[email protected]| [email protected]Editorial: 4455 7741 | Advertising: 4455 7837 / 4455 7780 www.thepeninsulaqatar.com Sunday 20 January 2013 8 Rabial I 1434 - Volume 17 Number 5585 Price: QR2 CERTIFIED NEWSPAPER ISO 9001:2008 Business | 17 Sport | 28 Qatari bank asset quality set to improve Hosts India take ODI series lead Firms seek manpower from Europe Growth boosts salaries in Asia BY MOHAMMAD SHOEB DOHA: The booming economies of Asia are heralding a change in the job sector in Qatar and the Gulf, with employers here fac- ing difficulties in hiring qualified hands from these countries due to the high salaries and increas- ing job opportunities there. As a solution, employers are now looking for people from European countries that are fac- ing high rates of unemployment due to economic recession. A senior official from the hos- pitality industry in Qatar said the industry was gradually replacing Asian workers with Europeans due to the difficulty in getting qualified hands from the tradi- tionally human resource-rich Asian countries. Big hotels and tourist facilities are now exploring new sources of manpower, such as Spain, Greece and Portugal, said Hoss Vetry, Cluster General Manager of The Ritz-Carlton Doha and Sharq Village and Spa. Speaking of the challenges facing the industry, Vetry said: “As source country economies, from where we used to recruit people, such as Indonesia, India, the Philippines and Sri Lanka, are growing fast, it is becoming a little bit harder to bring quality people. So we are exploring new sources in European countries. And I just delivered an orientation lecture to 20 students hired from European schools.” “Countries such as Indonesia and India have been witnessing tremendous growth over the past several years. These two Asian countries are among the fastest growing economies in the region. So people are getting good salaries and other benefits in their home countries and are reluctant to take overseas jobs,” he added. The Gulf region is attractive for the Europeans because they are able to save more thanks to tax-free incomes in the GCC countries. “It is not only about money, the expe- rience of dealing with Arabian and Asian guests is an added advantage for them,” said Vetry. Due to difficulty in getting skilled workers from countries like India, many employers and manpower agencies often end up recruiting unskilled or semi-skilled workers from some other Asian countries. “There is a shortage of Indian visas here, and if at all we have the visa, it is not easy to find qualified people because they are demand- ing very high salaries. The reason is that they are already getting good salaries back home. So we are forced to bring semi-qualified workers from other Asian coun- tries like Nepal,” said a senior offi- cial in a manpower agency. He said all sectors, including construction, were hit by the man- power shortage. The rapid economic growth in some Asian countries is also attracting skilled and semi- skilled workers from neighbouring Asian countries. “Many Asians now prefer such destinations due to their proximity and because they find them more culturally friendly,” said another recruiting agent. THE PENINSULA IN AMENAS, ALGERIA: A dramatic four-day hostage crisis at an Algerian gas plant ended in a bloodbath yesterday when Islamists executed all seven of their remaining foreign captives as troops stormed the desert complex. Twenty-one hostages, including an unknown number of foreigners, died during the siege that began when the Al Qaeda-linked gun- men attacked the facility deep in the Sahara at dawn on Wednesday, the interior ministry said. Thirty- two kidnappers were also killed, and special forces were able to free “685 Algerian workers and 107 foreigners,” the ministry said. The kidnappers led by Algerian Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a former Al Qaeda commander in North Africa, killed two people on a bus, a Briton and an Algerian, before taking hundreds of workers hos- tage when they overran the In Amenas complex. Belmokhtar’s “Signatories in Blood” group had been demanding an end to French military intervention against jihadists in neighbouring Mali. In yesterday’s assault, “the Algerian army took out 11 terror- ists, and the terrorist group killed seven foreign hostages,” state television said, without giving a breakdown of their nationalities. As experts began to clear the complex of bombs planted by the Islamists, residents of In Amenas breathed a collective sigh of relief. “We went from a peaceful situ- ation to a terror situation,” said one resident who gave his name as Fouad. “The plant could have exploded and taken out the town,” said another. Brahim Zaghdaoui said he was not surprised by the Algerian army’s ruthless final assault. “It was predictable that it would end like that,” he said. Most of the hostages had been freed on Thursday when Algerian forces launched a rescue operation, which was widely condemned as hasty. But French President Francois Hollande and US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta refused to lay the blame on Algeria. The Algiers government’s response was “the most appropriate” given it was dealing with “coldly deter- mined terrorists ready to kill their hostages,” said Hollande. Foreign Secretary William Hague said five British nationals and a British resident are dead or unaccounted for. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan said he had received “severe information” about 10 of his country’s nation- als who were still missing. On Friday the gunmen, cited by Mauritania’s ANI news agency, said they were still holding “seven foreign hostages” — three Belgians, two Americans, one Japanese and a Briton. However, Brussels said it had no indication any of its nation- als were being held. Algeria was strongly criticised for launching the initial assault, which the kidnappers said had left dead 34 of the hostages and 15 of their own fighters. Belmokhtar also wanted to exchange American hostages for the blind Egyptian sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman and Pakistani Aafia Siddiqui, jailed in the United States on charges of ter- rorist links. At least one American had already been confirmed dead before yesterday’s assault. AFP See also page 7 DOHA: The relevance of the ‘majlis’, the traditional hall in homes where family members and friends sit together, is gradually diminishing as the issues and challenges faced by young Qataris are not taken up in them, say young Qatari men. This is also in part because youngsters prefer to spend time with gadgets such as smart- phones and tablets rather than with their family members in a ‘majlis’, some elders complain. “No intelligent man can deny the importance of the ‘majlis’ because it keeps families and the social fabric of a country together,” Tariq Rashid, a young Qatari, was quoted as saying by an Arabic newspaper yesterday. Rashid, however, noted that most elders did not consider the opinions of young men at ‘majlis’ gatherings. He said the ‘majlis’, which is by convention seen as a source of learning, needed to offer more in order to capture the attention of youngsters. “Our elders need to realise that the concerns of the new generation are completely dif- ferent from theirs,” Rashid said, adding that the elders needed to take into account issues of inter- est