Adding to growing pressure for dramatic policy action at this month EU leaders’ summit, he warned that the ECB could not fill the policy vacuum.

Establishing a new authority could require a change in the EU treaties, a usually lengthy and politically painful process which requires ratification in all 27 member states of the bloc.

A spokesman for Olli Rehn, the EU commissioner in charge of economic and monetary affairs, said draft legislation designed to step up financial dis-cipline in the euro zone, would create such a fiscal authority by granting new powers to the EU’s executive.

“This would grant enhanced powers to the European Commission on fiscal surveillance, including allowing the sanctioning of countries,” said Amadeu Al-tafaj. “Even before a budget is drafted and reaches the national parliament, the Commission could ask for a revision of the budgetary plans if it considers this would not allow a country to meet its fiscal commitments, and thereby could endanger financial stability.”

Germany has said further integration in Europe was required, including ad-ditional controls on national public finances, and was ready to consider revising the treaties if needed. A day after Berlin supported giving Spain an extra year to cut its deficit down to the 3 percent of GDP threshold, Chancellor Angela Merkel said it should be possible for countries that violate fiscal rules to be sued in the European Court of Justice.

The idea is already part of a new “fiscal compact” signed by 25 EU states and which is due to come into force next year.

Several countries, including France, Austria and Finland, have already sig-naled they are not willing to give up their parliaments’ budgetary powers.

Banking unionMerkel also praised higher German wage deals and signaled flexibility on a

financial transaction tax, in a sign she is open to new measures to boost growth in Europe. The comments, at a conference of her Christian Democrats (CDU) in Berlin, show that she is ready to heed calls for Germany to do more for growth but wants other euro states to accept giving up sovereignty over their budgets in exchange.

“You can’t ask for euro bonds, but then not be prepared to take the next step towards closer integration,” she said.

In an interview with Greek newspaper Vima, Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti said while he believed common bonds in the 17-nation euro zone would become a reality they should not become a “license to spend and burden oth-ers.

With the debt crisis now centered on Spain’s teetering banking sector, talks are also under way on creating a banking union in the euro zone based on cen-tralized supervision, a European deposit scheme and a central fund that would cope with failed lenders.

Germany’s finance ministry said on Friday it was willing to consider this option in a mid-term perspective.

“Not on the eve of the apocalypse”Rajoy backed the idea on Saturday and said that the government would

explain before the end of June how it would recapitalize Spain’s banking sector, which is currently being reviewed by independent auditors.

Spain has picked the “Big Four” accounting firms KPMG, PwC, Deloitte and Ernst & Young to carry out a full, individual audit of its ailing banks, a source with knowledge of the decision told Reuters on Saturday.

Moving away from pessimistic speeches in recent weeks, Rajoy said Spain would weather the financial storm by stepping up efforts to rein in public fi-nances and by implementing structural reforms at national and European level.

“We’re not walking on a bed of roses but we’re also not on the eve of the apocalypse,” he said. -Reuters

BUSINESSMOnDAY, JUnE 4, 2012

ALWATAN DAILY

7

HSBC gets formal approval for Oman merger,

names board, CEODUBAI: Hong Kong Shanghai Bank-

ing Corporation (HSBC) Holdings has received formal regulatory approval to merge its business in Oman with local lender Oman International Bank, it said in a statement to the Muscat stock ex-change on Sunday.

The combined entity, named HSBC Bank Oman, begins operations today after gaining assent from the sultanate’s Ministry of Commerce & Industry, with shares in the bank to trade from Monday under the HBMO.OM ticker, the state-ment said.

HSBC, Europe’s biggest bank, will own 51 percent of the new entity.

Simon Cooper, chief executive of HSBC Middle East and north Africa, has been named chairman of HSBC Bank Oman, with Ewan Stirling appointed as chief executive, the statement said.

Waleed Omer Abdul-Monem Al-Zawawi, previously a director on the OIB board, was named deputy chairman. Two other members of OIB’s current board, including its chairman, Juma Ali Juma Al-Juma, will sit on the merged entity’s board.

The Gulf Arab state had briefly halted the merger after a creditor of the British bank filed an objection to the tie-up citing a pending lawsuit. -Reuters

6,083.33 Volume 186,082,908Weighted Index -3 80 400 90 404 70 404 32 397 26Price index -71.86 6,121.96 6,193.82 6,193.04

Sunday 3 June, 2012

Index Change Closing Last Closing High Low

Value (KWD) 18 458 896Weighted Index -3.80 400.90 404.70 404.32 397.263,599

Security High LowTrades

Last Change Security High Low

Value (KWD) 18,458,896KSX 15 -9.40 960.00 969.40 967.94 951.08 Number of Trades

MARIN 124 124 25000 3 100 3 124 -10 0

TradesLast ChangeVolume Value (KD) Trades Volume Value (KD) Trades

104 -2 0URC 106 104 406 250 42 251 23MARIN 124 124 25000 3,100 3 124 -10.0

5 260IKARUS 188 188 10 2

104 -2.0-2.0

URC 106 104 406,250 42,251 23120 120,926 14,765 5 1241 188 4.0 NRE 124

51,999 13,360 -5.00 0.0 SRE 260 255IPG 0 0 0 0 039,550 1,182 5 33 0.50 0.0 PEARL 33 30NAPESCO 0 0 0 0 0

5,020,000 1,124,480 2 224 0.0128 0.0 TAM 224 224AREFENRGY 128 126 153,009 19,565 6100 16 1 160 -2.059 -3.0 AREEC 160 160GPI 61 57 846,115 49,527 26

ABAR 188 180 20,005 3,605 4 188 2 91 -5.0Oil & Gas 1,044,139 75,799 40 939.81

-2.0 MASSALEH 91 91 20,999 1,911

8 106 -6.0 ERESCO 910 0 0 0.0

PIPE 106 104 59,637 6,282

69,599 58 35 -2.5UREC 0 0 0

-14.22 ARABREC 35 35 2,015,519

940 -30.0BPCC 620 610 588 000 358 980 15 610

MABANEE 950 920 1,456,030 1,348,579 63-2.0

KFOUC 0 0 0 0 0 0 0.088 890,217 79,750 32 91

10 269 10 62 -3.0-20.0 INJAZZAT 67 61 164 010BPCC 620 610 588,000 358,980 15 6100.0 INVESTORS 0

10,269 10 62 -3.0ALKOUT 0 0 0 0

-20.0 INJAZZAT 67 61 164,010

Basic Materials 950,803 429,286 47 970.11IRC 50 49 1,280,240 62,967 57

0.0ALQURAIN 214 210 303,166 64,025 24 212 -2.0

0 0 0 0 00 0

8 84 1.0SANAM 57 55 280,000 15,720 8

-18.41 ALTIJARIA 84 81 430,000 35,31050 -3.5

23,522 19 83 -2.0-5.0 AAYANRE 83 81 288,00257 -3.0

KCEM 400 400 5,000 2,000 1 400REFRI 0 0 0 0 -5.0CABLE 1,200 1,140 47,476 55,440 34 1,180 -40.0

94 20,000 1,880 2 940 0 0.0 AQAR 94

51,122 31 73 -4.0PCEM 870 840 3,110 2,703

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LIFEA vegetarian food label doesn’t mean low fat

Food labeled “vegetarian” on its package or on a restaurant menu may not contain meat, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s low in fat.

In fact, some vegetarian foods can be high in fat, including textured soy patties, soy hot dogs, soy cheese, refried beans and snack bars. Even tofu may have more fat than you might think: 4 ounces has about 95 calories and 6 fat grams, mostly from polyunsaturated fats.

Even those practicing the healthy vegetarian lifestyle should be aware to read the Nu-trition Facts panel on food labels to compare the calories and the nutrients in foods. A registered dietitian can help you with a vegetarian food plan that is also low in fat.

‘Smart bomb’ drug attacks breast cancerCHICAGO: Doctors have successfully

dropped the first “smart bomb” on breast can-cer, using a drug to deliver a toxic payload to tumor cells while leaving healthy ones alone.

In a key test involving nearly 1,000 women with very advanced disease, the experimental treatment extended by several months the time women lived without their cancer getting worse, doctors planned to report Sunday at a cancer conference in Chicago.

More importantly, the treatment seems like-ly to improve survival; it will take more time to know for sure. After two years, 65 percent of women who received it were still alive versus 47 percent of those in a comparison group given two standard cancer drugs.

That margin fell just short of the very strict criteria researchers set for stopping the study and declaring the new treatment a winner, and they hope the benefit becomes more clear with time. In fact, so many women on the new treat-ment are still alive that researchers cannot yet determine average survival for the group.

“The absolute difference is greater than one year in how long these people live,” said the study’s leader, Dr. Kimberly Blackwell of Duke University. “This is a major step forward.”

A warning to hopeful patients: the drug is still experimental, so not available yet. Its back-ers hope it can reach the market within a year.

The treatment builds on Herceptin, the first gene-targeted therapy for breast cancer. It is used for about 20 percent of patients whose tu-mors overproduce a certain protein.

