October 23, 201015 Dhu’l-qa’da 1431

Volume 15 Number 4765

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ON SATURDAY

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PAGE 6

Amid tensions, Bahrain votes today

US plan for trade targets hits G20 headwinds

Secretariat: Story of an extraordinary horse

Wayne Rooney’s shock u-turn

France on the boil as strikes continue

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2020

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THE ISSUE

With the majority of the population relying on private vehicles for daily transport, it was not easy to develop a public transport system in the country. The number of privately-owned vehicles continues to rise, with about 100,000 new vehicles registered in the country

every year, according to figures released by the Traffic Department some time ago.The public buses, however, proved a success, thanks to the burgeoning expatriate

population in the country. Mowasalat currently operates about 260 Karwa buses on 57 routes that together carry 80,000 to 100,000 passengers daily, according to company officials. In 2009, a total of 24 million people used the bus service, mak-ing it one of the most popular public services in the country.

The service is not without problems and shortcomings. Families still shy away from using public buses, perhaps because a public transport culture has not yet developed in the country along with the transport system. Currently, single work-ers, especially labourers, form the huge majority of bus passengers. It is a fact that the service has become a boon to this segment of the population, which cannot afford the high taxi fares.

The Karwa taxis, launched by Mowasalat in 2004 replacing the earlier orange-and-white cabs, have no doubt raised the quality and standard of the taxi service in the country. But with that went up the fares, making the service inaccessible to a major portion of the population.

Despite all the claims being made by Mowasalat officials, the company has not been able to address the shortage of taxis that is still felt in many parts of Doha city and its outskirts, not to speak of the distant areas. The company insists its current fleet of about 2,200 taxis is enough to meet the requirements of the country, with a population of nearly 1.7 million. The surge in the number of illegal cabs over the past few years is a clear pointer to the inadequacy of the official taxi service.

A few years ago Mowasalat had announced plans to open the sector to competition and allow private companies to operate taxis. Four companies were selected follow-ing public bidding. The company, however, didn’t proceed with the plan. Recently, a senior official said the company was ready to reconsider the proposal, but nobody knows when that will happen. If more operators enter the field, it could address the shortage of taxis to some extent. Whether it would have an impact on the fares depends on what policy Mowasalat will follow in this regard.

THE PENINSULASee also page 2

When Mowasalat, the state-owned public transport company, launched the first public buses in Qatar in 2005, many wondered if the experiment was going to work.

KEEPINGKEEPINGTHEM ON THEM ON THE GO...THE GO...

Pics: Salim Matramkot

CHALLENGES OF

0202 OCTOBER 23, 2010www.pen.com.qaON SATURDAY Home

BY RAYNALD C RIVERA

DOHA: Though Qatar has been witnessing rapid economic and demographic growth, its pub-lic transport sector seems to be lagging behind as mounting challenges beset its progress.

Before the state-owned Mowasalat transport company took the helm of the country’s public land transport system six years ago, the streets of Doha were dominated by around 2,000 orange-and-white coloured taxis catering to the country’s then 750,000-strong residents.

The Qatar Statistics Authority, in a recent report, said Qatar’s population has reached 1.7 million and is expected to grow to 2.5 mil-lion by 2020.

Despite the increase in the number of people in the coun-try the transport company has not been seen as exerting much effort to augment its fleet to meet the surge in demand, with the number of taxis at only 2,200. The shortage of taxis is evident in the mushrooming of illegal private taxis that ply around Doha.

Hapless passengers are left with almost no choice but to hire these illegal cabs whose drivers demand more than the Karwa fare, especially outside the city, where there are virtually no Karwa taxis available to take pas-sengers to their destinations.

While some of the drivers of ille-gal taxis do the work just for a few hours to earn some extra money, many of them drive full-time as they find it more lucrative than a regular job, with many customers preferring their services to that provided by Mowasalat. One rea-son is that many passengers find it more convenient to call a private taxi than a Karwa one. Booking a Karwa taxi has been tough for many customers as it takes a lot of time to get a call through and many times taxis are not available — another proof of the shortage.

Even Karwa drivers have devised ways to earn extra cash — by manipulating the taxi meter; not using the meter and instead asking for a higher fare; or taking multiple passengers going to different desti-nations on the same trip.

By changing the mode of the meter from that for normal tariff to one for outside Doha or night charge, a taxi driver can trick the passenger into paying double the usual fare. The taxi meter starts at QR4, with QR1.2 charged per kilometre during daytime inside Doha city. The running rate between 9pm and 5am in Doha is QR1.8 per kilometre. The rate outside Doha is QR1.8 per kilo-metre at all times.

Most Karwa taxis recently had sensors installed in the front pas-senger seat that automatically turn the meter on once a passenger takes the seat; however, some driv-ers manually switch off the meter after having the passenger agree not to use it in return for a cheaper fare, which is really not so.

Karwa drivers justify their devious methods saying the man-agement does not provide them enough compensation to support themselves and their families back in their home countries.

On top of all this, taxi users now face an additional burden with the Mowasalat management recently announcing that taxi fares are to be increased because of inflation and high maintenance costs.

Those who wish to travel with-out burning a hole in their pocket have the option of riding on any of the hundreds of Mowasalat public buses plying on 57 routes inside and outside Doha. The fares are low compared to the taxis — starting from QR3 within Doha limits to QR9 for the far-thest destination in the country. A passenger may also buy a two-way ticket for QR5 or a day pass for QR9 that entitles one to any number of bus rides inside the city until 12 midnight.

Currently there are 260 Karwa buses that carry 80,000 to 100,000 passengers daily, accord-ing to Mowasalat officials. Last year, a total of 24 million people used the bus service, making it one of the most popular public

transport services in the country.The frequency of the bus trips

varies from one every 15 minutes to twice a day, though sometimes road works or lack of buses causes delays. The resulting inconven-ience to passengers increases manifold during the summer

months because many bus stops do not have any shelter and those that do provide little relief from temperatures that can reach 50 degrees Celsius.

Mowasalat had announced plans to erect air-conditioned bus shelters, but they have not

seen the light of day until now.There is another problem: the

bus drivers also resort to illegal practices such as asking alighting passengers to return their ticket and issuing the used tickets to other passengers. Mowasalat has been keen to curb such practices

and deploys inspectors to conduct random checks of the buses from time to time at bus stops.

This problem might become a thing of the past when an elec-tronic ticketing system is imple-mented next year wherein bus passengers will pay using pre-paid smart cards instead of cash.

Compared to Dubai, which crossed the 1.8 million population mark in the first quarter this year — slightly more than Qatar’s pop-ulation — this country has a long way to go in terms of improving its public land transport system.

The most populated among the seven emirates in the United Arab Emirates, Dubai boasts a large government-run transport system. While its bus system has expanded its fleet from 500 last year to more than 1,500 this year, with nearly 200 routes on weekdays, it also has a large number of taxis with state-owned Dubai Taxi Corporation running more than 3,000 taxis apart from the 4,000-plus taxis run by privately owned companies such as Cars Taxi, National Taxi, Cititaxi and Metro Taxi.

The chairman of the board of directors of Mowasalat, Jassim Saif Al Sulaiti, recently said in an interview that another taxi com-pany was likely to be launched next year. Although this may play an important role in easing the taxi shortage, it may at the same time worsen traffic congestion.

Having a second taxi company in the city could also be a boon to the public as competition could result in lower fares and better services.

Commuting by taxi here has always been costly despite petrol being cheap; so many people find using their own car better than using public transport.

The much-anticipated Qatar rail network and Doha metro sys-tem, which have been conceived based on the success of the Dubai Metro, will be built at an enor-mous cost but are expected to provide numerous benefits includ-ing lower traffic congestion and an alternative means of transport for the majority of the population.

Dubai’s driverless metro, launched last year, proved suc-cessful in encouraging peo-ple to use public transport; it has seen a sharp increase in the number of passengers from an average of 35,000 daily last year to 110,000 this year.

But for Qatar there is still a long way to go as the 300-kilome-tre multi-billion dollar Qatar rail project, which will be constructed in several phases, is expected to be completed only by 2026.

Governments around the world have been keen to persuade more people to use public transport instead of private vehicles, as mass transport systems have many advantages, both economic and environmental.

Public transportation lessens the number of cars on the road, lowering gas emissions, easing traffic congestion and reducing an individual’s carbon footprint.

Improving Mowasalat’s services could be the best way to lure the majority of the population in Qatar to utilise public transport for the good of the country as it takes huge strides in economic development.

THE PENINSULA

Public transport challengesThe number of buses and taxis in Qatar has failed to keep pace with the steady increase in population

Teeming numbers waiting for buses to their destinations at the Al Ghanim bus terminus. SHAIVAL DALAL

While some of the drivers of illegal taxis do the work just for a few hours to earn some extra money, many of them drive full-time as they find it more lucrative than a regular job, with many customers preferring their services to that provided by Mowasalat.

(Clockwise from left) Karwa taxis waiting for passengers in front of a shopping mall in Doha; a private taxi; and a limousine operated by a private company in Doha. SALIM MATRAMKOT/ABDUL BASIT

NEW EVIDENCE

Killings of hundreds of civilians at US checkpoints

US army’s cover-up of state-sanctioned torture

Despite denials, US kept a death count during the war

Maliki’s alleged association with death squads

0303OCTOBER 23, 2010www.pen.com.qa ON SATURDAYHome

DOHA: Al Jazeera will be the first international broadcaster to air analytical coverage and programmes that reveal star-tling new information about the operations of US forces during the Iraq War.

The programmes, produced for Al Jazeera English by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, are based on files from Wikileaks who gained access to over 400,000 documents regarding the War in Iraq making it the largest docu-ment leak in US history. The secret materials are more than four times larger than Wikileak’s Afghanistan files. The documents date from January 1, 2004 to December 31, 2009.

Al Jazeera English aired the first programme yesterday at 2100GMT. The programme spe-cial will be repeated at 0200GMT today. The second extended one-hour special will air at 1400GMT tomorrow.

Among the major findings cov-ered in the programmes include:

� The US army’s cover-up of Iraqi state sanctioned torture — although one of the stated aims of the Iraq War was to close down Saddam Hussein’s torture cham-bers, the Wikileaks documents show many cases of torture and abuse of Iraqi prisoners by Iraqi police and soldiers. In addition, the documents reveal the US knew about the state sanctioned torture but ordered its troops not to intervene.

� The killing of hundreds of civilians at US manned

checkpoints — according to the documents, many Iraqi civilians were killed during the war at checkpoints in contrast to the official US position.

� The US kept a death count throughout the War despite repeated denials.

� New information on Blackwater civilian killings — the secret US files reveal new cases of Blackwater (a company now known as XE) opening fire on civilians. No charges were ever brought.

� US Army reports about Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki and allegations of his association with death squads.

� Iran’s secret involvement in financing Shia militias — the files detail Iran’s secret war in Iraq and discuss Iran’s Revolutionary Guard acting as an alleged sup-plier of arms to Shia insurgents.

Visit www.aljazeera.net/eng-lish for more details.

THE PENINSULA

Leaked Iraqi war documents on Al JazeeraFirst to reveal startling information

DOHA: Out of more than 1,300 applicants, over 800 volunteers completed their training and will be on hand to take part in the Doha Tribeca Film Festival (DTFF) 2010 from October 26 to 30.

DTFF could not happen with-out the dedication and hard work of its volunteers who work throughout the festival in vari-ous capacities. These positions are unpaid but provide priceless experience and opportunities as volunteering is often the first step in the door for people interested in pursuing or advancing a career in the film industry.

The rewards of being a festival volunteer are many – in addition to fostering a sense of community, being a volunteer has benefits including receiving vouchers for

screenings and panel discussions, getting credentials (a badge) and a fun-filled goodie bag including a DTFF uniform, invitation to the volunteer appreciation party, and a certificate of appreciation.

Shabeb Al Rumaihi, a law stu-dent at Qatar University and a Guest Relations Volunteer said: "I love being a DTFF volunteer because I am a part of an insti-tution that represents Qatar to international film industries and represents the world to Qatar."

Ibrahim Minawi, a volunteer in the Communications Department said: “Some people wonder why I’d want to volunteer and work for free, and my response is that because I’m helping people each day and that is a valuable reward. For me, it’s not always about the money; it’s about helping the

community and doing something useful in my life.”

As the official sponsor of the Volunteer Programme, Virgin Mobile Qatar (a service provided by Qtel) will be hosting the volun-teer appreciation party, as well as awarding special prizes to DTFF’s top volunteers.

Those who missed out on sign-ing up to be a volunteer, but would still like to be involved are wel-come to join the DTFF Fan Zone, which will be open daily next to the red carpet at the Katara Opera House. Everyone is invited to cheer on their favourite stars as they arrive on the red carpet and be part of the excitement. DTFF Fan Zone credentials are available at DTFF Lounges at Villaggio and City Center malls.

THE PENINSULA

(From left) Shabeb Al Rumaihi, Ibrahim Minawi and Jassim K Emad Dahi during the DTFF training.

800 volunteers complete DTFF training

DOHA: Qatar University (QU) hosted a ‘Just-in-Time’ training workshop conducted by ictQatar, as a part of its initiative on crea-tive e-Learning cultures to empower leadership.

The workshop was designed for middle managers. It show-cased how the Qatar National e-Learning portal can assist and support them in filling the knowledge gap within their teams as well as enhancing their knowledge in key areas, organisers said.

The workshop objective was to introduce participants to the portal and its 2,500 courses and features that are customised for middle man-agers. Additionally, partici-pants were able to get a better understanding of the manag-er’s role within the portal and how it can be used for maxi-mum benefit. The workshop included constructive discus-sion on the training approach and benefits for management teams and organisations.

QU Vice President and Chief Academic Officer Prof Sheikha bint Jabor Al Thani along with 30 QU staff mem-bers participated in the work-shop which was coordinated by ictQatar Coordinator Noor Al Madfa and conducted by ictQatar Project Manager Yazen Al Safe, and TRAK Learning Solutions specialist Alaeddin Al Najjar

The event was organised by QU’s Staff Development Section of the Human Resources Department.

THE PENINSULA

ictQatar, QU hold e-Learning workshop

Donating blood

Volunteers pose for a picture during the annual blood donation campaign organised by Tulu Koota at HMC blood donation unit, yesterday. Tulu Koota Qatar, a socio-cultural organisation from India’s coastal Karnataka State, held its annual blood donation campaign to mark the 11th anniversary. SHAIVAL DALAL

0404 OCTOBER 23, 2010www.pen.com.qaON SATURDAY Home

BY CHRIS V PAGANIBAN

DOHA: The premier Filipino basketball league in Qatar for-mally opened yesterday at the Al Arabi Sports Club drawing hundreds of basketball fans.

Billed as the 7th Pinoy Basketball of Qatar (PIBAQ) Basketball Cup 2010 with Vodafone Qatar as its main spon-sor, the tournament is regarded as much bigger and more excit-ing as 16 teams will take part in Category B and six teams in Category A.

Philippine Ambassador to Qatar Crescente Relacion graced the opening ceremony along with a representative from Vodafone Qatar which was marked with

an attractive display of differ-ent teams donning their colour-ful uniforms during the parade around club’s hard court.

Relacion has reiterated his call to his countrymen to devote more of their time with sports like basketball.

The event also saw pretty Filipinas calling the shots to the much coveted Miss PIBAQ 2010 with QDVC bet Nida Vitug crowned for the tilt and two other lasses from One Family-Chowking Qatar as best muse for Category A and Qatar United Travels as best muse for Category B.

What makes this tournament a truly come-on to basketball fans are the entry into the league of former basketball stars of the

prestigious Philippine Basketball Association who were given another crack to play for differ-ent teams.

The former PBA stars have lost their fame to the Philippine league but were however given the chance to regain the glory with an offer for a decent work as long as they will play for the teams that hired them back home.

Among them are Nino Gelig who used to play for PBA’s Talk N’ Text team, Marvin Ortigera, Radel Mallari and Ruben Mendoza of the Sta Lucia Realtors and Arnold Calo.

Participating teams are defending champion Chowking-One Family, Rumaillah Group, Vodafone Qatar, Ali Café, Power

Horse Energy Drink and Qatar Kentz.

The Category B are com-posed of AECOM Consultant, PBC Tamween, Qatalum,

KBAS Contracting, Al Khor Community, Pampanga All-Star and Consultants, PISQ-Western Union, PSD-Western Union, Hamad Pit-Malu, Qatar

United Travel, One Family-Chowking Doha, Noel Mindanao, Combined Group Company, IMCO Engineering and QDVC LRT.

THE PENINSULA

7th Filipino basketball league opens in Doha Vodafone main sponsor; 22 teams vie for honours

The parade of colours at the hardcourt of Al Arabi Sports Club marking the opening of the PIBAQ Basketball Cup 2010 sponsored by Vodafone Qatar, yesterday. CHRIS V PANGANIBAN

DOHA: Eliminating cardio-vascular risk factors and regu-lar blood pressure tests will prevent from strokes or brain attacks says a neurology expert.

One of the most important ways to prevent stoke is to main-tain a normal blood pressure, according to Dr Matthew Fink, professor and interim chair of the Department of Neurology and Neuroscience and chief of the division of stroke and criti-cal care neurology at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center.

High blood pressure is a factor in nearly 70 percent of strokes, says Dr Fink, who talked about ways to prevent stroke and dementia at a programme spon-sored by Weill Cornell Medical College – Qatar (WCMC-Q) as part of its Medicine and Public Lecture Series.

Guarding against high blood pressure requires regular screen-ing tests because it usually doesn’t have symptoms. If it is high, then taking steps such as medica-tion, quitting smoking, improved diet, regular exercise and weight reduction can help lower it.

Heart disease is another risk factor for stroke, says Dr Fink and it, too, can be modified by quitting smoking, better diet, more exer-cise, and regular health screen-ings that check for high blood pressure and high cholesterol.

Preventive measures to save your brain from stroke is impor-tant because stroke leaves about 30 percent of survivors needing help caring for themselves and leaves 18 percent needing to be institutionalised.

Multiple strokes can also be a

cause of dementia, which in the United States affects about eight percent of people over 65.

So the risk for dementia can also be modified by health screen-ings that check for high choles-terol and high blood pressure, by quitting smoking, a healthy weight and healthy diet and regu-lar exercise.

Eliminating cardiovascular risk factors not only helps prevent stoke, but can help reduce the risk of dementia in later life, says Dr Fink. Further, keeping busy mentally and avoiding sedentary lifestyles could reduce the chances of developing dementia.

THE PENINSULA

WCMC-Q holds lecture on preventing strokes DOHA: Qatar University’s

Department of Health Sciences of the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) held its Cancer Awareness Forum with the theme “Cancer can be beaten”.

“This forum is timely to pro-mote awareness, prevention, early diagnosis, and care and treatment of this disease,” said Dr Mohamed Ahmedna, CAS Associate Dean for Research. He stated that dis-cussions will focus on the collec-tive efforts in the field of scientific research to find crucial solutions to combat the disease.

The event was part of a series of events held at the organisa-tion to mark International Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Forum participants were QU faculty and students, representatives from Hamad Medical Corporation, the

Supreme Council of Health, Weill Cornell University Qatar, and researchers interested in cancer control and prevention issues.

Head of the Department of Health Sciences Dr Tahra El Obeid, said: “Today’s event is an example of how we can come together and disseminate infor-mation and make a difference”.

She noted that the World Health Organisation reported that cancer is the leading cause of death in the world with over 8 million people affected by the disease in 2008. Further statis-tics show that by 2030, 21.4 mil-lion new cases will be diagnosed, she said.

“While the statistics are dis-turbing, great strides have been made in combating the disease, so cancer is no longer a death

sentence as previously thought. Research is a vital weapon to fight the disease,” Dr El Obeid said.

On the forum’s agenda were presentations by President LXRYM Opto Technology Inc Dr Ma’an Al Ani on “Angstro-Technology: Detection of pro-teins on cancer cells could play a role in the methods of ther-apy”; QU Assistant Professor of Medical Microbiology Dr Asma Al Thani on “High-Risk HPV among women attending Women’s Hospital in Qatar”; Associate Professor QU College of Pharmacy Dr Lars Hedin on “Don’t feed the tumour! The importance of healthy diet in cancer preven-tion”; and Radiation Oncologist Al Amal Hospital Dr Mohamed Riyas on Understanding breast cancer. THE PENINSULA

Cancer can be beaten, QU forum told

BY CHRIS V PANGANIBAN

DOHA: The Philippine Independence Day Organising Committee 2011 (PINOC 2011) has vowed to offer thousands of their countrymen in Qatar a much bigger and more exciting celebration next year.

Newly-elected PINOC 2011 chairman Romeo Ocfemia said they would be holding a series of meetings to draw up better plans and strategies to add more activi-ties and involve more community groups to become part of the cel-ebration. Ocfemia was elected as PINOC 2011 chairman yesterday in a majority votes during the quarterly community meeting held at the Philippine Embassy where more than 100 community leaders attended.

He said he will first call for a meeting of an ad hoc commit-tee who will have a consultation and analysis of the problems and gains encountered by the PINOC last year then later elect among themselves the chairmen of dif-ferent committees. The PINOC ways and means committee will be activated this early and will be tasked to mobilise all the prepa-rations to ensure that next year’s Independence Day celebration in June 12 will be successful.

‘We will encourage more groups to join the celebration to make it more grand and excit-ing,” Ocfemia said. Last year, the PINOC 2010 chaired by Frank Jamandre held the celebration at the Doha Sheraton Hotel where various activities including the car show, musical extravaganza, product exhibits and the high-lighted gala dinner for a cause.

The body generated more than QR100,000 from the dinner and its proceeds went to charitable services to the community.

THE PENINSULA

Philippine body plans for bigger Independence Day celebration

DOHA: QatarDebate Center, an initiative of Qatar Foundation for Science and Education, has started a week long training session for the students and faculty of all the universities in Qatar in the new format of British Parliamentary style.

QatarDebate is introducing the British Parliamentary (BP) debate model in its future debate sessions for the university stu-dents from this academic year, throwing up a major shift in the approach in the debating mode and skills. The training session was opened on Sunday at the LAS building of Qatar Foundation.

“This is the World University Debating Championship (WUDC)

format. It is an in-depth debate method which tries to fathom out the inner core of a debate topic and conducts a detailed analy-sis of a topic,” said prominent debate trainer, Kate Shuster, Director of the world’s largest debate programme for students “the Middle School Public Debate Programme,” headquartered at Claremont McKenna College.

Giving out the details of the BP style debate she said that it is different from the schools debate model as there are two parts for the debate both for the proposi-tion and the opposition. There are four members in a debate team as against three in the schools debate programme. Another important

feature of BP debate is that only 15 minutes are given for prepara-tion and no electronic devices are allowed for the preparation.

Regarding the shift to BP for-mat of debating, QatarDebate Center Head of English Programme, Kelley Bieringer said that it was a change for the better.

“We wanted to introduce BP style of debating primarily for the reason that all the international debates are taking place in this format. As our students take part at the university level of debat-ing it is imperative for them to be acquainted with this format. Moreover this format gives scope for wider and detailed debating

than the schools debate format,” she said.

She also said that separate training sessions have been organised for various universities in Qatar. She also hoped that the students will benefit from these workshops and be able to present their ideas more logically and convincingly. “I am learning many new things which I will be able to make use of in the coming debat-ing sessions. Moreover, I hope that when I complete the training sessions, I will be able to get into the bottom of a topic and debate on it far more elegantly and effi-ciently,” said Almas, one of the students from Qatar University.

THE PENINSULA

UK Parliamentary style taught at debate centre

DOHA: A high number of breast cancer patients are detected within every week in Qatar, reported Al Sharq newspaper.

“Two to three breast cancer patients are identified weekly in Qatar,” said Dr Sheikh Khalid bin Jabr Al Thani, Chairman, Qatar National Cancer Society.

He explained four main facts which influence Qatar women’s lifestyle in getting breast cancer. Lack of exercise, eating unhealthy food, inhaling shisha and age factor influence women in getting breast cancer, Dr Al Thani said on the sidelines of a press confer-ence to announce the third scientific breast cancer conference schedule to be held at the end of this month.

“With age the possibility of getting breast cancer is increasing, therefore it’s important to have routine checkups,” Dr Al Thani said.

He also said that all sectors are supporting the activities of social institutions, especially activities of the Qatar National Cancer Society. He stressed the necessity for cancer awareness programmes and precautions to be taken, as early detection of the disease is curable.

Dr Al Thani thanked Al Khaliji Bank, the sponsors of the third scientific breast cancer conference.

Sheikh Hamad bin Faisal Al Thani, chairman of the Al Khaliji Bank said, the bank has taken the responsibility to participate at the conference to support the campaign launched by the National Institution for social programmes.

Al Khaliji Bank will participate to support the institution and other organisations for public welfare, he further said.

He also said the bank is studying all suggestions to include the clients to participate in supporting the cause and will launch an account to collect donations for Qatar National Cancer Society.

THE PENINSULA

Two, three breast cancer cases detected every week in Qatar

Chief of Stroke and Critical Care Neurology at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, Dr Matthew Fink during the lecture.

0505OCTOBER 23, 2010www.pen.com.qa ON SATURDAY

Salim Matramcot

Out on the beach

As temperature subsides, many people now prefer heading towards

beaches to enjoy their weekends.Qatar has a number of public beaches where residents can take a splash for free. These beaches however have virtually no facilities such as toilets, parasols and other basic provisions for visitors who wish to unwind by the Qatari waters.Some beaches are left unkempt with old dhows, destroyed and not anymore functional, just left along the shore posing danger for little children. Steps are needed to be taken to clean these beaches up and make facilities available to provide better services to visitors and boost the country’s local tourism industry. THE PENINSULA

0606 OCTOBER 23, 2010www.pen.com.qaON SATURDAY Views

BY PRAFUL BIDWAI

WHEN India was elected last week to the UN security council as one

of its five temporary members for two years, foreign minister SM Krishna was ecstatic. He termed this a “big day for Indian diplomacy” and a “reflection of the expectations that the world

has from us”. The Indian media joined the chorus to celebrate this “monumental” victory, which will give India a chance to “showcase its eligibility to become a per-manent member” of the council. New Delhi has long nurtured this ambition and backed it indefati-gably, while throwing in its lot with the other security council aspirants – Japan, Germany and Brazil – known as the G4.

But it’s ludicrous to exult over an election for which there was no contest; under the Asian rota system, India’s victory became inevitable once Kazakhstan was persuaded to withdraw from the race. And India lobbied furiously for the seat. During the general assembly session in New York, Krishna personally spoke to the foreign ministers of 123 countries. It also helped that Pakistan didn’t campaign against India.

India’s recent election stands in sharp contrast to 1996, when

it last contested the Asian seat against Japan. The result then was a humiliating 142:40 defeat. Of course, there has since been a sea-change in India’s global sta-tus, with its rising profile as a potential economic superpower, and a great regional power, whom nobody wants to displease. India has even extracted a unique deal from the US under which its nuclear weapons are legiti-mised and the world resumes regular nuclear commerce with it – although India has signed no atomic restraint or disarmament treaty.

Does the temporary member-ship bring India any closer to a permanent seat, with or without a veto? Probably not. The G4 asso-ciation carries its own burden: China is as keen to keep Japan out of the council’s permanent membership as Washington is to bring it in. Germany’s bid raises more eyebrows than India’s. And

the “coffee club” comprising Italy, Spain, Mexico, Pakistan and oth-ers stiffly opposes the G4.

It would be wiser for India to redirect its energies radically. The country should stop obsess-ing over a permanent seat and instead work to strengthen the general assembly and make it more vibrant and responsive to the weakest states. What matters much more than position, status or symbols of status is how India uses its rising power.

Here, it remains unsure, timid and confused. In place of craft-ing proactive independent posi-tions on major issues like Iran, Palestine-Israel, Afghanistan, climate change, north-south relations and the great recession, India tails the west – a complete U-turn from the days of non-alignment. So preoccupied is India with nurturing its new “strategic partnership” with the US that it has failed to leverage its own

special advantage in respect, for instance, of Iran, with which it has enjoyed good relations.

India not only put in abeyance a lucrative gas pipeline project from Iran via Pakistan, but voted against Iran at the International Atomic Energy Agency “under coercion” from Washington – despite its stand that Iran is not in substantive breach of its IAEA and non-proliferation obligations. India should play a mediatory role that prevents Iran from being cornered and allows it to pursue legitimate nuclear activities with IAEA inspections.

India had a principled position for Palestinian nationhood for decades. It recently abandoned it to embrace Israel as an ally and major military supplier. But India hasn’t used its relations with Israel to encourage less reckless behaviour on its part, or help the Palestinians. India pledged to uphold the G77 developing

countries’ stand on differentiated north-south responsibility for climate change and for an ambi-tious, legally-binding agreement with deep enforceable emissions cuts by industrialised countries. But India struck a collusive, inef-fectual, obligations-free deal at Copenhagen with the US and the biggest emerging polluters, which spells disaster for the planet.

These positions are rooted in the domestic elite’s pro-western biases and cry out for correc-tion. India’s elite greatly relishes its growing global power. But it doesn’t debate its purposes. It does not ask what kind of power India should be and how it can use its influence to make the world better while promoting India’s enlightened interests as a tribune of the global under-privileged. That’s a tragedy for a nation with the Gandhi-Nehru legacy.

THE GUARDIAN

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ACROSS Europe, governments are faced with the twin problems of aging populations and shrinking finances to fund the pen-sions provided to them. The solution, those governments have

decided, is to raise the pension age on the principle that if people live longer, they should work longer. But while in almost all Europe there is a reluctant public acceptance of this change, in France it is being resisted. Strikes by French workers and students opposed to President Nicolas Sarkozy’s pension reforms have brought the country almost to its knees. Opinion polls show considerable public sympathy for the strikers.

This is precisely the sort of battle that Sarkozy relishes. Moreover, it is difficult to see him losing it providing he stays the course. He holds most of the cards in his hand. That is because while Sarkozy may be unpopular, there are other things that the French like even less. They do not like demonstrations, let alone running battles, on their streets. Nor do they like public transport brought to a halt. They especially dislike power cuts or the gas stations running dry.

Most important, they have the highest regard for their political insti-tutions. Once their elected representatives have passed a law, they do not like to see it revoked by public protest. That threatens the entire political system. For that reason, although uncomfortable about the pension age being raised, they are unlikely to accept the challenge from the streets once the bill is passed and becomes law. This is not 1968. Moreover, while they would prefer that the issue be resolved some other way, they are aware that it is not going to happen and that France is in no financial position to avoid the unpleasant medicine that the rest of Europe accepts it is going to have to swallow.