to the younger generation at ‘majlis’ gatherings. Many families have upgraded sitting arrangements in the tra- ditional family halls by install- ing television sets and indoor games in them. “The youth today prefer to go to the kind of ‘majlis’ that is equipped with modern technol- ogy. You will even find people from different neighbourhoods visiting them,” Rashid said. Abdullah Mohammad, one of the community elders, said the issues discussed at ‘majlis’ gath- erings had changed. Earlier, a ‘majlis’ gather- ing, for both men and women, served as a platform where families discussed the history of tribes and nations, economic issues as well as stories of hunt- ing. Youngsters, in turn, learned about their traditions and cus- toms by being in the company of their elders. The focus of these gatherings nowadays seems to be national and international news. “Children used to enjoy being in a ‘majlis’ earlier, but now they want to use their smartphones and tablets. It appears no one wants to discuss the traditions of the community anymore,” said Mohammad. THE PENINSULA Gadgets driving Qatari youth away from majlis DOHA: Qatar’s road sector will witness a sharp increase in con- tract awards this year as the government initiates a major infrastructure upgrade of the country’s road network. Qatar, along with Saudi Arabia, has one of the GCC’s busiest road markets to date, with contracts valued $1.8bn awarded so far. According to MEED Projects, spending on future projects will significantly increase this year as more than 30 highway projects, valued at $27.5bn, are awarded. Full report on page 17 LONDON: Extreme winter weather swept across western Europe yesterday, leaving thou- sands of passengers stranded at London’s main international air- port and claiming several lives in Spain, Portugal and France. The frigid temperatures also caused delays and cancellations on major railway lines including the Eurostar train service, and transport authorities warned of further traffic disruptions with more blizzards forecast today. In London, thousands of pas- sengers were forced to camp out on the floors of Heathrow Airport overnight as hundreds of flights to and from the British capital were cancelled. “There are lots of bodies lying around in the airport. If feels like there’s been a natural disas- ter,” Jerry Meng from Los Angeles, whose flight to New York was can- celled, told British broadcaster BBC. London’s other main airports, Gatwick and Stansted, managed to operate normally yesterday. For today, the snow is expected to cause a 20-percent traf- fic reduction at Heathrow, and French air traffic authorities have ordered a 40 percent cut in take- offs and landings at Paris’ Charles De Gaulle and Orly airports. The snow and ice covering large parts of France led to several fatal car crashes, one of which killed three French soldiers. In total, six people were killed on French roads yesterday, and the nation’s weather services have forecast more snow across the northern and southeastern parts of the country over the weekend. In southern Europe, the fierce weather claimed several lives, killing two men in Spain. AFP Europe hit by blizzards, air traffic havoc Qatar to spend $27.5bn on road upgrade DOHA: Under the patron- age of the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister H E Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem bin Jabor Al Thani, the Federation of GCC Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FGCC Chambers) and Suly Company will organ- ise tomorrow (January 21) the 2nd Gulf Economic Forum here. Up to 250 participants will take part in the forum which will explore investment opportuni- ties in Qatar. QNA Doha to host 2nd Gulf Economic Forum Snowmen in front of the Eiffel Tower in Paris yesterday. Hostages are seen with their hands in the air at the In Amenas gas facility in this still image received yesterday. Bloody end to Algeria hostage crisis
Firms seek manpower from EuropeGrowth boosts salaries in AsiaBY MOHAMMAD SHOEB
DOHA: The booming economies of Asia are heralding a change in the job sector in Qatar and the Gulf, with employers here fac-ing difficulties in hiring qualified hands from these countries due to the high salaries and increas-ing job opportunities there.
As a solution, employers are now looking for people from European countries that are fac-ing high rates of unemployment due to economic recession.
A senior official from the hos-pitality industry in Qatar said the industry was gradually replacing Asian workers with Europeans due to the difficulty in getting qualified hands from the tradi-tionally human resource-rich Asian countries. Big hotels and tourist facilities are now exploring new sources of manpower, such as Spain, Greece and Portugal, said Hoss Vetry, Cluster General Manager of The Ritz-Carlton Doha and Sharq Village and Spa.
Speaking of the challenges facing the industry, Vetry said: “As source country economies, from where we used to recruit people, such as Indonesia, India, the Philippines and Sri Lanka, are growing fast, it is becoming a little bit harder to bring quality people. So we are exploring new sources in European countries. And I just delivered an orientation lecture to 20 students hired from European schools.”
“Countries such as Indonesia and India have been witnessing tremendous growth over the past
several years. These two Asian countries are among the fastest growing economies in the region. So people are getting good salaries and other benefits in their home countries and are reluctant to take overseas jobs,” he added.
The Gulf region is attractive for the Europeans because they are able to save more thanks to tax-free incomes in the GCC countries. “It is not only about money, the expe-rience of dealing with Arabian and Asian guests is an added advantage for them,” said Vetry.
Due to difficulty in getting skilled workers from countries like India, many employers and manpower agencies often end up recruiting unskilled or semi-skilled workers from some other Asian countries.
“There is a shortage of Indian visas here, and if at all we have the visa, it is not easy to find qualified people because they are demand-ing very high salaries. The reason is that they are already getting good salaries back home. So we are forced to bring semi-qualified workers from other Asian coun-tries like Nepal,” said a senior offi-cial in a manpower agency.
He said all sectors, including construction, were hit by the man-power shortage. The rapid economic growth in some Asian countries is also attracting skilled and semi-skilled workers from neighbouring Asian countries. “Many Asians now prefer such destinations due to their proximity and because they find them more culturally friendly,” said another recruiting agent.
THE PENINSULA
IN AMENAS, ALGERIA: A dramatic four-day hostage crisis at an Algerian gas plant ended in a bloodbath yesterday when Islamists executed all seven of their remaining foreign captives as troops stormed the desert complex.
Twenty-one hostages, including an unknown number of foreigners, died during the siege that began when the Al Qaeda-linked gun-men attacked the facility deep in the Sahara at dawn on Wednesday, the interior ministry said. Thirty-two kidnappers were also killed, and special forces were able to free “685 Algerian workers and 107 foreigners,” the ministry said.