Researchers combined Herceptin with a che-motherapy so toxic that it can’t be given by itself, plus a chemical to keep the two linked until they reach a cancer cell where the poison can be re-leased to kill it.

This double weapon, called T-DM1, is the “smart bomb,” although it’s actually not all that smart - Herceptin isn’t a homing device, just a substance that binds to breast cancer cells once it encounters them.

Doctors tested T-DM1 in 991 women with widely spread breast cancer that was getting worse despite treatment with chemotherapy and ordinary Herceptin. They were given either T-DM1 infusions every three weeks or infusions of Xeloda plus daily Tykerb pills - the only other treatments approved for such cases.

The median time until cancer got worse was nearly 10 months in the women given T-DM1 versus just over 6 months for the others. That is about the same magnitude of benefit initially seen with Herceptin, which later proved to im-

prove overall survival, too, Blackwell said.T-DM1 caused fewer side effects than the

other drugs did. Some women on T-DM1 had signs of liver damage and low levels of factors that help blood clot, but most did not have the usual problems of chemotherapy.

“People don’t lose their hair, they don’t throw up. They don’t need nausea medicines, they don’t need transfusions,” said Blackwell, who has consulted in the past for Genentech, the study’s sponsor.

“The data are pretty compelling,” said Dr. Mi-chael Link, a pediatric cancer specialist at Stan-ford University who is president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the group hosting the Chicago conference where the results were being presented.

“It’s sort of a smart bomb kind of therapy, a poison delivered to the tumor ... and not a lot of other collateral damage to other organs,” he said.

Dr. Louis Weiner, director of Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, said the results strongly suggest T-DM1 improves sur-vival. It delivers more drug directly to tumors

with less side effects, “a clear advance,” he said.Denise Davis, 51, a customer service repre-

sentative at a propane company, was diagnosed three years ago with breast cancer that had spread to her liver and bones.

Since February of last year, the Lynchburg, Va., woman has made the two-hour trip to Duke in Durham, N.C., every three weeks to get infu-sions of T-DM1.

“I call it ‘Herceptin-plus,’” she said. Scans every six weeks show “everything is still shrink-ing or stable,” she said. “Right now, I’m feeling pretty good about it. The only way I’d feel a little better is if it took care of everything, but I’ll take what I can get.”

Genentech, part of the Swiss company Roche, plans to seek approval later this year to sell the drug in Europe and the United States. Another company, ImmunoGen Inc., made the technology combining the drugs.

Genentech says the price of T-DM1 has not been determined. Herceptin costs more than $4,000 a month plus whatever doctors charge to infuse it. Herceptin’s US patent doesn’t expire until 2019. -AP

FILE - Breast cancer cells seen here in this undated file image.

NEW YORK: Many of history’s most celebrated creative geniuses were men-tally ill, from renowned artists Vincent van Gogh and Frida Kahlo to literary gi-ants Virginia Woolf and Edgar Allan Poe. Today, the fabled connection between genius and madness is no longer merely anecdotal. Mounting research shows these two extremes of the human mind really are linked - and scientists are be-ginning to understand why according to LiveScience.

A panel of experts discussed recent and ongoing research on the subject in New York as part of the 5th annual World Science Festival. All three panelists suffer from mental illnesses themselves.

Kay Redfield Jamison, a clinical psy-chologist and professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, said the findings of some 20 or 30 scientific stud-ies endorse the notion of the “tortured genius.” Of the many varieties of psycho-sis, creativity appears to be most strongly linked to mood disorders, and especially bipolar disorder, which Jamison suffers from herself. For example, one study tested the intelligence of 700,000 Swed-ish 16-year-olds and then followed up a decade later to learn which of them had developed mental illnesses. The startling results were published in 2010. “They found that people who excelled when they were 16 years old were four times as likely to go on to develop bipolar disor-der,” she said.

Bipolar disorder entails dramatic mood swings between extreme happiness (known as “mania”) and severe depres-sion. How might this brutal cycle engen-der creativity? Research by another pan-elist, James Fallon, a neurobiologist at the University of California-Irvine, suggests an answer.

“People with bipolar tend to be cre-ative when they’re coming out of deep depression,” Fallon said. When a bipolar patient’s mood improves, his brain activ-

ity shifts, too: activity dies down in the lower part of a brain region called the frontal lobe, and flares up in a higher part of that lobe. Amazingly, the very same shift happens when people have bouts of creativity. “There [is] this nexus between these circuits that have to do with bipolar and creativity,” Fallon said.

As for how the brain patterns trans-late into conscious thought, Elyn Saks, a mental health law professor at the Uni-versity of Southern California, explained that people with psychosis don’t filter stimuli as well as other people. Instead, they’re able to entertain contradictory ideas simultaneously, and become aware of loose associations that most people’s unconscious brains wouldn’t consider worthy of sending to the surface of our consciousness. While the invasion of non-sense into conscious thought can be over-whelming and disruptive, “it can be quite creative, too,” said Saks, who developed schizophrenia as a young adult.

For example, word association studies, which ask participants to list all the words that come to mind in relation to a stimu-lus word (such as “tulip”), demonstrate that bipolar patients undergoing mild mania can generate three times as many word associations in a given time period as the general population. As for how this leads to strokes of genius, it could be that the sheer bounty of unsuppressed ideas means a greater probability of producing something profound.

Of course, no one is bursting with creative energy during a severe bout of depression or schizophrenia. Above all, these conditions are debilitating and even life-threatening, the scientists said, and although society benefits from the pro-ductivity of its tortured geniuses, those individuals don’t always consider their moments of brilliance to be worth the extensive suffering. Saks put it this way: “I think the creativity is just one part of something that is mostly bad.”

Research reveals connection between madness, genius

NASA to hunt black holes with new

space telescopeNEW YORK: After months of delay, NASA’s newest space

telescope is just less than two weeks away from launching on an ambitious mission to seek out the universe’s black holes and investigate their mysterious origins according to Live-Science. The space agency’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) is slated to launch June 13 from Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. The X-ray space telescope will ride into orbit on a Pegasus XL rocket from Orbital Sciences, which is designed to launch in midair from a rocket-carrying aircraft. The mission has been awaiting launch since March, when NASA delayed its liftoff pending a review of the rocket. NuSTAR will study how black holes form and grow, and how these processes affect their host galaxies, said Fiona Harrison, principal investigator of the NuSTAR mission at the Califor-nia Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, Calif.

“It’s the very first telescope to focus high-energy X-rays,” Harrison told reporters today (May 30) in a news briefing. “This will enable NuSTAR to study some of the hottest, densest and most energetic phenomena in the universe, for example black holes and explosions of massive stars.”

NuSTAR will examine these objects with unprecedented sensitivity by studying light in the high-energy, short-wave-length X-ray range. Images beamed back from NuSTAR will be 10 times sharper than current X-ray observatories in or-bit, Harrison said.“It’s opening up a new window on the uni-verse,” said Paul Hertz, director of the astrophysics division at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. “Although we are going into this mission with many scientific questions, like all of our NASA missions, we’re going to find unexpect-ed things out there that will lead us to questions and answers that we aren’t even anticipating at this time.”

NuSTAR was originally scheduled to launch in March, but was delayed after NASA decided more time was needed to review software on the Pegasus XL rocket.

The delay meant that the mission, which carried an initial price tag of about $165 million, increased by several million dollars, or a few percent, Hertz said. NuSTAR’s science mis-sions, however, were not impacted by the extra time required for the rocket’s software review. NuSTAR will examine the innermost regions of black holes, where hot material is ac-celerated close to the speed of light, boosting emissions into the high-energy X-ray range, Harrison explained.

In these areas, light is bent and severely distorted by the black hole’s strong gravity. By studying atoms in the X-ray band as they are drawn into the black hole, researchers will be able to see the effects of a black hole’s intense gravity.

These observations will let scientists watch as a black hole feeds and grows, and will offer them a glimpse of the environment surrounding these cosmic giants, said Daniel Stern, NuSTAR project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. But NuSTAR is also designed to study other intriguing phenomena in our galaxy and the universe, Stern added, including the remnants of massive stars that end their lives in violent supernova explosions, high-speed particle jets, ultra-dense neutron stars, and coro-nal mass ejections and flares from the sun.

Two new elements on periodic table get namesNEW YORK: Two of the heaviest elements on the peri-

odic table were officially named over the weekend accord-ing to LiveScience.The man-made elements 114 and 116, which contain 114 and 116 protons per atom, respectively, are now officially called flerovium (Fl) and livermorium (Lv). The names were chosen to honor the laboratories that first created the elements: the Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions in Dubna, Russia, and Lawrence Liver-more National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif.

Scientists at the two institutions collaborated to syn-thesize both of these heavy elements by smashing calci-um, which has 20 protons, into curium, which contains 96 protons. When these atomic nuclei collided (the electrons were stripped off beforehand, rendering the atoms into ions), they glommed together to create element 116.