That is the unions’ predicament and Sarkozy’s master card. It is why he and his party are bound to persevere. Once the law is passed sometime in the next few days, any union-organized opposition to it on the streets, especially if that turns violent, sends the message that the demonstrators and the strikers respect neither the law nor the democratic system. For that reason, the opposition Socialists cannot be seen to do anything other than bide their time and promise that, if elected next time round, they will repeal the law. For Sarkozy there is also a very personal reason for not changing his plans at this point. He and his party know that if he gives in to the demands of the strikers and drops the pension reforms, he will be seen as a broken reed. He will have no chance of winning the next presidential election -only 19 months away. ARAB NEWS

The other side

What would Gandhi say?

Editorial

Bernanke’s strategy

AS America is struggling to dispel frightening images of deflation, all eyes are on Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke. The reason is the limited choices which

Bernanke has before him to perk up the economy, having experi-mented with many options since the recession began. There is also another danger: this time, his policies or reforms can’t afford to fail. The costs of such a failure will be huge.

On November 2, when Americans go to the polls, the same day the Open Market Committee of the Federal Reserve Board con-venes in Washington. All indications are that the Fed will embark on a major effort to stimulate the economy. With unemployment still high and inflation threatening to become deflation, Bernanke seems to believe that the Fed should act, lest the economy slip into permanent, Japan-like stagnation — or worse. His determination is laudable but risky. The unorthodox approach he seems to favour could easily have negative side effects.

Experts say the Fed has exhausted its usual means of increas-ing the money supply: lowering the interest rate at which banks may lend one another their reserves held at the Fed. This so-called federal funds rate is now zero. You can’t go any lower than that, so the Fed has expanded the money supply further through “quantitative easing”: buying more than a trillion dollars’ worth

of mortgage-backed securities with freshly printed money. Now the Fed is poised for more such “quantitative easing” in an effort to bring long-term interest rates down further.

The case for quantitative easing is straightforward. By bidding up the price, and thus lowering the yield, of Treasuries and other safe debt instruments, the Fed encourages investors to put their money into different, potentially higher-yielding investments such as stocks. This reduces the cost of capital for businesses, which enables them to expand, which creates jobs. Other hoped-for effects include a further slide in home mortgage rates and greater demand for US exports.

But experts are worried that this new package is a gamble, as Bernanke acknowledges. “We have much less experience in judging the economic effects of this policy instrument,” he said on Oct. 15. The risks include, crucially, a surge in commodity prices, which have already taken off in anticipation of the new package. Higher prices for food and petrol would cancel out some of the growth this might achieve. A cheaper dollar might indeed help exports. But it’s not clear how the Fed will sop up all the extra liquidity it’s creating once growth resumes. Given the uncertainties, the markets can only wait to see how the new plans unfold. As in politics, the future is unpredictable in economy too.

By disclosing sensitive information, Wikileaks continues

to put at risk the lives of our troops, their coalition partners

and those Iraqis and Afghans working with us.

Geoff Morrell Pentagon Spokesman

Quote ofthe day

Fed chairman’s latest plan to perk up the economy is not without risks.

Pension reforms

Instead of

kowtowing to the

west, India should

use its position on

the global stage

wisely.

0707OCTOBER 23, 2010www.pen.com.qa ON SATURDAYViews

BY MONICA HESSE

In the early days after 9/11, employees of the Arab American Institute (AAI) huddled in their modest Washington offices, afraid

to leave the building. Police down-stairs guarded the entrance, serv-ing as protection from those who might deliver on the death threats sent to the nonprofit’s founder and president, James Zogby. “Raghead,” they had said, or “I’ll slit your throat”.

This is not the story that Zogby likes to tell. He prefers the one that happened next, the one where, in the middle of the threats and the paranoia, he heard a timid knock.

“I looked through the door, and I saw the woman from the office next door,” he says. He didn’t know her name. They had never spoken. “She was holding a plat-ter of brownies. And she said, `I know you are frightened. I wanted to bring you this.’ “ He shakes his head at the memory, which hon-ors his belief that violent actions prompt kind reactions and that progress progresses.

He saw the brownies and, he recalls, “I wept.”

Zogby, who is of Lebanese descent, is Catholic but is often assumed to be Muslim because of what he does, and responds to e-mailed bile by offering to pray for the senders. He is the brother of the more famous John, the poll-ster behind Zogby International, with whom he has collaborated on a new book. He is, at a time of “Islamic cultural centers” or “Ground Zero mosques” — depending on how you feel about the proposed New York construc-tion — a man relentlessly tapped to explain what Arabs are think-ing, why they are thinking it and how the United States can make better decisions.

“He knows all the Arab lead-ers, whether it’s (Yasser) Arafat or the king of Jordan or the presi-dent of Egypt or the prime minis-ter of Lebanon,” says Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, who is also of Lebanese descent and who met Zogby when LaHood was running for Congress in Illinois. “In Washington, if you want to know about Arab issues, you call Jim Zogby.”

And LaHood suggests calling up one of these world leaders. He knows that such dignitaries don’t typically gab on the phone, “but when they hear you’re talking about Jim ...”

A few days later, Queen Noor of Jordan rings up. Asked what she thinks Zogby’s most impor-tant contribution has been to relationship-building between Americans and Arabs, she says, “The work that he’s undertaken today is more important than it ever was — and it will be even more important tomorrow.”

* * *The grand irony of the Middle

East: The United States has “sent more money, sent more troops, fought more wars, and lost more lives” than can be cal-culated, Zogby says. “The invest-ment there is so enormous and yet we just don’t understand the culture.”

At 64, Zogby is a grandfa-therly man, gently balding with deep laugh lines and thin-rimmed glasses. His cluttered office is decorated with pictures of his wife, Eileen, and their five grown children.

His frustrations over this knowledge gap resulted in the new book, “Arab Voices,” which is part polling data (using results from Zogby International’s sur-veys), part history and part per-sonal recollections. It is dedicated, Zogby says, to narrowing that chasm between perceptions and reality.

“We don’t understand that Arabs really DO like us (Americans) — that we define a whole culture,” he says. “When someone in Saudi Arabia goes to ... McDonald’s, it’s not because the food is better than the local fare. It’s because people want to buy a piece of America and do an American thing.” He spoke recently to the board of Starbucks, which has locations from Oman to Bahrain, and cheered them on: “You guys are saving lives every day. You are public diplomats!”

Most Arabs don’t spend their days watching anti-American rants on television, he says. They watch movies. The most popular show in the United Arab Emirates during Zogby’s research was an animated series based on “The Golden Girls.” And most Arabs don’t “hate our freedom” — the simplistic shortcut by which some explained the 9/11 attacks. In the Zogby polling done after 9/11, the majority of those surveyed in five Arab countries liked America’s freedom and democracy, as well as our cultural exports and our science and technology. What they hated were US policies — or their perceptions of them

— toward Arabs. This research contradicted a 2002 Gallup poll that had presented mass antipa-thy toward Americans. Zogby challenged that tally and chalked the Gallup results up to overly broad questioning. “America” means different things at dif-ferent times to different people. Asking whether Arabs hate the country “is like asking a woman whose husband is a serial cheater how she feels about men. She’ll give you one answer. But if you say, `What do you think about fathers? What about brothers?’ ... Pull it apart and you get very dif-ferent answers.” (The Gallup poll surveyed nine Muslim countries, only five of which were Arab. The Zogby polls focus solely on the Arab countries.)

The key for the United States, Zogby says, is to figure out how to maximize the positive associations and build on them.

“It’s quite a pioneering book,” says activist Ralph Nader, who is of Lebanese descent. “Its intent is to break the stereotype of Arab people, to show there’s a very large diversity within these eth-nic groups. ... Once that window is open, you can see how rich the culture is.”

“It’s on my desk right now,” says Rep. Brian Baird, D-Wash., who spoke passionately about the Middle East after a 2009 visit to the Gaza Strip, and who has been a guest on “Viewpoint,” Zogby’s call-in talk show about interna-tional issues, which is broadcast on Abu Dhabi television. “I wish all members of Congress would” pay attention to Zogby, Baird says.

“Arab Voices” is, Zogby says, “the book I always wanted to write” and couldn’t without his brother John.

Their Washington offices are in the same building, same floor, across the hallway from each other, with matching Zogby nameplates. John may be the rea-son that their surname is a brand name among political junkies, but “when he and I travel to the Middle East together, I’m cogni-zant of the fact that I’m traveling with royalty,” John says. “It’s ̀ Oh, Dr. Zogby, is there anything we can get you? And who is your lit-tle sidekick?’ “

Their relationship works because “he respects the fact that I know how to poll, and I respect the fact that he knows what he’s talking about,” John says. “I’ve had a lot of practice respecting that because frankly, Jim always knew what he was talking about.”

The Brothers Zogby were born in Utica, NY. Their father was a Lebanese grocer, their mother a forward-thinking feminist who campaigned for women’s suf-frage. A schoolteacher by train-ing, Celia demanded that her sons be informed. Their friends used to joke that the newspaper was required reading for entrance into the family’s home.

Joseph Zogby died when his sons were teenagers and James, three years older, became his brother’s counsel on the mysteries that their mother couldn’t help with — relationships, sports and, John says, “where do I fit in this world?” They grew up in an ethnic neighborhood, but the dominant ethnicity was Irish. “So we were the wrong ethnic group,” John says. “I had a bit of an independ-ent streak, so I relished being on the outside. Jim always relished getting on the inside and being a leader there,” and it was he who showed John how to merge their two worlds.

After an undergraduate degree in economics, James pursued his doctorate in comparative religions at Temple University. For disser-tation research, he and Eileen, whom he’d met in college, traveled to Lebanon to interview the dis-placed inhabitants of Palestinian camps. There, a woman looked at him and said, “Now we’ve told you our story. What are you going to do about it?” On the plane ride home, Eileen — who is of Irish descent — turned to her husband, and they silently stared at each other. One of them said, “I don’t think our lives are ever going to be the same again.”

James founded the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in 1980, and AAI a few years later. John went on

to become one of the most rec-ognized names in the polling industry.

James’s oldest son, Joe Zogby — a staffer for Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill. — says his father tried to instill a sense of justice in all of his children; their bedtime stories were books about the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Another child-hood memory is more chilling. In 1985, the Washington offices of the Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) — which James had recently left — were set on fire. A few months earlier, a bomb had exploded near the group’s Boston offices. And in the ADC’s Santa Ana location, a bomb planted in the building killed the organiza-tion’s West Coast director, who was also Zogby’s good friend.

Joe was terrified for his father. It was the first time he realized that there were people who not only opposed his father’s work, but hated him for it. But James told his kids that his parents had immigrated here for the freedoms of religion and speech, and that it was his patriotic duty to keep fighting.

There he was, protecting a country where a few intoler-ant citizens had just killed his former colleague. Throughout his career, there he was, the recipi-ent of anti-Muslim hate mail from Christians, because the senders didn’t know he — like 63 percent of Arab Americans — is Christian. There he was, hearing people say negative things about Judaism because they assumed that he would agree, but were surprised when he didn’t. There he was, offering his organiza-tion’s support to public figures, only to have them respond that it was not needed — that an Arab association might damage their reputation.

In the early days, James says, he sometimes felt like Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man,” witnessing all the nastiness that humanity can spew when it thinks no one else is looking.

In 1985, shortly after AAI’s founding, James Zogby got an urgent call to come to Michigan. Michael Guido, the Republican candidate for mayor of Dearborn, had mailed out a broadsheet with a question in block letters: What was the Detroit suburb going to do about its “Arab Problem?”

The candidate was smart; though the city had a substantial Arab population, few were reg-istered to vote. Zogby launched a voter-registration campaign

that exponentially increased their numbers by the next election. Guido was elected, but his atti-tude gradually softened. By 1996, he was addressing his Muslim constituents as “My brothers and sisters,” and presenting Zogby with a gift of Lebanese worry beads — a token key to the city.

There are lots of stories like this, of ways that relationships have improved.

He counts among his friends Susan Turnbull, the chair of the Maryland Democratic Party and a board member on the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. They collaborated on a Democratic Party resolution regarding divest-ment from Israel, ultimately urg-ing that divestment NOT occur.

“We’re an unlikely duo,” Turnbull says. “But we’ve found over the years that we have much in common.”

(The Jewish Anti-Defamation League lists AAI among “Anti-Israel Protest Groups,” but notes only that Zogby is a “lead-ing spokesman” in the Arab-American community, while several other groups on its list are condemned for their violence or extremism. A spokesman from a prominent pro-Israel lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, said that he “couldn’t be of much assistance” in commenting on Zogby or his work.)

AAI is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, and Zogby wants to pause, step back, fig-ure out whether the group’s efforts should be reevaluated or redirected. “When I came to Washington 30 years ago, there were four of us (in the country) doing this work,” Zogby says. “And now on any one day, there are a couple hundred people doing this work.”

At a recent lecture sponsored by the World Affairs Council, Zogby outlines the arguments of his book and then pauses for questions from the audience.

Isn’t it true, one business-attired Capitol Hill type asks, that even if moderate Muslims aren’t engaging in terrorist activities themselves, they are at least tac-itly supporting them? Why aren’t those Muslims doing anything to stop their compatriots?

Zogby listens to the question, then wryly smiles. The questioner, he says patiently, has hit on at least three myths and misunder-standings about Arab culture.

The education begins anew.WP-BLOOMBERG

Throughout his career, James received anti-Muslim hate mail from Christians, because the senders didn’t know he — like 63 percent of Arab Americans — is Christian.

Dispelling myths about Arabs

James Zogby is a man relentlessly tapped to explain what Arabs are thinking, why they are thinking it and how the United States can make better decisions.

0808 OCTOBER 23, 2010www.pen.com.qaON SATURDAY Middle East

The voting comes at a time when the Sunni-led government of HM King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa has conducted a wave of arrests of political activists from the Shia majority.

MANAMA: Bahrainis head to the polls today for a parlia-mentary election amid a crack-down by the Sunni Muslim-led government against the Shia majority.

This is the third election for the Gulf island nation under its eight-year-old constitution. All seats in the 40-member parliament are at stake. But the voting comes at a time when the Sunni-led govern-ment of HM King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa has conducted a wave of arrests of political activists from the Shia majority.

At least 250 Shia activists have been detained in the last two months, and 23 Shias accused of plotting to overthrow the govern-ment are scheduled to go on trial next week. Despite the turmoil, a government election official says that 300 or more observers will monitor the elections to make sure they are fair.

The United States has a key interest in the election. Pro-Western Bahrain hosts the US Navy’s 5th Fleet, which patrols the Persian Gulf at a time when Western concern over Iran’s nuclear development program has risen sharply. Iran says its

nuclear program is peaceful.The US State Department

has taken a measured approach towards the unrest in Bahrain.

A State Department official said after a visit earlier this month that she had discussed human rights issues with Bahraini leaders. But she said the US does not intend to “impose our views on others.”

The only woman in Bahrain’s outgoing parliament has already secured her seat, unopposed ahead of today’s elections, but the other seven women vying for seats look set to fall victim to sexist tradi-tions. “The chances of success are not big,” lamented Chahzelane Khamis, who lost election bids in 2002 and 2006 and is among 137 candidates vying for a place in the 40-member house.

She said the Gulf kingdom’s constituencies should be reduced in number in order to “increase the chances of women being elected ... in large constituencies that would be less influenced by tribal and confessional factors.”

“Parliament should be bal-anced to represent society well,” said candidate Roqaya Amiriya, a US-educated psychologist

Bahraini Salafi leader Sheikh Jassem Al Saidi arrives to campaign for Khaled Al Shaer (right), who is running for the elections as an independent candidate at Isa city. Centre: A Bahraini Sunni Muslim woman shows the party sign for the candidate. Right: Leftist and Pan Arab supporter, Mounira Fakhro, who is running in the elections gives a speech to her supporters.

ISTANBUL: Turkish police have detained five men sus-pected of providing support to al Qaeda militants fighting NATO forces in Afghanistan, a sen-ior security official in Izmir in western Turkey said yesterday.

The five, described as students, were taken to court after being arrested two days earlier in west and southwest Turkey. One is believed to have been designing computer programmes to jam the flight controls of drone aircraft and the others were involved in fun-draising for militants, the official said. The arrests come hard on the heels of a security scare last month in Europe. Intelligence sources said at the time that a German Islamist interrogated by US troops in Afghanistan had revealed details of a plot to attack European targets.

The number of Turks fight-ing in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region is believed to be relatively small, though a senior security official in northwest Pakistan said there had been an increase over the past year. “We detained five men from five different cities - Hatay, Istanbul, Kayseri, Antalya and Izmir,” said the official, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information.

“These people belong to an Aegean branch of al Qaeda. The leader is currently in Afghanistan, fighting for Al Qaeda.” The

leader of the group was named “Zekeriya” and served time in prison before joining the insur-gency against Afghan and US-led forces in Afghanistan, said the official.

Like many Muslims from around the globe, Turks first went to fight in Afghanistan in the late 1980s, when a few joined the mujahideen, holy warriors, then fighting to end the Soviet occupation.

A Nato member, with troops serving in non-combat roles in Afghanistan, Turkey has been a venue for Al Qaeda attacks in the past. Graduates of bin Laden’s training camps were behind the bomb attacks in 2003 that killed 57 people and wounded hundreds in Istanbul, alerting the govern-ment to the need to monitor any rise in the number of Turks going to Pakistan and Afghanistan.

But, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s championing of Islamic causes, like the plight of Palestinians in Gaza, has meant Turkish militants have focused most of their activities abroad, in places like Iraq, Somalia, the Caucasus, and AF-Pak theatre.

The Turkish official said the suspect that had been arrested in Izmir was a 23-year-old mathe-matics student named Abdulkadir Kucuk who was designing pro-grammes to jam unmanned drones. He was also a bombmaker,

the official said, and is believed to have been in e-mail contact with Zekeriya.

The JihadiMedia website says a man with the name Zekeriya Cifti served a one-year jail sentence in Turkey. The others arrested in Turkey this week were involved in fund raising for the militants, the security official said.

“We have bills, images, every-thing to prove they’ve been send-ing money to Afghanistan. Clear evidence,” he said.

Turkish police often arrest suspected militants and describe them as having links to Qaeda, though details seldom emerge. Around 120 Al Qaeda suspects were rounded up last January in raids mostly carried out in the southeast. Turks have until now played little part in Al Qaeda’s global network, but security ana-lysts have noted an increase in the number of Turkish language jihadi websites, some of which have posted obituaries for Turkish militants killed in Afghanistan.

Some of those websites pro-mote the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), a Central Asian jihadi movement with ties to Al Qaeda. The security official said Zekeriya was a commander in a group led by a fellow Turk called Ebuzer, the nom de guerre of Serdar Erbashi, according to the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation. REUTERS

Canada denies arrest in Dubai assassination case VANCOUVER: Canada has made no arrests in connection with the January assassination of a Hamas militant in Dubai, despite the claims of a senior police official there, the federal safety minister said.

Vic Toews said the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the national police force, told him they had made no arrest in con-nection with the case, and no other law enforcement agency could have done it without mak-ing the news public.

“We don’t have secret pris-ons in Canada, so if somebody was arrested they would have had to go before a court,” Toews told Reuters at an event near Vancouver on the government’s plans to toughen the country’s immigration laws.

Two Pakistanis beheaded in Saudi RIYADH: Two Pakistani men were beheaded by the sword in Saudi Arabia yesterday after being convicted of rape, the interior ministry said.

The two were found guilty of storming the house of a foreign family and raping a woman before stealing her gold jewellery, mobile phone and some cash, the minis-try said in a statement carried by the SPA state news agency.

AGENCIES

Turkish police arrest five Al Qaeda suspects

Amid tensions, Bahrain votes today

WASHINGTON/KHARTOUM: North and south Sudan must be ready to compromise next week when they meet in Ethiopia to discuss remaining obstacles to January elections that could see the oil-rich south emerge as an independent country, US offi-cials said yesterday.

President Barack Obama’s special envoy for Sudan, Scott Gration, said the talks Wednesday could be one of the last chances to agree the frame-work for the vote, which observ-ers fear may open the door to new conflict in the region which only emerged from decades of civil war in 2005.

“There’s no more time to waste,” Gration told a news brief-ing. “The parties must be pre-pared to come to Addis with an attitude of compromise. The entire world is watching and will make judgments based on how the parties approach these talks, on how they act in the next couple of months.

Next week’s talks, to be led by former South African President Thabo Mbeki, follow nine days of discussions between the two sides this month that failed to resolve key issues, including the status of the disputed border region of Abyei.

Under its 2005 comprehen-sive peace deal, Sudan is due to hold two referendums on Jan. 9 to determine whether the south

secedes and whether Abyei joins the north or the south. Relations between the two sides remain strained, however, and the slow pace of preparations has raised concern that the referendums may be delayed - a prospect the south has said is unacceptable and could lead back to war.

Fundamental issues including borders, citizenship and divi-sion of oil revenues remain to be agreed, and both sides also need to make final preparations for the referendums such as registering voters, employing poll workers and putting domestic and inter-national monitors in place.

Gration reiterated that the United States, which has offered Khartoum a package of incentives if it cooperates on the referen-dums and to bring peace to the western region of Darfur, would not support any delay to the January votes.

“We’re committed to on-time referenda in both Abyei and southern Sudan,” Gration said. “It is really up to the parties to take the decisions and take the actions to make this a reality.”

White House officials say Obama is increasingly concerned about Sudan, and receives at least three weekly briefings on the issue from Denis McDonough, a senior official who was yesterday named deputy national security advisor.

REUTERS

US urges compromise ahead of new Sudan talks

who said female MPs are better placed to address issues related to women and children.

But Tahani Al Mokdad, a teacher at an election rally by the largest Shia group, Wefaq, which is not fielding any female cadi-dates, said “society does not trust women.” “Many people do not want to be represented by a woman, due to traditions,” she added.

It was only nine years ago that Bahraini women won the right to

vote and run for office following a referendum on political reform that turned the Shia-majority archipelago, ruled by a Sunni dynasty, into a constitutional monarchy. But no women got past the post in the 2002 election, the first since parliament was sus-pended in 1975.

In 2006, Latifa Al Qouhoud was the only woman to enter the legislative chamber after winning he constituency’s seat unopposed. She has had the same luck this year. “Our society is conserva-tive” said Rim Khalifa, a journal-ist at Al Wasat daily, pointing out that the main Sunni and Shia Islamist groups do not have any female candidates.

“Certain groups, like the (Sunni Salafist) Al Assala, pro-hibit all political or parliamentary involvement for women,” although Bahraini women work not only as taxi drivers but as cabinet minis-ters, she said. Munira Fakhrou, a woman running with the National Democratic Action Association, an alliance of pan-Arab nation-alists and leftists, also said that reducing the number of con-stituencies would improve wom-en’s chances. Although she still

believes that “certain candidates might make a breakthrough” in this elections, she is looking more to the future for change. “The percentage of female students at the universities of the Gulf is higher than that of males,” she said, and these young women “believe in modernity.”

Others among the women can-didates are banking on a change of opinion among voters disap-pointed by the outgoing parlia-ment. There is “a strong wish for change” among voters disap-pointed by the past eight years of parliamentary experience, said Mariam Al Rowayi, who heads the Union of Bahraini Women.

“People feel that MPs have focused on issues that pro-voke sectarianism and ignored the main problems, while they expected them to concentrate on the needs of their daily lives,” she said. In 2006, King Hamad named 10 women to the upper chamber, or the 40-member consultative council, to compensate for the absence of women in the parlia-ment. Bahrain said yesterday that Interpol has circulated warrants for the arrest of two Shia opposi-tion leaders who have been living

in London, days before they are due to go on trial in absentia on terror charges. Bahrain Freedom Islamic Movement secretary general Said Al Shihabi and Haq leader Hussein Mashaimaa were among 23 activists from the Gulf state’s Shia majority community charged on September 4 with ter-rorism offences and threatening to overthrow the Sunni regime.

“Interpol has circulated war-rants for the arrest of Said Al Shihabi and Hussein Mashaimaa, wanted in the case of the recently dismantled terrorist network,” said a statement from police pros-ecutors carried by the official BNA news agency. “The interior minis-try secured Interpol’s agreement to issue Red Notices for the two fugitives,” the statement added.

London-based human rights watchdog Amnesty International said earlier this month that the arrests of the 21 activists in cus-tody came amid a wider crack-down on Shia opposition activists in the run-up to a tense parlia-mentary election, which had seen a total of 250 detained. It warned that they all faced the risk of torture.

AGENCIES

0909OCTOBER 23, 2010www.pen.com.qa ON SATURDAYMiddle East

JERUSALEM: Israel’s mili-tary police have questioned a senior army officer for approv-ing an air raid that killed 22 members of the same family during the 2008-2009 Gaza war, press reports said yesterday.

Colonel Ilan Malka, who was head of the Givati brigade during the war, was on Thursday ques-tioned under caution for authoris-ing a missile strike on a building in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighbour-hood, the Haaretz daily said.

The raid, which took place early on January 5, killed 22 members of the Samuni family, at least 10 of them minors, in an incident described by the UN as “one of the gravest” of the deadly

operation which had begun 10 days earlier.

Security sources quoted by the newspaper said military police investigators had interviewed air force officers who said they had warned Malka there could be civilians in the area.

But Malka told them he was not aware of any warning, Haaretz said. The Israeli military declined to confirm the report, saying only: “The case is currently under mili-tary police investigation.”

Givati units had been operating in the neighbourhood for several days before the air raid, and wit-nesses said it was clear the build-ing was populated with civilians.

At the time, the military said

it was an “operational error” and that it had intended to attack a weapons storage facility next door.

The military investigation was launched several weeks ago by the military’s Judge Advocate General, Ynet news website said, in a move opposed by out-going southern command head Yoav Galant, Israel’s next chief of staff.

About 1,400 Palestinians were killed during the 22-day onslaught launched by Israel on December 27, 2008, which was aimed at halting rocket attacks from the Islamist Hamas-ruled enclave. Thirteen Israelis were also killed.

AFP

RIYADH: Palestinian presi-dent Mahmud Abbas held talks yesterday with the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia that focused on the stalled peace process with Israel, the official Saudi news agency SPA reported.

They discussed “developments in the Palestinian issue and efforts exerted to put the peace process back on the right path,” it said.

The two leaders also discussed the “need for the international community to assume responsi-bility to achieve a just and com-prehensive peace that would guarantee the Palestinian peo-ple’s right to establish its inde-pendent state on its national soil, with Jerusalem as a capital,” it added.

Abbas left Riyadh last after-noon, the agency added.

A Palestinian diplomat in Riyadh said that Abbas’ visit “comes at a critical stage in the negotiations between the Palestinians and the Israelis.”

The diplomat pointed to Israel’s refusal to extend a moratorium on Jewish settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem that expired on September 26.

On October 9, foreign minis-ters of the Arab League, in which Saudi Arabia plays a leading role, said they would wait one more month to see if the direct peace talks can be restarted.

Since the settlement morato-rium ended, Jewish settlers have begun building at least 600 homes, a pace four times faster than before the freeze began last year, the Israeli activist group Peace Now said on Thursday.

Meanwhile, the Israeli occu-pation authorities decided to close all crossings into and out of the Gaza Strip for 48 hours, a Palestinian official said yester-day. AFP

BRUSSELS: The European Union’s foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton reissued an invitation to Iran yesterday to hold talks on its nuclear pro-gram in Vienna next month, after receiving no formal reply to a previous invitation.

In a letter to Iran’s ambassador to the European Union, Ashton invites Iran’s chief nuclear negoti-ator Saeed Jalili to hold talks from November 15-17 in the Austrian capital, with the discussions to cover the nuclear program and “any other items pertinent to the discussion.”

“The meeting could start with a dinner on November 15, followed by two days of consultations to enable substantial discussions,” reads the letter. “Given the prox-imity of the suggested dates and the diary constraints of the par-ties involved, I do hope for your early and positive response.”

Iran has indicated through its media that it welcomes the offer of talks, the first in more than a year, but has not yet formally replied to the invitation first announced on October 14.

Meanwhile, Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi has expressed doubts about the effectiveness of sanctions against Iran and argued that a gentle approach might be more helpful. Iran has been hit with several rounds of interna-tional sanctions over its nuclear programme, which the United States and allies believe could be used to produce nuclear weap-ons. Iran insists the programme is meant purely for peaceful

purposes. Yesterday, Berlusconi was quoted as telling Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung daily that, although Italy has participated in the sanctions, “I fear that sanctions will not bring success.”

He said sanctions have tended to reinforce regimes in countries such as Cuba, and “a gentle and circumspect approach would be more helpful,” the newspaper reported.

Berlusconi identified Russia and China as countries that could pursue such an approach, and said he had asked China’s Premier Wen Jiabao “to use his influence in this direction.” The two per-manent UN Security Council members have been more hesitant than Western nations about tak-ing a hard line against Iran, and Russian engineers have helped Iran build a nuclear power plant.

Italy has supported UN sanc-tions despite its strong commer-cial ties with Tehran, but also has always tried to reach out to Iran by trying to get it involved in issues such as Afghanistan’s future. Asked if Iran can be inte-grated in the international com-munity, Berlusconi replied: “We must at least try that — it is the only way to get Iran out of its blind alley.”

Israel is particularly worried about Iran’s intentions. As Iran’s arch enemy, the Jewish state fears it will be targeted by Iran and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has repeatedly made references to Israel’s destruction.

REUTERS/AP

Ashton reinvites Iran to hold nuclear talksTalks set for November 15-17

Abbas, Saudi king discuss stalled peace talks

Israel quizzes army officer over Gaza raid that killed 22

The Palestinian Islamist movement’s exiled chief Khaled Meshaal (left), welcomes at his office in Damascus South African Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe yesterday.

1010 OCTOBER 23, 2010www.pen.com.qaON SATURDAY International

Policy debate found wanting in Ivory Coast poll campaignABIDJAN: With Ivory Coast’s election due in under two weeks, candidates are frantically tour-ing the country to pick up votes — with patriotism, personali-ties and history taking up much more space than policies.

Yet the old spectre of tribalism that often haunts African politics also seems pretty muted despite years of bitter north-south divi-sions following the civil war of 2002-3. President Laurent Gbagbo, his main challengers Henri Konan Bedie and Alassane

Ouattara face each other in a close race. There are also 11 other minor candidates.