The kidnappers led by Algerian Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a former Al Qaeda commander in North Africa, killed two people on a bus, a Briton and an Algerian, before
taking hundreds of workers hos-tage when they overran the In Amenas complex. Belmokhtar’s “Signatories in Blood” group had been demanding an end to French military intervention against jihadists in neighbouring Mali.
In yesterday’s assault, “the Algerian army took out 11 terror-ists, and the terrorist group killed seven foreign hostages,” state television said, without giving a breakdown of their nationalities.
As experts began to clear the complex of bombs planted by the Islamists, residents of In Amenas breathed a collective sigh of relief.
“We went from a peaceful situ-ation to a terror situation,” said one resident who gave his name as Fouad. “The plant could have exploded and taken out the town,” said another.
Brahim Zaghdaoui said he was
not surprised by the Algerian army’s ruthless final assault. “It was predictable that it would end like that,” he said. Most of the hostages had been freed on Thursday when Algerian forces launched a rescue operation, which was widely condemned as hasty.
But French President Francois Hollande and US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta refused to lay the blame on Algeria. The Algiers government’s response was “the most appropriate” given it was dealing with “coldly deter-mined terrorists ready to kill their hostages,” said Hollande.
Foreign Secretary William Hague said five British nationals and a British resident are dead or unaccounted for. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan said he had received “severe information”
about 10 of his country’s nation-als who were still missing.
On Friday the gunmen, cited by Mauritania’s ANI news agency, said they were still holding “seven foreign hostages” — three Belgians, two Americans, one Japanese and a Briton. However, Brussels said it had no indication any of its nation-als were being held.
Algeria was strongly criticised for launching the initial assault, which the kidnappers said had left dead 34 of the hostages and 15 of their own fighters. Belmokhtar also wanted to exchange American hostages for the blind Egyptian sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman and Pakistani Aafia Siddiqui, jailed in the United States on charges of ter-rorist links. At least one American had already been confirmed dead before yesterday’s assault. AFP
See also page 7
DOHA: The relevance of the ‘majlis’, the traditional hall in homes where family members and friends sit together, is gradually diminishing as the issues and challenges faced by young Qataris are not taken up in them, say young Qatari men.
This is also in part because youngsters prefer to spend time with gadgets such as smart-phones and tablets rather than with their family members in a ‘majlis’, some elders complain.
“No intelligent man can deny the importance of the ‘majlis’ because it keeps families and the social fabric of a country together,” Tariq Rashid, a young Qatari, was quoted as saying by an Arabic newspaper yesterday.
Rashid, however, noted that most elders did not consider the opinions of young men at ‘majlis’ gatherings. He said the ‘majlis’, which is by convention seen as a source of learning, needed to offer more in order to capture the attention of youngsters.
“Our elders need to realise that the concerns of the new generation are completely dif-ferent from theirs,” Rashid said, adding that the elders needed to take into account issues of inter-est to the younger generation at
‘majlis’ gatherings.Many families have upgraded
sitting arrangements in the tra-ditional family halls by install-ing television sets and indoor games in them.
“The youth today prefer to go to the kind of ‘majlis’ that is equipped with modern technol-ogy. You will even find people from different neighbourhoods visiting them,” Rashid said.
Abdullah Mohammad, one of the community elders, said the issues discussed at ‘majlis’ gath-erings had changed.
Earlier, a ‘majlis’ gather-ing, for both men and women, served as a platform where families discussed the history of tribes and nations, economic issues as well as stories of hunt-ing. Youngsters, in turn, learned about their traditions and cus-toms by being in the company of their elders. The focus of these gatherings nowadays seems to be national and international news.
“Children used to enjoy being in a ‘majlis’ earlier, but now they want to use their smartphones and tablets. It appears no one wants to discuss the traditions of the community anymore,” said Mohammad.
THE PENINSULA
Gadgets driving Qatari youth away from majlis
DOHA: Qatar’s road sector will witness a sharp increase in con-tract awards this year as the government initiates a major infrastructure upgrade of the country’s road network.
Qatar, along with Saudi Arabia, has one of the GCC’s busiest road markets to date, with contracts valued $1.8bn awarded so far.
According to MEED Projects, spending on future projects will significantly increase this year as more than 30 highway projects, valued at $27.5bn, are awarded.
Full report on page 17
LONDON: Extreme winter weather swept across western Europe yesterday, leaving thou-sands of passengers stranded at London’s main international air-port and claiming several lives in Spain, Portugal and France.
The frigid temperatures also caused delays and cancellations on major railway lines including the Eurostar train service, and transport authorities warned of further traffic disruptions with more blizzards forecast today.
In London, thousands of pas-sengers were forced to camp out
on the floors of Heathrow Airport overnight as hundreds of flights to and from the British capital were cancelled. “There are lots of bodies lying around in the airport. If feels like there’s been a natural disas-ter,” Jerry Meng from Los Angeles, whose flight to New York was can-celled, told British broadcaster BBC. London’s other main airports, Gatwick and Stansted, managed to operate normally yesterday.
For today, the snow is expected to cause a 20-percent traf-fic reduction at Heathrow, and French air traffic authorities have
ordered a 40 percent cut in take-offs and landings at Paris’ Charles De Gaulle and Orly airports. The snow and ice covering large parts of France led to several fatal car crashes, one of which killed three French soldiers.
In total, six people were killed on French roads yesterday, and the nation’s weather services have forecast more snow across the northern and southeastern parts of the country over the weekend.
In southern Europe, the fierce weather claimed several lives, killing two men in Spain. AFP
Europe hit by blizzards, air traffic havoc
Qatar to spend $27.5bn on road upgrade
DOHA: Under the patron-age of the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister H E Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem bin Jabor Al Thani, the Federation of GCC Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FGCC Chambers) and Suly Company will organ-ise tomorrow (January 21) the 2nd Gulf Economic Forum here. Up to 250 participants will take part in the forum which will explore investment opportuni-ties in Qatar. QNA
Doha to host 2nd Gulf Economic Forum
Snowmen in front of the Eiffel Tower in Paris yesterday.