Such large “super-heavy” elements are not stable, so element 116 decayed almost immediately into element 114. In separate trials, the researchers created 114 inde-pendently by slamming together calcium and plutonium, which has 94 protons.The elements were first made more than 10 years ago, but subsequent testing was required to

confirm the fleeting elements’ existence. The elements’ of-ficial names were not approved until now by the Inter-national Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), which governs chemical nomenclature.

Before they got their official names, flerovium and livermorium were temporarily called ununquadium and ununhexium, roughly based on the Latin words for the numbers 114 and 116. Four other super-heavy elements - 113, 115, 117 and 118 - have the temporary names of ununtrium, ununpentium, ununseptium, and ununoctium, and are waiting for their permanent monikers.

“These names honor not only the individual contribu-tions of scientists from these laboratories to the fields of nuclear science, heavy element research, and superheavy element research, but also the phenomenal cooperation and collaboration that has occurred between scientists in these two countries,” Bill Goldstein, associate director of Lawrence Livermore lab’s Physical and Life Sciences Di-rectorate, said in a statement.

The Flerov lab is named for Georgiy N. Flerov (1913-1990), a Russian pioneer of heavy-ion physics who dis-

covered the spontaneous fission of uranium. The Lawrence Livermore lab was founded by E.O. Lawrence (1901-1958), an American physicist and Nobel laureate who already has an element, Lawrencium, or element 103, named after him. In addition to helping discover flerovium and liver-morium, scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Lab were collaborators on the projects that first created ele-ments 113, 115, 117 and 118.

The creation of heavier and heavier elements is impor-tant not just for its novelty, but for the chance that soon scientists will find an “island of stability,” an undiscovered region in the periodic table where heavy elements become stable again. If very heavy elements could exist for longer than nanoseconds, researchers hope they could experi-ment on them, and develop uses for them.

In 2011, three other new super-heavy elements, 110, 111 and 112, were officially christened darmstadtium (Ds), roentgenium (Rg) and copernicium (Cn), after the German city of Darmstadt, where they were created, as well as the German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen and the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus.

PARIS: Three critically-endangered Sumatran elephants have been found dead in an oil palm plantation in western Indonesia and are believed to have been poisoned, an NGO said Saturday. Villagers found the dead animals on Thursday in a government-owned oil palm plantation in the eastern part of Aceh province. They were esti-mated to be four and five years old, local environ-mental group Fakta said. “We suspected that they died after consuming bars of soap laced with poi-son we found near the carcass,” the group’s chief Rabono Wiranata told AFP. “It seems that the el-ephants have died around one week,” he said. The animals are usually either killed by villagers, who regard the beasts as pests that destroy their

plantations, or by poachers for their tusks. Early last month, two other Sumatran elephants were found dead in the west of the province. There are fewer than 3,000 Sumatran elephants remaining in the wild, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, marking a 50 percent drop in numbers since 1985. WWF changed the Sumatran elephant’s status from “endangered” to “critically endangered” in January, largely due to severe habitat loss driven by oil palm and paper plantations. Conflicts between humans and animals are increasing as people encroach on wildlife habitats in Indonesia, an archipelago with some of the world’s largest remaining tropi-cal forests. -AFP

Three rare elephants found dead in Indonesia

FILE - a 2-week old Sumatran elephant, plays with his mother Kartini at Indonesian Safari Park in Bogor, West Java, Indonesia, Thursday, Jan. 20, 2011. (AFP)

NEW YORK: Sunlight has a subtle effect on asteroids, pushing them around ever so slightly. This Yarkovsky effect, as it’s called, is caused when sunlight is absorbed and re-emitted as heat. Now scientists have measured the precise change in an asteroid’s orbit caused by this according to Live-Science. Asteroid 1999 RQ36 is about one-third of a mile wide (0.5 km). Its path around the sun has been altered by about 100 miles (160 km) over the past 12 years due to the Yarkovsky effect, the study finds. The orbit of the space rock - which crosses Earth’s path, presenting the remote chance of a future collision - was measured by the ground-based Arecibo and Goldstone radar stations in 1999 and 2005. Last September, another set of observations revealed the orbital change. The Yarkovsky effect is named for a 19th-century Russian engineer who first proposed the idea that a small rocky space object would, over long periods of time, be noticeably nudged in its orbit by the slight push created when it absorbs sunlight and then re-emits that energy as heat. The tiny effect is difficult to measure. “The Yarkovsky force on 1999 RQ36 at its peak, when the asteroid is near-est the sun, is only about a half-ounce - about the weight of three grapes on Earth,” said study team member Steven Chesley of the NASA Jet Pro-pulsion Laboratory. “Meanwhile, the mass of the asteroid is estimated to be about 68 million tons. You need extremely precise measurements over a fairly long time span to see something so slight acting on something so huge.” Because asteroid 1999 RQ36 hangs out in the vicinity of Earth, and could someday threaten to hit the planet, scientists are curious where its changing orbit will take it in the future. Chesley and his colleagues used the new measurements to show that the asteroid passed (or will pass) within 4.6 million miles (7.5 million km) of Earth 11 times from the years 1654 to 2135. In 2135, the space rock will make its closest brush with us, swinging by Earth at about 220,000 miles (350,000 km) away. That’s closer than the moon, which orbits about 240,000 miles from Earth. What happens after that gets harder to predict. “The new results don’t really change what is qualitatively known about the probability of future im-pacts,” Chesley said. “The odds of this potentially hazardous asteroid col-liding with Earth late in the 22nd century are still calculated to be about one in a few thousand.” NASA plans to launch the OSIRIS-Rex mission in 2016 to collect a sample from 1999 RQ36 and return it to Earth.

Earth-threatening asteroid pushed around by sunlight

CULTUREALWATAN DAILY

9MONday, JUNE 4, 2012

Crowds brave rain for Queen Elizabeth’s giant jubilee armada

LONDON: Queen Elizabeth joined a spectacular ar-mada of 1,000 vessels on Sunday for the most dazzling dis-play of British pageantry seen on London’s River Thames for 350 years, watched by cheering crowds celebrating her 60th year on the throne.

Pealing bells greeted the flotilla as the queen’s gilded royal barge sailed alongside a colorful and eclectic array of boats from leisure cruisers and yachts to a Hawaiian war canoe and Venetian gondolas. Typically inclement British weather failed to dampen enthusiasm, with hundreds of thousands of onlookers, waving “Union Jack” flags, massed on the riverbanks to catch a glimpse of the procession along the seven mile (11 km route).

The queen, wearing a silver and white dress with a matching coat, smiled broadly and waved to the crowds from the royal barge, “The Spirit of Chartwell”, alongside her 90-year-old husband Prince Philip.

They were accompanied on the barge by heir-to-the-throne Prince Charles, his eldest son Prince William and new wife Kate, a global fashion trendsetter who wore a vivid red alexander McQueen dress and matching hat.

Up and down the country, organizers said millions of people attended diamond jubilee street parties in honor of the 86-year-old sovereign, the only British monarch after Queen Victoria to have sat on the throne for 60 years.

“We’re English, we know what the weather is like. We really don’t care if we get wet you know - it’s the jubilee, it’s the queen, so it’s nice to come up and celebrate it,” said Jackie, a 39-year-old sales consultant who travelled across southern England to watch the Thames pageant.

From New Zealand Maoris who paddled their canoe wearing traditional cloaks to sailors and people dressed as pirates, the flotilla boasted a colorful array of participants from every corner of the planet. There were even vessels from the 1940 evacuation of British and allied troops from dunkirk in northern France - a famous rescue performed by crafts of all shapes and sizes and a celebrated piece of Brit-ish history. Organizers said Sunday’s river pageant, reminis-cent of a Canaletto canvas from the 18th century, was the largest of its kind since a similar spectacle was held for King Charles II and his consort Catherine of Braganza in 1662.

Churchill and EisenhowerOther craft included Motor Torpedo Boat 102 on which

allied Forces commander General dwight Eisenhower and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill inspected warships before the 1944 d-day invasion of Nazi-occupied France.

The flotilla passed under 14 bridges and past landmarks including the Houses of Parliament, St Paul’s Cathedral, and the Tower of London, after the picturesque Tower Bridge bascules were raised in salute.

another boat taking part, “amazon”, featured in dia-mond jubilee celebrations for Queen Victoria, Elizabeth’s great-great-grandmother, held in 1897 when Britain’s em-pire spanned much of the globe. The jubilee pageant ap-peared on news sites around the world and was among the top trending topics on the Twitter micro blogging site, with messages ranging from congratulatory to comic.

“Booze cruise” wrote @Queen_UK, an irreverent and unofficial spoof twitter handle written from the queen’s perspective. although the queen is still head of state in 16

countries from australia and Canada to tiny Tuvalu in the Pacific Ocean and head of the Commonwealth, Britain is a shadow of its former imperial self.

Nevertheless, interest in the pageant and affection for Queen Elizabeth extended to former colonies such as Can-ada.

“I admire Queen Elizabeth II for her extraordinary grace and diligence,” marketing expert amanda Batchelor told Reuters from her home in Toronto where she was watching on television.

“The fact that she remains relevant to millions of people - in the UK and abroad - over six decades of rapid change is testimony to her longevity. She is a sign of stability and security. She is a kind of living history.”