Opinion polls put Gbagbo as front runner, Bedie second and Ouattara third, although some diplomats doubt their accuracy.

Campaign rallies have shown few policy differences.

“It’s clearly not an election being fought on policy,” said Standard Bank’s Samir Gadio. “Look at the government’s record on corruption and mismanage-ment: it’s not been an issue.”

Gbagbo has made cocoa a prior-ity, with promises to double pro-duction in the world’s top grower and process it all domestically — appealing to the quarter of a mil-lion cocoa farmers whose industry is declining.

Yet his campaign has been most strongly pinned on promises to liberate Ivory Coast from the shackles of former colonial mas-ter, France, which he accuses of backing the opposition.

“Your choice is between sub-mission or dignity, servility or

independence for your country,” he told a rally last month.

That strikes a chord with the many Ivorians who resent the French for the colonial days and perceived interference since. Gbagbo is seen as a liberator by his supporters.

Not that any of this bluster signals a concrete foreign pol-icy: Gbagbo’s relationship with France has thawed since they fell out over French peacekeeping operations in 2004. He received Claude Gueant, French President

Nicolas Sarkozy’s chief of staff, this month and last month reo-pened a French school his sup-porters demolished six years ago.

For former President Henri Konan Bedie, meanwhile, it is all about history. He governed the from 1993 until a coup in 1999, succeeding post-independence President Felix Houphouet-Boigny’s ‘golden age’ of agri-culture-led growth that saw construction of skyscrapers and highways, an envy of neighbouring countries. REUTERS

France on the boil as strikes continuePARIS: French police broke up pickets besieging oil refiner-ies and fuel depots yesterday, as President Nicolas Sarkozy’s government hardened its stance and the Senate prepared to vote on pension reform.

Government representatives served an order on workers at the main refinery serving the Paris region, threatening them with jail unless they lift blockades that have threatened to paralyse transport and go back to work.

Unions reacted with fury, alleg-ing that Sarkozy was threatening their right to strike, and strik-ers vowed to step up the protests against moves to increase the pension age from 60 to 62 with at least two more nationwide stoppages.

Police used tear gas to disperse 200 demonstrators trying to block a fuel depot near the southern city of Toulouse, and moved in in force to restore control of the Grandpuits refinery in Melun outside the capital.

Strikers said three protesters were injured as the police went in, although at Grandpuits they did so without helmets or batons. Unions said a state official had issued them with a “requisition” ordering them back to work.

The leader of the powerful CGT union, Bernard Thibault, condemned “this judicially ille-gal and politically insane action” and accused the government of “preventing the right to strike as

guaranteed by the constitution.”Left-wing opposition parties

also reacted with fury to the escalation, and the CGT repre-sentative in the refinery indus-try went as far as to compare the operation to the tactics of

France’s World War II fascist puppet regime.

The government insisted it had simply acted to secure access to the fuel depot inside the refinery for emergency serv-ices and to protect “freedom of

movement,” and Prime Minister Francois Fillon’s office promised more action.

“At a time when many French people wish to travel for the November 1 holiday weekend, it is in everyone’s interest to make

all necessary efforts to return the situation to normal, which will take several more days,” it said.

France’s half-term school holi-days were due to start after les-sons yesterday.

Fuel distribution firms warned that their plans to resupply fill-ing stations would take longer than planned, but the govern-ment insisted that as yet it has no plans to introduce petrol rationing.

Meanwhile, turmoil continued around the country, as students staged another day of protests, workers stepped up fuel depot pickets and unions called two more days of mass strikes and street rallies for next week and the week after.

Hundreds of riot squad officers stood by in Lyon to try to pre-vent a repeat of Thursday’s vio-lence that saw security forces fire water cannon and fight running battles with rampaging youths in the east-central city.

The protests have become the biggest battle of the right-wing president’s mandate and he has staked his credibility on a reform he says is essential to reduce France’s public deficit.

The bill has been moving through parliament and Labour Minister Eric Woerth said it would be approved in a Senate vote “in the coming hours,” clear-ing the last major hurdle, which means it could become law as early as next week. AFP

Senate prepares to vote for pension reforms amid agitation by workers and students

German government split over EU stability pact enforcementBERLIN: The German govern-ment tried to paper over cracks within the ruling coalition yes-terday about a Franco-German agreement to jettison demands for automatic enforcement of European Union budget rules.

Chancellor Angela Merkel said she and Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, head of her Free Democrat coalition part-ner, agreed that changing the EU treaty is an “important goal”.

But she did not address his crit-icism about looser enforcement

of the stability pact. Earlier, her spokeswoman Sabine Heimbach said Merkel and Westerwelle “have the same line” on reforms of the EU’s stability pact, even though Westerwelle has publicly called for sanctions to punish high deficits.

In a surprise deal struck in the French town of Deauville, Germany secured a commitment from France to support the idea of reforming the EU’s fundamen-tal treaty in exchange for backing a bid by Paris to change the way

EU budget rules are enforced.Merkel has been accused of

selling out to French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Westerwelle’s FDP argue German taxpayers who helped bail out Greece were promised automatic sanctions on future debt sinners.

Instead, it will take a politi-cal decision by a qualified major-ity of euro zone governments to start disciplinary action against any state with an excessive defi-cit or debt level, and a majority of countries can still block any

financial sanction. “The chancel-lor and the foreign minister have the same line that progress on the package — and not focusing on one issue — can be the break-through for the talks in the EU,” Heimbach told a government news conference.

She and Westerwelle’s spokes-man acknowledged the FDP leader had spoken out at a cabi-net meeting against the Franco-German deal to drop demands for automatic enforcement of budget rules.

Westerwelle said in a speech late on Thursday that tighter rules for the stability pact were needed. “It’s crucial that sanc-tions are not subjected to politics,” he said.

Merkel said: “We agreed with the French president to seek treaty changes, and the Union and FDP agree this is an impor-tant goal.” EU leaders will see the results next week of work led by European Council leader Herman Van Rompuy on budget rules.

REUTERS

Berlusconi vows to end Naples trash crisis soonNAPLES, ITALY: Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi pledged a swift end to the Naples garbage crisis yes-terday as images in the media of piles of rubbish and angry pro-tests put his struggling govern-ment under pressure.

At least 20 police officers were injured on Thursday and there was further violence overnight as the chronic problem of waste disposal in Italy’s third larg-est city flared into violence for another night.

Hundreds of tonnes of garbage lie uncollected in the streets after a dispute erupted over a new dump near the town of Terzigno, near Naples, where the existing facility is full and where residents complain about the stench and toxic waste.

Berlusconi promised to spend ¤14m to upgrade the dump at Terzigno and he said there was no threat to public health from the site which has been at the centre of the crisis.

“We expect that within 10 days the situation in Terzigno can return to normal,” he told a news conference in Rome after an emergency meeting with ministers, the regional gover-nor and the head of the Civil Protection Agency.

The latest outbreak is an embarrassment for Berlusconi, who has often cited clearing Naples’ streets shortly after he came to power in 2008 as one of his government’s main achievements.

“Naples is no good. We are drowning in garbage again. They have to open the new dump but they need to do it far from the houses, because rubbish spreads disease,” an 80-year-old woman, who gave her name as Assunta, said.

Not all the protests have been violent, but overnight police faced around 2,000 demonstrators who threw stones, marbles and fire-crackers and used trees to block the dump near Terzigno, located in a national park at the foot of Mount Vesuvius. “This feels like Beirut,” said Michele Amoruso, a tax lawyer who was protesting against setting up a new dump in the park, where the picturesque views contrasted with the rubbish strewn about. REUTERS

Some 800 striking rail workers gather at Bordeaux’s Saint-Jean station yesterday to protest against the government’s bid to hike the retirement age from 60 to 62.

Seven killed as temple collapses in TaiwanILAN: At least seven people died when a temple collapsed in Taiwan yesterday as torrential rains unleashed by Typhoon Megi triggered landslides that also left dozens missing and hundreds stranded.

Megi, the strongest storm to hit the northwest Pacific in two decades, has already killed at least 36 people in the Philippines and was expected to make land-fall late yesterday or early today in Fujian province in southeast China.

Along China’s densely popu-lated southeastern coastline, authorities have evacuated more than 160,000 people from low-lying areas, while dozens of flights have been cancelled and thou-sands of fishing boats recalled to port. In Taiwan, rescuers recov-ered seven bodies buried under

the debris of Bai Yun Temple in Suao, a coastal town in the north-east Ilan county, the National Fire Agency said in a statement posted on its website. Two nuns are believed to be among the dead. More than 20 people, including Chinese tourists, remained unac-counted for after their buses were trapped along a badly damaged highway in Ilan as the torrential rains hit, rescuers said.

About 400 people in a long line of cars were stranded when the mudslides blocked the road but 70 were later airlifted to safety and the rest were expected to leave by foot or bus after rescuers cleared part of the highway.

“The threat of Megi still exists today and we urge all to be on guard against torrential rains,” Taiwan’s Interior Minister Jiang Yi-huah said in a statement. AFP

Two officers face trial for youths’ death in Paris suburbPARIS: Two police officers will stand trial over the deaths of two youths in a Paris suburb, the spark for weeks of rioting that drew worldwide attention in 2005, a lawyer involved in the case said yesterday.

Magistrates investigating the deaths referred the case to a criminal court for the officers to face charges of failing to assist a person in danger, Jean-Pierre Mignard, a lawyer for the families of the victims, said.

The two youths, Zyed Benna and Bouna Traore, died from being electrocuted when they climbed into an electricity sub-station as they tried to escape police chasing them in the Paris of suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois in October 2005.

Their deaths sparked violent riots and clashes between youths and police which spread to cities across France.

Lawyers for the dead youths said the police officers had reason to suspect the two had entered the installation and did not call the emergency services.

A prosecutor in September had called for the case to be dis-missed, causing anger and disap-pointment in Clichy-sous-Bois, which like many of France’s run-down urban districts suf-fers from tension between locals and police.

AFP

Rescue workers evacuate people on Taiwan’s Highway No 9 after it was damaged by landslides caused by Typhoon Megi yesterday.

1111OCTOBER 23, 2010www.pen.com.qa ON SATURDAYInternational

UK’s N-submarine runs agroundLONDON: Britain’s newest nuclear submarine ran aground off a Scottish island yesterday, in an embarrassing blunder just days after the government announced sweeping cuts to the Royal Navy.

The defence ministry said there was no environmental damage after the rudder of HMS Astute — billed as the country’s most powerful hunter-killer subma-rine — got stuck on rocks near the Isle of Skye.

Tugboats were waiting until the next low tide to try to free the 3.5-billion-pound sub, which only entered service in August, the ministry said.

“The submarine is stable in calm waters. Normal safety pro-cedures are being undertaken. There is no risk to the public or to those on board,” Defence Secretary Liam Fox said.

Television footage showed the stranded vessel emitting clouds of steam and lying half submerged in a stretch of shallow water against a backdrop of dark green hills several hours after the incident.

Two tugs were waiting nearby.A Ministry of Defence spokes-

man said it was “not a nuclear incident”.

“Whilst conducting a person-nel transfer HMS Astute grounded her rudder in the vicinity of the Isle of Skye. She was initially unable to free herself and we are waiting for the next high tide,” the spokesman said.

“No part of the Astute’s nuclear propulsion system is damaged or in danger of being damaged. We can confirm there are no injuries to personnel and there is no envi-ronmental damage.”

Britain’s Maritime and Coastguard Agency said it was sending a tug to the scene of the incident to be on standby, but added that the defence minis-try was in charge of the salvage operation.

“The submarine is on the rocks off the Isle of Skye. Apparently,

you can see it from Skye bridge,” said agency spokesman Mark Clark.

Local residents and campaign-ers expressed worries.

“It’s a concern. Anything with the word nuclear in it is obviously a worry,” said witness Rachel Browett, who runs a visitor cen-tre on the island.

The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) said the

incident “highlights the dangers of the large number of nuclear submarine movements around Britain’s shores.”

The accident comes just days after the government announced sweeping cuts to Britain’s armed forces including the scrapping of the Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the Ark Royal.

The BBC reported that one of the tugs — the one sent by the

coastguard — was also set to be taken out of service in 2011 under the sweeping austerity measures announced on Wednesday by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition. Astute was named and launched by Prince Charles’ wife Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, in 2007 and was com-missioned into the navy less than two months ago after intensive sea trials. Weighing 7,800 tonnes

and almost 100 metres long, it is equipped with special noise reduction technology enabling it to “operate covertly and remain undetected in almost all circum-stances,” the ministry said.

It is armed with Spearfish torpedoes and Tomahawk cruise missiles and its nuclear reactor is supposed to mean that it will not need refuelling once in its 25-year lifespan. AFP

Defence ministry says no environmental damage from new submarine stuck on rocks

Crew work on the deck of the Royal Navy nuclear-powered submarine HMS Astute near the Skye bridge off the Isle of Skye, northwest Scotland, yesterday.

Iraq weapons inspector killed himself, says BritainLONDON: The British govern-ment released secret autopsy records yesterday confirming that Iraq weapons inspector David Kelly died by slashing his own wrist, after doubts were raised over the cause of his death.

The justice ministry said it was publishing the documents, initially classified for 70 years following an official inquiry into Kelly’s death, “in the interests of maintaining public confidence in the inquiry.”

A group of medical experts earlier this year called for a full inquiry into Kelly’s death in 2003, arguing that the suicide verdict was unsafe. The inci-dent has also spawned a host of conspiracy theories.

In the post-mortem report, unveiled publicly for the first time, pathologist Nicholas Hunt wrote that wounds to Kelly’s left wrist that severed an artery were “typical of self-inflicted injury.”

The fact that Kelly had taken an overdose of painkillers and had undiagnosed coronary artery dis-ease had likely brought about his death “more certainly and more rapidly than would have other-wise been the case,” he said.

Kelly was found dead in woods near his home in Oxfordshire, southern England, after he was exposed as the source for a BBC story that alleged prime minister Tony Blair’s government “sexed up” intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

The then lord chancellor Charles Falconer, the govern-ment’s chief law officer, suspended an inquest into the death before an inquiry began, and the inquest was never resumed.

The 2004 inquiry, carried out by Lord Brian Hutton, also con-cluded that the principal cause of death was the wounds to Kelly’s wrists, but Hutton requested that the medical papers should remain classified for 70 years.

“I am publishing these reports in the interests of maintaining public confidence in the inquiry into how Doctor Kelly came by his death,” Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke said in a statement.

“While I firmly believe that the publication of these documents is in the public interest, I am mind-ful that the contents may be dis-tressing. I hope that the privacy of Doctor Kelly’s family will be respected at this difficult time.”

The autopsy report released yesterday said there was no evi-dence that Kelly had been sub-jected to any kind of assault and no sign that his body had been “dragged or otherwise trans-ported to the location at which his body was found.”

AFP

Republicans blast public radio for sacking analystWASHINGTON: Top US Republicans, including three possible White House contend-ers in 2012, pushed yesterday to strip US public radio of tax-payer money for firing a news analyst over comments seen as anti-Muslim.

“At a time when our country is dangerously in debt and looking for areas of federal spending to cut, I think we’ve found a good candidate for defunding,” said former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

Palin’s comments, in a state-ment on her Facebook page,

came after National Public Radio (NPR) fired long-time senior ana-lyst Juan Williams for saying on Monday that he is uneasy when he sees Muslim passengers aboard an airplane.

“When I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nerv-ous,” he told Fox News.

NPR, which relies mostly on private money, said in a state-ment that Williams’ remarks were “inconsistent with our

editorial standards and prac-tices, and undermined his credibility as a news analyst with NPR.”

The controversy came with barely a week and a half to go until November 2 elections in which Republicans were expected to make big gains and possibly seize control of one or both houses of the US Congress.

Republicans have repeat-edly accused President Barack Obama of not being tough enough on Islamist extremists and denounced his defence of plans to build a mosque near the

New York site of the September 11, 2001 terrorist strikes.

Palin said NPR had fired Williams “for merely speaking frankly about the very real threat this country faces from radical Islam” and was stifling “an honest debate about an issue as impor-tant as terrorism.”

Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, like Palin a possible 2012 Republican presi-dential hopeful, accused NPR of “censorship” and of being a “pur-veyor of politically correct pabu-lum and protector of views that lean left.” AFP

A woman pulls US President Barack Obama into the crowd as he works the rope line during a rally for US Senator Patty Murray, D-WA, at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Obama rallies women voters on West CoastSEATTLE: President Barack Obama aimed his economic message at women on Thursday as he campaigned on the West Coast for female candidates crucial to his Democrats’ chances of keeping control of the US Senate.

Obama will try to bolster Senators Patty Murray of Washington and Barbara Boxer of California with rallies and fundraisers over the next two days, part of a four-day trip that is his longest campaign swing as president.

Standing in the backyard of a Seattle family’s home, Obama said women now constituted half the US workforce and were responsi-ble for more than half the income of middle-class families.

“How well women do will help determine how well our families are doing as a whole,” Obama told about 30 people before taking a series of friendly questions.

Polls have shown an erosion in the slight leads held by Murray and Boxer to razor-thin margins,

with less than two weeks left before the November 2 congres-sional elections.

Victories by Republicans in Washington and California could increase Democrats’ chances of losing their Senate majority. They are already widely forecast to lose their dominance in the House of Representatives.

Despite his poor approval rat-ings, Obama gave himself an upbeat assessment on one cam-paign stop after a woman called him the “best president on earth.” “Well, I won’t say that,” Obama replied, “but we’ve got a pretty good president.”

Obama is seeking to energise core Democratic voters. In addi-tion to the backyard event, he has been holding big rallies remi-niscent of his 2008 presidential campaign.

“We need you fired up!” Obama told an enthusiastic crowd at a packed arena at the University of Washington that followed the backyard session.

REUTERS

London councils to share local services to cut expenditureLONDON: Three London councils unveiled plans to share local services that could save up to £100m a year, one of sev-eral schemes cash-strapped local authorities are consid-ering after a government spending review.

“In the age of austerity we need to seriously examine new ways of working,” the Conservative lead-ers of Hammersmith and Fulham, Kensington and Chelsea, and Westminster councils said in a joint statement announcing the plans yesterday.

The proposal to share services such as child protection and care for adults with disabilities is the first of its kind, as local authori-ties look for ways to save money after the government announced their budgets would be slashed by more than a quarter in its deficit-busting drive.

More than 400 local authori-ties in England and Wales spend about £130bn a year delivering services from schools and librar-ies to child care and rubbish collection.

With local budgets shrinking and council taxes frozen, com-munities secretary Eric Pickles said councils should look for more innovative ways of cutting costs, including getting rid of duplicate positions. “Every council does not need its own team of lawyers or press officers,” Pickles wrote in the Financial Times yesterday. “The days of throwing money at problems are over, and this gov-ernment will have little truck with laziness or complacency.”

But efficiency savings will not be enough to save jobs, and Hammersmith and Fulham leader Stephen Greenhalgh told the BBC there would be “significant reduc-tions” in staff. REUTERS

YANGON: A severe cyclone pounded western Myanmar on Friday, threatening to unleash flooding and landslides, authori-ties in the military-ruled coun-try said.

A weather warning broadcast on state television described Cyclone Giri as a “very strong” storm and urged people living in affected coastal areas in Rakhine state to move to safety.

The storm was packing winds of about 177km per hour at its centre, with gusts of up to 193kp/h, said the alert, issued by Myanmar’s department of meteorology.

Sea levels could rise by 3.7 metres (12 feet), it said.

A Myanmar official said there were no reports of casualties, but communication with the worst-hit region was difficult.

Trees were reportedly toppled and power was cut to some areas, according to the official, who did not want to be named.

Myanmar is frequently hit by tropical storms and in 2008 was battered by Cyclone Nargis, which left 138,000 people dead or miss-ing, mostly in the southwest delta region.

A Red Cross official in Yangon said the authorities in Rakhine State had prepared disaster relief camps since Thursday in prepara-tion for the storm, adding, “We are hoping the worst situation will be avoided.”

A resident in Kyaukphyu town in Rakhine State said the cyclone was bringing rain and rising water levels.

“We’re staying inside the house. So far we haven’t heard of any casualties,” she said.

The storm was expected to churn northeastwards towards the Chin, Magway and Mandalay areas, state television said, warn-ing of a risk of landslides.

Neighbouring Bangladesh advised its fishing boats and trawlers to remain in shelter and

warned of the risk of flooding in low-lying areas. India’s meteoro-logical department described Giri as a “very severe” cyclone.

The US Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center in Hawaii said Giri was expected to “rapidly weaken” as it moves across the rugged terrain of western Myanmar.

Cyclone Nargis in 2008 unleashed winds of 240 kilometres

an hour and storm surges up to four metres high, sweeping away thousands of homes, flooding rice fields with salt water and ravag-ing schools and hospitals.

Myanmar’s military govern-ment faced international criticism for its response to the disaster. It was accused of blocking emer-gency aid and initially refusing to grant access to humanitarian workers and supplies. AFP

Relief for typhoon victims

Philippine policemen load relief goods into a US marine CH-46E helicopter at Cuaayan airport, Isabela province, north of Manila, yesterday to be transported to affected areas devastated by Typhoon Megi. The death toll in the Philippines from Typhoon Megi, which roared across the country earlier this week, rose to 36, the government and Red Cross reported. The typhoon slammed into the northeastern side of the main island of Luzon on October 18, ripping roofs off houses, toppling power lines and nearly destroying some coastal villages.

1212 OCTOBER 23, 2010www.pen.com.qaON SATURDAY S. Asia / Philippines

Morning prayers

A Buddhist spins prayer wheels during his morning prayers at Swyambhu temple in Kathmandu, yesterday.

MANILA: Philippine secu-rity forces said a splinter group of Islamist separatists with ties to South East Asia’s most prominent militant group was behind a bus attack on southern Mindanao island that killed 10 people.

They said Thursday’s bomb blast was aimed at sabotag-ing peace negotiations between Manila and the country’s larg-est Muslim separatist group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

Attacks by the rogue faction — killing two officials and wound-ing a soldier in an ambush also on Thursday — have added to con-cerns about the peace process, as talks with the new government to end the four-decade insurgency are yet to restart.

The government of President Benigno Aquino, in office since late June, said it had wanted to resume talks with the MILF after the fasting month of Ramadan in September.

Philippine army intelligence officials said they thought an Islamist extremist group linked to the Jemaah Islamiah (JI) militant network was behind Thursday’s attacks to create tension and delay any resumption of negotia-tions in Malaysia.

“These rogue rebels, trained under Indonesian militants from Jemaah Islamiah to assemble crude bombs, are hoping to polar-ise the situation there,” one sen-ior army intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said.

“They are exploiting the uncer-tainty in the south due to delays in the peace talks, because most

of the younger MILF field com-manders are getting restless and impatient.”

Founded in the early 1990s, the goal of JI is the creation of an Islamic “super-state” spanning Indonesia, Malaysia, the southern Philippines, southern Thailand, Singapore and Brunei.

The group has been weakened by crackdowns in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia that have seen leaders arrested or killed.

Security officials say there are about 50 members in the southern Philippines, with Mindanao used as a training base and sanctuary.

Felicisimo Khu, police chief for western Mindanao, said the bomb used in the bus bombing — an 81 mm mortar triggered by a mobile phone — resembled devices used by Muslim rebels in similar bus attacks in 2008.

“It’s a signature bomb of rogue MILF rebels,” Khu told report-ers, saying investigators were still looking at all possible angles for the attack. “Terrorism is likely the motive.”

There was speculation Thursday’s bus attack was an extortion attempt by criminal gangs which operate in the area, but the bus company said it had received no demands.

Mohagher Iqbal, MILF’s chief negotiator, said his group was not involved and was awaiting word for the resumption of talks.

The two sides have been in stop-start talks since 1997 to end more than 40 years of conflict that has killed 120,000 people, displaced 2 million and stunted growth in southern areas believed to be rich in deposits of oil, gas and minerals. REUTERS

ZAMBOANGA: An ex-convict burst into a school in the south-ern Philippines and stabbed three people to death before being killed himself yesterday, a police official said.

The knife-wielding man killed a teacher, a 12-year-old school-girl and an elderly man and wounded at least six other peo-ple in a school just outside the southern city of Zamboanga, said Senior Superintendent Edwin de Ocampo.

“The suspect reportedly went inside the classroom, then stabbed the teacher in the chest, then stabbed two other teachers and two students,” de Ocampo, the city police director, told reporters.

He then tried to enter other classrooms, stabbing more people along the way, de Ocampo said.

The female teacher and one of her students were killed, along with the girl’s grandfather who was visiting at the time. Two other teachers and four more

students were also wounded in the attack, de Ocampo added.

As the terrified students took refuge in a bathroom local resi-dents rushed to the scene and battered the attacker to death with large stones, de Ocampo said.

“We rushed to the school after receiving the report. We still don’t know what triggered his attack on the children,” said district official Pinpin Pareja.

The attacker had been working as a caretaker for fighting cocks

but she had no idea why he would attack the school, she said.

The classroom was still in dis-array with blood on the floor and blackboard, desks overturned and books scattered, reporters on the scene said.

The body of the dead knifeman lay nearby, surrounded by bloody rocks.

Records showed that the man had previously been jailed for 27 years for rape and was released in 2008, de Ocampo said. AFP

Rogue rebels behind Manila bus blast: Govt Attack to sabotage peace talks

Knife-wielding man kills three in Philippine school

Strong cyclone strikes western Myanmar

An ethnic Karen refugee holds her child in a heavy downpour in Mae La refugee camp, outside Mae Sot district, near the Thai-Myanmar border, in Tak province, northwest Thailand.

WASHINGTON: A Singapore man who tried to sell arms to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) has been convicted by a court in the US.

A Baltimore federal court jury convicted Balraj Naidu, 48, for attempting to sell the weapons to the Tamil Tigers. Four co-conspirators pleaded guilty in the case, said the Sri Lankan embassy here.

Naidu was charged in a con-spiracy to provide material support to the LTTE, which in 1997 was designated by the US as a terrorist organisation. According to evidence pre-sented at the trial, Naidu and four others arranged to buy about 28 tonnes of US-made weapons and ammunition from an undercover business in Maryland.

The Justice Department said that LTTE representa-tives made a $250,000 down payment on the $900,000 weapons deal with the bogus company in the summer of 2006.

Naidu faces a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison.

The co-conspirators — Thirunavukarasu Varatharasa, 40, of Sri Lanka; Haji Subandi, 73, and retired Indonesian Marine Corps General Erick Wotulo, 62, both Indonesians; and Haniffa Bin Osman, 59, of Singapore — all pleaded guilty and were sentenced to 57 months, 37 months, 30 months and 37 months in prison respectively.

Naidu’s partners were arrested in September 2006 after inspecting the weapons that were delivered to Guam and making another payment of $450,000 to the under-cover business, the Justice Department said. IANS

US convicts man for trying to sell arms to LTTE

DHAKA: Bangladesh’s popu-lation is now 164.4 million, up from 156 million a decade back, the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) has said.

The boom should be a mat-ter of concern as it threatens food security, warned Food and Disaster Management Minister Muhammad Abdur Razzaque who unveiled the report “State of World Population 2010”.

The UNFPA report also pre-dicted that the population of the country would be 222.5 million by 2050. Ganesh Chandra Sarkar, director of the family planning directorate, however, claimed that the population is around 144

million. In the fourth Population and Housing Census 2001, the population of Bangladesh was stated to be at 124.3 million, The Daily Star quoted Sarkar as say-ing. Bangladesh’s official website puts the population at 156 million as of 2001. A decennial census is to be conducted next March.

According to the UNFPA report 2010, 28 percent people of the country live in urban areas where the population growth is 3.2 per thousand.

The fertility rate in the country is 2.25 percent with 72 of every 1,000 females aged between 15 and 19 years old giving birth to their first child. IANS

Bangla population is 164.4m: UN

1313OCTOBER 23, 2010www.pen.com.qa ON SATURDAYIndia

Tax authorities yesterday asked global mobile firm Vodafone to pay over `112.17bn ($2.53bn) as tax in the 2007 purchase of Hutchinson Whampoa’s mobile business.

Military exercise

An Indian Air Force Dassault Mirage 2000 takes off from Air Force Station Kalaikunda in West Bengal, during the Ex Indradhanush military exercise. The Indian Air Force and the British Royal Air Force are taking part in the exercise which runs till November 3.

NEW DELHI: India slapped a `112bn ($2.53bn) tax bill on British cell phone giant Vodafone yesterday over its 2007 purchase of an Indian mobile company and demanded payment within 30 days.

The formal demand is the latest development in Vodafone’s bitter row with Indian tax authorities over its $11.1bn purchase of a 67-percent stake in Hong Kong-based Hutchison Whampoa Ltd’s Indian mobile unit.

Indian tax officials have call the long-running dispute a “test case.” It is being closely watched by international investors with experts saying the case could have implications for big-ticket pur-chases of Indian firms by other foreign companies.

“The income tax department yesterday issued an order raising a tax demand of ̀ 112.17bn ($2.53bn) on Vodafone International Holdings BV,” owned by Vodafone Group Plc, the tax office said in a statement.

The bill follows a lower court ruling last month ordering Vodafone to pay taxes on the acquisition. India’s Supreme Court is slated to set a date for a hearing on the company’s appeal next Monday.

The tax demand brought a stinging response from Vodafone, which accused tax authorities of “attempting to interpret Indian law as it has never been inter-preted for the past 50 years.”

“This interpretation also goes against internationally recognised tax norms,” a Vodafone spokes-man said.

Vodafone “strongly disagrees with the tax calculation” and believes “it is not liable for any tax on this transaction involving the transfer of a company outside of India,” the spokesman said.

Vodafone maintains Indian law did not require it to deduct tax because the deal took place in the Cayman Islands and both buyer and seller were foreign.

“Further, Vodafone was the acquirer and not the vendor and

NEW DELHI: After strong criticism by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Home Minister P Chidambaram yes-terday said the government would take action against Kashmiri separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani over his speech at a seminar here if it was found he had violated laws against preaching sedition.

Chidambaram said the pro-ceedings of Thursday’s seminar had been videographed and the footage was being checked to see if there was any violation of law in Geelani’s speech at a seminar ‘Azaadi - The only way’, organised by sympathis-ers of Kashmiri separatists.