Hostages are seen with their hands in the air at the In Amenas gas facility in this still image received yesterday.
Bloody end to Algeria hostage crisis
02 HOMESUNDAY 20 JANUARY 2013
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DOHA: The Emir H H Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani yesterday telephoned UAE President H H Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan to congratulate him on the UAE national team’s winning of the 21st Gulf Cup. The two leaders also reviewed brotherly relations between the two countries and means of enhancing them.
The UAE defeated former Asian champions Iraq 2-1 in extra-time to claim their second Gulf Cup title in a thrilling final. Ismail Al Hammadi scored the winner in the 107th minute as thousands of UAE fans, flown in by chartered flights specially for the title showdown, roared in celebration.
AGENCIES
Emir congratulates UAE President on Gulf Cup victory Qatar University, Oxy Qatar sign
MoU for Supply Chain ChairOxy Qatar to provide Qatar University $250,000 every year for three yearsDOHA: Qatar University (QU) and Occidental Petroleum of Qatar Ltd. (Oxy Qatar) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to create a Chair to teach Supply Chain as part of its engi-neering programme.
The three-year agreement, signed at the university on 17th January, provides for Oxy Qatar to make a contribution to QU of $250,000 each year, which will go toward covering the salary and associated costs of the Chair position, which QU aims to fill by next month. Oxy Qatar will also be involved in selecting the new candidate and help draft the functions and duties of the Chair.
Additionally, they will advise on research and consulting topics and monitor the success of the programme alongside their QU counterparts.
The MoU was signed at the university’s library auditorium by QU President Prof. Sheikha Abdulla Al Misnad and Oxy Qatar Ltd’s President and General Manager Stephen Kelly. It brings to ten the number agreements QU’s College of Engineering holds with external organisations.
“This generous contribution from OXY fur-ther develops our network of partnerships. The Chair position will be an invaluable resource in expanding our students’ education and a welcome addition to our portfolio of research projects at QU,” Professor Al Misnad said.
The university has committed to supporting the position for three years, providing staff and
related services and benefits and liaising with Oxy Qatar on the progress of the programme.
“Oxy takes great pride in supporting the new Faculty Chair and Supply Chain Management Programme at QU. In addi-tion to expanding academic and professional
opportunities, we believe it will benefit our industry as a whole, through the learning and sharing of best practices. All of us at Oxy look forward to the outcomes of this exciting endeavor,” Stephen Kelly said in his speech.
THE PENINSULA
WCMCQ hosts lecture on psychosomatic symptoms DOHA: Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar (WCMCQ) discussed the psycho-logical causes of physical ailments in a lecture recently.
Symptoms of psychosomatic disorders range greatly in severity and type, from mild com-plaints such as slight fatigue, weakness and insomnia to serious symptoms like mutism, chronic fatigue, paralysis, abnormal move-ments, blindness and deafness, said Dr Abdel Moniem Abdel Hakam, Senior Consultant in Psychiatry at Hamad Medical Corporation,
in a lecture entitled ‘Brain, Mind and Body Connections’ - the latest installment of Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar’s monthly Medicine and U community health forum.
Because they have no clear underlying physical pathology, conventional treatments for these symptoms typically have little or no effect. Physicians such as Dr Abdel Moniem, therefore, attempt to understand the causes of disorders in terms of the inter-action between the psychology of patients with environmental and societal triggers.
Dr Abdel Moniem said: “This is a fas-cinating area of medicine because it dem-onstrates the significance of psychological factors when understanding general health. The way in which each individual conceptu-alises the world, cultural norms and stress can all affect our health, causing debilitating physical symptoms. Developing new ways to treat this type of psychosomatic disorder promises to deliver real benefits to people suffering with these conditions.”
THE PENINSULA
Stephen Kelly and Professor Sheikha Abdulla Al Misnad exchanging documents.
Shopping at Souq Waqif
A man looks at traditional hand-made items on sale at a shop in Souq Waqif yesterday. (SHAIVAL DALAL)
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QR12.4m car to premiere at motor show Arab world’s first super luxury sports carDOHA: The Arab world’s first high performance luxury sports car will be unveiled at the third edition of Qatar Motor Show, which will begin on January 29. Only seven units of the ultra luxurious LykanHypersport 2013 have been produced.
The price of the car is QR12.4m, positioning it as the most exclusive sports car in the world. The Lykan has a 750 horsepower engine delivering 1000NM of torque which take the vehicle from 0 to 100km in 2.8 sec-onds to reach a maximum speed of 390km per hour. This speed is over 100km/hour faster than the take off speed of the world’s larg-est commercial jet, the Airbus 380.
The car, which is a result of six years of work, has diamond encrusted LED lights and gold-stitched interior leather seats. Other high-level specifications include a reverse door opening system and a state-of-the-art 3D Virtual Holographic Display with Tactile Interaction.
“When we initially set up the company in Beirut earlier this year, our launch event attracted thousands of people from the automotive industry, media, poli ticians, and VIPs,” said Ralph Debbas, W Motors’ Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.
“Not only did we herald the forma-tion of an exclusive automotive indus-try in the region, but I do believe that our first model, the LykanHypersport 2013, raises the bar for hypercars worldwide,” he added.
The partners that worked on the development of the Lykan include Magna Steyr Italia (engineering and
manufacturing consultants), RUF Automobile (technical consultants and suppliers), Studiotorino (mod-elling consultants), Viotti (proto-type and model manufacturing), ID4MOTION (technology integra-tion developers).
“We worked only with the best in the field, and not by coinci-dence, a majority of these compa-nies are based in Italy, a country with a proud tradition of produc-ing some of the most iconic sports cars in history,” added Debbas.
“Through this partnership, not only did we produce a one-of-a-kind car, but also, with great pride, the first exclusively Arab brand of hypercars, an icon about to mark the industry forever,” he added.
The first deliveries of LykanHypersport 2013 by W Motors are scheduled for September.