Historians and commentators say the pomp and spec-tacle of British royal occasions gives the country a sense of national pride at a time when the economy is in recession and people face deep austerity measures.

Street Partiesacross England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland,

street parties were being held to mark the occasion. Prince Charles and his wife Camilla dropped into one in central London before the pageant, joining in a rousing rendition of the national anthem.

While the queen and the royal party braved the ele-ments under a golden canopy on a barge in the middle of the Thames, the wet conditions proved too much for Prime Minister david Cameron, who moved his downing Street party indoors.

That said, the government hoped the festivities would mark the start of a summer of revelry capped off by the Olympic Games in London, raising the public’s spirits and their poll ratings.

“What is great is that we have the jubilee and then the Olympics. We should show how great we are in Britain,” said Joanne Richmond, 61, from central England, who was in London for the queen’s coronation as a two-year-old.

However, economists have warned that the extra public holidays will hit Britain’s already ailing economy, poten-tially prolonging a recession.

The celebrations come as polls show the overwhelming backing for the monarchy, which has overcome a slump in the 1990s following marital infidelities and the death of the hugely popular Princess diana in a 1997 Paris car crash

However, not everyone in London was cheering as about 100 republicans waving banners demanding “Votes not Boats” and “Make Monarchy History” staged a protest near Tower Bridge.

“Her achievement is just staying alive, doing little and saying less,” Graham Smith, head of campaign group Re-public, told Reuters.

Even republicans acknowledge there is almost no chance that the queen will be ousted and take solace in indications many Britons are simply indifferent -- 2 million people are leaving the country to take advantage of the extended public holiday. Celebrations will continue today with a pop concert outside Elizabeth’s London residence Buckingham Palace and conclude with a service of thanksgiving at St. Paul’s Cathedral on Tuesday followed by a carriage proces-sion. -Reuters

Britain’s Queen Elizabeth waves from onboard the Spirit of Chartwell, as it approaches Westminster Bridge during her Dia-mond Jubilee Pageant on the River Thames in London June 3, 2012. (Reuters)

Guns are fired on the banks of the River Thames to celebrate Britain’s Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee in London, June 3, 2012. (Reuters)

Fireworks explode over Tower Bridge during the Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant on the River Thames in London on June 3 2012, where 1,000 vessels of all shapes and sizes will be part of the Diamond Jubilee river Pageant. (AFP)

Hong Kong’s mother tongue hushed as Mandarin gets louder HONG KONG: at the age of 10, Hong Kong

student Miranda Lam can hold a conversation and write in both English and Mandarin Chinese. But ask her to speak to her grandmother and she shakes her head. “I don’t know what she says sometimes,” she says.

Her grandmother speaks Cantonese, Hong Kong’s official language. But Miranda’s parents - both Cantonese speakers themselves - have cho-sen to limit the time they speak it at home. Instead, they talk to Miranda mainly in English and Manda-rin, to improve her chances of attending an inter-national school. To linguists, Miranda’s struggle to speak her mother tongue is a worrying indication of how Cantonese may be under threat in Hong Kong from the spread of Mandarin, the official language of mainland China. “It is difficult to cal-culate the timing but in the medium- to long-term, Cantonese is an endangered language” in Hong Kong, said Stephen Matthews, an associate profes-sor in linguistics at the University of Hong Kong.

It might survive for 50 years or so but after 50 years, it will still exist but it may well be on its way out.” Cantonese is the language of the streets, courts and the Legislative Council in the city of 7.1

million people. although its written form shares the same roots as Mandarin, it differs in pronun-ciation and grammar which, according to linguists, makes it a distinct language rather than dialect.

Matthews, who has lived in Hong Kong for 20 years, believes the threat to Cantonese comes from current policies and changing attitudes to-wards Mandarin, also known as Putonghua, since the territory was handed back to China by Britain in 1997. “Putonghua was pretty much invisible in the early 1990s,” he said. “Before the handover a number of friends and students would say ‘I don’t want to learn Putonghua. I’m not interested’.”

“But then around the time of the handover they said ‘Maybe we should start learning Puton-ghua.’ They were talking about it. Now, of course, everyone is doing it.” Matthews believes one sig-nificant factor is that schools have begun switching from Cantonese to Mandarin for the teaching of Chinese literacy, a move that improves students’ Mandarin but which appears to have a detrimental effect on their Cantonese.

More than 160 primary schools are currently using Mandarin in Chinese language lessons after a government policy encouraging a switch from

Cantonese was introduced in 2003. Then there are the students like Miranda who are sent to interna-tional schools. “Their Cantonese is suffering. It is undergoing attrition,” said Matthews, using a tech-nical term for the process by which people lose their native language. another factor influencing the shift is the rising flow of mainland visitors, whose numbers have soared since cross-border travel was made easier in recent years. In response, shops, restaurants and hotels are increasing their use of Mandarin. The move has angered some and earlier this month a group staged a demonstration outside clothing chain Giordano after it began us-ing the simplified Chinese characters used in main-land China, rather than the traditional characters understood by Cantonese speakers.

Thomas Lee, professor of linguistics at the Chi-nese University of Hong Kong, is less pessimistic and believes Cantonese is “still very much alive.” But he warned it needed to remain in use in main-stream education to avoid becoming marginalized, pointing to the decline of Shanghainese - now reckoned to be spoken by less than 50 per cent of people in China’s second city - as an example of how dialects and languages can decline in a matter of generations. Lee said while he appreciated the benefits of schools switching to Mandarin, educa-tion officials should consider implementing the switch in higher levels only rather than all levels of schools. “For a language to really thrive and de-velop, it requires not just home use,” he said. “It requires use in literature and cultural arts and all the complicated domains of language use.”

One concern expressed by Lee was that the Hong Kong government might follow “the underly-ing assumptions of the central government policy” that it was economically and socially preferable to have a single, unifying language.

University of Hong Kong linguistics student Tsui Wa Han said it would be a “cultural disaster” for Cantonese to die out. “If Cantonese becomes extinct, some of our cultural heritage would fol-low suit,” Tsui wrote in an essay. “Cantonese opera would not be sustainable and beautiful, idiosyn-cratic expressions ... would be lost forever. -dpa

FILE - Can-tonese is the language of the streets, courts and the Legisla-tive Council in Hong Kong, a city of 7.1 million people. (dpa)

Rare copy of Book of Mormon reported stolen from Arizona store

PHOENIX: Police searched during the weekend for clues to the suspected theft of a rare, first-edition copy of the Book of Mormon, valued at $100,000, that was reported stolen from a suburban Phoenix bookstore over the Memorial day weekend. The authorities said they were in the early stages of an investiga-tion into the disappearance of the 1830 leather-bound volume, which its owner said has became a must-see artifact for young Mormons worldwide before em-barking on church missions.

“at this time we have no specific information of the whereabouts of the book,” said detective Steve Berry, a Mesa, arizona police spokesman. “I don’t think it’s a big secret the book was there. But I don’t think everyone knows how valuable it is.” The Book of Mormon is a foundational, holy text of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The 588-page book missing since Monday is one of only 5,000 copies ever printed, said its owner, bookstore owner and proprietor Helen Schlie.

The Book of Mormon was published in 1830 by church founder Joseph Smith, who claimed the manuscript came from his translation of an ancient “reformed Egyptian” text engraved on golden plates he found buried, with the guidance of an angel, in a stone box near his home in New york state.

Schlie, who bought the first-edition print in the late 1960s, told Reuters that she discovered the book was missing when she went to retrieve it for two mis-sionaries visiting from asia. The women wanted to take a picture with it.

Such requests are common. The cramped store, overflowing with books, has a special area set aside for people to take pictures with the famous text. Emo-tional reactions to touching the book are common, she said.

Schlie, 88, said she was stunned when she went into her office, opened the bottom draw of an unlocked file cabinet where the book was kept in fireproof box, and the volume was nowhere to be found. “I still can’t believe it,” she told Reuters. “It’s been so much a part of my life for years, and now it’s gone. It’s been a shock.” Schlie, a convert to the Mormon faith whose store is a block away from a large Mormon temple in downtown Mesa, sparked controversy in 2005 when she started to sell framed pages out of the book for between $2,500 and $4,000. She has said her intention was to earn enough money to open an ice cream parlor that would generate revenue for Mormon youths to help pay for their missions and perhaps future education.

about 50 pages were sold before the weekend disappearance of the book, whose total value Schlie puts at about $100,000. all that remains in her posses-sion at the moment is a single framed page, from Chapter 5. Schlie said it was important for the book be returned, so it can “finish its mission.”

“Someone said the person who took it should read it, ponder it and then return it. That sounds right,” she said. -Reuters

Song Of The Day

Fahad AlSabahStaff Writer

Song: No Problem (Feat. Flinch & My Name Is Kay)Artist: DiploAlbum: Express Yourself - EPGenre: DanceIn short: Diplo brought out the big guns for his latest EP, although the songs feature mostly unknown people, the pro-ductions are top notch. “No Problem” is the perfect workout song - not even this dust storm could stop you when you’re blasting this one.