“If it is established prima facie that the laws have been violated, Delhi Police will take action in accordance with the law,” the home minister said in a

statement. The statement comes after BJP leader Arun Jaitley criticised the government for not taking action against Geelani when he and others at the semi-nar were making speeches that amounted to sedition.

But the home minister said he “strongly” rejected Jaitley’s charge that the government was “looking the other way” when “unacceptable views were being raised in the name of freedom of speech”.

“What happened in Delhi on Thursday when a group of separa-tists got together to hold a semi-nar to promote sedition under the nose of the government has stunned the nation. In a democ-racy, the right to secede cannot be accepted in the garb of right to free speech,” Jaitley said.

He said the right to free speech

could not be used to target the country. “There are two respon-sibilities and obligations of the state - to prevent such events and to punish the offenders. The government exercised the option of looking the other way which is not available to it,” Jaitley said.

Besides Geelani, sympathisers of Maoists, Sikh separatists and Naga rebel groups came together and advocated secession of Jammu and Kashmir from India. Another BJP leader, M Venkaiah Naidu, said what happened in New Delhi was “shocking”.

“And such a thing was allowed... Allowing separatists to hold a meeting and to make seditious remarks... No government can accept it. How did the govern-ment allow this ... The govern-ment should explain,” Naidu told reporters. IANS

Kashmir bilateral issue, says US WASHINGTON: Making its stance clear on the Kashmir issue, the US yesterday said the matter should be resolved through bilateral talks between India and Pakistan. It rejected Pakistan’s request to inter-vene in the dispute. “We recog-nise the importance of Kashmir to both India and Pakistan. We absolutely want to see tensions eased and ultimately a resolu-tion to the situation in Kashmir,” State Department spokesman P J Crowley told reporters at the Foreign Press Center here.

“That we believe needs to come through additional dialogue between Pakistan and India. We have not been asked by both coun-tries to play a particular role. This is the reason why, for a number of reasons we continue to encourage further dialogue between India and Pakistan,” Crowley said in response to a question.

His comments came a day after Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, who is cur-rently in Washington leading a delegation for US-Pakistan secu-rity and strategic dialogue, sought US intervention in resolving the Kashmir issue.

Crowley described both India and Pakistan as US allies and said his country will continue to encourage both countries in their efforts to achieve piece and stabil-ity in the region.

Pakistan yesterday again urged US President Barack Obama to intervene in the Kashmir dis-pute during his November visit to India. “President Obama has always understood the importance of a Kashmir solution,” Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said at the start of the final day of the latest Washington-Islamabad strategic talks here.

“His coming visit to the region is the time to begin to redeem the pledge,” he said minutes after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced a $2bn package of mil-itary aid to Pakistan to get tough with terrorists.

Meanwhile, the Foreign Policy magazine’s blog ‘The Cable’ reported that the get tough with terrorists message was deliv-ered personally by US President Barack Obama to the visiting Pakistani delegation during a meeting with National Security Advisor in-waiting Tom Donilon.

IANS

NEW DELHI: Desperate to erase the shame of having won only nine seats in 2005, the Congress hopes its fortunes in Bihar will improve this time because it has fielded more Muslim candidates and also tried to expand the party’s social base. Congress leaders said Muslim candidates were contesting in about 50 of 243 seats in the assembly elections that began on Thursday.

Candidates from upper castes form the largest chunk of nomi-nees, about 85. Candidates from Other Backward Classes (OBC)

number over 60 while around 40 seats are contested by Dalits.

The leaders said the Congress attempt at “social engineering”, however, did not entirely succeed as there was a reluctance to try new combinations and allow new faces. “We put our foot down on several seats but did not press too hard for changes at many other places so as not to upset the state leadership,” a Congress leader said on the condition of anonymity.

“If we had pressed harder, the onus of getting the candidates elected would have been on us,”

said the leader, explaining the Congress dynamics in Bihar, where the party has become an also ran in recent decades.

He said several members of the screening committee favoured giving more seats to OBCs and MBCs (Most Backward Castes) who form a sizable proportion of Bihar’s electorate.

Though estimates vary, a senior leader said the Congress was con-fident of winning at least 35 seats - a four-fold increase from 2005.

A better finish would depend on how minorities and upper castes vote. “The tally could be much

more if there is a swing. It will be an achievement if the party emerges as a kingmaker,” he said. The Congress is contesting all 243 seats on its own.

Congress spokesman Mohan Prakash said there was a reali-sation among many that Bihar’s pride and development had suf-fered after the party got weaker in the state. “There is a pro-Con-gress current. The new generation is hungry for development and it has a huge attraction for the Congress,” Mohan Prakash said. The party, whose most promi-nent youthful face nationally

is Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s son and MP Rahul, has fielded 37 women candidates and some 45 youths below the age of 35. Congress leaders admitted that the party’s prospects will be affected if there was a religious polarisation among voters follow-ing the judicial verdict over the Ayodhya land row.

The Congress preparations also suffered due to infighting in the state unit. The party changed its state unit chief and general sec-retary in charge of Bihar in June following widespread complaints.

IANS

India, US differ over Headley 26/11 info NEW DELHI: India yesterday reiterated that it did not get any specific information from the US over the 26/11 attacks even as Washington maintained that it has shared all the information with New Delhi.

“Before 26/11, we did not have anything more than general and non-specific information,” Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao told reporters here.

“Whenever the US gets spe-cific information about a terrorist attack against any of our friends we immediately act to share that information with the country that is affected,” US Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Robert Blake, who is here to firm up the agenda for US President Barack Obama’s November visit, told reporters here.

“And that is certainly the case with India where we have a deep interest in ensuring that there is not another attack such as the terrible one that occurred in Mumbai,” he said.

“If there is anything that has improved dramatically, it is the counter terrorism cooperation, and even before the Mumbai attacks we were doing a lot of exchanges of information about specific threats against India,” he stressed. “I would want to reassure that whenever we have any specific info on any terrorist attack, wherever it is, especially against friends like India, we share that information on a real time basis, right away to make our friends have that info. That’s especially true of India,” he said in a separate interview with NDTV.

IANS

Revamp defence doctrine to combat terror: ManmohanNEW DELHI: Prime minister Manmohan Singh yesterday called for an upgrade of the country’s defence doctrine, warning of the growing threat posed by militant groups with access to the lat-est technology. “Non-state actors are becoming increasingly fused and employing the best technologies to target open and democratic societies like ours,” Manmohan Singh told a seminar on the ‘Role of Force in Strategic Affairs.’

“We have to therefore modernise our defence doctrines to respond to new and non-traditional threats to our security,” he said. Singh’s comments came after global consultancy firm KPMG earlier this week said New Delhi was expected to spend $116bn between now and 2016 on military acquisitions.

“Terrorist groups enjoy patronage and sanctuaries and do not lack in resources,” Singh warned, stressing the need to maintain a logisti-cal advantage over any groups planning to stage attacks on Indian soil or assets.

“We will ensure that our capabilities to combat terrorism remain a step ahead of those of the terrorists (and) they should be left in no doubt about our ability and resolve to defeat them,” Singh said.

Media reports citing unnamed Western intelligence sources had said Al Qaeda and Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba had planned to attack New Delhi during the October 3-14 Commonwealth Games. AFP

Tax authorities slap Vodafone with `112bn fine

has made no gain on the transac-tion,” the spokesman noted.

Earlier this week, Vodafone chief executive Vittorio Colao said the outcome of the dispute could be a key factor in determining the company’s future investments in India.

“The tax issue will be incred-ibly important for us to determine how (investor) friendly India is.”

Colao also said it was “very important to have an outcome here that establishes a principle for the future. This is a concern for our investors and for other international investors.”

The latest development comes as Indian authorities scrutinise tax aspects of other international deals. SABMiller, the world’s second-biggest brewer, has a tax case pending over its 120-billion-dollar acquisition in 2006 of the Indian arm of Foster’s from the Australian drinks group.

“This (tax) law has been in place since the 1960s, it has never been interpreted like this -- that’s why the Vodafone case is seen as a test case,” a tax analyst at an international consultancy said.

Vodafone has faced a rough ride since it entered India, the world’s fastest-growing mobile market, with cut-throat competition forc-ing down call rates and hitting the company’s earnings. AFP

Kashmiris search through the rubble of a damaged house after a gunbattle between suspected militants and troops in Maloora, on the outskirts of Srinagar, yesterday. Three militants were killed in a gunbattle during a suicide mission to attack Indian military bases, a rebel group said.

Geelani will be punished if sedition charges proved: Chidambaram

Congress hopes Muslims will turn the tide in Bihar

1414 OCTOBER 23, 2010www.pen.com.qa Pakistan / AfghanistanON SATURDAY

On the alert

Pakistani paramilitary soldiers stand guard on a street in Karachi yesterday. Pakistan will recruit 3,000 extra policemen in a bid to stem repeated outbreaks of violence in its largest city Karachi, the country’s interior minister said.

Taliban leaders deny peace talks with govtGroups across Afghanistan vow to keep fighting; NATO says insurgents on the back foot KABUL: Mid-level Taliban insurgency commanders do not believe their lead-ers have begun tentative peace talks with the Afghan government, with many vowing yesterday not to give up the fight after nearly 10 years of war.

Nato and Afghan officials have con-firmed preliminary contacts between President Hamid Karzai’s government and the Taliban, although doubt sur-rounds when those contacts were made, who they were made with and what, if any, progress was made.

Karzai is pushing a negotiated settle-ment to the conflict and has launched a High Peace Council which has said it is prepared to offer concessions to bring insurgents to the table, although Kabul and Washington are adamant they must renounce violence.

But insurgency commanders from across Afghanistan indicated they were not involved in the initial contacts.

“No one has come so far and sat with the government and there is no hope that the Taliban will come and negoti-ate with the government,” said Abdullah Nasrat, the Taliban commander for Girishk district in southern Helmand province, one of the Taliban’s traditional strongholds.

Girishk is in the strategically impor-tant Helmand River valley, along which mainly US and British forces launched a series of offensives last year.

“We basically hear the reports of talks through the press and do not believe in them,” Nasrat said by telephone. “As long as foreign forces are in Afghanistan, there will be no talks. Our morale is high.”

Violence across Afghanistan is at its worst since the Taliban were ousted by US-backed Afghan forces in late 2001. Record civilian and military casualties — and the possibility of peace talks — will

weigh heavily on US President Barack Obama when he conducts a strategy review of the Afghan war in December.

It will also be a central part of discus-sions at a Nato summit in Lisbon next month.

Providing an upbeat assesment of recent offensives, Nato Secretary-General

Anders Fogh Rasmussen told reporters in Berlin that insurgents in Afghanistan were on the back foot.

“The insurgency is under pressure, under pressure like never before in Afghanistan. Our aim for this year was to regain momentum,” Rasmussen said. “Now we have it.”

The New York Times newspaper on Wednesday quoted an unidentified Afghan source as saying Taliban leaders from the “Quetta shura” — the leader-ship of the Afghan Taliban who are based in Pakistan — and one member of the Al Qaeda-linked Haqqani network had taken part in “extensive” talks.

Salahuddin Ayoubi, a senior com-mander for the Haqqani network’s Sirajuddin Haqqani, accused US General David Petraeus, the commander of the almost 150,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, of trying to drive a wedge through the insurgency.

“These (reports) are part of a drama of General Petraeus, who from one side has stepped up the military operations and from other side wants to confuse the minds of the mujahideen by talking about talks,” Ayoubi said.

“There has been no let up in our activi-ties and we have not been told by our leaders to reduce or halt our operations for any reason,” he said.

Similar sentiments were expressed across the country.

“Karzai has no authority for making peace and cannot do anything without the order of the foreigners. I do not believe in the reports of the talks,” said Feda Mohammad, a Taliban commander in northwest Badghis province.

Commanders for Hezb-i-Islami, run by veteran fighter Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, and the Haqqani network in southeast-ern Khost and Paktia provinces near the Pakistan border also said they would con-tinue fighting.

In Kunduz province, some criminal gangs, including about 60 members of one group, had surrendered in recent weeks, encouraged by government reconciliation efforts and in fear of increased military operations by Nato-led forces.

The High Peace Council said on Thursday it would be willing to make concessions to bring insurgents to the negotiating table and also called for Saudi Arabia’s help in future talks. Saudi Arabia sponsored secret, but inconclusive talks last year. REUTERS

A US Marine mans a lookout post at a base in Kunjak in southern Afghanistan’s Helmand province yesterday.

Musharraf gave nod for US drone surveillance, says GilaniISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s prime minister revealed yes-terday for the first time that former military ruler Pervez Musharraf gave approval for US drones to make surveillance flights over the country.

“The previous government gave them permission for surveillance and reconnaissance flights by US drone aircraft but not to launch missile attacks,” Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani told diplo-matic correspondents.

The United States does not offi-cially confirm the drone attacks, but the campaign is unpopular among the Pakistan public who see military action on Pakistani soil as a breach of national sovereignty.

Gilani said “we will find out” when asked about reports that US drones use Shamsi base in south-western province Balochistan, but denied that drones were taking off from a military base in south-ern province Sindh.

“We have not provided them space (to fly). This is wrong and I have contradicted that drones were using Shahbaz base (in Sindh) for this purpose.”

Gilani’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) emerged as the biggest

party from general elections in February 2008 and formed its government months before Musharraf stepped down as President over fears of parliamen-tary impeachment.

A covert US drone campaign has dramatically increased the frequency of drone strikes in the tribal belt in response to intel-ligence claims of a Mumbai-style terror plot to launch commando attacks on European cities.

Officials in Washington say drone strikes are highly effec-tive in the war against Al Qaeda and its Islamist allies, killing a number of high-value targets, including Pakistan’s Taliban founding father Baitullah Mehsud.

But in Pakistan, anger over the attacks has fuelled reprisals from militant groups who have targeted Nato supply convoys destined for Afghanistan.

“We have repeatedly said the drone attacks are counter pro-ductive,” Gilani told the group of local and foreign reporters.

“We want to have drone tech-nology and also if they have any actionable intelligence, we want them to share it with us.”

Speaking in London, where

he is living in self-imposed exile, Musharraf condemned the surge in US drone strikes late last month.

“Within Pakistan there is sen-sitivity of the people of Pakistan. We have got forces to deal with any situation and if action needs to be taken the West should realise that they should equip the Pakistan army or air force,” he said.

Mary Ellen O’Connell, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame in the United States, this week became the latest legal expert to warn that the drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and other countries vio-late international law and should be halted.

“The use of drones is causing really serious anger in Pakistan. I really seriously question the necessity for what we are doing,” she told London think-tank Chatham House.

Although he did not specify bombing raids by unmanned air-craft, CIA chief Leon Panetta has been quoted as telling US media that the agency’s expanding oper-ations in Pakistan have taken “a serious toll” on Al Qaeda.

AFP

One killed, two hurt in hospital gun attackISLAMABAD: A brazen gun attack at the leading hospital in Pakistan’s capital Islamabad left one person dead and two others wounded yesterday, an official said.

Officials said the incident was a private feud and unrelated to Taliban and Al Qaeda-linked vio-lence that plagues the northwest and which has been blamed for high-profile attacks in recent years on western targets in Islamabad.

The shots were fired outside the gate of the emergency ward at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS), which is in the centre of Islamabad.

“One person has died,” city administrator Amir Ahmed Ali said. “One group fired at the other when they were off-loading two injured persons at the hos-pital’s emergency gate.... One attacker has also been arrested while the others have been iden-tified,” he said. Doctor Waseem Khawaja, spokesman for PIMS, had said that three people were wounded when a gunman opened fire with a pistol on his rivals at the hospital. AFP

Three killed by roadside bombKABUL: A roadside bomb killed a district governor and two of his aides in Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar province yesterday in the latest attack targeting a local government official, the Afghan Interior Ministry said.

Violence is at its worst level since the Taliban were toppled in 2001 by US-led troops and later began their campaign to bring down the government of President Hamid Karzai and drive out thousands of foreign troops deployed in Afghanistan.

The bomb exploded as a car carrying the head of Dor Baba district and four others passed through a remote area bordering neighbouring Pakistan’s restive tribal belt, the Interior Ministry said in a statement. Two police-men were wounded in the attack, it said. REUTERS

US to give $2bn military assistance to PakistanWASHINGTON: The United States announced $2bn in mili-tary aid for Pakistan yesterday as the two countries sought to dispel doubts about Islamabad’s commitment to uprooting Islamist insurgents from safe havens on its soil.

“The United States has no stronger partner when it comes to counterterrorism efforts against the extremists who threaten us both than Pakistan,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said.

The five-year military aid pack-age, which must be approved by Congress, would complement $7.5bn in civilian assistance already cleared by US lawmakers.

Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi rejected

naysayers who argue that Islamabad’s heart is not in the fight against the insurgents.

“Prophets of doom are back in business, painting doomsday sce-narios about our alliance,” he said. “They are dead wrong.”

Announcement of the military assistance, for the years 2012 to 2016, came at the formal open-ing of the third round of the US-Pakistan Strategic Dialogue, a series of talks to expand relations beyond the fight against Islamist insurgents.

Clinton said 13 working groups focusing on issues from water to energy had agreed on plans to immunise 90 percent of Pakistani schoolchildren, improve electric-ity supplies and help farming

families get back on their feet after devastating floods in August.

But looming over the talks is the nine-year-old war in Afghanistan and the fight against Al Qaeda and other Islamist extremist groups along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. The Obama administration has point-edly pressed Pakistan for more aggressive action against safe havens in North Waziristan, say-ing in a recent report to Congress that Pakistani forces had avoided direct contact with Al Qaeda and related militants, in part for polit-ical reasons.

Stepped up attacks in the region by US drone aircraft have aggra-vated public opinion in Pakistan and relations deteriorated after

a cross-border helicopter incur-sion killed two Pakistani border guards. The incident prompted Pakistan to close a border cross-ing near the Khyber Pass to Nato supply convoys for 10 days until apologies were made by US and Nato officials.

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates apologised again for the incident when he met Pakistani army chief General Ashfaq Kayani earlier this week.

But US officials continue to press Pakistan for more action and express growing concerns about the possibility of an attack on US soil plotted by Pakistan-based groups, similar to the failed bombing in New York’s Times Square this year. REUTERS

US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates (left) with Pakistani Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani in Washington, DC, yesterday.

1515OCTOBER 23, 2010www.pen.com.qa ON SATURDAYBusiness

Vodafone IndustriesQatar

Nakilat Barwa Gulf Holding Int. IslamicBank

Qatar IslamicBank

Comm. Bankof Qatar

Rayyan Bank

423,740185,843 268,324 925,176 263,602 527,064 127,6247.85531,671 873,954 15.80 76.1018.60108.80 31.80 13.90 83.00 45.20

US plan for trade targets hits G20 headwindsUS struggles to win support for proposal to set limits on external imbalance; no comments from China

GYEONGJU, South Korea: The United States struggled yesterday to win backing for a proposal to set limits on exter-nal imbalances as a way of pressing countries with sur-pluses such as China to let their exchange rates rise.

In a letter to fellow finance ministers of the Group of 20 leading economies, US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said countries should implement policies to reduce their current account imbalances below a speci-fied share of national output.

Japanese Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda said Geithner, backed by host South Korea, proposed limiting surpluses and deficits on the current account —the broadest measure of trade in goods and services — to four per-cent of gross domestic product.

But the plan met with a cool reception on the first day of a two-day meeting meant to smooth the path for a G20 summit in Seoul on November 11-12.

Big exporting countries that habitually run chunky trade sur-pluses led the opposition.

A G20 source said China was against any limits on imbalances, German Economy Minister Rainer Bruederle warned of a throwback to “planned economy thinking”, and Russian Deputy Finance Minister Dmitry Pankin said a draft communique to be issued on Saturday would steer clear of numerical targets.

“The communique is very politically correct. There’s noth-ing sharp in it,” Pankin said. “In the long term the focus should be on the exchange rates reflect-ing market conditions. Excessive state interference in currencies should be avoided.”

Noda also voiced scepticism. “We doubt whether rigid numer-ical targets should be set. But when checking the progress in rectifying imbalances, that might be an idea,” he told reporters.

The criticism underscored the difficulties facing the G20 as it strives to put the world economy on a more stable footing and defuse currency tensions that economists fear could trigger trade wars.

While the G20 won praise for coordination of stimulus pack-ages during the global financial crisis, its unity has been tested by low growth in rich countries and attempts by some emerging mar-ket economies to preserve export competitiveness by holding down their exchange rates.

Saudi Arabia, Germany and Russia are the G20 members with the biggest current account sur-pluses, but China is the chief cul-prit in Washington’s eyes — and the unspoken target of Geithner’s letter — because of massive cur-rency market intervention to keep a lid on the yuan.

Beijing has amassed $2.65 tril-lion in official currency reserves as a consequence, and prompted the US House of Representatives to pass a bill threatening retalia-tion unless China lets its currency off the leash to reduce its huge trade surplus with the United States.

G20 countries, Geithner said, “should commit to refrain from exchange rate policies designed to achieve competitive advantage by either weakening their currency or preventing the appreciation of an undervalued currency”.

Chinese officials made no pub-lic comment, but a G20 source said Beijing was opposed to any

communique that explicitly bound countries to limits on current account balances or any other form of rules on currency policy.

The source, with direct

knowledge of the talks, said the group of rich and emerging econ-omies was split not only on the question of currencies but also on how to give poorer countries more

voting power at the International Monetary Fund.

“Positions are still very much divided. It’s a rift down the middle on both issues,” the source said,

predicting “bland” language in the closing communique to paper over the cracks. Not everyone rejected the US gambit out of hand.

REUTERS

Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors attend the first session of the G-20 Financial Ministers and Central Governors meeting, in Gyeongju, South Korea, yesterday.

WTO rejects Chinese claims in US duties caseGENEVA: World Trade Organisation panel largely rejected Chinese claims yes-terday in a dispute with the United States over extra duties on Chinese goods which Washington argued were priced at below cost and subsidised.

US Trade Representative Ron Kirk welcomed the ruling as a win for American businesses and workers affected by unfairly traded imports. The case involved treat-ment of goods from a country that is not a market economy, where the state sets or influences prices.

The ruling backed the right of an importer to set duties on goods from such economies to compen-sate for unfair pricing and for subsidies — something that a US court had struck down.

The two-year-old dispute turned on duties imposed by the United States on imports of Chinese steel pipes, off-road tyres and woven sacks.

The panel did back some Chinese complaints and called on the United States to bring its measures in line with WTO rules where they breached them.

China had challenged the way the United States calculated the duties and the fact that it suffered a double penalty of anti-dumping (AD) duties for unfairly priced goods and countervailing duties (CVD) for subsidised products.

“We are pleased that the panel recognised that the concurrent application of AD and CVD duties on subsidised Chinese goods to level the playing field for US com-panies and workers is fully consis-tent with our WTO obligations,” Kirk said in a statement.

REUTERS

Oil rises above $81 on weak dollar, German dataLONDON: Oil prices rose above $81 a barrel yesterday as positive German data and a dip in the dollar index stoked buy-ing for commodities ahead of a G20 finance ministers’ decision on currencies.

The G20 meeting in South Korea looked unlikely to reach a deal on a US-led initiative for a commitment from emerging countries to allow their curren-cies to rise.

The US dollar index was vol-atile early yesterday and then turned negative in a move that pushed the US crude benchmark

up over $1 in intra-day trade as investors rushed to buy alterna-tives to cash. By 1335 GMT, US crude futures were up 88 cents at $81.44 a barrel, nearly reversing Thursday’s drop of more than two percent. ICE Brent rose $1.07 to $82.92 a barrel.

“The developing currency war and the devaluation war is the single most important factor for the oil market besides maybe the rate of Chinese economic growth,” said Eugen Weinberg, commodi-ties analyst at Commerzbank add-ing, “the negative correlation is sustainable in the longer term.”

The dollar index has fallen around seven percent from September highs and stoked buying interest among both buy-ers holding other currencies and investors looking for a commodi-ties hedge. Failure to reach a deal on currencies in South Korea could weigh further on the dol-lar, analysts said.

Positive German data showing business sentiment was strong-est in 3-1/2 years in October also lifted oil prices yesterday.

“Today’s Ifo underlines that the German good-news-show is con-tinuing and is more than just a

rebound or a pure statistical effect. The broadening of the recovery will continue,” said Carsten Brzeski, ING Financial Markets.

Refinery outages in France were supportive for the oil com-plex on Friday with unions signal-ling their determination to keep fighting even if President Nicolas Sarkozy’s unpopular pension reform becomes law on Friday.

A batch of US data on Thursday pointed to slow-growth in the world’s top oil consumer, reinforc-ing views the Federal Reserve will ease monetary policy further next month in an attempt to jumpstart

the economy. New claims for job-less benefits dropped last week but remained at levels suggest-ing little improvement in the dis-tressed labour market.

Other reports showed only a modest rise in a gauge of future US economic activity and a small gain in factory activity in the country’s Mid-Atlantic region.

“The general consensus is that more QE (quantitative easing) will be approved, which, in turn, is expected to reduce unemploy-ment and boost demand,” said Tamas Varga at oil broker PVM.

REUTERS

Nespresso display

A Nespresso display at Nestlé’s 9-month sales press conference in New York yesterday. For the first time the press conference was held outside of Switzerland in the US, Nestlé’s biggest market.

BSkyB profits surge amid takeover battleLONDON: BSkyB, the pay-TV giant being courted by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, yester-day reported a surge in quar-terly net profits as the British group edged closer to its target of 10 million customers.

BSkyB said profit after tax jumped to £228m ($359m) in the three months to September 30 — the group’s first quarter — com-pared with performance a year earlier.

The company, which in June rejected a full takeover offer from its largest shareholder News Corp worth £7.8bn, saw a 39-percent jump in the number of custom-ers who subsribed to BSkyB’s TV, phone and Internet services.

“BSkyB goes from strength to strength as it reported a solid set of first quarter numbers,” said ETX Capital trader Manoj Ladwa.

“The broadcaster is also reap-ing the benefits of a strategy shift as it increasingly cross-sells to its expanding customer base. Both are factors that are likely to see News Corp either raise its offer quite significantly or walk away.”

BSkyB said it added 96,000 cus-tomers in its first quarter, taking its total number of subscribers to 9.95 million.

“Today’s results show that our consistent strategy is delivering an excellent performance in a challenging environment,” chief executive Jeremy Darroch said in the group’s earnings statement.

“These results are underpinned by continued investment in con-tent and innovation, which is bringing more value to customers and growing returns for share-holders,” he added.

AFP

1616 OCTOBER 23, 2010www.pen.com.qa BusinessON SATURDAY

Declining profit

Azim Premji, Chairman of Wipro Ltd, attends the quarterly results announcement at the Wipro campus in Bangalore yesterday. India’s No. 3 outsourcing firm Wipro missed quarterly profit estimates as higher wages cut margins, underperforming rivals and sending its shares down more than five percent.

Japan eyes US-led free trade agreementGovernment expected to unveil stance on free trade pacts during Asia-Pacific leaders’ summit

TOKYO: Japan’s economics minister said yesterday that Tokyo should join a US-led Asia-Pacific free trade initia-tive to keep its firms from flee-ing abroad, despite a backlash in the ruling party against the proposed deal.

Japanese firms are pressing the government to forge more trade pacts and catch up with regional rivals such as South Korea. Economists agree such deals are vital to keep more manufacturers from moving overseas, taking jobs with them.

The government is expected to unveil its stance on free trade deals, including the US-led Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), ahead of an Asia-Pacific leaders

summit next month in Yokohama, near Tokyo, which US President Barack Obama will attend.

Many lawmakers in Prime Minister Naoto Kan’s Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), however, are worried about the fallout from such trade deals on long-protected and politically power-ful farmers.

“Japan needs to show its inten-tion to join the TPP early ... But some ruling party members are opposed, as there has not been enough debate within the party,” Economics Minister Banri Kaieda told a news conference.

“As the yen remains strong, Japanese manufacturers have to produce high value-added products (to stay competitive) ... But their

products won’t sell in Asian markets if high tariffs are levied,” Kaieda said. “Joining TPP would thus be unavoid-able in order to keep manufacturing products in Japan.”

The yen’s surge to 15-year-highs has eroded an export-led recovery and is pushing firms to rethink production plans.

The Cabinet Office estimates that joining TPP would push up Japan’s real GDP growth rate by about half a percentage point annually after taking into account the adverse impact on the agri-cultural sector, Asahi newspaper reported.

The United States and seven other countries launched talks on a proposed TPP agreement ear-lier this year and Washington is

trying to bring Malaysia on board too. US free trade advocates see the initiative as a way to ensure the United States isn’t locked out of regional arrangements.

Japan’s biggest business lobby wants Kan to offer to take part in TPP at the November 13-14 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, where the forum’s leaders will discuss a proposed Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific cov-ering all 21 members.

“If we miss this chance, Japan will lag far behind other countries in developing an international business environment,” business lobby Keidanren said this week, urging Kan to declare his inten-tion to join the TPP talks at the APEC summit. A free trade deal

inked between South Korea and the European Union this month in particular has given corporate Japan the jitters, while rival China is also considered ahead in the race.

The trade pact talk is prompt-ing a backlash, however, among ruling Democratic Party lawmak-ers reluctant to upset farmers, whose political clout is amplified by an electoral system that gives rural votes more weight than those in urban areas.

“I hope the government will only consider the idea and stop there,” former farm minister Masahiko Yamada told report-ers after more than 100 law-makers gathered on Thursday to oppose joining the trade initiative, which also includes Australia,

Brunei, Chile, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam.

Many of the lawmakers at the meeting are supporters of Kan’s rival, DPJ heavyweight Ichiro Ozawa, who last month lost a leadership race to Kan. Ozawa now faces indictment over a funding scandal but he remains a force in the party. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshito Sengoku, the No.2 in Kan’s cabinet, acknowl-edged the conflicting pressures.

“We must preserve what needs to be preserved from the perspective of food security and national land conservation,” he told a news confer-ence, stressing changes were needed to attract young people to a sector whose population is ageing fast.

REUTERS

European shares edge lowerLONDON: European shares drifted lower yesterday from six-month highs the previous day as investors took profits ahead of the conclusion of a G20 meeting, with many experts sceptical whether a binding agreement would be reached.

At 1129 GMT, the FTSEurofirst 300 index of top European shares was down 0.2 percent at 1,091.42 points after gaining the previous two sessions. The index is up 4.4 percent this year.