The show will be open to the public on January 29, and run for five days the Doha Exhibition Centre.
THE PENINSULA
DOHA: Total returns from investments that belong to the Qatari minors were to the tune of QR20m last year, according to a report released by the State Cabinet.
A total of 1,530 people benefited from various services provided by the General Authority for Minors Affairs during the year.
The number of waqf (endow-ment) properties stood at 224 during the year and returns from
endowment shares were esti-mated to be worth QR44m.
A total of 15,247 families bene-fited from nine charitable projects implemented by the Zakat Fund during the year. The fund with 33 branches across the country opened five branches at Al Meera facilities.
The fund sponsored 3,562 stu-dents in 2012 and distributed 2,399 uniforms and school bags to needy children.
The Mosque Management Department at the Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs completed designs for 18 new mosques, with a total capacity of 125,000 worshippers.
Currently, there are 164 Qatari Imams and 135 preachers employed in mosques across the country. Of the 135 preachers, 117 are working as Imams as well.
The Religious Institute in Doha enrolled 65 students from
14 countries during the 2011- 2012 academic year and 90 students from 20 countries in the current academic year.
A total of 1,950 expatriates from 51 nationalities embraced Islam during the year.
Islam Web, a Qatari Islamic website issued 150,000 religious edicts (fatwas) and answered 95,000 questions from visitors during 2012.
THE PENINSULA
Returns from minors’ investments at QR20m
The car, which is a result of six years of work, has diamond encrusted LED lights and gold-stitched interior leather seats.
04 HOMESUNDAY 20 JANUARY 2013
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Paralympian named NSD AmbassadorVodafone supports Dolphin DashDOHA: London 2012 Paralympian Abdulrahman Abdulqader Abdulrahman (pic-tured) was announced the first official Ambassador for the National Sports Day (NSD), to be held on February 12.
Abdulrahman, who repre-sented Qatar in shot put, discus throw and javelin throw at the Paralympic Games last sum-mer, is among a group of elite athletes who pledged their sup-port for NSD. As the leading Paralympian in the country, Abdulrahman’s presence is cen-tral to the main concept of the event – Sport is for All, offer-ing an opportunity for personal development.
“In Athletics, you compete not only against your opponents but against your own personal records as well,” said Abdulrahman, who finished sixth out of 20 athletes in the discus throw in London. “Personal development is a key part of sport and can help eve-ryone improve in every aspect in life. I hope the National Sports Day leads to many people embrac-ing sports for life.”
Inviting all the population of Qatar to take part in the NSD, the London 2012 Paralympian highlighted the way sport helped him overcome the obstacles he faced in life.
“My disability does not prevent me from practising sports and achieve high per-formance levels, represent my country and raise the Qatar flag in international events. Furthermore, it encourages me to challenge the best ath-letes in the world and prove that even a disabled person can achieve better results than non-disabled people.”
The Ambassadors’ skill, spirit and commitment to sport embody the values of the NSD.
Meanwhile, Vodafone Qatar has signed up as a Platinum Sponsor of the Dolphin Energy Doha Dash, set to take place on February 12.
The Losail International Circuit will play host to the event in celebration of Qatar National Sports Day (NSD).
Vodafone is funding the partici-pation of over 300 staff members.
To help its employees prepare for the run Vodafone will issue a weekly
newsletter with training and nutri-tion tips and will hold an internal competition for employees, with its fastest employee to be awarded a prize on the day of the dash.
The event will include a 5km and 3km timed race, plus a ladies’ walk and the Vodafone sponsored 1km Mini Doha Dash.
Entry into the 1km mini dash is free for children and schools, clubs and individuals in Doha can register their children for the event.
“Vodafone is very supportive of Heir Apparent H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani’s initiative to promote sports and fitness in Qatar,” said Richard Daly, CEO of the company.
“We look forward to engaging the public and our own employees in the planned activities that will help to improve their health and fitness.”
All runners will receive an offi-cial race t-shirt and medal.
On the day, alongside title spon-sors Dolphin Energy, Vodafone will be present in the Festival Village, situated in the pit garages at the circuit, and will be hosting a number of fun activities.
Event organisers, Professional Sports Group, are encouraging participants to bring their friends and family to watch.
Jamie Cunningham, CEO Of Professional Sports Group, said: “We are absolutely delighted to welcome Vodafone Qatar on board as a Platinum Sponsor of the very first Dolphin Energy Doha Dash. “The event was designed to provide leading companies in Qatar with a turnkey solution for National Sport Day.
THE PENINSULA
People watch a dhow being introduced into the waters yesterday.
Private Engineering Office launches four dhowsDOHA: The Private Engineering Office (PEO) launched four traditional dhows yesterday in a bid to keep alive the marine heritage of the coun-try and to provide additional boats to ferry the guests of the hotels at Suq Al Waqif
The inaugural ceremony was held at dhows unit located at Sharq Area, which was attended by
several officials and senior citizens.The boats were built in six
months under the supervision of Qatari experts, said Ali Saed Al Kuwari, a senior officer at PEO in a press release yesterday.
Several senior citizens have been invited to introduce the dhows into water in a traditional way to follow the foot paths of their forefathers.
“We plan to build some bigger dhows in the future and the type and size of them will be announced later. This will encourage citizens to own traditional dhows in a bid to follow the tradition of the country,” said Al Kuwari.
With the launch of the boats, the number of boats serving the guests of hotels at Suq Al Waqif reached seven. They are taking sea trips in
two shifts, morning and evening.A separate marine museum
including marine history of Qatar and traditional diving gears should be set up to show-case the rich marine heritage of Qatar, proposed Mohammad Jasem Al Khulaifi, Advisor at Qatar Museum Authority who was present at the ceremony.
THE PENINSULA
Qatari designer introduces abaya collectionDOHA: Qatari fashion designer Fatima Al Khuzaei introduced a number of new collections named Oh La La Abaya Designs at Made in Qatar, which was organised by Qatar Chamber. The designer referred to the importance of supporting young Qatari entre-preneurs to help them prove their talents and abilities.