To listen to the song visit www.alwatandaily.comE-mail your feedback to falsabah@alwatandaily.com

The BuzzFans toss chairs after Buffalo concert canceledFans of the country music singer Eric Church smashed chairs and threw bottles and cans after his planned concert in Buf-falo was canceled due to bad weather. The Buffalo News reports organizers of the WYRK Taste of Country concert decided to halt the multi-act show at around 11 p.m. Fri-day after strong winds threatened the stage at Buffalo’s Coca Cola Field. Church had originally been scheduled to go on at about 9:45 p.m. Some fans, who had been waiting in heavy rain, responded by hurling chairs onto the stage, or dumping them into large piles. Some witnesses described the scene as frightening. The singer issued a statement saying he was “bummed” about the cancellation, but planned to return to Buffalo at a later date. -AP

George Lucas names Kennedy as Lucasfilm successorFilmmaker George Lucas on Friday named veteran producer Kathleen Kennedy as his co-chair and successor at the iconic film studio he founded four decades ago. Kennedy and Lucas will serve as board co-chairs at Lucasfilm Ltd. as the “Star Wars” creator moves forward with his retirement plans. Lu-cas, 68, will continue as CEO and work with Kennedy as she transitions into her new role at Lucasfilm, the San Francisco-based company said. The legendary filmmaker said he chose Kennedy as his successor because he was looking for “some-one with great creative passion and proven leadership abili-ties, but also someone who loves movies.” In recent months, Lucas has told reporters he plans to move away from produc-ing big-budget movies so he can focus on smaller, art-house films. Kennedy will step down from her role at The Kennedy/Marshall Co. and shift responsibilities to her partner Frank Marshall. Together they have produced Academy Award-nominated films such as “War Horse,” ‘’The Adventures of Tintin,” ‘’The Sixth Sense” and “Sea Biscuit.” Over the past three decades, Kennedy has worked with Steven Spielberg to produce blockbuster films such as “E.T.,” ‘’Schindler’s List,” and the “Indiana Jones” and “Jurassic Park” franchises. Ken-nedy, 58, said she feels fortunate that Lucas will work with her for the “next year or two” as she moves into her new job. “It is nice to have Yoda by your side,” Kennedy said in a statement. -AP

Facebook, Grey’s Anatomy win GLAAD awards GLAAD likes Facebook. The social networking site won the Special Recognition Award at the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation’s 23rd annual Media Awards. Other honorees at Saturday’s ceremony in San Francisco included “Grey’s Anatomy” for drama series, “Days of Our Lives” for daily drama series, Max J. Rosenthal of The Huffington Post for digital journalism article, Wells Fargo for the Cor-porate Leader Award and “Grey’s Anatomy” creator Shonda Rhimes for the Golden Gate Award. The awards salute fair, accurate and inclusive representation of the lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender community and the issues that af-fect their lives in the media. Other winners from among this year’s 35 categories were honored at ceremonies in New York and Los Angeles earlier this year. -AP

Matthew Fox pleads ‘no contest’ to DUIET has learned that Matthew Fox has pleaded no contest to one count of DUI in exchange for no jail time, reports ET Online. The former “Lost” star was arrested in Bend, Ore-gon over the first weekend of May on suspicion of driving under the influence while he was on his way to a fast food restaurant at about 3:30 a.m. The Deschutes County D.A. confirmed that as part of the deal, the actor is required to complete a drug and alcohol program within one year from now. If he complies with all the court’s orders, the case will be dismissed. Fox was not present today in court.

Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’ son gets football scholarshipJustin Combs, the 18-year-old son of hip-hop mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs, will attend UCLA on a $54,000 football scholarship. It is one of 285 athletic scholarships the uni-versity hands out every year. But it comes at a time when student fees are rising and a year after the university had to use more than $2 million in student fees to cover an athletic department funding gap. UCLA says, however, that athletic scholarships are funded by ticket sales, corporate partner-ships, media contracts and private donations. The Los Ange-les Times says the senior Combs is worth an estimated $475 million and gave his son a $360,000 Maybach car for his 16th birthday. And Justin Combs has defended the scholarship in a tweet, saying he put the work in. -AP

Family Feud TV host Richard Dawson dies at 79LOS ANGELES: Richard Dawson, the

wisecracking British entertainer who was among the schemers in the 1960s TV comedy “Hogan’s Heroes” and a decade later began kissing thousands of female contestants as host of the game show “Family Feud” has died. He was 79.

Dawson, also known to TV fans as the Cockney prisoner-of-war Cpl. Peter Newkirk on “Hogan’s Heroes,” died Saturday night from complications related to esophageal cancer at Ronald Reagan Memorial Hospital, his son Gary said.

The game show, which initially ran from 1976 to 1985, pitted families who tried to guess the most popular answers to poll ques-tions such as “What do people give up when they go on a diet?”

Dawson won a daytime Emmy Award in 1978 as best TV game show host. Tom Shales of The Washington Post called him “the fast-est, brightest and most beguilingly caustic interlocutor since the late great Groucho ban-tered and parried on ‘You Bet Your Life.’” The show was so popular it was released as both daytime and syndicated evening versions.

He was known for kissing each woman contestant, and at the time the show bowed out in 1985, executive producer Howard Felsher estimated that Dawson had kissed “somewhere in the vicinity of 20,000.”

“I kissed them for luck and love, that’s all,” Dawson said at the time.

He reprised his game show character in a much darker mood in the 1987 Arnold

Schwarzenegger film “The Running Man,” playing the host of a deadly TV show set in a totalitarian future, where convicts try to escape as their executioners stalk them. “Sat-

urday Night Live” mocked him in the 1970s, with Bill Murray portraying him as leering and nasty, even slapping one contestant (John Belushi) for getting too fresh.

The British-born actor already had gained fame as the fast-talking Newkirk in “Hogan’s Heroes,” the CBS comedy about prisoners in a Nazi POW camp who hoodwink their cap-tors and run the place themselves.

Despite its unlikely premise, the show made the ratings top 10 in its first season, 1965-66, and ran until 1971.

Both “Hogan’s Heroes” and “Family Feud” have had a second life in recent years, the former on DVD reissues and the latter on cable television’s GSN, formerly known as the Game Show Network.

On Dawson’s last “Family Feud” in 1985, the studio audience honored him with a standing ovation, and he responded: “Please sit down. I have to do at least 30 minutes of fun and laughter and you make me want to cry.”

“I’ve had the most incredible luck in my career,” he told viewers.

“I never dreamed I would have a job in which so many people could touch me and I could touch them,” he said. That triggered an unexpected laugh.

Producers brought out “The New Fam-ily Feud,” starring comedian Ray Combs, in 1988. Six years later, Dawson replaced Combs at the helm, but that lasted only one season. According to the Internet Movie Da-tabase, Dawson was born Colin Lionel Emm in 1932 in Gosport, England.

His first wife was actress Diana Dors, the blond bombshell who was Britain’s answer to Marilyn Monroe. -AP

ENTERTAINMENTALWATAN DAILY

10MONDAY, JUNE 4, 2012

FILE - This June 1978 file photo shows Richard Dawson, host of “Family Feud” in character. (AP)

Desperate Housewives actress Kathryn

Joosten dies at 72

LOS ANGELES: Kathryn Joosten, a character actress best known as the crotchety, yet loveable, Karen McCluskey on “Des-perate Housewives” and the president’s secretary on “The West Wing,” has died. She was 72. Joosten, who had battled lung can-cer for 11 years, died Saturday at her home in Los Angeles, her publicist Nadine Jolson said. Joosten “was surrounded by love and humor ‘til the end,” her family said in a statement. “We are laughing through our tears.” Joosten won two Emmy awards for her portrayal of Mrs. McCluskey, who kept a close eye on her Wisteria Lane neighbors on “Desperate Housewives.” The hit show ended its eight-year run on ABC last month with a series finale in which Joosten’s character passed away. Her character’s battle with cancer was a story line in the show.

Joosten’s “Desperate Housewives” co-stars took to Twitter to express their condolences. “Rest in peace, she was an amazing woman and a wonderful actress,” Felicity Huffman wrote.

Brenda Strong said in a tweet: “Wisteria Lane won’t be the same without you.” Joosten was a psychiatric nurse and single mother in suburban Chicago when she began her acting career at 42. She wrote on her website that she pursued her child-hood dream of acting after getting involved with her hometown theater in Lake Forest, Ill. She said she received her first break when she was hired to be a street performer at Disney World in Orlando. She worked odd jobs to make ends meet and moved to Hollywood in 1995. She said she landed her first small role within months on the comedy “Family Matters.”

Over the years, she found steady work appearing in such pop-ular shows as “Dharma & Greg,” ‘’Ally McBeal” and “Scrubs.” She became a familiar face to fans of NBC’s “The West Wing” when she appeared as Dolores Landingham, President Jed Bar-tlet’s trusted secretary.