Miners retreated as investors took profits from their rise in the past two sessions. The STOXX Europe basic resources index fell 0.6 percent, while BHP Billiton, Anglo American, Antofagasta Xstrata and ENRC slipped 0.5 to 1.5 percent.

Technology shares gained ground, with mobile network equipment maker Ericsson surg-ing 5.6 percent after saying a dose of high-margin network upgrades boosted third-quarter profit by 14 percent.

ASML Holding, Aixtron, United Internet and Micro Focus gained 0.5 to 7.5 percent.

“In the near term, the equity market is dominated by newsflow regarding company earnings -- 2010 earnings estimates are well supported,” Greetfeld said.

“However, one should view this in the medium-term context. The declining trend of leading indi-cators point to deterioration in 2011 earnings trends. The impli-cation is that in the medium term the STOXX Europe 50 index will broadly move sideways.”

The Euro STOXX 50, the euro zone’s blue-chip index, was down 0.1 percent at 2,878.85 points.

Philippe Delabarre, technical analyst at Trading Central said the intraday dynamic on the Euro STOXX 50 was bullish for several reasons.

“First of all, a bullish continu-ation configuration (broaden-ing formation) was confirmed yesterday. Second, the contract is supported by two ascending trendlines. Finally, the 50-day simple moving average is ascend-ing,” he said.

His targets for the index were at 2,880 and 2,915 points, with a stop-loss at 2,825 points.

Nestle AG was down 0.2 per-cent, in line with the broader market trend. The world’s big-gest food group reported core sales growth this year is ahead of market forecasts, thanks to strong demand in emerging mar-kets, price rises and a thriving Nespresso coffee business.

REUTERS Traders are pictured at their desks in front of the DAX board at the Frankfurt stock exchange yesterday.

UAE finance minister seeks 5pc budget cut, says reportDUBAI: The United Arab Emirates’ finance ministry has proposed a five percent cut in the state’s budget for the next three years to a total Dh126.3m ($34.4bn), a local paper said.

Arabic daily Al Ittihad said it obtained a September letter to UAE officials from Obaid Humaid Al Tayer, the minister of state for finance, proposing the reduced budget for the period from 2011 to 2013 as a measure to prevent running a deficit.

On Thursday, the country’s legislature, the Federal National Council (FNC), rejected the pro-posed budget, Al Ittihad said.

Its secretary general cited the FNC’s right to reject the proposal under the constitution. The FNC has the constitutional right to reject laws, and in the UAE, the federal budget is drafted as a law.

In the past however, the gov-ernment has passed laws with-out FNC approval during periods when the legislature is not in session. The president, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, would also be able veto the FNC decision. The Gulf Arab state had previously planned a 2011-13 budget of Dh132bn.

REUTES

SK Energy to restart naphtha cracker unit SINGAPORE: South Korea’s top refiner SK Energy Co Ltd is restarting the smaller of its two naphtha crackers to cash in on recent strong petrochemical margins after a two-year shut-down due to poor profits, trad-ers said yesterday.

SK Energy is restarting the 200,000 tonne-per-year (tpy) unit sometime in November, after it was shut down in 2008.

“If you were to ask me, SK Energy is not restarting the smaller unit soon enough,” said an industry source. “They should have restarted earlier as overall petrochemical margins were quite good last month but slipped a bit currently.”

The source pegged over-all petrochemical margins for contracted supplies at around $350.00 a tonne last month, and about $200.00-$300.00 a tonne currently.

SK Energy also operates a 660,000-tpy naphtha cracker, which was closed for routine maintenance around October 4, and is due to resume operations in early November.

SK’s total cracking capacity is much smaller than South Korea’s top ethylene maker YNCC, which runs a 1.86 million-tpy crack-ing complex, but it operates the

country’s biggest oil refining complex with a 1.12 million-bpd capacity.

SK Energy decided on the long-term shutdown of the smaller cracker in October 2008 after the petrochemical industry was ham-mered by the global financial cri-sis and margins sank into the red.

The market soon recovered, but the refiner kept the unit shut indefinitely due to its small capac-ity. Healthy petrochemical mar-gins have supported demand for naphtha feedstock.

Cracks, the premiums/losses obtained from refining Brent crude into naphtha, were at their highest in more than five months on Thursday at $149.00 a tonne premium. SK Energy shares jumped almost 5 percent on Friday, outperforming the main index’s 1.2 percent rise.

But traders cautioned that the robust petrochemical margins might not last.

Ta iw a n ’s Fo r m o s a Petrochemical Corp, East Asia’s biggest privately run petrochem-ical maker, has restarted its 700,000-tpy cracker last Friday after an extended shutdown since early July due to a fire, and this had started to weigh on the eth-ylene market.

REUTERS

1717OCTOBER 23, 2010www.pen.com.qa ON SATURDAYBusiness

Turkmen-Russia ties

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev (right) shakes hands with his Turkmen counterpart Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov yesterday in the city of Turkmenbashi on the Caspian Sea coast. Medvedev is to discuss energy cooperation during his visit to the Central Asian state.

AIA IPO set to be 2nd largest IPO this yearShare sale could top $20bn

HONG KONG: The Asian unit of troubled US insurer AIG looked set yesterday to record the world’s second-largest ini-tial public offering this year, in a monster share sale that could still top $20bn.

AIA said that it had raised $17.8bn after pricing its shares at HK$19.68 ($2.53) ahead of the insurer’s debut on the Hong Kong stock exchange next week.

Frenzied investor demand has already made the IPO Hong Kong’s largest ever share sale while the total amount raised could rise if other options are exercised.

Agricultural Bank of China in July raised a total of $22.1bn from its IPO, exceeding the previous world record set by the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, which raised $21.9bnin 2006.

However, Agbank’s IPO was split with it raising $12bn in Hong Kong and the rest in Shanghai.

Shares in AIA’s highly-antic-ipated offering were priced at almost 16 times forecast earnings this year, Dow Jones Newswires cited an unnamed source as say-ing. “The IPO is a critical turn-ing point for AIA and we are delighted that it has been so positively received by investors around the world,” Mark Tucker, AIA’s chief executive, said in a statement yesterday.

On Sunday, AIA said it would initially offer 5.86 billion shares at between 18.38 and 19.68 Hong Kong dollars, adding that it could issue additional shares if it exer-cised a so-called greenshoe option.

That may bring the total raised to around $20.5bn and leave AIG with a stake of just 32.9 percent in the firm.

AIG, which is on the hook to repay US taxpayers after a

government bailout in 2008, won approval last month for the sale.

The US insurer was forced to look at publicly floating AIA in Hong Kong after the collapse in June of a proposed $35.5bn sale to the British insurer Prudential.

AIA’s reach across 15 Asian countries and its healthy balance sheet explained the strong inves-tor demand, said Francis Lun, general manager of Hong Kong’s Fulbright Securities.

The firm booked a net profit of $1.75bn in 2009.

“The listing should do well because of the strong investor demand (for AIA shares),” Lun told AFP, adding that “AIA is a good company and insurance is always a very strong cash flow business.”

But Patricia Cheng, an analyst at Hong Kong-based brokerage CLSA, questioned AIA’s growth potential despite the firm’s well-known brand, noting that it was losing market share in some coun-tries. “Investors are in Asia for growth. Today’s AIA unfortunately doesn’t measure up too well,” she wrote in a report this month.

“(AIA’s) influence has been declining across the board. It’s already lost the top positions in China (among foreign operations), Hong Kong and Singapore.”

Major investors in the AIA sale include the Kuwait Investment Authority, the oil-rich Gulf emir-ate’s sovereign wealth fund, and a number of Hong Kong tycoons.

Chinese sovereign-wealth fund China Investment Corp is also among the buyers, according to reports.

AIA traces its roots in Asia back more than 90 years and was the largest foreign life insurer in China in 2009 based on life insur-ance premiums.

AFP

People queue up at an AIA office in Singapore’s main business district. AIA, the Asian life insurance arm of American International Group Inc, raised $17.9bn by pricing its Hong Kong IPO at the top of an indicated range, sources said, due to heavy demand for one of Asia’s best known industry brands.

Australia approves A$30bn coal gas projectsSYDNEY: Australia yester-day approved two multi-billion dollar coal gas projects with strict environmental condi-tions, clearing the way for exports of millions of tonnes of clean-burning energy to Asian countries.

Environment Minister Tony Burke imposed more than 300 conditions to protect ecologi-cal treasures such as the Great Barrier Reef as he gave the go-ahead to BG Group and the Gladstone Liquefied Natural Gas (GLNG) joint venture.

“After rigorous assessments that included public consulta-tion and the advice of experts, I consider that these projects can go ahead without unacceptable impacts on matters protected under national environment law,” Burke said.

BG is developing Curtis LNG and GLNG is a joint venture between Australia’s Santos, Malaysia’s Petronas and France’s Total, in projects worth about A$30bn (about $29bn).

The companies are set to make final investment decisions by the end of the year on the plants and export terminals at Gladstone on Australia’s east coast, in the lower reaches of the Great Barrier Reef.

The companies are using pio-neering technology to cool gas taken from underground coal seams into liquid and ship it abroad, mainly to Asia, adding a new dimension to Australia’s bur-geoning liquefied natural gas sec-tor. Australia, dubbed a potential “Middle East of gas”, also has sev-eral separate projects in its west and north that will chill natural gas deposits into liquid for shipping.

The announcement boosts expectations for rival coal seam gas joint ventures between Origin Energy and ConocoPhillips, and Royal Dutch Shell and PetroChina, which are yet to apply for environmental approval.

Santos said GLNG will pro-vide 5,000 jobs during construc-tion and 1,000 when the plant is functional, with initial output of 7.2 million tonnes a year.

AFP

Gazprom may take part in TAPI gas pipelineT U R K M E N B A S H I , Turkmenistan: Russia’s gas monopoly Gazprom could take part in a project to build gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan and India via Afghanistan, Russia’s energy tsar Igor Sechin said yesterday.

Turkmenistan, holder of the world’s fourth-largest natural gas reserves, is keen to revive plans to build the TAPI (Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India) pipeline. The project has been stalled by war in Afghanistan.

The long-delayed project would also further efforts by Turkmenistan, Central Asia’s largest gas producer, to diver-sify its export routes and lessen dependence on its traditional partner Russia.

Gazprom, the main buyer of Turkmen natural gas until Turkmenistan launched a China-bound pipeline last December, could play a role, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin said.

“The issue of Gazprom’s par-ticipation in the TAPI gas pipe-line was discussed during this visit,” Sechin told reporters dur-ing Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s visit to Turkmenistan.

“Gazprom may participate in this project in any capacity—builder, designer, participant, etc,” Sechin said. Pakistan and India have expressed an interest in buying up to 70 billion cubic metres annually.

A senior Afghan official said last month that Afghanistan would secure the planned pipeline through the Taliban heartland by burying its sections underground and paying local communities to guard it.

REUTERS

Canada province urges govt to block BHP’s Potash bidR E G I N A , SASKATCHEWAN: The Canadian province home to Potash Corp said it opposed BHP’s $39bn bid to buy the fertilizer supplier, setting the stage for a politically charged final decision by the federal government.

Saskatchewan said on Thursday it would urge Ottawa to block BHP Billiton’s attempt to take over Potash because a successful bid by the Anglo-Australian miner could hurt jobs

and revenues in the province. Potash is one of Canada’s largest resource firms. Demand for its namesake product is set to surge in coming years as China, India and other countries work to feed growing populations.

“In the interests of jobs for Saskatchewan families, in the interest of the quality of life that we prize that is funded by rev-enues to the government ... we must say no to this hostile take-over,” Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall said in a speech in the

provincial capital Regina. Under the Investment Canada Act, the federal government can only allow a takeover by a foreign company if it decides the deal would bring a “net benefit” to Canada.

“It’s our government’s belief that the people of Saskatchewan deserve nothing less than a pot-ash industry unequivocally man-aged, operated and marketed for the benefit of Canada and Saskatchewan,” said Wall, consid-ered a political ally of the ruling federal Conservatives.

There was little impact on BHP’s shares in Sydney from the widely expected decision. The stock was up 0.5 percent at A$41.42 at 0137 GMT yesterday, outperforming Rio Tinto which lost 0.1 percent but was in line with the broader market.

“There is an expectation that something will be worked out, and BHP will probably have to pay up a little bit,” said Ric Ronge, a portfolio manager at Pengana Capital. “On the flipside of that, the fundamentals of the potash

market appear to be improving as they are negotiating this deal.”

Saskatchewan estimates it will lose about C$3bn ($2.9bn) in revenues over the next 10 years if the deal goes through because of the way royalty payments are structured. If Ottawa allows a takeover to proceed, Wall said, Saskatchewan would make tax changes applicable to BHP that could generate an extra C$3bn for the province, compensating it for revenue it might otherwise lose.

REUTERS

VW posts 9-month profit of €4.8bnFRANKFURT: Volkswagen, the biggest European carmaker, reported yesterday a strong oper-ating profit of ¤4.8bn ($6.7bn) for the first nine months of 2010 and said its full-year figure would show gains as well.

The nine-month figure was more than three times higher than the ¤1.5bn posted in the same period of 2009. Sales rose to ¤92.5bn, a gain of 19.9 percent, a statement said, before adding that the group did not expect growth to be as strong in the fourth quarter of the year.

VW said full-year sales and operating profit were nonethe-less expected to mark significant gains owing to strong demand, especially in China.

But the fourth quarter would see more muted growth, a situ-ation that VW executives have already mentioned. Pre-tax profit

for the nine-month period leapt to ¤5.44bn, a huge gain from the 2009 figure of ¤1.07bn.

Pre-tax profit was boosted by 863 million euros in contri-butions from investments that included joint ventures in the robust Chinese auto market and options linked to the takeover of the luxury sports car maker Porsche, VW said.

Volkswagen and its nine other brands delivered 5.4 million vehicles in the period from January through September, an annualised gain of 12.9 percent. That gave the German group a market share of 11.6 percent, a slight gain on the year, it said.

After suffering from a slump in global sales amid the economic downturn last year, VW was well positioned to rebound owing to its strong presence worldwide.

AFP

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www.qatarjobcenter.comOver 7,500 jobs available in Qatar. Job Seekers: Register & Upload CV - Free of Charge. Employers: Register & Upload Jobs Today. Call: 33161105 to place your Ad.

Martial Arts

AIKIDO YOSHINKANMI-YAMA RYU JUJUTSO - Adults/ChildrenTel: 44854600 E-mail: dohaaikido@gmail.com Website: www.dohaaikido.com

Medical Services

DR. AJU ABRAHAM, MBBS MRCPsych (UK), CCST (UK), Dip. CBT (UK) Consultant Psychiatrist, Tel: 44365051 - www.drajusclinic.com

DR. B.RIAZ AHAMED - BDS, MDS(Periodontics) Specialist Periodontics Al Rafa Industrial Area Branch. Tel: 44604448/9 Fax: 44500175

DR. FUAD USMAN - MBBS, MD(Skin & VD) Specialist Dermatologist Al Rafa Industrial Area Branch. Tel: 44604448/9 Fax: 44500175

DR. ANTONY. GEORGE JOSEPH - MBBS, MD(General Medicine) Al Rafa Industrial Area Branch. Tel:44604448/9 Fax: 44500175

DR. HANI SWEID CLINIC - PEDIATRIC CONSULTANTM.B.B.S./MD (Pediatrics) - All India Institute of Medical Sciences (A.I.I.M.S), New Delhi. Abu Hamour Street, Opposite to Al Jazeera Academy. Tel: 44216565

AL SAFA POLYCLINICTel: 44322448/44428701/44426948 Fax: 44360572E-mail: sales@alsafahospital.com Timings: 7 am to 11pm. Friday: 3pm to 11pm. Al Kinana Street, Al Nasr.

Dental

AL MASA DENTAL COMPLEXDR. Saeed Mohammed Abdelkhalek, MS, Prosthodontics. Opposite Villagio. Tel: 44513289 Fax: 44693086

AL MASA DENTAL COMPLEXDR. Sami Khalil Elmorsi Elsharoud, MS, Restorative Dentisty & Endodontics. Opposite Villagio. Tel: 44513289 Fax: 44693086

AL MASA DENTAL COMPLEXDR. Mohammed Naveed Yawar GB, General Scope Dentist (Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences). Opposite Villagio. Tel: 44513289 Fax: 44693086

ORIENTAL CARPET CO. 25 YEARS IN DOHA C’ Ring Road, Behind Al Fardan MotorcycleTel: 44479794/44131850/44478379

KASHMIR HANDICRAFT EMPORIUMHandmade Cartpets, Handicrafts & Furniture. Al Mirgab Street, Al Naser. Tel: 44432761 GSM: 55553407

Carpet

Computer Training Centre

FAMILY COMPUTER CENTREAl Rayyan Complex, Rayyan Road.Tel: 44435361/44370779 Fax: 44449130

Accounting Softwares

ARTECHPeachtree, Quickbook, simply accounting. Accpac Products, Services & Training. Tel: 44375654 GSM: 55305906 E-mail: artech@Ar-technology.net Web: ar-technology.net

GEM ADVERTISING & PUBLICATIONS(Overseas Newspaper Advertisements) Tel: 44442001 GSM: 55783303

Advertising Overseas Newspaper

ORIENTAL CARPET CO. & ARTS & CRAFTS C’ Ring Road, Behind Al Fardan MotorcycleTel: 44479794/44131850/44478379

Arts and Crafts

QATAR INTERNATIONAL ADVENTURESTel: 44553954, 44677406 GSM: 55864568/55527225E-mail: info@qia-qatar.com - Website: www.qia-qatar.com

Adventure in Qatar

Blinds

AL JAWHAR CURTAINS & FURNITUREVertical-Venitian Blinds - Salwa Road, Qatar Decoration R/A. Tel: 44689897

AL SHARK EXHIBITIONVertical-Venitian Blinds Bin Mehmoud.Tel./Fax: 44422906

Blasting and Painting

M. PALLONJI QATARP.O. BOX: 23933. E-mail: mpallonji@qatar.net.qaTel: 44606822 Fax: 44606977 GSM:55879234

SKATE SHACKAl Ain # 3, Salwa Road, Doha (near the large Qatari Flags) www.skate-shack.com GSM: 55324431 Tel: 44692532

Bicycles & Water Sports

Bus Hire

GULF GHAZAL RENT A CARWe have available 15, 24, 30 & 66 seats buses for rent. With or Without driver for all your transport solution - Corporation, School and functions inside Qatar. Tel: 44273619 Fax: 44273618 GSM: 55212784/55708306 E-mail: rentacar@gulfghazal.com Web: www.gulfghazal.com

ASIA TRANSLATION & SERVICES CENTERAttestation from India in 10 working days for QR.500. Contact: Mr. Sufiyan Tel: 44364555/44440943 GSM: 55403720/66192881

Attestation

Cleaning and Maintenance

AL MUTWASSIT CLEANING & PEST CONTROLKharaba Street, Behind White Mosque, Tel: 44367555 Fax: 44367999 GSM: 55875920/55860432

CAPITAL CLEANING COMPANY W.L.L.Complete General Cleaning Services for Old and New VillasTel: 44582257/44582546 Fax: 44582529 Mobile: 33189899/ 55565328 E-mail: capitalcleaningwll@gmail.com

DELTA SERVICES COMPANYGood cleaning starts with good people. For all your Residential & Commercial needs. Tel: 44550520 Fax: 44675503GSM: 55566939 E-mail: dsc@deltaqatar.com

QATAR CLEANING COMPANY W.L.L.Male/Female: Housekeepers, Catering-Wedding Service Staff Hourly/Daily/Weekly/Monthly - Rates Apply.Tel: 44662695 Ext.21 GSM: 55816421

Curtains

AL SHARK EXHIBITIONBin MehmoudTel./Fax: 44422906

AL JAWHAR CURTAINS & FURNITURESalwa Road, Qatar Decoration Roundabout. Tel: 44689897

INTERDECORSpecialist in Curtains, Sofas, Furnishing Fabrics, All kinds of Blinds & Interior Works. Tel: 44505882 GSM: 55131957

DOHA PEST CONTROL & CLEANING CO. W.L.L. For General Cleaning, Carpet Shampooing, Water Tank Cleaning, Scrubbing & Polishing. Supply of Cleaners & Office Boys. Tel: 44360901/02/22 Fax:44360838 Email: dohapest@qatar.net.qa GSM: 55695540/55747395 Web: www.dohapest.com

AL FURSAN CLEANING SERVICES CO. W.L.L.Villa Cleaning, Sofa, Carpets, Tiles, Floors, Marble Polishing, Swimming Pool, Water Tanks & Insects Proof. Tel: 44878914 Mobile: 33293482/55637816 Fax: 44864152

TARIQ GROUP INTERNATIONAL (TGI) CLEANING SERVICESYou will get the best Job in Town, at rates you can afford. Your satisfaction is always guaranteed in Salwa Road, next to Jarir Bookstore. Fax: 44364185Tel: 44428454/44212462 GSM: 55523704/55837120/66080836E-mail: info@tgi.com.qa Website: www.tgi.com.qa

1919OCTOBER 23, 2010www.pen.com.qa ON SATURDAYClassifieds

To Let Situations VacantServices

APOLLO REAL ESTATEDoha’s leading Real Estate Agency can offer you a wide selection of available

properties. Apartment to compounds and office space. Give us your requirements and let us find you a place that fits. With over 30 years experience in Doha, we know the market.

Qatar’s first Real Estate Company under British Management

Call: Office: 44689522, Maureen 55864352, Sal 33190644Abubakar 55850815, Peter 55506803, Dexter 55872145

www.apolloproperties.com.qa

Announcements

GSM: 55505773

BUYING

We buy all kinds of used

household items. Office Furniture, Electric and electronics items.. Fridge, A/Cs, Freezer,

TV & Computers.

Services

Schools

DOHA MONTESSORI & BRITISH SCHOOLinfo@doha-montessori.com, www.doha-montessori.comTel: 4450 22 57 / 4450 22 59, Fax: 4450 22 35

Scaffolding

APOLLO ENTERPRISES SCAFFOLDING DIVISIONContract/Hire/Sale - Salwa Road. Tel: 44426664 GSM: 55521089 www.apollo-qatar.net

SARVIKA & CO. QATAR W.L.L.P O Box: 45725 - Tel: 44514689/90/91 Fax: 44514688E-mail: sarvika@srimaleshqatar.com

GULF GHAZAL TRADING & EST.Available all types of small and medium types of Weighing Scale, Weigh Bridge, Calibration Services & Calibration Certificate also. Tel: 44273619 Fax: 44273618 GSM: 55310321 Email: scale@gulfghazal.com

Weighing Machine

Water Tank Cleaning

AL MUTWASSIT CLEANING & PEST CONTROLKharaba st, Behind white Mosque. Fax: 443679 99 GSM. 55875920/55860432

Tours in Qatar

QATAR INTERNATIONAL TOURS Tel: 44551141, 44552242 Fax: 44653461 GSM: 55010137E-mail: info@qittour.com - Website: www.qittour.com

TRANSCONTINENTAL TRAVELS & CARGOAl Khaleej Street, Hotel Gulf Paradise Building. Travel: 44366691/44372139 Fax: 44372145/44363292 E-mail: transconti@qatar.net.qa Cargo: Tel: 44366629/44366649 Fax: 44366619 E-mail: hirang@transcontinentalcargo.com.qa

Travels

Translation & Typing

TRANSCO TRADING & SERVICES GROUPBuilding 18, Shop No.30, Barwa Village, WakrahTel: 44633020, Fax: 44633047 GSM: 55903772E-mail: transcogroup@gmail.com

Yoga Training

YOGA TRAINING FOR LADIESStretching, Flexibility & Slimming.Home Visit. GSM: 66038133

SARVIKA & CO. QATAR W.L.L.P O Box: 45725 - Tel: 44514689/90/91 Fax: 44514688E-mail: sarvika@srimaleshqatar.com

Refactory & Fire Proofing

A-ONE REAL ESTATEMr. Abid Moosavi: 55354985. Tel: 44410851/ 44425769 Fax: 44322016 Muntaza P.O. Box: 22810 E-mail: aone_realestate@yahoo.com

TARIQ GROUP INTERNATIONAL (TGI) REAL ESTATEOffers F/F Flats in prime location. Salwa Road, Next to Jarir Bookstore. Tel: 44428454/44212462 GSM: 55523704/55837120 Fax: 44364185E-mail: info@tgi.com.qa Website: www.tgi.com.qa

Real Estate

APOLLO ENTERPRISESSalwa Rd. Tel: 44689522 (3 Lines) GSM: 55506803/55503062/ 33190644 - www.apolloproperties.com.qa

ADAM REAL ESTATE COMPANYAl Kuwari Blgd., 8th Floor, Al Sadd, Near Sebstain Rest. Tel: 44366932 Fax: 44366931 GSM: 55500789 / 55803731

MIRAGE INTERNATIONAL PROPERTYTel: 44444431 Fax: 44310408 Salwa Road, (Jarir Bookstore Complex) www.mirageproperty.com Email: info@mirageproperty.com.

Part-timeMaid

for an Indian family.

Please contact:

REQUIRED

GSM: 55897451

Printing Services

AL FAKHIRA PRINT & SUPPLY W.L.L.Best Price Print Business Card, Free Door to Door Design & Delivery. GSM: 66510546/55684777, E-mail: qaprint@hotmail.com

SARVIKA & CO. QATAR W.L.L.P O Box: 45725 Tel: 44514689/90/91 Fax: 44514688E-mail: sarvika@srimaleshqatar.com

Painting & Coating

AL DAR CAR RENTAL24 Hours. Bin Omran, Ahmed Bin Ali St., PO Box 24816 Tel: 44877789, GSM: 55599972/55732070, Fax: 44866637 aldar-car-rental@hotmail.com

GO RENT A CARCompetitive Rates for Car Rental & Leasing. Doha Jadeed. Tel: 44325500 Fax: 44375753 E-mail: info@gorac.com.qa

THE OWNERS RENT A CAR + LIMOUSINE SERVICE24 Hrs Service! Tel: 44515515 GSM: 55149555 Fax: 44515155 Contact Mr. Anjum Malik E-mail: anjum@ownersqtr.com

NICE RENT A CARSolution for Transport & Leasing all types of vehicle & Heavy Equiment.Tel: 44413392 GSM: 55514223 Fax: 44317896 Website: niceqatar.comE-mail: niceqatar@qatar.net.qa/ rasheed@niceqatar.com

Rent A Car

BUDGET RENT A CARThe Best Car Rental Service in Qatar. Opp. Centre 44310411 Airport - Tel: 44622678 - City Centre - Tel: 44933874

AVIS RENT A CARMain Office at Daihatsu Showroom Complex on ‘C’ Ring Road. Tel: 44667744 / 44622180 Fax: 44657626

AL MUFTAH RENT A CAR WLLMain Office, D’ Ring Road -Tel: 44328100, 44634444, Fax: 44414339, Branches: C’ Ring Road -Tel: 44442003, Musherib - Tel: 44326840, Ras Lafffan: Tel.: 44748840 E Mail: rac@qatar.net.qa Website: www.rentacardoha.com

BASE RENT A CARCars that fits your Needs & Budget, We Deliver & Pickup. Call for a quote 24 Hours @ 55206569

EUROPCARYou rent A lot more than a car. Opp. Al Sharq Bldg.,D-Ring Road. Tel: 44660677 Fax: 44662677 Airport: 44621188

AL SULAIMAN RENT A CARMain Office D’ Ring Road. Tel: 44911711/44911710 Fax: 44911699. E-mail: info@alsulaimancar.com Musherib: 44355477/44440702/44315616 Fax: 44355466. Al Wakra: 44646775/44649153 Fax: 44646773 Al Khor: 44796677/44725378 Fax: 44796633

OASiS RENT A CARYOU RENT MORE THAN A CAR WITH OASiS. Tel: 44130011 GSM:55808763/55157587 Fax: 44130033 Rental@OasisCars.Com - OasisCars.com

JABRCO RENT A CARSpecial Offer Price for Company Establishments/Specially for Monthly Basis. Tel. (O): 44663933 GSM: 77600777E-mail: jabrco.companies@hotmail.com

J&F QATAR W.L.L.Low Budget Car Rentals. Lease-to-Own. Special Long Term & Corporate Packages. Tel.: 44370672 Fax: 44317825GSM: 55854356/77802436/55593522

ADONIS RENT A CARFleet of Modern Cars. Tel: 44320820 Fax: 44324057GSM: 55625086 E-mail: adonisqatar@hotmail.com

GULF GHAZAL RENT A CAR CO. WLLCar Rental, Bus Hire, Cheiffer Service Al Nasier Street, In Front Family Food Centre, Upstair of Al Jabier Optics. Tel: 44273619/55212784/55708306/ 55492705 Fax: 44273618 Rentacar@gulfghazal.com

REGENCY FLEETS (A Regency Group Co.)Special Corporate leasing and Rental rates. Price includes Comprehensive Insurance, Maintenance, Replacement Vehicle etc. Driven by Values. E-mail: info@regencyfleets.com Tel: 44433822/44554046 Fax: 44554047

TARIQ GROUP INTERNATIONAL (TGI) RENT-A-CARLower rates Car Rentals in Salwa Road, Next to Jarir Bookstore.Tel: 44428454/44212462 Fax: 44364185E-mail: info@tgi.com.qa Website: www.tgi.com.qa

PARTY KINGDOMNear Jaidah Flyover, In the Gulf Commercial Centre, Across from the Internet Cafe. Tel: 44353501 Fax: 44693924

Party Items & Balloon Decoration

PARTY MANIAAl Muntaza, Near Al Meera. Tel: 44418810 Fax: 44418426 GSM: 55556306 E-mail: partymania_q@hotmail.com/gm@partymaniaqatar.com. PO Box 39191 - www.partymania.com

AL MUFTAH SERVICES & RENT A CAR WLLC Ring Road Main Office Tel: 44328100/44442003, Fax: 44414339 - Musherib Branch Office: Tel: 44326840/ 44426649, Fax: 44312899 E Mail: rac@qatar.net.qa Website: www.racqatar.com

Real Estate COLLECTION OF SEWAGE WATER WITH 5,000 GALLONS TANKER FROM DIFFERENT LOCATION AT PRICE OF 250 TO 450 QATARI RIYAL PER TRIP AND

CLEANING OF SEPTIC TANK

SERVICES AVAILABLE

Please contact: 33197511/66446117

Private Tutorial Classes for CFA Material.