Fatima said: “The name Oh La La Designs was inspired by a French expression used as an exclamation of pleasurable sur-
prise. It was selected for its broad popularity locally and globally, pleasant meaning, and connection with Paris which is often dubbed the fashion capital of the world.”
“These designs cater to a range of lifestyles and age groups. Every line has modern and clas-sic features. As a Qatari designer, I am proud of
Some of the Oh La La Abaya Designs collection.
the Qatari and Gulf traditions, which are reflected in some of the new designs with contemporary touches in line with the latest fashion trends,” she added.
Fatima is also the editor of the fashion page in Al Sharq. In her debut into the world of fashion
and lifestyle, Fatima launched her first Abaya collection titled Velvet Pearl in 2012.
The new collection for win-ter 2013 featured a number of eye-catching designs that were showed in Dress to Impress at The Gate recently. The Abaya is
a symbol of the Eastern woman’s prestige and elegance. Hence, the designer’s message focused on staying true to heritage and tradition and introducing ultra-chic and luxurious design to the latest fashion trends.
THE PENINSULA
Police Training Institute holds training for officersDOHA: The 12th leadership training course for high ranking officials con-cluded at the Police Training Institute (PTI). The course was conducted between January 6 and 17 in collaboration with British International Police College. Twenty five officers of lieutenant, colonel and major ranks from different depart-ments attended the course.
The training was aimed at introducing
importance of top leadership, func-tions and opera-tions of knowledge management in security work, concepts of opera-tions research and its impor-tance in security
leadership, c o n c e p t s of crea-tive leader-ship, skills of strategic s e c u r i t y p l a n n i n g and time m a n a g e -ment in security field.
The sessions also aimed at raising the efficiency of the top leadership to be able to take appropriate decisions at the appropriate time, developing personal skills, as well as developing
their abilities to meet the interim and future challenges and spread the spirit of cooperation and responsibility.
The assistant director of the PTI awarded certificates to the participants.
THE PENINSULA
Officers attending the training.
Fencing lessons
Chaiblaine Zinedine, a five-year-old, gets his first lessons in fencing at Aspire Academy on Friday. Zinedine was part of a group of youngsters who attended a coaching clinic conducted by Qatar Fencing Club on the sidelines of the Qatar 2013 Fencing Grand Prix and World Cup. (KAMMUTTY VP)
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Expert sees boom in hospitality industryGrowth not to affect existing hotels: Ritz-Carlton GM DOHA: The rapid growth of the hospitality industry is not going to have any adverse impact on the business of the exist-ing hotels, says a senior official from the industry.
There are more than 20,000 hotel rooms of all categories in Qatar. As part of preparations for the 2022 FIFA World Cup, the number is expected to double or triple by 2022, which is a major cause of concern for the industry.
As a result of Qatar hosting an increasing number of inter-national conferences and other events, the lean-business periods for hotels are shrinking every year, according to the official.
“Earlier, summer and the Christmas period used to have slow business, but as the country has become very active in terms of hosting mega events, it is creat-ing a lot of pressure in the mar-ket, shrinking that period”, said Hoss Veteran (pictured), Cluster General Manager of The Ritz-Carlton Doha and Sharq Village and Spa.
Veteran said this year’s events are spread out, with two mega events in the fourth quarter of the year. “As of now, we have a couple of big events in the coming months, although not like last year.”
In terms of business, 2008 was the best year so far, he said, adding
that big events such as the World Petroleum Congress, Arab Games and COP18 were “amazing”.
“We are maintaining our eve-ryday customers, and when-ever there is a city-wide event, we benefit from that. And I am 100 percent sure about a major announcement in the last quar-ter” he added.
With the opening of St Regis Doha and re-branding of Ramada Hotel as Radisson Blu last year, competition is
said to be getting stiffer.According to the latest figures
available, the average occupancy rate in Qatar’s hotels was 70 percent. Last year, some hotels offered discounts of up to 50 per-cent on room rents during sum-mer, when vacationers spend their holidays outside the country.
Reiterating his confidence in the market despite the growing competition, Veteran said: “I am not worried; I sleep very well at night. Every hotel has its own niche market and strategy. They are also nice hotels; I have noth-ing negative to say about them. We compete with ourselves.”
He added: “The hospitality industry is growing positively. Everybody’s fear that new hotels will bring businesses down is not true. The country is growing. It is involved with almost every nation in the world. In addition, with the inauguration of New Doha International Airport, cou-pled with the ever-growing Qatar Airways, Doha is expected to become a transit hub, which will give a major boost to the sector.
“If you see our growth figures for the last two years, we had the biggest index change of 1.29 (an average growth rate of 12 per-cent) among all the players, which is tremendous.”
THE PENINSULA
Baraem TV presenters cutting a cake to mark the anniversary.
DOHA: Baraem TV, a chil-dren’s channel from Al Jazeera network, yesterday celebrated its fourth anniversary with an entertainment show at the Qatar National Convention Centre.
The event featured renowned presenters Marwa and Iman, and iconic puppets Nashit, Noun, Teela and Toola. Fafa made an appear-ance at the end, which pleased the children very much. The children got to meet the characters in per-son and have their photographs taken with them.
Baraem is the first Arabic tel-evision channel for pre-school children offering a wide range of programmes specifically tailored for them.
“This anniversary marks the start of a new journey, with some surprises lined up for the future
and bigger plans for our audience, including a new line-up of shows that will feature in-house and inter-national productions,” said Saad Al Hudaifi, Acting Channels Director.
Some of the new shows are scheduled to start this month, including Handy Manny, Little Einstein, and Jojo’s Circus.
Hayabin Khalifa Al Nassr, Acting Executive General Manager of the channel, said: “Trust of view-ers is a key factor in our strategy. Their support gives us the push to engage our audience through programmes with the guarantee to parents that there will always be monitoring of content”.
The crowd included families from across the Arab world, including Kuwait, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Egypt.
Huda Bardawel, a working
mother who had come to the show with her two children, said: “I took MBC 3 off my dish. My kids are getting the right education from Baraem TV. I feel safe leaving them watching TV alone, knowing they are in good hands. This chan-nel gives the education my kids are in need of. I also watch TV with them and I have become addicted to watching this channel, which brings us happiness and laughs.”