“Some people in Hollywood think of me as a model for dra-matic midlife transitions: suburban housewife to Emmy-winning actress,” she wrote on her website. “But I never plotted a master plan for following my dreams.” Joosten was an advocate for lung cancer awareness and research and sat on the board of governors for the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

She is survived by her sons, Jonathan and Timothy. Plans for a memorial service were pending. -AP

FILE - Actress Kathryn Joosten attends the Nathalie Dubois Pre-Emmy Gift Suite at Luxe Hotel on Sept. 16, 2011 in Bev-erly Hills, California. (AFP)

LOS ANGELES: Angela is a stunning model, Auti is a dancer who is trying for a baby, Tiphany is designing a clothes line and Mia works as a graphic designer.

And all four women are paralyzed from the neck or waist down and are about to shatter widespread notions of what it’s like to spend life in a wheelchair.

“Push Girls”, launching on the Sundance Channel on Monday, chronicles the lives of the ambitious and dynamic quartet in a way that producers say has never before been seen on US television.

“Plenty of people have no idea what it’s like to spend the day in the life of someone with a disability, let alone a spinal cord injury,” said Tiphany Adams, 29, who was paralyzed in a horrific 2000 car accident.

“How do we get in and out of a car? How do we go to the bathroom. How do we go grocery shopping? How do we get in the shower? How do we get dressed? I thought it was a brilliant idea for the world to see that,” she said.

Told without self-pity, “Push Girls” shows the wom-en going about their lives in Los Angeles just like other good-looking females in their 20s, 30s and 40s - flirting, going to nightclubs, chatting about love lives and search-ing their souls about the future. Unlike many current re-ality shows dreamed up in writers’ rooms and producers’ offices, the 14-episode documentary was inspired by the girls themselves. “I wanted to do a show about people in wheelchairs. Then going out to find them, the girls came first,” producer Gay Rosenthal told Reuters.

Rosenthal became involved after meeting and be-coming friends with Angela Rockwood, 37, a model and actress who was paralyzed from the neck down after a car accident in 2001. Recently separated from her hus-band, Angela is seen in the show trying to resume her modeling career.

Inspiring Women“I was so taken by Angela’s energy, her aura, her out-

look and her joie de vivre,” said Rosenthal. After meet-ing Angela’s three friends, Rosenthal proposed the idea of a documentary and they quickly agreed. New friend Chelsie Hill, 20, who was paralyzed from the waist down in a car crash just three years ago, is also featured in the show.

“I felt I had to tell this story. That night so changed my life. When you see all of them share such an energy and positive outlook, you cannot help but be inspired,” Rosenthal said. Nothing was off limits for the filming of the show, giving Rosenthal a careful path to tread be-tween realism and voyeurism.

“When people hear it’s a show about women in wheelchairs, I expect them to think it’s going to be ex-ploitive. That doesn’t surprise me, but hopefully the way I am telling the story and the way the girls are sharing their lives, it’s going to be ‘Wow! How dynamic, how interest-ing,’” she said.

Sundance Channel general manager Sarah Barnett said that “Push Girls” was a great fit for the cable net-work’s drive for programming that is bold, broad-minded and unusual. Rosenthal said she hoped “Push Girls” would help to change perceptions of people in wheel-chairs the way TLC documentary series “Little People, Big World”, which she also produces, has done for dwarf-ism.

“It has been extraordinary to see the change. In the beginning of ‘Little People’ it used to be like, ‘little person! midget! freak!.’ I remember little Zach getting chased in one of the early episodes. Now it’s like, ‘little people - cool, be my friend,’ and I can’t ask for more than that,” she said. -Reuters

TV’s Push Girls break wheelchair boundaries

In this photo provided by the Sundance Channel, “Push Girls” stars, Auti Angel, left, and Mia Schaikewitz, right, dance it out at key locations throughout New York City on May 31, 2012 in New York. (AP)

LONDON: In a major setback for Nicollette Sheridan in her lawsuit against “Desperate Housewives” producer Touch-stone Television, an appeals court has issued a ruling delaying indefinitely a planned September retrial and suggesting that the key claim in the case likely should have been resolved in favor of Touchstone, Reuters has learned.

As you’ll recall, a Los Angeles jury deadlocked in March over whether the former “Housewives” actress was owed about $4 million for being improperly fired as retaliation for complaining after she was struck in the face by series creator Marc Cherry. The jury failed to reach a verdict, with eight of 12 jurors siding with Sheridan, so a retrial was set by Judge Elizabeth Allen White for Sept. 10.

Touchstone/ABC lawyers then appealed in an attempt to prevent a retrial, arguing that California law precludes wrong-ful termination lawsuits when an actress’ contract option is simply not exercised. That argument was made unsuccessfully

several times during the litigation.But now, in a surprising development, on Friday the Cali-

fornia Court of Appeals issued an order agreeing with Touch-stone and bumping the planned retrial off the calendar indefi-nitely.

In a short “writ of mandate,” the appeals court overturned the trial judge’s denial of Touchstone’s motion for a directed verdict-essentially, that means the appeals court believes Touchstone should have won the major part of the case be-cause a prior ruling in a case called Daly v. Exxon made clear that most employees whose options are not picked up can’t sue for wrongful termination.

The ruling is a big blow to Sheridan. The appeals court set an August 9 hearing date for the trial judge to show up and justify why the case should move forward to a retrial, but Superior Court judges rarely attempt to challenge appeals court rulings. The likely effect, therefore, will be that Judge

White adheres to the appeals court mandate and issues some kind of directed verdict in favor of Touchstone on the wrong-ful termination claim.

Touchstone hasn’t completely won, however. The appeals court suggests Sheridan can reconfigure her case as a labor code violation under the OSHA law (Section 6310), which could lead to significant damages. Other appeals are possible. But a lawsuit that began as a $20 million bombshell when originally filed has now been brought to the brink of dismissal. Sheridan’s legal team led by Mark Baute will need to work some magic to bring it back. “It is further ordered that the re-trial currently set for Sept. 10 is hereby stayed pending further order of the court,” the ruling states.

Sheridan lawyer Baute tells Reuters that despite the ap-peals court’s indefinite stay, he is planning to fight to keep the retrial on track. Lawyers for Touchstone have not responded to requests for comment. -Reuters

Appeals court calls off Housewives Sheridan retrial

SPORTSmonDAY, june 4, 2012

ALWATAN DAILY

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tennis

Basketball

track and field

cricket

Azarenka out of French Open, Djokovic survives

PARIS: Victoria Azarenka was knocked out of the French open fourth round on Sunday and could now lose her world number one ranking, while novak Djokovic narrowly avoided follow-ing her to the exit.

Belarussian Azarenka was beaten 6-2 7-6 by Slovakian 15th seed Dominika Cibulkova and must wait to see if Russian maria Sharapova will claim the top spot.

Sharapova, who meets unseeded Czech Klara Zakopalova in the last 16 on monday and has yet to drop a set here, must get to the Roland Garros final for the first time to become number one.

Cibulkova, who reached the French semi-finals three years ago and had lost seven times to Azarenka in eight previous meetings, collapsed on to her back, a big grin on her face, after win-ning the tiebreak 7-4 with a backhand crosscourt on her second match-point.

The Slovakian will play either uS open cham-pion Samantha Stosur of Australia or American teenager Sloane Stephens in the quarter-finals.

Asked by a reporter how she would recover from the defeat, a stone-faced Azarenka said sar-castically: “I’m going to kill myself!”

Azarenka, who had come within five points of defeat in the first round against Italy’s Alberta Brianti, was asked what had gone wrong on Sun-day.

“Pretty much everything, really,” she said. “I don’t know how to describe my perfor-

mance today. I wasn’t satisfied being out there playing that way but I guess it happens.”

Djokovic, the men’s world number one, had to come back from two sets down to beat Italian Andreas Seppi and continue his quest to hold all four grand-slam titles at once.

The Serbian hit 77 unforced errors - 26 more than defending champion Rafa nadal had racked up in three matches - before turning things around and managing to beat Seppi 4-6 6-7 6-3 7-5 6-3. He will now play either fifth-seeded French-man jo-Wilfried Tsonga or number 18 Stanislas Wawrinka of Switzerland.

Italy’s Sara errani saw off her second French open champion in two rounds when she beat Russian Svetlana Kuznetsova 6-0 7-5 to reach the quarter-finals of the claycourt grand slam for the first time.”

I am curious to see how far I can go, what level I can get to,” said clay specialist errani, who had knocked out Serbian Ana Ivanovic, the 2008 winner, in the third round.

“I am curious to see how far I can go, what level I can get to,” said clay specialist errani, who had knocked out Serbian Ana Ivanovic, the 2008 winner, in the third round. Kuznetsova’s demise left Li na as the only French open champion still in the women’s draw, after earlier-round defeats for Francesca Schiavone and Serena Williams.

China’s Li, who won last year, meets Kazakh qualifier Yaroslava Shvedova in the fourth round on monday.