Please contact:

REQUIRED

GSM: 55062222

Maintenance Services available for Cleaning and

repair of Air Conditions (Windows/ Split Unit),

Refrigerators, Deep Freezers, and Washing Machines.

Replacing of unserviceable unit with serviceable one.

MAINTENANCESERVICES

Call: 55558154

Wanted

STOREwith approved licence from The Civil

Defence. Please contact:

WANTED

44365859/66189648

Female Staff

to work in a Beauty Salon with experience in all beauty speciality.

Please contact:

REQUIRED

GSM: 55303292

Situations Wanted

MANAGER or Assistant Manager available. B.Com (IT) with 7 years experience is looking for a suitable placement. Looking for good position & salary pack-age. Transferable visa with NOC. Please contact GSM: 66586836 E-mail: safdar_farhan@yahoo.com

SRI LANKAN NATIONAL, is looking for a part-time job (from 4pm to 10pm) in the field of Accounting, Secretarial, Data Entry. NOC available. Please contact GSM: 77442576 E-mail: uwais999@gmail.com

MBA MARKETING AND HR, 26 years old Indian, with 4 years experience in sales and marketing, is looking for right career opportunity. Please contact GSM: 30224607 E-mail: knnishanthster@gmail.com

YOUNG INDIAN, Computer Graduate in MCA with MCSE and CCNA, with 4 years experience (including Qatar), very fluent in English, is looking for a job as IT Administrator or any other suitable post. Please contact GSM: 77890951 E-mail: hvrmtl@yahoo.com

MBA FINANCE AND MARKETING, 26 years old, young Indian, with 4 years of experience in accounts and administration, is looking for a right opening. Please contact GSM: 30216076 E-mail: aneeshjohn84@gmail.com

INDIAN MALE, with 13 years GCC experience as Civil Foreman, with good communication skills in English, Arabic and Hindi, is looking for a suitable job. Please contact GSM: 30107264

Vehicles For Sale

TOYOTA COROLLA. Model 2005. 1.3cc. Dark Blue colour. Done 161,000 kms. One year valid road permit. Fully automatic. CD Rom, Wireless Key. Special edi-tion. Excellent condition. Fixed price QR.24,000. Please contact GSM: 55284150

TOYOTA COROLLA XLI. Model 2007. 1.8cc. White colour. Done 117,000 kms. Road permit till 20.05.2011. Fully automatic. Strong A/C and engine. Good condi-tion. Fixed price QR.33,000. Serious buyers only, please contact GSM: 55857198

Notice

MR. SIRI GADHA RAJA GOUDINDIAN NATIONAL, PASSPORT NO. A9046617

QATAR ID NO. 25635605374

FORCECO TRADING & CONTRACTING W.L.L.44446541/66718260/66804598

The above said person is leaving Qatar for good. Anybody having any claim against him should contact us on the following numbers within 3 days from the date of this advertise-ment. We will not be responsible for any claim whatsoever after the above said date.

For Sale

NEW HOUSEHOLD ITEMS FOR SALE. Brand new

original seal packed Apple iPad 32GB, Wifi enabled

with one year international warranty. Price QR.2,800.

Please contact GSM: 55097913

MR. ABDULRAHIMAN TATTAKANDYINDIAN NATIONAL, PASSPORT NO. A9946364

QATAR ID NO. 26235602595

FORCECO TRADING & CONTRACTING W.L.L.44446541/66718260/66804598

The above said person is no more working with us. Anybody having any claim against him should contact us on the following numbers within one week from the date of this advertise-ment. We will not be responsible for any claim whatsoever after the above said date.

MR. RAHIM MADAVANI THIKKUMIINDIAN NATIONAL, PASSPORT NO. F8285800

QATAR ID NO. 27835623719

FORCECO TRADING & CONTRACTING W.L.L.44446541/66718260/66804598

The above said person is no more working with us. Anybody having any claim against him should contact us on the following numbers within one week from the date of this advertise-ment. We will not be responsible for any claim whatsoever after the above said date.

MR. MOYYIL NAWASINDIAN NATIONAL, PASSPORT NO. H5496792

QATAR ID NO. 28935604346

FORCECO TRADING & CONTRACTING W.L.L.44446541/66718260/66804598

The above said person is no more working with us. Anybody having any claim against him should contact us on the following numbers within one week from the date of this advertise-ment. We will not be responsible for any claim whatsoever after the above said date.

Sri Lankan Law Graduate, with short-hand speed of 90 WPM and typing of

50 WPM with NOC, is looking for a job.Please contact:

GSM: 55781692rahim@tadmur.com or

rmohamed69@yahoo.com

SRI LANKAN LAW GRADUATE

For Sale

Big Office on Salwa Road,near to Vegetable Market.

Rent QR.5,500.Please contact: 66960144

OFFICE FOR SALE

Tariq Group International (TGI) Real EstateOffers best rate daily, weekly, monthly and yearly contract.Fully furnished 1 bedroom, 2 bedrooms, and 3 bedrooms,

2 bathrooms, living/dining room, kitchen and shaded parking in Al Sadd, Al Nasr, Al Muntaza, Fareej Abdelaziz and Bin Omran area. We also have office space in Muntaza area near Andalus Petrol Station.

Contact us at:

44428454, 44212462, 55523704, 55837120, 66080836 Fax: 44364185

E-mail: info@tgi.com.qa Website: www.tgi.com.qa

FOR RENT

Pen.MagTel: 44557857 Fax: 44557870

Pen.MagTel: 44557857 Fax: 44557870

2020 OCTOBER 23, 2010www.pen.com.qa SportON SATURDAY

Phillies stay alive with 4-2 win over Giants SAN FRANCISCO: The Philadelphia Phillies kept their World Series dreams alive with a gritty 4-2 win over the San Francisco Giants yesterday to send the National League Championship Series back to the East Coast.

Facing a 3-1 series deficit, the Phillies turned to Roy Halladay for Game Five and the big right-hander delivered, allowing two runs on six hits over six scrappy innings to send the series back to Philadelphia for Game Six today.

“We did exactly what we had to do, we won the game,” Phillies manager Charlie Manuel told reporters. “Going back home we have (Roy) Oswalt going the first game and (Cole) Hamels the second.

“I figure if we get back home and the way we play, I figure we definitely kind of changed things around a little bit.”

Game Five failed to deliver the expected classic pitching duel, as Halladay, nursing a mild groin strain faced Giants’ ace Tim Lincecum.

The Phillies, however, managed to score three runs off Lincecum in a wild third inning -- where they were helped by a hit batter, a foul ball bunt that was ruled fair and a costly fielding error by first baseman Aubrey Huff, to seal the game.

Halladay struggled early yes-terday, issuing a leadoff walk to Andres Torres followed by a line drive base hit to Freddy Sanchez. Buster Posey then hit into a field-er’s choice to score Torres.

Philadelphia, however, hit back with their three-run burst in the third with Raul Ibanez lining a single to right before he was moved to second when Lincecum hit Carlos Ruiz.

Halladay then lay down a bunt that was ruled fair but replays showed was foul, advancing the runners for Shane Victorino, who hit a line drive that Huff fumbled, allowing Ibanez and Ruiz to score.

Placido Polanco then singled to drive in Victorino and give the Phillies a 3-1 lead.

The Giants pulled one back in fourth on a Cody Ross RBI dou-ble but Halladay and the Phillies bullpen would not allow another run.

Jayson Werth providing some breathing room with a solo home run to open the ninth with Brad Lidge coming on to get the final three outs and the save.

Semenya finds it hard to get sponsors: Coach PRETORIA: Caster Semenya is finding it hard to get sponsors despite being a world champion, her coach said yesterday.

“It is tough for Caster,” Michael Seme said. “If you look overseas you will see other world champi-ons featuring in a lot of advertis-ing campaigns and you see their faces up on billboards but that doesn’t happen for Caster.”

Semenya, who underwent gen-der verification tests after win-ning 800 metres gold at the world championships in August 2009, did not have as much financial backing as she would have liked, Seme said.

“Caster does receive help from Nike while the Department of Sports and Recreation and the University of Pretoria help out with her education but there isn’t spare money,” Seme said in a tel-ephone interview.

“For instance, if she requires special equipment she can’t just go out and get it.”

Reports in South Africa about Semenya’s financial situation have sparked a campaign by a group of fans to raise 1m rand ($143,600) for the runner by December.

“People love her,” Thobeka Magcai, spokesperson for the campaign said. “She has been through such a lot at such a young age and we just want to show our support for her and say that we want to see you back on the world stage, winning medals.”

Semenya, who is studying towards a sports science degree at the University of Pretoria, pulled out of the recent Commonwealth Games in Delhi because of a back injury. REUTERS

Rooney’s shock u-turnUnexpected new deal to keep the England striker at Old Trafford for the next five seasons

Manchester United’s Wayne Rooney participates in a team training session at the club’s Carrington training complex, in Manchester, north-west England in this October 19, 2010, file photo. Rooney signed a five-year deal with United in a move that has ended specualtion that the English striker was leaving Old Trafford.

LONDON: Wayne Rooney per-formed a shock u-turn yesterday by signing a new five-year con-tract with Manchester United just days after appearing to be on his way out of Old Trafford.

Rooney had rocked United on Wednesday by revealing that he wanted to leave the Premier League club because they no longer had enough ambition to compete for major honours.

However United reopened talks with Rooney’s agent and announced yesterday that the player had made an astonishing u-turn and opted to commit his long-term future to the club.

A statement on the club’s website said: “Wayne Rooney has agreed a new five-year contract to stay at Manchester United until at least June 2015. The agree-ment follows intensive discussions between the Club and the player’s representatives and means that by the end of his contract Wayne will have been a Manchester United player for 11 years.”

Rooney, who was reportedly demanding wages of around £150,000 ($235,664) a week after tax in the original contract negotiations, insisted he agreed the new deal because Sir Alex Ferguson had convinced him United remain committed to suc-ceeding on the pitch.

“I am delighted to sign another deal at United,” he said. “In the last couple of days, I have talked to the manager and the owners and they have convinced me this is where I belong.

“I said on Wednesday the man-ager is a genius and it is his belief and support that have convinced me to stay.

“I’m signing a new deal in the absolute belief that the manage-ment, coaching staff, board and owners are totally committed to making sure United maintains its proud winning history - which is the reason I joined the club in the first place.”

United manager Ferguson had already revealed earlier in the week that contract talks with Rooney had broken down

in August and it seemed certain the former Everton star would be sold.

Ferguson’s comments about Rooney’s failure to show respect for United seemed to signal a breakdown in their relationship, especially as it came after a war of words between the two over the United manager’s decision to rest his star for three matches due to an ankle injury.

But Ferguson said yesterday he was delighted with Rooney’s decision.

“It’s been a difficult week, but the intensity of the coverage is what we expect at Manchester United. I said to the boy that the door is always open and I’m delighted Wayne has agreed to stay. Sometimes, when you’re in a

club, it can be hard to realise just how big it is and it takes some-thing like the events of the last few days to make you understand. I think Wayne now understands what a great club Manchester United is,” Ferguson said.

Rooney had been increasingly linked with a move to arch local rivals Manchester City, prompt-ing an angry reaction from fans.

One group protested at his house on Thursday and had to be moved on by police.

Rooney’s decision to stay is sure to be greeted with relief by most United fans, but several of the club’s players, including Patrice Evra, had already expressed frus-tration at the situation.

Rooney’s form in recent months had been well below-par as well and it remains to be seen if he will be welcomed back in the dressing room.

However, Ferguson, who is con-fident Rooney can go on to become one of United’s all-time greats, claimed the player had apologised to him and his team-mates.

“Wayne has apologised to me and the players,” Ferguson told Key103. “He will also do so with the supporters.

“I’m pleased he has accepted the challenge to guide the younger players and establish himself as one of United’s great players.”

Despite the criticism of his attitude this week, Rooney was adamant he had no intention of leaving once Ferguson made it clear that he hadn’t given up on keeping him.

“Once it all came out, it looked as though there was nowhere to go,” Rooney told MUTV.

“But the manager made it quite clear the door was still open for me to sign. The club still wanted me to sign.

“I spoke to my agent and said ‘let’s go in and sit down and try to resolve it to get the deal done’.

“We went in, spoke with the manager, (United owners) the Glazers and (chief executive) David Gill. I am really pleased we managed to sort it out.” REUTERS

Striker out for three weeks LONDON: Wayne Rooney has been ruled out for three weeks with an ankle injury on the day he finally ended speculation over his future at Manchester United.

The England international won’t be back in a United shirt for a while as he recovers after being stretchered out of train-ing on Tuesday following a tackle by Paul Scholes.

United manager Sir Alex Ferguson confirmed to radio station Key103 that Rooney will be out of action until the middle of next month.

“Wayne will be out for three weeks,” he said.

Rooney has already sat out matches against Valencia and Sunderland prior to the inter-national break as a result of the injury.

He could now miss the first derby of the season against Manchester City on November 10, as well as three other Premier League games against Stoke, Tottenham and Wolves and a Champions League tie against Bursaspor. REUTERS

United set to take on Stoke in EPL clash LONDON: Manchester United mid-fielder Darren Fletcher has warned his side’s Premier League rivals that they won’t be distracted by Wayne Rooney’s absence at Old Trafford in the next three weeks.

Rooney rocked United this week when he revealed he would not extend his stay at the club beyond the end of his current contract, which expires at the end of next season.

However, Rooney - who ended specula-tion about his future - was yesterday ruled out for three weeks with an ankle injury.

Losing a player of Rooney’s talent would be seen as a massive blow to United’s hopes of remaining a competitive force in the Premier League. But Scotland interna-tional Fletcher is confident his team-mates will use tomorrow’s match at Stoke to show they can rise to the challenge of replacing their talismanic striker.

“High-profile players have left in the past but the club itself just keeps going,” Fletcher said.

“If anything, it should galvanise the

squad because we all need to come together.“I am confident we can win trophies. We

have a lot of exciting, young players who are getting better every day.

“Crucially, we also have a core of experi-ence that has been through testing situa-tions before and won plenty of things for Manchester United.”

Even the Rooney saga won’t keep Liverpool manager Roy Hodgson out of the spotlight if his struggling side fail to beat Blackburn at Anfield.

Hodgson’s team, who have already suffered dispiriting defeats against Northampton, Blackpool and local rivals Everton, will kick-off tomorrow glued to the bottom of the table if West Ham take a point from their fixture against Newcastle today.

It is an unpalatable prospect for a club more used to winning domestic and European honours and will only add to the pressure on the increasingly belea-guered Hodgson. But Reds defender Jamie Carragher insists it is the players - and not

their boss - who must take responsibility for Liverpool’s plight.

“The manager is the boss and we should be trying to impress him, not the other way around,” he said.

“It is a little rocky patch we are going through at the moment but as long as the players, manager and supporters all stick together it won’t be a problem.”

Arguably the most intriguing clash of the weekend comes at Eastlands, where Manchester City will keep the pressure on leaders Chelsea by beating an Arsenal team desperate to show they deserve to be considered as genuine title contenders.

City have made an impressive start to the season and are just two points behind Chelsea, but third-placed Arsenal would leapfrog Roberto Mancini’s side with a win tomorrow.

Arsenal manager Arsenal Wenger has received a welcome injury boost ahead of the clash after French right-back Bacary Sagna was cleared to play following a thigh injury.

Sagna’s return was well-timed as Wenger will be without Thomas Vermaelen for longer than expected after the defender was ruled out for another three weeks.

“I see a real opportunity to have great achievements this season - we have the spirit, talent, hunger and desire,” Wenger said.

“I do not say there are no weaknesses - we are conscious of that - but we work very hard.”

Chelsea can increase the pressure on their title rivals if they defeat Wolves at Stamford Bridge today.

Carlo Ancelotti’s side will be clear favour-ites but Wolves boss Mick McCarthy is determined to take the game to the Blues.

“We’ve got a chance - it’s 11 versus 11,” McCarthy said. “Nobody gives us a chance so why don’t we just turn up and have a go at them?

“They can be pretty awesome when they get going, so we’ve got to go there and be ready for it, which we will be,” he said.

REUTERS

EPLEnglish Premier League fixtures (1400GMT

unless stated):

Today:

Birmingham v Blackpool

Chelsea v Wolves

Sunderland v Aston Villa

Tottenham v Everton (1145GMT)

West Brom v Fulham

West Ham v Newcastle (1630GMT)

Wigan v Bolton

Tomorrow:

Liverpool v Blackburn

Man City v Arsenal (1500GMT)

Stoke v Man Utd (1230GMT)

SPLScottish Premier League fixtures (1400 GMT

unless otherwise stated)

Today:

Aberdeen v Hibernain (1100)

Hamilton v St Johnstone

Hearts v St Mirren

Kilmarnock v Inverness CT

Motherwell v Dundee United

Tomorrow:

Celtic v Rangers (1145)

La Liga La Liga fixtures (times GMT).

Today:

Real Zaragoza v Barcelona (1600)

Real Madrid v Racing Santander (1800)

Valencia v Real Mallorca (2000)

Tomorrow:

Getafe v Sporting Gijon (1500)

Osasuna v Malaga (1500)

Espanyol v Levante (1500)

Almeria v Hercules CF (1500)

Sevilla v Athletic Bilbao (1700)

Villarreal v Atletico Madrid (1900)

Playing on Monday:

Real Sociedad v Deportivo Coruna (1900)

Ligue 1 Ligue 1 fixtures (times GMT).

Today:

Monaco v Valenciennes (1700)

AS Nancy v FC Lorient (1700)

Girondins Bordeaux v Stade Brest (1700)

Racing Lens v Nice (1700)

Stade Rennes v Montpellier HSC (1700)

St Etienne v Caen (1700)

Sochaux v Toulouse (1900)

Tomorrow:

AC Arles-Avignon v Olympique Lyon (1500)

Paris St Germain v Auxerre (1500)

Lille v O Marseille (1900)

Serie A Serie A fixtures (times GMT).

Today:

Fiorentina v Bari (1845)

Tomorrow:

Parma v AS Roma (1030)

Bologna v Juventus (1300)

Chievo Verona v Cesena (1300)

Genoa v Catania (1300)

Lazio v Cagliari (1300)

Lecce v Brescia (1300)

Udinese v Palermo (1300)

Inter Milan v Sampdoria (1845)

Playing on Monday:

Napoli v AC Milan (1845)

Bundesliga Bundesliga fixtures (times GMT).

Today:

Nuremberg v VfL Wolfsburg (1330)

Borussia Moenchengladbach

v Werder Bremen (1330)

Eintracht Frankfurt v Schalke 04 (1330)

Hanover 96 v Cologne (1330)

Freiburg v Kaiserslautern (1330)

Tomorrow:

Borussia Dortmund v Hoffenheim (1330)

Bayer Leverkusen v Mainz (1530)

VfB Stuttgart v FC St.Pauli (1530)

Dutch C’ship Dutch championship fixtures (times GMT).

Today:

Graafschap Doetinchem v Heracles Almelo

(1645)

NEC Nijmegen v Groningen (1745)

Heerenveen v VVV-Venlo (1845)

Tomorrow:

Excelsior v Ajax Amsterdam (1030)

AZ Alkmaar v Willem II Tilburg (1230)

Twente Enschede v ADO Den Haag (1230)

PSV Eindhoven v Feyenoord (1230)

Vitesse Arnhem v Utrecht (1430)

Football fixtures this week

2121OCTOBER 23, 2010www.pen.com.qa ON SATURDAYSport

Matfield named captain for Springbok tour JOHANNESBURG: Veteran lock Victor Matfield was yes-terday named skipper of the Sprinbok squad to tour the British Isles next month.

Embattled South Africa coach Peter de Villiers also confirmed that flanker Juan Smith would be the tour vice-captain.

“With John Smit being injured and unavailable for such a chal-lenging and important tour we obviously needed Victor’s leader-ship qualities,” said De Villiers.

“He has filled the role in the past with distinction and has led the Vodacom Bulls and Blue Bulls to a string of titles and has been Springbok vice-captain for a number of years.

“We’re aware of his workload this season and we’ll manage him accordingly.”

De Villiers is under pressure after a disastrous Tri-Nations tournament yielded just one win from six outings against the New Zealand All Blacks and Australian Wallabies.

The world champions face Ireland, Wales, Scotland and England on consecutive Saturdays from November 6.

Ticket sales show Samoa has ‘X-factor’: Peter APIA: Strong sales for Samoa’s rugby union Test against England at Twickenham next month showed the resurgent team still retained its “X-factor”, Samoan Rugby Union head Peter Schuster said yesterday.

The Rugby Football Union this week confirmed tickets sales for the match had already reached 50,000, a month out from the November 20 kick off -- the equivalent of more than a quar-ter of the Pacific nation’s 180,000 population.

Samoa flopped at the 2007 World Cup in France, record-ing only one win over the United States, and suffered a 101-14 drubbing at the hands of the All Blacks in 2008.

But Samoan rugby has enjoyed a revival this year, with the 15-a-side team winning the Pacific Nations Cup and the sevens team clinching the World Series crown for the first time.

Schuster said international rugby fans remembered Samoa’s glory days, when the team made the World Cup quarter-finals in 1991 and 1995 and pushed England in the 2003 tournament.

REUTERS

Captain lifts Sri LankaSkipper slams century in Sri Lanka’s big one-day win; I like the way we batted: Sangakkara

Indian cricketer Shikhar Dhawan (right) listens to coach Gary Kirsten during a training session at the Jawaharlal Nehru Cricket Ground in Margao, Goa, yesterday. India play the final One-Day International cricket match against Australia in Goa tomorrow. India lead the three-match 1-0. RIGHT: Australia’s bowler Mitchell Starc prepares to bowl as bowling coach Troy Cooley watches during a training session at the Jawaharlal Nehru Cricket Ground yesterday.

BRISBANE: Skipper Kumar Sangakkara hammered 110 off 95 balls as Sri Lanka blazed to a score of 301 on their way to a 112-run win over Queensland in their opening Australian tour match yesterday.

The Sri Lankans, building up to their three-match one-day inter-national series with Australia next month, were spearheaded by Sangakkara and Chamara Silva (75) at the Gabba.

The tourists then dismissed Queensland for 189 off 36.1 overs with paceman Dilhara Fernando taking 4-41 off 6.1 overs and fel-low fast bowler Dammika Prasad snaring 3-43 off eight overs.

Sangakkara was heartened by the way his team started on one of Australia’s bounciest wickets but said they had plenty of important work ahead of them with a one-dayer and T20 against New South Wales before taking on Australia.

“We still have a lot of improve-ment (left) but I like the way we batted especially getting through the start in the first 12 overs on a wicket that was slightly soft and had a bit in it,” he said.

“We consolidated well and put on a good total and in our first 15 overs we bowled we managed to make some inroads.”

Sangakkara was pleased to kick off his tour in good form.

“It was nice to get runs on the board first up... it was very satis-fying,” he said.

Sri Lanka rested star spin-ner Muttiah Muralitharan, pace spearhead Lasith Malinga, former skipper Mahela Jayawardene and senior batsman Tillakaratne Dilshan in their tour opener.

Queensland’s under-strength bowling attack were on top early with the tourists struggling with the extra bounce of the Brisbane wicket at 30 for two in the eighth over.

But Sangakkara, who shrugged off a hamstring strain to play, sin-gle-handedly turned around the Sri Lankan innings.

The wicketkeeper-batsman set a solid platform by dominating an 87-run stand with Chamara Kapugedera (35) before a century partnership with Chamara Silva.

Sangakkara, who hit 10 bound-aries and five sixes, brought up his century with his fourth six off leg-spinner Cameron Boyce, and then repeated the dose over deep mid-wicket two balls later.

Ben Laughlin (3-54) removed Sangakkara in the 41st over with

a slow full-toss which the left-hander chipped to mid-wicket.

But the Sri Lankan lower order carried on in similar fashion, belting 49 runs from the last five overs, including a six by Thisara Perera off the last ball.

In Queensland’s innings only number six Craig Philipson put up any resistance with 69 off 62 balls including 11 fours.

Sri Lanka have another one-dayer against NSW in Sydney tomorrow followed by a Twenty20 game against NSW on Wednesday.

The T20 match will be followed by a three-game one-day inter-national series against Australia with matches in Melbourne,

Sydney and Brisbane next month.Sri Lanka also play Australia

in a one-off T20 international in Perth on October 31.

New Zealand told to ‘step up’ after Bangladesh flop WELLINGTON: New Zealand cricket chiefs yesterday ordered the Black Caps to “step up” in an upcoming Indian tour after a humiliating one-day series loss to Bangladesh.

New Zealand Cricket (NZC) chairman Chris Moller said his board had “robust” discussions

with captain Daniel Vettori and coach Mark Greatbatch after the 4-0 whitewash, Bangladesh’s first series win against a major crick-eting nation.

But Moller said the board decided against immediate action because next month’s Indian tour was imminent.

“The players, especially the batsmen, need to step up and per-form and prove what the team is capable of,” he said.

Instead, the NZC announced the formation of a committee to review the structure of the game in New Zealand.

The committee will include Moller, former internationals Stephen Boock and Rob Hart,

judge John Hansen, and three as-yet unnamed former players.

“The remit of that committee will run from the grass roots of the game right through to the elite level, including the Black Caps,” Moller said.

New Zealand media have described the series loss as an all-time low for the country’s cricket team and expressed fears it will face similar maulings during an upcoming Indian tour and at next year’s World Cup.

The Black Caps will play three Tests and five one-day inter-nationals against the in-form Indians.

The squad will be named tomorrow. AGENCIES

Al Anabi drag racing team is set for battle at Ennis circuitTEXAS: Qatar’s Drag Racing Team, under the leadership of HE Sheikh Khalid Bin Hamad Al Thani (pictured left), President of Qatar Racing Club, will compete in the 10th and final round of American Drag Racing League (ADRL) in Ennis Circuit in Texas today. The team’s qualification to the final stage was made possible

following their dazzling per-formance and victories in the Pro Extreme, EXTREMIE 10.5 and Pro Natrus events during the previous rounds.

Last month, the Al Anabi Drag Racing Team of Sheikh Khalid claimed the title of Pro Extreme event in the eighth round of ADRL (pictured above). Todd Tutterow occupied the first place

in the final race of the eighth round clocking a time of 3.852 seconds.

Sheikh Khalid will also be seen during races in the QRC’s annual events at Qatar Racing Club in December.

The QRC is the most techni-cally advanced and outfitted drag racing facility in the country.

THE PENINSULA

Rangers edge Maple Leafs TORONTO: The New York Rangers scored two goals in 61 seconds as they handed the Toronto Maple Leafs a first loss in regulation this season with a 2-1 victory yesterday.

Ruslan Fedotenko opened the scoring by tapping in a loose puck behind Maple Leafs goalie Jonas Gustavsson late in the first period, before Artem Anisimov extended the advantage barely a minute later with a shot from the top of the crease.

Colby Armstrong pounced on a rebound halfway through the third period to draw the Leafs to within one but the home side were unable to find an eaqualiser in the final nine minutes.

“We weren’t ready to do the things we needed to do and our defense was kind of stationary,” Maple Leafs coach Ron Wilson told reporters.

“We didn’t push the puck ahead and our forwards started to get ahead of the play. In general, they scored two ugly goals and we didn’t do anything until it was too late.”

Martin Biron made his first start in goal for the Rangers in

NHL ResultsBuffalo 4 Atlanta 1

Columbus 3 Anaheim 1

Chicago 2 Vancouver 1

Los Angeles 4 Carolina 3

place of Henrik Lundqvist and turned aside 24 shots for his first win. He received a lot of support from his team-mates who blocked 30 shots on goal.

“The neutral zone play is where we really improved. That’s the way we have to play,” Rangers head coach John Tortorella said. “The penalty kill was great, we blocked shots, I thought every-body contributed in that part of the game.” Biron’s best stop came moments after Armstrong had made it 2-1, stopping Kris Versteeg on a breakaway to pre-serve the lead and secure the win.

The Maple Leafs started the evening as one of two teams (Nashville the other) unbeaten in regulation play this season, hav-ing opened the season with four straight wins before losing to the New York Islanders in overtime on Monday. REUTERS

2222 OCTOBER 23, 2010www.pen.com.qa SportON SATURDAY

Ice hockey games at Villaggio

Azarenka eases into Kremlin Cup last four MOSCOW: Second seed Victoria Azarenka reached the Kremlin Cup semi-finals with a 6-1, 6-3 thrashing of home hope Alisa Kleybanova yesteray.

The powerful Belarussian, known for her loud grunting on the court, dispatched the seventh-seeded Russian in less than 100 minutes to set up a Saturday clash with Spanish number eight seed Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez, who eliminated Slovakia’s Dominika Cibulkova 6-2, 6-3.

The world number 10 had already secured her place in next week’s season-ending WTA championships in Doha when American Serena Williams pulled out with a foot injury.

Ljubicic fights back into Stockholm semis STOCKHOLM: Fourth seed Ivan Ljubicic made a great escape from a potential fellow Croatian spoiler, earning a 4-6, 6-2, 6-4 comeback win into the semi-finals of the Stockholm Open day over qualifier Ivan Dodig.

The 31-year-old Ljubicic, who lifted the first Masters 1000 title of the season last March at Indian Wells, will play the winner from the Swiss pair of world number two Roger Federer and fifth seed Stanislas Wawrinka.

Federer, who played his 900th career match Thursday as he beat Taylor Dent at the Kungligahallen, is looking for another season of 50 wins. He can achieve that by defeating his good friend and Olympic gold medal doubles partner Wawrinka.