Nabil Benaferi, a father, said, “This is the second year I am bringing my kids to the show. I am impressed by the shows and the education my kids are receiv-ing from this channel. We never get bored of it”.
The evening ended on a high note with 30 performers, joined by children, singing a Baraem song.
THE PENINSULA
Baraem celebrates 4th anniversary
Culture Minister hails role of Youth CentresDOHA: The Minister of Culture, Arts and Heritage H E Dr Hamad bin Abdulaziz Al Kuwari has lauded the sig-nificant role of the Ministry’s Youth Centres in refining young talents and filling leisure time with meaningful activities.
At a meeting with members of the Board of Directors of Al Wakrah Youth Centre, he said that the Ministry has been keen on setting up more Youth Centres in pursuit of Qatar National Vision 2030.
Director of Youth Centres
Department at the Ministry Abdul Razak Al Kuwari thanked the Minister for forming of the board and for attending the meeting which underscores the Minister’s keenness on supporting youth movement in Qatar.
THE PENINSULA
06 MIDDLE EASTSUNDAY 20 JANUARY 2013
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Second bid for transitional govt in SyriaISTANBUL: Syria’s opposi-tion leaders yesterday launched their second bid to form a tran-sitional government, with their credibility at stake as the coun-try slides deeper into civil war.
Agreement among the National Coalition, an umbrella group for the Syrian opposition, could help address international concern about the risk of Syria disinte-grating along ethnic and sec-tarian lines if President Bashar Al Assad falls.
Failure at the talks, being held in an Istanbul hotel, would high-light divisions in the coalition which was formed two months ago, and undermine that support.
Leading opposition campaigner Kamal Al Labwani, a member of the coalition, said the group needed at least to name a prime minister to maintain credibility as a democratic alternative to four decades of family rule by Assad and his late father, President Hafez Al Assad.
“The coalition is a legislature and we need an executive. There have been lots of mistakes and the people we are supposed to rep-resent inside feel marginalised,” said Labwani, one of a minority of liberal figures in the Islamist-dominated coalition.
The United Nations says 60,000 people have been killed in Syria’s 22-month conflict. A collapse of the country could draw in rival powers in a region where the Sunni-Shia faultline has been deepening since the Arab Spring revolts began in Tunisia two years ago, toppling dictators in four Arab countries and ushering in Islamist political ascendancy.
The rise of jihadist rebels in the last few months as a dominant force in the armed opposition, and the possibility of a massive backlash by the Sunni majority against Assad’s Alawite minority,
has made international powers hold back from supporting the increasingly radicalised, mostly Sunni rebels.
Assad’s forces massacred over 100 Sunni men, women and chil-dren when they overran an oppo-sition-held district in the central city of Homs on Tuesday, accord-ing to opposition campaigners.
The killing occurred around the same time a disputed attack killed and wounded dozens of peo-ple at Aleppo University, a hotbed of peaceful demonstrations at the start of the revolt.
With diminishing prospects for a deal to remove Assad, any prime minister named by the coa-lition would have to be acceptable to rebels who have been making incremental gains on the ground despite massive air and artillery bombardment.
Naming a transitional govern-ment was part of the original agreement under which the coa-lition was formed last year.
But some in the opposition have grown wary since, fearing that Western powers were influenc-ing the process to come up with a government that would nego-tiate with Assad and keep the minority-ruled police state intact, according to various opposition sources.
The powerful Muslim Brotherhood, the only organised political force in the opposition, is largely against forming a govern-ment at present, although Arab and Western-backed members of the coalition want one, the sources said.
The 70-member coalition was formed with Western and Gulf backing in Qatar at the begin-ning of December. Power strug-gles swiftly emerged among its members, contributing to failed efforts to agree on a transitional government. REUTERS
A combo made yesterday of a handout picture from Aljazeera news channel (top-left) and image grabs from a video uploaded on YouTube shows Aljazeera correspondent Mohammed Hourani reporting during clashes between rebel fighters and Syrian government forces, holding the satellite channel’s microphone (top-centre), running to cross a street (top-right), the moment he is shot by a sniper positioned nearby (bottom-left), injured on the ground (bottom-centre) and being helped by a rebel fighter (bottom-right). Hourani was killed in Basra Al Harir, south Syria, on Friday, the television network said, in the second such shooting of a journalist in two days in the conflict-swept country.
Coalition leaders meeting in Turkey
Rights body pushes for war crimes probeDAMASCUS: UN rights chief Navi Pillay piled pressure on the Security Council to probe war crimes in the 22-month conflict as Syrian troops fought intense battles yesterday against rebels who are trying to capture two military bases in the north-west and step up their attacks on army compounds elsewhere in the nation torn by civil war, activists said.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Local Coordination Committees said the rebels destroyed at least one tank near the town of Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib province. The rebels, who have been battling for weeks to take control of bases in Wadi Deif and Hamdiyeh, are working to cut off supply routes to the com-pounds, the Observatory said.
Attacks on government bases are a recent focus of fighting in Syria’s conflict, which according to the UN has killed more than 60,000 people since March 2011.
Last week, rebels captured
the nearby air base of Taftanaz, dealing a significant blow to President Bashar Al Assad’s forces, which have relied on its airpower in its fight against the opposition.
The rebels also have been try-ing to capture other air bases in the northern province of Aleppo, and according to activists, were attacking the air base of Mannagh near the Turkish border.
In Turkey, state-run Anadolu news agency said Syria’s air force targeted a mosque and a school building that apparently was shel-tering displaced Syrians in the town of Salqin, some six kilome-tres from the border with Turkey in Idlib province. Dozens of people were killed and wounded.
At least 30 people wounded in the attack were taken across the border to Turkey for treatment, and two of them died in Turkish hospitals, the news agency said.
The displaced Syrians were eat-ing when the school was attacked, according to Anadolu, who interviewed witnesses who has
crossed into the Turkish border province of Hatay. The wounded included women and children, the agency said.