Sunday’s matches were played under cloudy skies and Kuznetsova, who won in 2009, said the

gloomy weather had affected her.“Today the weather was so bad. I felt cold

during the whole match. For me to move was really complicated, I

couldn’t make my feet move,” said the Russian who started working with marat Safin’s old coach Hernan Gumy a week before the tournament.

errani will now play another first-time quar-ter-finalist here, 10th seed Angelique Kerber who beat Croatian Petra martic 6-3 7-5 on Suzanne Lenglen Court.

The Italian said she would change her tactics to play left-hander Kerber but, pressed on what she would do, told reporters with a smile: “I am not telling you for now, I am keeping it to my-self.” -Reuters

Serbia’s Novak Djokovic v Italy’s Andreas Seppi during their fourth round match in the French Open tennis tournament at the Roland Garros stadium in Paris, Sunday, June 3, 2012. (AP)

Kerber reaches French Open quarter-finals for first timePARIS: German 10th seed Angel-

ique Kerber bludgeoned her way into the French open quarter-finals for the first time with a 6-3 7-5 win over Croatian Petra martic on Sunday. Kerber made an impressive run to reach the uS open semi-finals last year and has a chance to match or even improve on that result af-ter dispatching her 21-year-old opponent on a dark and gloomySuzanne Lenglen

court. With the heavens threatening to open at any time, a muttering Kerber did not want to hang around longer than nec-essary and yelled out an almighty “Come on” after she fired down a backhand win-ner on her third matchpoint.

She will next face Italy’s Sara errani, another first-time quarter-finalist, who knocked out 2009 champion Svetlana Kuznetsova. -Reuters

Angelique Kerber of Germany returns the ball to Petra Martic of Croatia during the French Open tennis tournament at the Roland Garros stadium in Paris June 3, 2012. (Reuters)

Durant soars late as Thunder tie series with SpursOKLAHOMA CITY: Kevin Durant’s unstop-

pable fourth-quarter explosion lifted oklahoma City to a 109-103 victory over the recently un-beatable San Antonio Spurs on Saturday and lev-eled the Western Conference Finals series at 2-2.

With visiting San Antonio on the heels of the

Thunder in the final quarter, Durant ran off 16 straight points and finished with a game-high 36 to give oklahoma City a second straight home win and turn up the heat in the best-of-seven series.

“once a player of that caliber, with that much talent starts scoring it’s hard to stop him,” Spurs

forward Stephen jackson told reporters after try-ing unsuccessfully to contain Durant.

“He got into a nice rhythm and got rolling. It was too late.” San Antonio were on a 20-game win streak, the longest ever combining the regular sea-son and playoffs, and looked in complete control of the West matchup before dropping the last two on the road.

Tim Duncan scored 21 points to lead the way for the Spurs but they fell behind by 12 at halftime and their late rally fell short.

After the visitors trimmed the deficit to four, Durant’s personal run stretched it back to nine and all but clinched the victory.

Lost in Durant’s heroics was an unlikely per-formance from team mate Serge Ibaka, who re-corded a career-high 26 points and made all 11 of his field goal attempts.

Ibaka caught fire, repeatedly making open pe-rimeter shots, and made up for quiet nights from Russell Westbrook and james Harden, who com-bined for just 18 points between them.

“He didn’t miss a shot? Wow,” Durant said of Ibaka’s play. “He played phenomenal. He’s been working on his jump shot since he got in the league and it’s starting to be money now.”

Thabo Sefolosha was the surprise hero of Game Three for the Thunder, but in Game Four it was their big men who rose to the challenge.

Center Kendrick Perkins added 15 points and nine rebounds to spark the home team.

“Their big guys were the difference in the game,” Duncan said. “Ibaka made great jump shots. There are a lot of things we need to do.” The Spurs will have their chance to respond with Game Five in San Antonio on monday. -Reuters

Oklahoma City Thunder power forward Serge Ibaka (right), from the Republic of Congo, blocks a shot by San Antonio Spurs forward De-Juan Blair as Kevin Durant (left) watches during the second half of Game 4 in the NBA basketball playoffs West-ern Conference finals, Satur-day, June 2, 2012. (AP)

Ireland face Bangladesh in World Twenty20 warm-upsLONDON: Ireland will begin their

preparation for this year’s ICC World Twenty20 in Sri Lanka with a three-game series against Bangladesh in Belfast next month, it was announced Saturday.

“It’s great news that we’re taking on Bangladesh and the games will give us valuable preparation as we build towards the World Cup in Sri Lanka,” Ireland coach Phil Simmons said in a Cricket Ire-land statement.

“We played an exciting brand of cricket in winning the recent qualify-ing tournament in Dubai and we’re now eighth in the world rankings in this format of the game,” the former West Indies bats-man added.

“In Paul Stirling we have one of the most exciting players in international cricket at present and I’m sure the Belfast public will relish the opportunity to watch him on home soil.”

The matches, which form part of a nine-day Bangladesh tour, will be staged

at Stormont on july 18, 20 and 21.Bangladesh all-rounder Shakib Al

Hasan said: “We are always looking for tough challenges as professional crick-eters and I am sure the tour of Ireland would test our skills and resolve. This will be wonderful preparation for both teams heading into the ICC World T20.”

“Ireland are a very competitive side and in their conditions they will be for-midable. However, we have a team that is brimming with confidence.”

“We have proven match winners and some fresh faces who are tailor-made for the demands of T20 cricket. This promises to be an exciting contest.”

Ireland have met Bangladesh just once before in the shortest format, when they were six-wicket winners during the 2009 World Twenty20.

Ireland have been drawn against Aus-tralia and West Indies at this year’s World Twenty20 in Sri Lanka, which starts in September. -AFP

FILE- Alex Cusack of Ireland hits a shot during their Hong Kong cricket sixes quar-ter final match against Pakistan on Oct. 30, 2011. (AFP)

Xiang wins hurdles at Prefontaine ClassicEUGENE, Oregon: Liu Xiang lunged across the fin-

ish line and quickly looked up to his left at the giant scoreboard.

Then, he impatiently waited.A split second later - only it felt like an eternity

- the board flashed Liu’s time in big, white characters - 12.87 seconds. That sent the 110-meter hurdler from China straight into euphoria as he thrust his fist into the air before dancing and skipping around the track with unbridled exuberance.

Sure, there was the excitement from holding off a star-studded field to get the win at the Prefontaine Classic on Saturday. But there also was that glittering time on the scoreboard.

maybe at first he thought he had tied the world re-cord, but it turned out to be wind-aided by a slight mar-gin. So the world mark set by Cuba’s Dayron Robles remains safe for now.

Long after the race was over - and after Liu did a celebratory lap around the track to high-five any-one with an extended hand - he was asked if he ever thought about breaking world records.

“no. I never think about that,” Liu said through

a translator. “I think I can run that fast. I’m ready for that.” Liu once held the world mark when he finished in 12.88 seconds during a race in july 2006. nearly two years later - just before the 2008 Beijing olympics - Robles took the record. And there it has stood.

Robles was actually scheduled to be in the field, but had trouble securing his visa and pulled out of the competition at the last hour.

There were still plenty of other rivals to push Liu, who held off Aries merritt and jason Richardson in what was billed as one of the marquee events at Pre. This race certainly lived up to the billing, with Liu get-ting off to a good start in the impressive victory.

“I just treated it as a regular race,” Liu said.His reaction to the win proved it was anything but

just another race, especially this close to the London olympics.

And had the wind not been gusting, this very well could’ve been a performance to remember.

These days, nothing Liu accomplishes on the track comes as a shock to Richardson.

“He’s just amazing,” Richardson said. “It almost goes without saying.” -AP

Xiang Liu, of China, third from (left), races against, from left to right, United States’ Dexter Faulk, David Oliver, Jason Rich-ardson, Aries Merritt and Great Britain’s Andrew Turner, (right), in the 110-meter hurdles on Saturday, June 2, 2012. (AP)

MONDAY, JUNE 4, 2012

SPORTSFootball

Sports Editors HighlightLONDON: England goalkeeper Rob Green will leave West Ham this summer

after six years, club chairman David Gold has confirmed.The 32-year-old will be out of contract at the end of June and has not agreed

new terms despite the Hammers’ promotion back to the Premier League.Former captain Matthew Upson left Upton Park as a free agent last year and

Green is now set to follow having been linked with Tottenham, QPR, West Brom and Spanish side Malaga.

Gold wrote on Twitter: “Robert Green is a free agent he has chosen to move on. Matthew Upson did the same thing. -AFP

SAITAMA, Japan: Asian Cup holders Japan beat Oman 3-0 on Sunday in the first match of the final Asian qualifying round for the 2014 World Cup.

Goals early in both halves gave the hosts a comfort-able win at theSaitama stadium, with CSKA Moscow midfielder Keisuke Hondafirst on the scoresheet in the 12th minute, shooting into the right corner from a Yuto Nagatomo cross.

Two-time J-League top scorer Ryoichi Maeda scored via the left upright in the 51st minute, and he had another shot blocked three minutes later only for Stuttgart forward Shinji Okazaki to collect the rebound and make it 3-0.

“We were a bit tense at the beginning, but I wanted to win. I’m glad that we won,” said Honda.