Tennis resultsMOSCOW: Results from the fifth day of the joint WTA and ATP $2m event here yester-day (x denotes seeding):

Men’s quarter-finals

Denis Istomin (UZB) bt Igor Kunitsyn (RUS)

6-2, 6-4

Viktor Troicki (SRB) bt Horacio Zeballos (ARG)

6-2, 6-1

Pablo Cuevas (URU) bt Radek Stepanek (CZE x5)

6-4, 7-6 (7/3)

Women

Vera Dushevina (RUS) bt Anna Chakvetadze (RUS)

6-3, 7-6 (9/7)

Maria Kirilenko (RUS x6) bt Zarina Diyas (KAZ)

6-1, 6-2

Victoria Azarenka (BLR x2) bt Alisa Kleybanova (RUS x7)

6-1, 6-3

Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez (ESP x8) bt Dominika Cibulkova (SVK)

6-2, 6-3

Luxembourg Championship

Women’s quarter-finals

Angelique Kerber (Germany) beat Polona Hercog (Slovenia)

6-4 6-2

Anne Keothavong (Britain) beat Iveta Benesova (Czech Republic)

6-7(3) 6-2 6-4

Al Arabi held to a drawThe Qatar Stars League (QSL) leaders lose points in 1-1 draw against Qatar Sports Club

Yousef Safri of Qatar Sports Club and Abdelaziz Hatim of Al Arabi vie for the ball during their Qatar Stars League (QSL) clash clash at Qatar Sports Club Stadium yesterday. The match ended in a 1-1 draw. RIGHT: Action from Al Sailiya’s game against Al Khor at Al Rayyan Stadium yesterday. Al Sailiyah won the match 3-2. PICTURES: SHAIVAL DALAL/ABDUL BASIT

LEFT: Marcelo Bordon addres-ing the media during Al Rayyan team’s press conference held at the Al Sadd Sports Club. Bordon is playing for Al Rayyan for one season following his move from Bundesliga club Schalke 04. He will be seen in action during Al Rayyan’s match against Umm Salal at Al Rayyan Stadium today.

RIGHT: Daniel Goumou of Al Rayyan sports a flashy pair of Nike shoes during a press conference held at the Al Sadd Sports Club. Goumou is expected to take the field in the game against Umm Salal today.

PICTURES: QASSIM RAHMATULLAH

A group photograph of ice hockey players seen with Qatar Olympic Committee (QOC) officials at Villaggio in Doha yesterday. Sheikh Saoud bin Abdulrehman Al Thani, Secretary General of QOC, and Khalil Al Jaber, of QOC, were present during the games played yesterday. Mohammad Eisa Al Fadala, supervisor of Qatar national ice hockey team, said that the event is being held for the first time with participation of four teams which include Qatari, Canadian and English players. The ice hockey games are being organised to finalise Qatar’s national team that will compete in the Asian Winter Games in Kazakhstan. PICTURES: ABDUL BASIT

DOHA: Al late equaliser from Qatar Sports Club’s Lasina Diyabi saw Al Arabi lose valu-able points in their seventh round clash in the Qatar Stars League (QSL) yesterday.

Diyabi’s snap-header off a free-kick in the 89th minute saw visi-tors Al Arabi lose the one-goal advantage they had over the hosts playing at Suheim Bin Hamad Stadium.

Earlier, luck favoured Al Arabi when Qatar SC’s Mohammed Al Rubai scored an own goal in the 23rd minute. Salman Isa’s shot from inside Qatar SC’s box hit the shoulder of Al Rubai before the ball went into the open net.

Before yesterday’s match, Al Arabi were leading the QSL points table but a draw means they trail newcomers Lekhwiya by a single point. Lekhwiya have 16 points from seven matches whereas Al Arabi are in second spot with 15.

In third place are Al Sadd, who also have 15 points but have lost two games this season.

In the second match of the day, Al Sailiyah beat Al Khor 3-2.

Al Sailiyah opened the scoring through Dagano Moumoune who scored off a penalty in the 32nd minute.

The celebration for Al Sailiyah had barely died down when Al Khor produced a stunning equal-iser through Salem Shaker two minutes later. Shaker produced a snap-header off a corner. The deflection went into the right top corner of the goal. In the sec-ond half, Al Sailiyah grabbed the lead through Fawzi Ayesh, who charged into Al Khor’s box before calmly slotting the ball above the goal-keeper for his side’s second strike in the match.

Mohammed Yasser helped Al Khor draw level with a power-ful strike from 40 meters in the 65th minute. However, four min-utes later, Moumoune scored Al Sailiyah’s third goal from close range.

The seventh-round action in QSL continues today with hosts Al Rayyan playing Umm Salal. Al Rayyan, who have 11 points from six matches, can pick up three points against an opponent in ninth spot with only five points.

In the second match today, Al Khuraitiyat take on Al Gharafa.

Yesterday’s results: 5:30pm: Qatar SC 1 (Lasina

Diyabi 89) drew with Al Arabi 1 (Mohammed Salem Al Rubai of Qatar SC, 23, own goal) at Suheim Bin Hamad Stadium

7:30pm Al Sailiyah 3 (Dagao Moumoune 32, penalty, and 69 Fawzi Ayesh 56) beat Al Khor 2 (Salem Shaker 34, Mohammed Yasser 65) at Ahmed Bin Ali Stadium

Today’s fixtures:5:30pm: Al Rayyan vs Umm

Salal at Ahmed Bin Ali Stadium7:30pm: Al Khuraitiyat vs

Al Gharafa at Thani Bin Jassim Stadium THE PENINSULA

Goumou’s flashy shoesRayyan’s Schalke star

04.20 Mythbusters

05.15 How It’s Made

05.40 How Do They Do It?

06.05 Dirty Jobs

07.00 Fifth Gear

07.25 Chop Shop. London

Garage

08.15 Overhaulin’

09.10 Street Customs

10.05 How It’s Made

10.35 Science Of The Movies

11.30 Stephen Hawking’s

Universe

12.25 Through The Wormhole

With Morgan Freeman

13.20 X-Machines

14.15 Battle Machine Bros

15.10 Mega Builders

16.05 Man Made Marvels Asia

17.00 Extreme Engineering

17.55 How It’s Made

18.20 Destroyed In Seconds

18.50 Destroyed In Seconds

19.15 Swamp Loggers

20.05 Ultimate Survival

21.00 Dual Survival

21.55 Deadliest Catch

22.50 Surviving Disaster

23.45 Miami Swat

00.40 Behind Bars

01.35 True CSI

02.30 Worst-Case Scenario

03.00 Worst-Case Scenario

03.25 Wreckreation Nation

04.20 How It’s Made

04.50 How Stuff Works

04.00 Tom And Jerry

04.25 Popeye Classics

04.50 Scooby Doo Where Are

You!

05.15 Tom And Jerry Kids

05.40 A Pup Named Scooby-

Doo

06.05 Yogi’s Treasure Hunt

06.30 Droopy And Dripple

07.00 Looney Tunes

16.00 Johnny Bravo

16.20 Dexter’s Laboratory

16.45 Tom And Jerry

17.00 Top Cat

17.30 Wacky Races

18.00 Dastardly And Muttley

18.30 The Scooby Doo Show

19.00 Scooby Goes Hollywood

20.35 The Jetsons

21.00 Looney Tunes

21.25 Tom And Jerry

21.50 The Scooby Doo Show

22.15 Hong Kong Phooey

22.40 Top Cat

23.00 The Garfield Show

23.25 The Scooby Doo Show

23.50 Wacky Races

00.15 Dastardly And Muttley

00.40 Top Cat

01.05 Popeye

01.30 King Arthur’s Disasters

01.55 Droopy. Master Detective

02.20 Looney Tunes

02.45 The Flintstones

03.10 The Jetsons

03.35 Pink Panther And Pals

04.00 Tom And Jerry

04.25 Popeye Classics

04.50 Scooby Doo Where Are

You!

06.10 Eliot Kid

08.15 Ben 10. Alien Force

08.40 Bakugan. New Vestroia

09.05 Batman. The Brave And

The Bold

09.30 Chop Socky 60

10.30 The Secret Saturdays

10.55 Best ED

11.20 Eliot Kid

11.45 Fantastic Four. World’s

Greatest Heroes

12.10 Megas Xlr

12.35 Samurai Jack

13.00 Ben 10

13.25 Codename. Kids Next

Door

14.15 The Life And Times Of

Juniper Lee

14.40 George Of The Jungle

15.05 Ed, Edd N Eddy

15.35 Chop Socky Chooks

16.00 Bakugan. New Vestroia

19.00 Best ED

19.25 Foster’s Home For

Imaginary Friends

20.05 The Powerpuff Girls

20.45 Ben 10. Alien Force

21.10 Ed, Edd N Eddy

21.35 Robotboy

22.00 Camp Lazlo

22.25 Samurai Jack

22.50 Megas Xlr

23.15 Out Of Jimmy’s Head

23.40 Chowder

00.05 Cow And Chicken

00.30 Cramp Twins

00.55 George Of The Jungle

01.20 Adrenalini Brothers

01.45 Eliot Kid

02.10 Ed, Edd N Eddy

05.00 Hannah Montana

06.15 Fairly Odd Parents

06.35 Replacements

07.00 Stitch

07.50 Phineas And Ferb

08.15 Replacements

08.35 A Kind Of Magic

09.00 Special Agent Oso

09.45 Handy Manny

11.00 Suite Life On Deck

11.25 Wizards Of Waverly

Place

11.50 Jonas

12.15 Hannah Montana

12.40 Good Luck Charlie

13.00 Sonny With A Chance

13.30 Stitch! The Movie (Cema)

15.00 Hannah Montana

15.25 Jonas

15.50 Wizards Of Waverly

Place

16.15 Suite Life On Deck

16.40 Fairly Odd Parents

17.00 A Kind Of Magic

17.25 Replacements

17.50 Phineas And Ferb

18.15 Fairly Odd Parents

18.35 Replacements

19.00 Sonny With A Chance

19.25 Hannah Montana

20.30 Jonas

20.55 Hannah Montana

21.20 Good Luck Charlie

23.35 Hannah Montana

00.00 Wizards Of Waverly

Place

00.50 Suite Life On Deck

01.40 Sonny With A Chance

02.05 Jonas

02.30 Hannah Montana

06.25 The Screening Room

07.00 Two Weeks In Another

Town

08.45 The Adventures Of

Huckleberry Finn

10.30 Crazy In Love

12.05 Mogambo

14.00 Mandela

16.00 On The Town

17.35 Penelope

19.15 Grand Prix

22.00 Zebrahead

23.40 The Killer Elite

01.45 The Yellow Rolls-Royce

04.00 The Screening Room

04.25 Zebrahead

6.30 Khana Khazana

7.00 Kismat Ke Sitare

7.30 Aapki Antara

8.00 Khana Khazana

8.30 Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Grand

Finale(2008)

11.00 Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Grand

Finale(2008)

11.30 Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Singing

Superstar

12.00 Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Singing

Superstar

12.30 Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Singing

Superstar

13.00 Shanivaar Express @ 2

PM - Nayak- RGV Ki Aag

16.00 Khana Khazana

16.30 Sanjog se bani… Sangini

18.30 Kahiye Janab

19.00 Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Singing

Superstar

19.30 Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Singing

Superstar

20.00 Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Singing

Superstar

20.30 Pavitra Rishta

23.00 Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Singing

Superstar(Rerun)

23.30 Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Singing

Superstar(Rerun)

0.00 Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Singing

Superstar(Rerun)

0.30 Preet Se Bandhi Yeh

Dori… Ram Milaayi Jodi

1.00 Mera Naam Karegi

Roshan

1.30 Sanjog se bani…Sangini

2.00 Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Singing

Superstar (Rerun)

2.30 Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Singing

07.40 Max and Ruby

09.20 New Adventures of

Madeline

09.45 Heathcliff

10.10 Dennis The Menace

10.35 The Beach Crew

10.40 Boo and Me

10.45 Birdz

11.30 Ace Lightning

11.35 The Fairly OddParents

12.00 Sabrina

12.25 Sonic Underground

12.50 Sonic Underground

13.15 The Magical Legend of

the Leprechauns...

16.05 Tales from the

Cryptkeeper

16.30 Tales from the

Cryptkeeper

16.50 Beverly Hills Teen Club

17.15 The Beach Crew

17.25 S Club 7 In LA

17.50 The Hardy Boys

18.10 Nancy Drew

18.35 Inspector Gadget

19.00 Sabrina Friends Forever

20.20 Fat Dog Mendoza

20.45 Sabrina

21.10 S Club 7 In Miami

21.35 Beverly Hills Teen Club

22.00 Sabrina Friends Forever

23.20 Sonic Underground

23.45 Nancy Drew

00.10 The Hardy Boys

00.30 Inspector Gadget

01.00 Rescue Heroes Marathon

04.50 Ancient Discoveries 3

05.40 Dinosaur Secrets

06.30 Tunnellers

07.20 Ax Men 2

08.10 Mega Disasters

09.00 Investigating History

09.55 Rome. Rise And Fall Of

An Empire

10.50 Ancient Discoveries 3

11.40 Dinosaur Secrets

12.30 Tunnellers

13.20 Ax Men 2

14.10 Mega Disasters

15.00 Investigating History

15.55 Rome. Rise And Fall Of

An Empire

16.50 Ancient Discoveries 3

17.40 Dinosaur Secrets

18.30 Tunnellers

19.20 Ax Men 2

20.10 Mega Disasters

21.00 A Global Warning

22.50 Tsunami 2004. Waves

Of Death

23.40 Cities Of The

Underworld

00.30 Ax Men

01.20 Modern Marvels

02.10 Investigating History

03.00 A Global Warning

04.50 Tsunami 2004. Waves

Of Death

05.40 Cities Of The

Underworld

06.30 Ax Men

05.00 Desperate Housewives

06.00 GMA Live RPT

08.00 The Deep End

09.00 The Unit

10.00 The Ellen de Generes

Show

11.00 Ghost Whisperer

12.00 Dollhouse

13.00 The Closer

14.00 Good Morning America

Live

15.00 Kathy Griffin

16.00 The Deep End

17.00 The Unit

18.00 Glee

20.00 Royal Pains

21.00 Smallville

22.00 The Closer

23.00 The Pacific

00.00 The Ellen de Generes

Show

01.00 GMA Live RPT

02.00 Kathy Griffin

03.00 The Closer

04.00 Dollhouse

05.00 NFL Game Day

05.30 World Sport 2010

06.00 The Golf Channel - TBA

08.30 Golf Central International

09.00 Champions Tour

Administaff Small

Business Classic Rd. 1

The Woodlands, TX

11.00 NHL Chicago

Blackhawks at St. Louis

Blues

14.00 Golf Central International

14.30 Seamaster

15.00 World Sport 2010

15.30 European Tour Castello

Masters Costa Azahar

Rd. 3 Castellon, Spain

18.30 College Football

Saturday Preview

19.00 NFL Game Day

19.30 Big 12 Football

23.00 ACC. TBA at TBA

02.30 MLB. National League

Championship Series

Game 6, Teams TBA (if

necessary) time/date

tentative OR Big 12

09.00 The Secret Life Of Bees-

PG15

11.00 Management-PG15

13.00 Shadows In The Sun-

PG15

15.00 Ice Age 3. Dawn Of The

Dinosaurs-FAM

17.00 The Secret Life Of Bees-

PG15

19.00 The Duchess-PG15

21.00 Forgetting Sarah

Marshall-18

23.00 Rocknrolla-18

01.00 The Limits Of Control-18

03.00 Carnera. The Walking

Mountain-PG

05.20 Untamed And Uncut

06.10 Wildlife SOS

06.35 Rspca. Have You Got

What It Takes?

07.00 The Crocodile Hunter

Diaries08.40 Dogs/Cats/

Pets 101

09.35 Animal Battlegrounds

10.00 Dogs 101

10.55 Monkey Life

11.20 Rspca. Have You Got

What It Takes?

11.50 Miami Animal Police

12.45 E-Vets. The Interns

13.40 Animal Cops Houston

14.35 Wildlife SOS

15.00 Rspca. Have You Got

What It Takes?

15.30 New Breed Vets With

Steve Irwin

16.25 Weird Creatures With Nick

Baker

17.20 Max’s Big Tracks

18.15 Austin Stevens

Adventures

19.10 Incredible Journeys With

Steve Leonard

20.10 Dogs 101

21.05 Into The Pride

22.00 Maneaters

22.55 Animal Cops Phoenix

23.50 Sharkman

00.45 Untamed And Uncut

01.40 Saba And The Rhino’s

Secret

02.35 Untamed And Uncut

03.30 Human Prey

04.00 Tweenies

04.20 Teletubbies

04.45 Me Too

05.05 Balamory

05.25 Tweenies

05.45 Teletubbies

06.10 Me Too

06.30 Balamory

06.50 Tweenies

07.10 Fimbles

07.30 Me Too

07.50 Balamory

08.10 Tweenies

08.30 Tellytales

08.40 Fimbles

09.00 Me Too

09.20 Balamory

09.40 Green Green Grass

10.15 Strictly Come Dancing

12.05 Eastenders

14.05 Robin Hood

14.50 The Weakest Link

15.35 Strictly Come Dancing

17.30 Robin Hood

18.15 Holby City

19.10 Holby City

20.10 Robin Hood

20.55 Strictly Come Dancing

22.00 Jack Dee

22.45 Manchild

23.15 The Keith Barret Show

23.45 Eastenders

01.50 Holby City

02.50 Holby City

03.50 Tellytales

04.00 Tweenies

04.25 Daily Cooks Challenge

04.55 Daily Cooks Challenge

05.20 10 Years Younger

05.45 10 Years Younger

06.10 Put Your Money Where

Your Mouth Is

07.40 What Not To Wear

12.40 Living In The Sun

13.30 Fantasy Homes By The

Sea

14.10 The Home Show

15.00 Cash In The Attic

15.40 Fantasy Homes In The

City

16.20 Cash In The Attic USA

16.45 Cash In The Attic USA

17.05 Cash In The Attic

17.50 Cash In The Attic

18.35 Cash In The Attic

19.20 Cash In The Attic

20.05 Come Dine With Me

20.30 Come Dine With Me

20.55 Come Dine With Me

21.20 Come Dine With Me

21.45 Come Dine With Me

22.10 Indian Food Made Easy

22.40 Rhodes Across China

23.20 Coastal Kitchen

23.45 Saturday Kitchen

2008/09

00.15 Saturday Kitchen

2008/09

00.40 Living In The Sun

01.30 Living In The Sun

02.20 Fantasy Homes By The

Sea

03.00 The Home Show

05.00 Bondi Rescue -S2-07

08.30 Madventures -10

9.00 Lonely Planet- Roads

Less Travelled -China 7

10.00 Food Lovers Guide To

The Planet -Daily Bread 3

10.30 Departures -Mongolia-

Meals And Wheels

11.30 Long Way Down -Into

Kenya 6

12.30 The Ride - Alaska To

Patagonia -The Great

Escape 1

15.30 Pressure Cook -Hawaii

S2-03

16.00 Food Lovers Guide To

The Planet -Daily Bread 3

16.30 Departures -Mongolia-

Meals And Wheels

17.30 Long Way Down -Into

Kenya 6

18.30 The Ride - Alaska To

Patagonia -The Great

Escape 1

21.30 Pressure Cook -Hawaii

S2-03

22.00 Food Lovers Guide To

The Planet -Daily Bread 3

22.30 Departures -Mongolia-

Meals And Wheels

23.30 Long Way Down -Into

Kenya 6

00.30 The Ride - Alaska To

Patagonia -The Great

Escape 1

02.30 The Ride - Alaska To

Patagonia -Midbike

05.40 Weird Connections

06.10 The Colony

07.00 Thunder Races

08.00 Scrapheap Challenge

09.00 Ten Ways

09.55 Brainiac

10.50 Ultimate Power Builders

11.45 Ultimate Power Builders

12.40 Ultimate Power Builders

13.35 Ultimate Power Builders

14.30 Speed Junkie

15.25 Sci-Fi Science

15.55 Ten Ways

16.50 The Gadget Show

17.15 The Gadget Show

17.45 The Future Of...

18.40 Nextworld

19.30 How The Universe

Works

20.20 Space Pioneer

21.10 Joao Magueijo’s Big

Bang

22.00 Mythbusters

22.50 Mythbusters

23.40 The Future Of...

22.00 Mythbusters

22.50 Mythbusters

23.40 The Future Of...

00.30 Nextworld

01.20 Joao Magueijo’s Big

Bang

02.10 How The Universe

Works

03.00 Space Pioneer

03.50 The Future Of...

04.45 What’s That About?

BBC WORLD SERVICE 5.00 BBC News 5.06 The World Today 5.30 BBC News Summary 5.32 Politics UK 6.00 BBC News 6.06 The World Today 6.30 BBC News Summary 6.32 World Football 7.00 BBC News 7.06 World Briefing 7.20 Sports Roundup 7.30 BBC News Summary 7.32 Global Business 8.00 BBC News 8.06 The World Today 8.30 BBC News Summary 8.32 The World Today 9.00 BBC News 9.06 The World Today 9.30 BBC News Summary 9.32 World Football 10.00 BBC News 10.06 The World Today 10.30 BBC News Summary 10.32 The World Today 11.00 BBC News 11.06 The Strand 11.30 BBC News Summary 11.32 The Strand 12.00 BBC News 12.06 The Mysteries Of The Brain 12.30 BBC News Summary 12.32 World Football 13.00 BBC News 13.06 World Briefing 13.30 BBC News Summary 13.32 Letter From... 13.41 Over To You 14.00 BBC News 14.06 World Briefing 14.20 Sports Roundup 14.30 15.32 Newshour 15.56 Sports News 16.00 BBC News 16.06 A History Of The World In 100 Objects 17.00 BBC News 17.06 Sportsworld 18.00 BBC News 18.06 Sportsworld 19.00 BBC News 19.06 Sportsworld 20.00 BBC News 20.06 World Briefing 20.30 BBC News Summary 21.32 Health Check 22.00 BBC News 22.06 World Book Club 23.00 BBC News 23.06 Newshour 23.30 BBC News Summary 23.32 Newshour

05.45 Star Trek-PG

08.00 Appaloosa-PG15

10.00 A Previous Engagement-

PG15

12.00 Transformers . Revenge

Of The Fallen-PG15

14.30 Keith-PG15

16.00 Appaloosa-PG15

18.00 Hellboy II. The Golden

Army-PG15

20.00 My Sassy Girl-PG15

22.00 Body Of Lies-18

00.15 The Guitar-18

02.00 Killshot-18

04.00 A Previous Engagement-

PG15

03.00 Heroes

05.00 Look alike

05.30 Look alike

06.00 Hawthorne

07.00 Lie To Me

08.00 Martha Stewart

09.00 Look alike

09.30 Look alike

10.00 Lie To Me

11.00 The View

12.00 Heroes

18.00 Emmerdale

18.30 Coronation Street

19.00 CSI

20.00 Treme

21.00 Mercy

22.00 The View

23.00 Downsize Me

10.00 Lie To Me

11.00 The View

12.00 Heroes

18.00 Emmerdale

18.30 Coronation Street

19.00 CSI

20.00 Treme

21.00 Mercy

22.00 The View

23.00 Downsize Me

00.00 Heroes

03.00 Heroes

06.00 Emmerdale

06.30 Coronation Street

07.00 Mercy

05.00 L’ivresse Du Pouvoir-

PG15

07.00 Lovely Still-PG

09.00 The Last Mimzy-PG

11.00 Broken Lines-PG15

13.00 Farrah’s Story-PG

14.30 Mes Stars Et Moi-PG15

16.00 Meet Joe Black-PG15

19.00 Nights In Rodanthe-

PG15

21.00 Forever Strong-PG

23.00 Foxfire-18

01.00 Midnight Express-18

03.00 Forever Strong-PG

05.00 Nights In Rodanthe-

PG15

05.35 According To Jim

06.00 According To Jim

06.25 According To Jim

06.50 According To Jim

07.15 According To Jim

07.40 Canada’s Next Top

Model

08.30 Canada’s Next Top

Model

9.25 Loop

9.55 Loop

10.25 Loop

10.55 Loop

11.25 Loop

11.55 How I Met Your Mother

12.20 How I Met Your Mother

12.45 How I Met Your Mother

13.10 How I Met Your Mother

13.35 How I Met Your Mother

14.00 [V] Tunes

15.00 [V] Tunes

16.00 [V] Tunes

17.00 [V] Tunes

18.00 [V] Tunes

19.00 90210

20.00 Reaper

20.55 Kyle XY

21.50 Stylista

22.40 [V] Plug

23.10 America’s Next Top

Model

00.05 Desperate Housewives

00.55 Stylista

01.45 F1 2010

02.35 Ugly Betty

03.25 Backtracks

04.25 [V] Tunes

04.55 Straight Out Of Brooklyn

06.15 Coca Cola Kid

07.50 Paper Lion

09.35 The Black Stallion

11.30 Return Of A Man Called

Horse

13.35 Cornbread, Earl And Me

15.10 Garbo Talks

16.55 The 70’s

18.50 Late For Dinner

20.20 Maxie

22.00 Impromptu

23.45 The Music Lovers

01.50 Chains Of Gold

03.25 Chattahoochee

05.00 L.A. Bounty

2400 Ucl Magazine English

0030 Total Italian Football

0100 The Global Game

0200 Europa League Karpaty

Lviv V Sevilla

0345 Europa League Atletico

Madrid V Rosenborg

0530 Moto Gpaustralia

0700 The Global Game

0800 Total Italian Football

0830 Transworld Sport

0930 Omni Sport

1000 Ucl Magazine English

1030 Magazine

1100 Uefa Champions League

Manchester United V

Bursapor

1300 The Global Game

1400 Scottish League

Aberdeen V Hibernian

1600 Uefa Champions League

Inter V Tottenham

1800 Real Nba Magazine

1830 Spanish League

Zaragoza V

BarcelonaReal Madrid

V Racing Valencia V

Mallorca

0115 Scottish League

Aberdeen V Hibernian

0300 Npower League Notts

Forest Vipswich

0445 Npower League

Doncaster V Sheffield

United

0630 Ucl Magazine English

ROYAL PAINSAT 20.00 FFFFFFOOOOORRGEETTING SARAH MAARSSHHHHAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL

SUPER MOVIES AT 21.00 SUPER MOVIES AT 21.00

SHOW MOVIES AT 22.00

EUROPEAN

TOUR CASTELLO

MASTERS AT 15.30

2323OCTOBER 23, 2010www.pen.com.qa ON SATURDAYTV / Radio Guide

2424 OCTOBER 23, 2010www.pen.com.qa MindsportON SATURDAY

Hagar The Horrible By Chris Browne

Zits By Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman

Baby Blues By Jerry Scott and Rick Kirkman

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

14 15 16

17 18 19

20 21 22

23 24 25

26 27 28 29 30

31 32

33 34

35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43

44 45

46 47 48

49 50 51 52 53

54 55 56

57 58 59

60 61 62

ACROSS

1 Surrounded by

5 Work with singing Egyptians

9 Lower septet of black squares in this grid, typographically

14 “Late Show” host, colloquially

15 Crossed, say

16 Clear, as a windshield

17 Three scruples

18 Higher septet of black squares in this grid, typographically

20 Bone on the pinkie side

21 Be mousy?

22 Actor Wheaton

23 McCarthy associate Roy

24 Fancy duds

25 Hat worn in “Casablanca”

26 Octet of black squares in the middle of this grid, typographically

30 Intrinsically

31 React to something striking?

32 Salon solutions

33 Green lights

34 Groan trigger

35 Much-read book of 150 poems

39 Containers on desks

44 Units of chains x furlongs

45 Nonet of black squares in this grid, typographically

46 Miss, south of the border: Abbr.

47 Bearded beast

48 Hothouse plant

49 Word before and after “yes”

50 Bouquets

53 Stun, in a way

54 Higher pair of black squares in this grid, typographically

M E G A A P P A D L I B SA L I T F E U D E T O U RR A ZZ M A T A ZZ J A C U ZZ IC I A M A R L B O R OO N R Y E S E R I L O F TS E D E R S I N G G R E

N I C K E D E E R I EC A T C H I N G S O M E ZZ

J O L L A S T E L M OA S P N I M R E T A G SZZ T O P N E W S T E R R A

I M I T A T O R T I NQ U I ZZ E D F U ZZ Y W U ZZ YB A C A L L E P I A R L OS W I ZZ L E R E E R O Y S

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE

C O O DSR S RW

Yesterday’s answer

Yesterday’s answer

How to play Hyper Sudoku:A Hyper Sudoku Puzzle is solved by filling the numbers from 1 to 9 into the blank cells. A Hyper Sudoku has unlike Sudoku 13 regions (four regions overlap with the nine standard regions). In all regions the numbers from 1 to 9 can appear only once. Otherwise, a Hyper Sudoku is solved like a normal Sudoku.

How to play Kakuro:The kakuro grid, unlike in sudoku, can be of any size. It has rows and columns, and dark cells like in a crossword. And, just like in a crossword, some of the dark cells will contain numbers. Some cells will contain two numbers.However, in a crossword the numbers reference clues. In a kakuro, the numbers are all you get! They denote the total of the digits in the row or column referenced by the number.Within each collection of cells - called a run - any of the numbers 1 to 9 may be used but, like sudoku, each number may only be used once.

HYPER

56 Skip

57 “Work ___” (Beyoncé song)

58 Enthusiasm

59 Rend

60 Lower pair of black squares in this grid, typographically

61 Greek god who figures in an annual holiday

62 River to the North Sea

DOWN 1 Brings together, as two

parts of the body

2 “Shakespeare in Love” role

3 Arthur Sullivan opera

4 Calls for

5 Fundamentals

6 Modern locale of ancient Ur

7 Delegates

8 Versailles valedictions

9 Wounded Knee’s locale: Abbr.

10 Lithe swimmer

11 Watching people

12 Sun block?

13 Nervous ___

19 Duty

25 “Toy Story 3” character

27 Electron-swathed nuclei

28 Competitor of Bloomie’s

29 First periods in H.S., often

30 Pilfer

32 Musical scales, e.g.

34 It may be split at a restaurant

35 New Jersey city, river or county

36 Classic pencil brand

37 It has drawers at school

38 Michele of “Glee”

39 More well-fed, say

40 Expressive of 61-Across, e.g.

41 They often hang around delis

42 Wearing

43 Outdoor summer pest, slangily

45 Siesta, say

47 [This is frustrating!]

50 “___ girl!”