“I scored the goal as I planned to do. I think we relaxed with that goal.”

Maeda, who plays for Jubilo Iwata, added: “We will have the next game very soon. I’m going to refresh and

prepare for the game. As for my goal, I’m happy, be-cause I missed a header shortly before. I want to score goals again.”

Japan dominated throughout the 90 minutes, with Oman limited to a single shot on target through mid-fielder Fawzi Doorbeen at the end of the first half, and never able to create another clear scoring chance.

A total of 10 Asian countries are split into two groups of five for the continent’s fourth qualifying round, with the group winners and runners-up earning places in Brazil, and the third-placed teams going into play-offs. “It was our first game, so it was important to get off to a good start,” said Japan’s Italian coach Alberto Zaccheroni.

“I think we can play well in the next two games. We were able to concentrate because of the support of so many people at the stadium.”

Japan will play Jordan on Friday, with Australia and Iraq their other opponents in Group B. -AFP

Japan beat Oman in football World Cup qualifying match

Russia f ly to Euro 2012 on a high after Italy win

Injured England defender Cahill out of Euro 2012

South Africa held, Zimbabwe lose in World Cup qualifiers

Japan’s Shinji Okazaki, fights for the ball with Oman’s Mohammed Al-Musalami during their soccer match for the World Cup Asia qualifying at Saitama stadium in Saitama near Tokyo, Sunday, June 3, 2012. (AP)

MOSCOW: Russia coach Dick Advo-caat said his team were brimming with confidence as they flew out to Euro 2012 on Sunday with a big friendly win over Italy in their pocket and the luck of a rela-tively easy group draw.

The Euro 2008 semi-finalists recorded their first post-Soviet win over Italy in Zurich on Friday - a 3:0 drubbing that made amends for a lackluster draw with Lithuania in their previous warm up for the June 8 tournament kick-off.

The 64-year-old Advocaat said his coaching experience from four previous big event finals told him that Russia were entering the European football showpiece at their peak.

“We are on the upswing. We are im-proving from game to game,” Advocaat said of his veteran squad.

“The Italy result fills us with confi-dence. These friendly games were very important,” the Dutch coach said.

Russia will be furious if they fail to progress from a group that besides their opening match foes the Czech Repub-lic also includes co-hosts Poland and Greece.

The team is almost identical to the one that showed charismatic flair in their shock defeat of the Netherlands in the 2008 quarter finals -- a win that showed Russia playing an attacking style of foot-

ball missing for many years.Russia will be captained by 2008 star

Andrei Arshavin and feature a backbone of players from the championship win-ning Zenit Saint Petersburg side that has been playing competitively in Europe for much of the past decade.

Advocaat said he had “eight or nine”

players in mind who would feature for Russia regularly in the opening matches.

“But I cannot name the 11 who will come out on the pitch against the Czech Republic on June 8,” he said. Russia will play the hosts in Warsaw on June 12 and conclude the group stage with a match against Greece on June 16. -AFP

LONDON: England defender Gary Cahill has been ruled out of the European Championship after fracturing his jaw in Saturday’s final warm-up match against Belgium.

The central defender is the third Eng-land player in the last week to be ruled out of Euro 2012, following injuries to midfielders Frank Lampard and Gareth Barry.

Cahill was injured in the first half of England’s 1-0 victory over Belgium at Wembley after being shoved into goal-keeper Joe Hart by Dries Mertens.

The Football Association says Cahill has two fractures of his jaw, one either side. Liverpool defender Martin Kelly will be called up in his place.

Meanwhile, John Terry has been given the all clear following fears of a hamstring injury after coming off Saturday.

England’s Euro 2012 opener is against France on June 11. -AP

JOHANNESBURG: South Africa were held 1-1 by Ethiopia and Zimbabwe lost 1-0 to Guinea Sunday in home 2014 World Cup qualifiers on a dismal day for countries from the south of the continent.

Salahdin Said gave the impressive Ethiopians the lead before half-time at Royal Bafokeng Sports Palace in north-west mining town Rustenburg, which they held until late in the second half when Katlego Mphela levelled.

Ibrahima Traore fired a first-half free kick into the top corner of the net at the National Stadium in Harare to get the Guinean campaign off to a great start ahead of a home clash with Egypt next weekend.

South African supporters joke that the only way Bafana Bafana (The Boys) can play in a major tournament is by staging it and the 2010 World Cup hosts looked far from a team capable of reaching the next finals in Brazil.

The top Group A seeds only threatened the supremely fit, well-organized visitors from free kicks with midfielder Steven Pienaar and striker Mphela troubling goalkeeper Sesay Basa.

Ethiopia took the lead on 28 minutes as Egypt-based striker Said intercepted a careless midfield pass from Siphiwe Tshabala-la, held off the challenge of centre-back Bongani Khumalo and rifled the ball past Itumeleng Khune.

Recalled 34-year-old striker Siyabonga Nomvethe was hav-ing no impact up front for South Africa while Said was always dangerous as the second half wore on and the Black Lions be-came increasingly adventurous in search of a second goal.

But a rare slip by an Ethiopian defender 13 minutes from time let in Mphela to curl the ball past Basa and into the far corner of the net for a fortunate share of the points before facing Botswana in Gaborone next Saturday.

Coach Pitso Mosimane said he remained confident South Africa would top a pool completed by the Central African Re-public, who celebrated a first World Cup qualifying victory by

overcoming Botswana 2-0 in Bangui Saturday.Rival coach Sewnet Bishaw lamented the mistake that led to

the equalizer and deprived Ethiopia of a first World Cup qualify-ing victory on the road in 14 attempts.

Germany-based striker Traore struck on 25 minutes in Hara-re while Zimbabwe had a goal disallowed and striker Knowledge Musona wasted several chances to salvage a point.

With Egypt scoring twice in the second half to down Mozam-bique 2-0 behind closed door in Alexandria, the stage is set for a top-of-the-table showdown between the National Elephant and the Pharaohs in Conakry next Sunday. -AFP

Russia’s national football manager Dick Advocaat smiles during a news conference in Moscow June 3, 2012. (Reuters)

England’s Gary Cahill, center, is pushed into goalkeeper Joe Hart (right) by Bel-gium’s Dries Mertens (left) during the international friendly football match between England and Belgium in London, Saturday, June 2, 2012. (AP)

Bongani Khumalo of South Africa in action during the 2014 FIFA World Cup Qualifier match between South Africa and Ethiopia, at Royal Bafokeng Stadium on June 3, 2012. (AFP)

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

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

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

Fenerbahce, one of the giant Istanbul teams, of-ficially declared the transfer to the Turkish stock ex-change, said the private NTV television.

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

“We had been working for this transfer for months.

He is a very important player, a big win for Fener-bahce,” he added.

Yildirim declined to comment on the transfer fee, saying that would be announced later.

Kuyt is expected to come to Turkey late June, said Yildirim.

Fenerbahce finished second in the Turkish league after Galatasaray and qualified for next season’s Cham-pions League.

But the final decision rests with the Turkish Foot-ball Federation (TFF), which previously banned Fen-erbahce from the 2011-2012 Champions League after allegations that several matches were fixed during the 2010-2011 season.

The investigation into the allegations led to a wave of arrests last summer, while Fenerbahce was hit hard-est by the case that sent its boss, Aziz Yildirim and more than a dozen team members behind bars in the ongoing trial. -AFP

Kuyt signs for Turkey’s Fenerbahce Rowe helps Revolution beat Fire

Dirk Kuyt (right) of the Netherlands warms up during a train-ing session in preparation for the Euro 2012 soccer championships in Hoenderloo May 28, 2012. (Reuters)

FOXBOROUGH, Massachusetts: Second-half substitute Kelyn Rowe broke a scoreless game in the 70th minute to lift the Revolution to a 2-0 win over the Chi-cago Fire on Saturday night. Rowe, who came on in the 64th minute, gave the Rev-olution the advantage while Benny Feil-haber added another in the 73rd minute. Revolution goalkeeper Matt Reis made three saves to preserve the shutout, his second of the season. The win snapped the Revolution’s two-game winless streak and upped their record to 5-7-1 (16 points).

Meanwhile, the Fire dropped their second straight and fell to 5-5-3 (21 points).

The Revs and Fire struggled to find scoring chances in the first half, as Reis and Fire goalkeeper Sean Johnson were rarely tested. Chicago nearly got on the board in the 48th minute when Orr Bo-rouch sent it to Dominic Oduro, who’s header ricocheted off the post.

Four minutes later, Sebastian Grazzi-ni hit one from outside the box and forced Reis to the dive before Patrick Nyarko put a foot on it at the near post.

But the Revolution attack came to life in the second half. Six minutes after he entered the match, Rowe took a hold of pass from Feilhaber and flicked it through to put the Revolution on top.

Rowe returned the favor in the 73rd minute when he played a diagonal ball to Feilhaber, who redirected it past Johnson to cap the scoring. The Revolution return to action in two weeks when they face the Columbus Crew on June 16 at home. The Fire head home to face the New York Red Bulls on June 17. -AP