51 “Got it,” jocularly

52 Math items represented using { and }

55 Math item represented using + or ∑

CINEMA LISTINGSCINEMA LISTINGS

GULF CINEMA

1 Crook (Hindi) – 2.30, 5.30, 8.30 & 11.30pm

Shikkar (Malayalam) – 2.30, 5.30, 8.30 & 11.30pm

MALL

1Takers (Action) – 2.00pm

Enthiran (Tamil) – 4.00, 7.00 & 10.00pm

2 Stone (Thriller) – 2.00, 5.00, 7.00, 9.00 & 11.00pm

3Noor Ayni (Arabic/Romance) – 2.30, 5.00, 7.15, 9.30 & 11.30pm

ROYAL PLAZA

1Noor Ayni (Arabic/Romance) – 2.30, 4.45, 7.00,9.15 & 11.30pm

2

The Crazies (Horror) – 2.30pm

What Ever Works (Comedy) – 4.45, 9.30 & 11.30pm

UNA Casa Con Vista Almar (Venezuela Festival Film) – 7.00pm

3

Legend Of The Guardians: The Owls Of Ga’hoole (Animation) – 2.30 & 5.00pm

The Hole (3D/Thriller) – 7.00, 9.00 & 11.00pm

LANDMARK

1

Going The Distance (Comedy) – 2.30 & 4.30pm

Eat, Pray, Love (Drama) – 6.30pm

The Crazies (Horror) – 9.00 & 11.00pm

2

Alpha & Omega (Kids) – 2.15, 4.00, 5.45 & 7.30pm

Resident Evil 3 (Action) – 7.30pm

The Hole (3D/Thriller) – 11.15pm

3Noor Ayni (Arabic/Romance) – 2.30, 4.30, 7.00, 9.15 & 11.15pm

CITY CENTERGRAND CINEMA

1 & 6

Noor Ayni (Comedy) – 10.30, 11.45am, 12.45, 2.00, 3.00, 4.15, 5.15, 6.30, 7.30, 8.45, 9.45, 11.00pm & 12.00midnight

2Resident Evil 3 (Action/3D) – 11.00am, 3.15, 7.30 & 11.45pm The Hole (Thriller) (3D – 1.15, 5.30 & 9.45pm

3 & 4

Stone (Thriller) – 12.30, 2.45, 5.00, 7.15, 9.30 & 11.45pm

5 The Crazies (Action) – 12.15, 2.30, 4.45, 7.00, 9.15 & 11.30pm

7Takers (Action) – 12.00noon, 2.15, 4.30, 6.45, 9.00 & 11.15pm

8Eat, Pray, Love (Drama) – 12.00noon, 2.45, 5.30, 8.15 & 11.00pm

9Whatever Works (Comedy) – 11.45am, 1.45, 3.45, 5.45, 7.45, 9.45 & 11.45pm

10Devil (Horror) – 12.00noon, 2.00, 4.00, 6.00, 8.00, 10.00pm & 12.00midnight

11Legend Of The Guardians: The Owls Of Ga’hoole (Animation) – 11.15am, 1.15, 3.15, 5.15, 7.15, 9.15 & 11.15pm

12Scott Pilgrim Vs The World (Comedy) – 10.30am, 1.00, 3.30, 6.00, 8.30 & 11.00pm

13Alpha And Omega (3D/Animation) – 11.30am, 1.30, 3.30, 5.30, 7.30, 9.30 & 11.30pm

14 Shikar (Malayalam) – 11.30am, 2.30, 5.30, 8.30 & 11.30pm

2525OCTOBER 23, 2010www.pen.com.qa ON SATURDAYFeature

BY MONICA HESSE

You must tumbl (tumble?), or haven’t you heard? You must tumbl (tumblify?) because the micro-

blogging site Tumblr.com is grow-ing fast — its estimated 3.3 million daily visitors up 50 percent from April, according to Quantcast.com. You must tumbl (Seriously, what is the verb here?) because the early adopting tech people tell you to use Tumblr. “There’s a new must-have social networking address,” chirped a recent news article, and blogs offer guidance on the most “essential” tumblogs.

While you are pondering this site — founded in 2007 but spruced up this year — and the communication possibilities it offers, you might feel ...

“The academic in me feels like, `Oh, this will be interesting,’ “ says Zeynep Tufekci, a profes-sor of sociology at University of Maryland Baltimore County who studies social networks. “The user in me goes, `Oh nooo, another one!’ “

There’s so much social network-ing she has not yet accomplished. “I really wanted to dive more into the music communities, like Last.fm and Fetch ... but that’s going to be a huge investment,” she says. Meanwhile, “I’ve been avoiding the location-based ones because they’re a whole other ball of wax. It’s nagging me.”

At some big or small level, it’s nagging all of the people who are mired enough in social network-ing to bother following the latest developments. This isn’t everyone — despite the fact that institu-tions from your local radio sta-tion to your dry cleaner beg you to follow them on Twitter, there are whole swaths of people who just don’t give a flying friend request.

But consider this: At one point in their centuries-old history, the Amish were not the technologi-cal relics they are today. Everyone else was churning and buggying right along with them. At some point, electricity was invented and the Amish had to reject it. Cars were invented and they took a pass. We’re good with the buggy, they said. Motor on without us.

Now, in an onslaught of sites designed to aid connection, com-munication and cross-promotion, individual stopping points must be declared. When will you go 21st-century Amish?

“I do Twitter; I do Facebook; I do Lawyer Connection” via Ning, says Gwynne Monahan, a legal consultant. “I did MySpace when it was popular”; now she uses it to find new music. She will not, however, do Foursquare, the net-work centered on virtually check-ing into real-life locations. That’s her boundary. She doesn’t have the time, and plus, “there’s just no rea-son for people to know where I am.”

On odd occasions, she wonders whether she’s drawn the bound-ary too soon. She was visiting New York and a group of friends met up at a concert. “Everyone whipped out their phones and started checking into Foursquare” to announce their exact locations. It was easier, she admits, for some people in the group to have the application. Rather than the end-less phone calls (“No, by the men’s room!”), everyone immediately knew when others had arrived by their check-ins, and then eve-ryone herded inside.

Still, the thought of plugging into yet another tool ...

“The basic notion that people reach a technological saturation point applies to a lot of people,” says Lee Rainie, the director of the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project, which studies the Web’s

impact on society. “They literally say, enough is enough ... and my mind is going to blow up and I can’t take it anymore.”

(Privacy concerns, like Monday’s announcement that Facebook’s most popular applica-tions transmit personal data to marketing companies, can exacer-bate already uneasy relationships with social networks.)

One problem, Rainie says, is that so many of the so-called revolutionary applications are actually riffs on a similar theme. Foursquare looks a lot like Gowalla; Tumblr could be the cousin of Posterous. It’s exhaust-ing to move onto what’s new if it sort of looks like what’s old. The people who still refuse to Facebook — the most ubiqui-tous of them all, with upwards of 500 million members and a Quantcast-estimated 135 million daily visitors — use this rationale: They already joined Friendster in 2004. Is that not enough? (It’s worth noting that you must be a member of Facebook in order to use it, while individual Tumblr blogs can be perused by those who do not have accounts with the site.)

Will we one day be able to measure age by a person’s social networks, the way one does with trees and their bark rings? Here we have a specimen who speaks MySpace, Facebook and Gowalla, but apparently stopped before Formspring.

“Everyone’s on Foursquare, and everyone’s on this and everyone’s on that,” says Xianhang Zhang, a researcher with “social design” firm Bumblebee Labs, which stud-ies innovation and social mores. “A lot of time they don’t even know why,” he confides. “They just feel like they should be.”

He’s hearing a lot about Quora.com now, a Wikipedia-like net-work based on user-generated questions and answers. Quora and Hunch.com — which recom-mends sites based on what you already like — might be the next destinations the tech-savvy feel compelled to add to their personal browsing itineraries.

Part of the drive to get there first is the prestige aspect and part of it is practicality. For

people who enjoy being followed, friended or otherwise Internet famous, it’s easier to do so in a newer, smaller pond. At this point moving into Twitter — which has 160 million users and an estimated 55 million daily visitors now; co-founder Evan Williams recently announced he expected it to hit 1 billion users — is like squeezing into an already dense neighbourhood, but Tumblr is still a relatively bare plain with lots of land for homesteaders. Not only can you discover the hot new thing, but you can be the hot new thing when you get there.

“But I’m not looking for the next hot thing,” says Scott Rosenberg, the co-founder of Salon.com who now blogs about technology and culture at Wordyard.com. “I do not use

Foursquare. I’m a grown-up with a family. I may be missing out on some deep understanding of how geospatial awareness shapes our understanding of the world,” but that’s a risk he’s willing to take. He’ll stick with Twitter and his personal blog, thanks, and feel bad for the poor guys who are trying to sort it out. For them, “It’s a challenge. Where do I put my chips? Tumblr or Posterous? Is Tumblr still going to be a big thing in the next few years?”

It’s an issue of time. It’s an issue of your own personal resources, and how often you want to repost the same infor-mation — first as a status update, then as a tweet, then as a tumbl (tumblette?). It’s also an issue of finding which online community feels like home.

“Each place has its own

cultural norms,” says Tufekci, the Baltimore professor. Just as “you would do one thing in a bar and one in thing in a church,” the expectations for customisable Tumblr, in which users are pre-cious snowflakes, are profoundly different from the expectations for the standardised Twitter. Do you want fast or slow? Individuality or hive mind? Anonymity or recipro-cal relationships?

On each new site, “you’re once again that awkward shy kid in the corner, and you don’t know what’s up. It’s exactly like being a Navy brat.”

And, she says, “You can’t hang out everywhere.”

The author of this piece Facebooks, tweets and contributes to The Post Style Tumblr page at WashingtonPostStyle.tumblr.com.

WP-BLOOMBERG

© GRAPHIC NEWSPicture: Getty Images

Sou

rce:

TN

S D

igita

l Life

0 50 100 150 200

Malaysia

Brazil

Norway

Poland

Indonesia, Greece

Portugal

Turkey

Argentina, Israel

Singapore

Thailand, U.S.

233

Average online friendsAverage online friends

231

217

201

198

196

189

184

183

178

Malaysians are the most sociableon the internet spending an average

of nine hours per week on socialnetworking with 233 online friends,

according to a global study ofonline behaviour

While South Africa’s teachers were on strike in September, volun-

teers used South Africa’s largest social network to help students prepare for exams.

Which means they did not turn to Facebook or Twitter, but to MXit — the brainchild of Namibian-born software devel-oper Herman Heunus.

Rather than using computers, MXit connects members through cell phones, allowing them to exchange instant messages prac-tically for free. They can also message in groups, called chat zones, that function seamlessly across other platforms like MSN messenger and Google Talk.

“I think users just immedi-ately saw a cost benefit to using MXit,” said MXit spokesman Juan du Toit. “People saw that this is an easy application to get on a low-end phone... it made sense for them to use MXit compared to something more complex like Facebook or Twitter.” For South Africans like 19-year-old Michillay Brown, the service almost renders ordinary text messaging obsolete.

“That’s why there are so many people on MXit, I think it’s like one cent a message or something,” Brown said. “They obviously want

to chat with their friends for free, quickly.”

Since its inception in 2003, MXit Lifestyles Ltd says it has expanded to include almost 27 million subscribers, most of them South African, and is adding 40,000 more every day.

In comparison, less than three million South Africans use Facebook, which is why during the teachers’ strike, tutors chose MXit as a platform to answer questions from students and to provide study materials for download.

The system sidesteps a major obstacle hampering the spread of social media in developing coun-tries: Internet access.

In much of Africa, weak infra-structure limits access to electric-ity, phone lines and the Internet, making surfing the Web often an expensive luxury.

But cell phone technology has already entrenched itself across the continent, with 376 million subscribers across the region.

Wallace Chigona, a technol-ogy professor at the University of Cape Town, believes cellular is an ideal platform for social media in Africa.

“For the majority of middle-income families, a cell phone is the only computer they have, and the low cost allows families to acquire

them for their children,” Chigona said. “Even cell phones that would technically struggle to support Internet connectivity would sup-port MXit.” The company hopes the same logic will apply in other developing countries, and hoping to grow in places like Indonesia, where it claims almost 2.5 mil-lion users.

Not everyone with a cell phone can use MXit. The application is powered by data services like 3G or GPRS, which require mobile Internet access to work.

MXit has its detractors, many of whom are concerned parents. They worry that teens are vul-nerable online, recalling concerns that erupted over early versions of Facebook and Myspace else-where in the world.

“There is fear of the unknown, and as parents we lack under-standing of what is going on on

MXit and our natural reaction is to stop it,” Chigona said. “The media is partly to blame... most of the reports published about MXit were all these horror stories.”

One such horror story occurred in July when a South African man drugged and raped a 15-year-old girl he met in a chat zone. In response, the company installed additional safety features ena-bling parents to better monitor their child’s activity on MXit.

But Chigona believes demand for innovations like MXit could hasten the spread of mobile broadband in emerging markets.

“The product became part of the youth identity,” he said. “There was huge peer pressure for the youth to get on board, and in fact, a good number of them acquired cell phones so that they can have MXit.”

AFP

MXit captivatesyoung cell users

At some big or small level, it’s nagging all of the people who are mired enough in social networking to bother following the latest developments. Now, in an onslaught of sites designed to aid connection, communication and cross-promotion, individual stopping points must be declared.

Social networking: How much is enough?

2626 OCTOBER 23, 2010www.pen.com.qa BooksON SATURDAY

Top 10 bestsellers of the week Source: Amazon.com

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

The Confession John Grisham

The girl with the Dragon TattooStieg Larsson

The Lost HeroRick Riordan

Autobiography of Mark Twain

Harriet E. Smith

The FinklerQuestion

Howard Jacobson

The Girl Kicked the Hornet’s NestStieg Larsson

At Home: A Short History of Private

Life Bill Bryson

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Ugly Truth

Jeff Kinney

LifeKeith Richards

Earth: A Visitor’s Guide to the Human

Race Jon Stewart

BY JOE QUEENAN

In my favourite instalment from Peanuts, the famous comic strip that debuted in US newspapers on October 2, 1950, the charac-ter Snoopy receives a rejection letter from a New York publish-

ing house to which he has been submit-ting his work. The letter says that it has been quite some time since the publish-ing house has received any submissions from the ambitious dog, who, in one of many alter-egos, has now fancied him-self a canny wordsmith. The final panel, which I used to carry around in my wal-let, until it finally disintegrated, shows Snoopy reading the words, “This suits our current needs.”

Any young writer submitting unsolic-ited manuscripts to publishing houses in the 1960s or 70s would have felt a chill run down his spine as he read the words, “This suits our current needs.” No mat-ter what you submitted, and no matter what publishing house, within a few weeks you would receive a cold, impersonal note reading: “Thank you for your submission. Unfortunately, your work does not suit our current needs.” Charles M Schulz, whose work would earn him hundreds of millions of dollars over his half-century career, had never lost touch with the aspiring cartoon-ist whose early work had been rejected, manhandled, or ignored. It was this human quality, this compassion for the young and the powerless, that made Peanuts what it was. Schulz had the common touch.

Peanuts, which grew out of earlier work Schulz had done in a column called L’il Folks, debuted around the time the US became embroiled in the Korean war. It was a time of genuine political hysteria, with Americans terrified that the communists in the Soviet Union and China would over-run the world, and, if this failed, unleash a nuclear holocaust as a kind of consolation prize. Peanuts, so endearing, so harmless, so good-natured, was a daily antidote to this atmosphere of fear and loathing, in the same way that the arrival of the Beatles in the US a few months after John F Kennedy’s assassination helped to bring young peo-ple back to life. Throughout the Red Scare of the 50s, the desegregation wars in the deep south, the Kennedy assassinations, the murder of Martin Luther King, the war in Vietnam, the hostage crisis in Iran and – well, you get the idea – Peanuts was always there as a touchstone and a balm. Unlike so many other venerated objects in US pop culture, it was sweet without being stupid, reassuring without being infantile. In the dark era in which it began, it served much the same function as I Love Lucy. The dif-ference was it had brains.

The comic strip ran for almost 50 years, the last original panel being pub-lished on February 13, 2000, the day after its creator died. The strip ran in many countries and was translated into many languages, even though fans in foreign countries might not have fully grasped its decidedly American sensibility. The premise, after all, is a bit of an inside joke: the central character in Peanuts is the hapless, downbeat Charlie Brown. Americans do not ordinarily take much of a shine to hapless losers. But they took a shine to Charlie Brown.

It is generally agreed that Schulz’s hey-day was in the 60s and 70s, that toward the end the strip became a bit too saccharine and predictable. That said, it had a nice run before it became little more than a merchandising vehicle, the marketing arm of a much larger empire. The strip first saw the light of day one month before I was born. So it was always there, and seemed like it had always been there.

THE LOSER FRIEND THAT SO MANY OF US HAVE

It was like the sky: pleasant, visually appealing, reliable. Peanuts had a Picture of Dorian Gray quality; you kept getting older and more decrepit and more cyni-cal, but it didn’t. By the time you started reading it, you were already older than

the characters in the strip, so it imme-diately made you nostalgic for childhood. Not necessarily for your childhood, but for the childhood Lucy and Charlie and Linus were having.

The name Peanuts is derived from the term “peanut gallery”, which describes the cheap seats in a theatre. The name was assigned to the strip by the syndicate that began to run it in 1950; Schulz him-self hated it. Yet in retrospect, it seems altogether perfect in the same way that The Great Gatsby is a far better book title than F Scott Fitzgerald’s original sugges-tions: Trimalchio in West Egg, The High-Bouncing Lover, On the Road to West Egg, The Gold-Hatted Gatsby. Unlike many of the famous comic strips that preceded it – Tarzan, The Phantom, Brenda Starr, Mark Trail – Peanuts did not belong to any one character. Though the perpetually down-beat Charlie Brown was the emotional centre of the strip’s universe, few identi-fied with him. He was very much like the essential loser friend that so many of us have, the harmless, hapless but ultimately lovable one who never gets anything right. His haplessness was an inspiration to us all; no matter how bad things got in our daily lives, they would get much worse for Charlie Brown. But never worse in a hor-rible way. Just . . . worse.

The other characters were all foils to Charlie Brown. Peppermint Patty, the tomboy par excellence, was the one who was game for anything. Snoopy was the quirky canine who was off in his own world. Linus was the quintessential weird younger brother, who never quite fitted in. Of all the characters, Lucy, the feisty little girl who liked to mix it up with the boys, was the closest to reality. I grew up with girls who seemed to have patterned their personality around Lucy, never giving an inch, always willing to give you an earful. But I never met anyone who shaped his personality after Charlie Brown.

You didn’t have to like all the char-acters in Peanuts to enjoy the strip. I never quite got Marcie or Franklin, mid-60s additions who seemed to serve an ancillary function. Woodstock, the

lovable little bird who became Snoopy’s protege, annoyed me. Linus’s Beethoven fixation I found tiring. But Lucy, Chuck, Peppermint Patty and Snoopy were fine.

From the very beginning, Peanuts had an elegiac quality. It made Americans pine for an earlier, more innocent time that had never actually existed. In this sense, Peanuts occupied a place in the American consciousness that was a bit like that occupied by Sir Walter Scott’s novels in Victorian times, evoking a time and place where life was simpler and easier to understand, and therefore entirely illusory. Though Schulz would sometimes make satirical allusions to

events of the day, the adult world never really intruded. Physically, he did not allow adults to enter the strip. Nor did he allow senseless cruelty. Pratfalls, yes, but not cruelty. The world of Peanuts was hermetically sealed, in the way that chil-dren at play have always wanted their cosmos hermetically sealed.

Peanuts did not look like the comic strips that had preceded it. Many of these were incredibly busy and complicated, and sometimes grotesque. They were stylish and beautiful, but inaccessible; the artist did not invite his audience in. Peanuts, by contrast was deceptively sim-ple in design and very accommodating to

the viewer. There was usually not much more than the characters’ expressions, perhaps a doghouse or a playing field. This graphic approach didn’t change much over the years; it was not broke, so there was no reason to fix it.

People often enjoy something without knowing why. This is why those audio guides you find in art galleries are so stupid: no one can explain to you why Bellinis are beautiful, and no amount of curatorial gas-bagging can make you like Renoir unless you are already the type of person who is predisposed to like Renoir. It probably never occurred to most peo-ple who liked Peanuts that its graphic ingenuity and deceptive elegance was a large part of its appeal. But it was. Before Peanuts, the most famous comic strips were arty. Peanuts was not arty.

EVERYTHING IN PEANUTS FLEW IN THE FACE OF ACA-DEMIC PRETENTIOUSNESS

Eventually, it became fashionable to find more in Peanuts than was really there. American academics are always offering courses in such things as the philosophical subtexts implicit in The Simpsons, or what Mad Men says about the American psyche because academ-ics can never leave well enough alone. I find this sort of stuff first-class bilge, an inability to accept a popular art form on its own terms. No amount of blather can turn U2 into Bach, and the fact that Charles Schulz produced a larger body of work than Rimbaud doesn’t put him in Rimbaud’s weight class.

Everything about Peanuts flew in the face of such pretentiousness; it was a comic strip that never took itself seri-ously. It was a lighthearted little set of four panels you could look forward to every day, no matter where you were, if only to follow the exploits of a silly dog who imagined himself a dog-fighting avia-tor in the first world war. Nobody ever knew where the idea for Snoopy and the Red Baron came from. Nobody knows why Peppermint Patty had so much trouble cracking the mystery of Snoopy’s identity. Nobody knows why the hapless Charlie Brown was so hapless. It did not matter. The ideas came from somewhere. And when they got here, they were more than welcome to pull up a chair and stay a while. Fifty years, in fact.

The Complete Peanuts 1963-64 and The Complete Peanuts 1965-66 are published by Canongate, both at £15. The Peanuts Collection by Nat Gertler is published by New Holland at £30.

Why everyone love Peanuts

It was simply drawn, its main character was a hapless loser, and it featured a dog convinced that it was a first world war flying ace. For

50 years, the comic strip Peanuts held America in thrall.

2727OCTOBER 23, 2010www.pen.com.qa ON SATURDAY

TOPTOP

MOVIES OF THE WEEK

Red

Life as we know it

The Legend of the Guardians

The Town

Jackass 3D You dont get to 500 million friends

Secretariat

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

my soul to take Easy A

2 3

4 5 6 7

9 108

THIS WEEK’S RELEASES

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AT AL SAFEER CENTRE DOHA,QATAR

TEL: 4462 6965 FAX:4467 3948

COURTESY

IN THE DVD SHOP

1

Movies

Story of an extraordinary horse

You walk down the street and people yell your name. That’s how you know you’re famous. That’s what I live for, and I still like it. I just don’t like having no privacy.

Dreams come true, and with-out a dream, there’s no life. So what you want to instil in your kids (and I’m a great grandfather now) is to dream – and dream big. Make plans for yourself, and then aim yourself in that direc-tion. Because what you want is what you’re gonna get.

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. That was my parents’ central message. It worked for me.

I’m not looking to do a com-edy after a drama or an action movie after a love story – that’s not the way I choose roles. Whatever good comes along is what I do.

I would like to succeed as

a producer. The challenge you face – even when you have a track record, even when you are Steven Spielberg – is that every new thing that you set out to do has to ride on its own merits. The rest is meaningless.

I always wanted an earring. It has to do with my attachment to the sea. When I was around 35 I was separated from my wife and she said, “I’m going to pierce your ear.” I’m an avid sailor, a dyed-in-the-wool blue-water man.

You know why sailors used to wear a gold earring? It’s enough money to bury you in a foreign country.

There are two or three tricks to being a good sailor. One is courage. You have to be willing to face the sea. And the rest is just knowledge – you can learn a lot by listening to other sailors about how to survive almost unsurviv-able situations.

I’ve been in dangerous storms. There comes a moment when you think you may not get through, and in that moment there’s a peacefulness that set-tles over you and you’re no longer afraid. That’s also the moment when you have to say, “I’m going to face this demon. I’m going to stand up and I’m going to do what I have to do. Not just by lying down and letting the sea wash over me, but by fighting it.”

After you’ve been in mortal danger, you don’t look at the world differently – you look at yourself differently. The world is just the world – it’s the same, nothing’s changed. But you have a different idea of yourself. You think, I did it. I survived it.

I’m easily tickled. Charlie Chaplin. Jackie Gleason. Peter Sellers – Sellers was a very, very funny man. And I remember the first time I saw Richard Pryor on

Johnny Carson’s show. He wasn’t the Richard Pryor we all know and loved; he hadn’t found his voice yet, but once he found it, he was hilarious. That man could make me laugh until I wept.

Waking up every day, that’s as far as I go with thinking about getting older. It’s foolish to think you’re gonna live for ever, but I do think I’m going to live until I die.

Everything I’ve ever done for love has been crazy. I got married twice. I love a lot, you know? Love friends, love kids, love women. It means being loved, too.

Retirement is not part of my lexicon.

THE GUARDIAN

This much I know: Morgan Freeman

BY ANDREW BEYER

The makers of the movie “Secretariat” hope to attract mil-lions of viewers who weren’t yet alive

when the great horse was racing in 1972 and 1973. Those mem-bers of the audience may won-der how much of the narrative is fact and how much is Hollywood gloss.

Just about every turf writer who has reviewed “Secretariat” has pointed out historical inac-curacies and significant omis-sions in the film. Having followed Secretariat’s career as a journal-ist, I found some of the omis-sions distracting (particularly the expurgation of his Kentucky Derby-winning stablemate Riva Ridge). But the filmmakers had to take some liberties in order to make this movie. Secretariat’s real-life story didn’t have a tri-umph-of-the-underdog theme that is a staple of sports movies. Nor were the people surround-ing him especially colourful or lovable.

Disney mined William Nack’s meticulously reported biography of Secretariat to find the female-empowerment theme that could make this film a hit. It built the narrative around Penny Chenery Tweedy, who abandoned her life as a Denver housewife to take over the faltering operation of the Meadow Stable from her ailing father. There are plenty of sentimental embellishments, but the story is true, and actress Diane Lane makes it a compelling

one. Moreover, “Secretariat” depicts the racing world more credibly than most movies and shows the racing action vividly. Purists should forgive the inac-curacies and relish the fact that Secretariat’s story has finally come to the screen, giving a younger generation the chance to appreciate the horse’s feats.

Disney didn’t have to embel-lish Secretariat’s achievements. In fact, the film almost under-states them. Many of us who watched him in 1972 and 1973 thought that we were probably seeing the best racehorse who ever lived, and the ensuing years have reinforced that conviction.

Secretariat came of age in the decade that the American thoroughbred was at its peak, a period that also produced Seattle Slew, Affirmed, Alydar, Ruffian, Forego and Spectacular Bid. Experts can endlessly debate the relative merits of such horses, but Secretariat did things that even other great ones didn’t do. If you watch videos of races with-out knowing who the horses are, there may be little to distinguish a high-class race from a cheap one. A film of Affirmed going to the lead and fighting off Alydar’s challenge doesn’t look much different from a $5,000 claimer doing the same thing.

But Secretariat’s athleticism was unmistakable. I saw him for the first time in the summer of 1972 at Saratoga, and still remember vividly his first stakes race, the Sanford, when he faced the pro-tem leader of the nation’s 2-year-olds, Linda’s Chief. As the

five-horse field turned into the stretch, Secretariat was blocked by a wall of three horses in front of him; Linda’s Chief, on the out-side, had clear sailing. When a slight bit of daylight appeared in front of him, Secretariat bulled through the opening in a manner that journalist Charles Hatton likened to “a fox scat-tering a barnyard of chickens.” He immediately unleashed an explosive run and flew past the favoured Linda’s Chief to win by three lengths. I wrote in the Washington Star that we might have seen the 1973 Kentucky Derby winner. Never have I watched a lightly raced 2-year-old stamp himself so definitively as a potential great.

Ten days after the Sanford, Secretariat made a dazzling move in the Hopeful Stakes, circling the field and going from last place to first place around the turn. The next year, in the Preakness, he made an even more amazing last-to-first run. He did it on the first turn at Pimlico - what would ordinarily be a suicidal move - and blew past his arch rival Sham to take command of the race. After watching that grainy film recently on YouTube, I am still astonished by it. I have never seen a horse make a winning move like that one in the subsequent 37 years.

In the early 1970s I had begun to embrace the philosophy that horses are best defined by how fast they run, and I had begun to calculate the speed figures that, two decades later, would be incorporated into every thoroughbred’s record in the

Daily Racing Form.At each stage of his career,

Secretariat’s winning times and speed figures provided objective evidence that he was an extraordinary runner. His greatest performance, of course, was the Belmont Stakes, where he dueled with Sham at a seemingly suicidal pace for three-quarters of a mile and proceeded to draw away to a 31-length victory. The prevailing track record, Gallant Man’s 2:26 3/5, was considered almost unassailable; only one other winner in the Belmont’s history had run faster than 2:28. When Secretariat crossed the finish line in 2:24 flat, he had raced into a new dimension.

Years later, when my speed-figure methods had matured, I revisited the data from the day of the 1973 Belmont and tried to produce a figure that would relate to my present-day numbers. I calculated that Secretariat had earned a 139, a figure that no horse after him has ever approached. (The best Beyer Speed Figure in the last two decades was Ghostzapper’s 128 in 2004.)

If the movie “Secretariat” had been a work of fiction, audiences might have scoffed at a climax that shows the equine hero winning by an almost unimaginable margin and running faster than any member of his species has ever run. Those of us who saw the event at Belmont Park could barely believe it, either.

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The actor on wearing an earring, being a good sailor, and dreaming big

English Dvd’s Releases No Film Name Star Cast Genre 1 Devil’s Tomb Taryn Manning, Hebry Rollins Action 2 Butterfly Effect 3 Chris Carmack, Rachel Miner Suspense 3 Mee- Shee Bruce Greenwood, Daniel Magder Adv./Fantasy 4 Driving Lessons Laura Linney, Julie Walters Comedy/Drama 5 Double Identity Val Kilmer, Izabella Miko Suspense 6 Backwoods Gary Oldman,Paddy Considine Suspense 7 Agora Rachel Weisz, Max Minghella Adv./Drama

French & Spanish Dvd’s Releases

1 Kilometer 31 Adria Collado, Raui Mendez Horror 2 Coco Avant Chanel Audrey Tautou,Benoit Poelvoorde Drama/Romance 3 Fauteuiles D Orcheste Cicile De France,Claude Brasseur Romance 4 Modern Love Alexandra Lamy,Stephane Rouseau Romance 5 Der Baader Meinhof Komplex Martina Gedeck,Moritz Bleibtreu Action6 Quatre Etoiles Jose Garcia,Isabelle Carre Romance/Comedy

Hindi Dvd’s Releases 1 Khatta Meetha Akshay Kumar,Trisha Krishnan Romance/Comedy2 I Hate Luv Story Imran Khan, Sonam Kapoor Romance/Comedy3 Once Upon A Time In Mumbai Ajay Devgan, Emraan Hashmi Suspense4 Aisha Aisha Kapoor, Arjun Burman Romance/Comedy5 Kites Hrithik Roshan, Barbara Mori Romance/Suspense6 Prince Vivek Oberai Action