Rami Abdul-Rahman, who heads the Observatory, said the government was sending rein-forcements to the central city of Homs where rebels have control-led some neighbourhoods for more than a year. Residents of Homs, Syria’s third largest city, were one of the first to rise up against Assad and many refer to it as “the capital of the revolution.”
“It seems they are preparing for a big attack on Homs,” Abdul-Rahman said by telephone.
The Observatory and the LCC said troops attacked several sub-urbs of the capital, Damascus, as well as Homs and the south-ern rebel-held town of Busra Al Harir. The shelling and air raids targeted the Damascus suburbs of Douma, Daraya and Moadamiyeh where regime forces have been on the offensive for weeks, they said.
Syrian state-run TV said
government forces attacked a group a rebels as they met in the town of Boukamal near the Iraqi border, killing some of them.
The UN children’s agency, Unicef, condemned the violence that killed civilians, including children, this week in the cen-tral village of Haswiyeh, the northern city of Aleppo and near Damascus.
Around 200 civilians were killed this week in government-controlled areas. Most of them died in a strike on a univer-sity in Aleppo and in a mass killing in the central town of Haswiyeh.
Opposition activists say a pro-government militia torched houses and killed more than 100 people in Haswiyeh.
“Unicef condemns these latest incidents in the strongest terms, and once again calls on all parties to ensure civilians — and children especially — are spared the effects of the conflict,” the organisation said in a statement.
AGENCIES
Residents stand near buildings damaged by what activists said were missiles fired by a Syrian Air Force fighter jet loyal to President Bashar Al Assad, in Daraya.
Egypt sends back two Syrians seeking refuge from strife
BEIRUT: Egypt government unlawfully expelled two Syrian refugees back to the war-rav-aged country last week, and two Palestinians from Syria now risk being deported, the watch-dog Human Rights Watch said yesterday.
A Palestinian man and his son currently being held at Cairo airport were apparently refused entry to Egypt and would face “indiscriminate violence and pos-sible persecution if returned to Syria,” the New York-based group said.
“Egypt may have a right to detain people temporarily or investigate them on grounds of false documentation, but it may not under any circumstance return them to Syria,” said Bill Frelick, Refugee Programme director at HRW.
“Egypt is obligated under international law not to return anyone, regardless of status, to a place where they would be persecuted.”
AFP
Palestinians hope Netanyahu will soften stand after electionsRAMALLAH: The Palestinians have long complained that Israel’s right-wing government is killing peace pros-pects by settling the West Bank with Jews, but now there is something new. The Palestinian president is warning that Benjamin Netanyahu’s expected victory in next week’s election could lead to an Arab-majority country in the Holy Land that will eventually replace what is now Israel — unless he pursues a more moderate path of a two state solution to the conflict.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has been careful not to intervene in Tuesday’s Israeli election, but it is no
secret that the Palestinians hope that Netanyahu will either be ousted or at least soften his position in a new term. He has shown no sign of doing so, and opinion polls showing hard-line, pro-set-tlement parties well ahead days before the vote have led to a sense of despair among the Palestinians.
During Netanyahu’s current term, the Israeli leader has pressed forward with construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, which along with the Gaza Strip were captured by Israel in the 1967 war from Jordan. Abbas says he wants to set up a state in the territories that would exist
peacefully next to Israel. The interna-tional community considers settlement construction illegal or illegitimate. And the Palestinians have refused to negoti-ate with Netanyahu while he continues to allow settlements to be built, saying it is a sign of bad faith.
Israeli backers of creation of a Palestinian state say relinquishing con-trol of the Palestinian territories and its residents is the only way to ensure Israel’s future as a democracy with a Jewish majority.
Mohammed Ishtayeh, a top aide to Abbas, told The Associated Press on Friday that his boss has been warning
that won’t be possible if settlement build-ing continues and Israel could end up with a Jewish minority ruling over an Arab majority.
He warned Israel could end up with “an apartheid style state, similar to the one of former South Africa.”
“In the long run it will be against the Israeli interests because ... we Palestinians will be the majority and will struggle for equality,” he said, adding that Abbas had repeated this message in meetings with several Israeli leaders in the past year.
Abbas “told them frankly there are Palestinians who are now calling for
the one-state solution, because they no longer see the two-state solution viable,” Ishtayeh said.
Abbas’s office said the Palestinian pres-ident spoke with multiple leaders in 2012 from Israel’s centrist opposition, includ-ing lawmakers from the Labor, Kadima and Meretz parties, along with mayors, university professors and social activists. He said a mayor from Netanyahu’s Likud Party was among them.
Labour parliamentarian Daniel Ben-Simon said he met with Abbas in Ramallah recently and was warned that time is running out for a two-state solution. AP
Lending an ear
Iraqi Deputy Interior Minister Adnan Al Assadi (right) attends a meeting headed by Sunni and Shia clan leaders in Baghdad to listen to the demands of protesters in an attempt to halt the escalation of demonstrations in Sunni areas, yesterday.
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France defends Algeria responseTULLE, FRANCE: French President Francois Hollande yesterday came out in support of Algeria’s deadly military strike against Islamist hostage-takers at a desert gas plant, saying the action was appropriate in the face of “coldly determined terrorists”.
Other nations have criticised the hasty military backlash that left several expa-triate workers dead, with Britain, Japan and Norway insisting they should have been forewarned of an army raid on Thursday.
France has refrained from criticising the military action that claimed one of its countrymen among the fallen in the former French colony.
“When there is a hostage-taking with so many people involved and such coldly determined terrorists, ready to kill their hostages — which they did — a country such as Algeria has had... the most appro-priate responses because there could be no negotiations,” Hollande told reporters in Tulle, south-central France.
The captors, calling themselves “Signatories in Blood”, killed the last seven of their foreign hostages yesterday before being gunned down at the remote gas plant, state media said, ending one of the bloodiest international hostage crises in years.
Most of the hostages, including 573 Algerians and about 100 foreigners, had been freed when Algerian forces launched a rescue operation on Thursday, but some 30 remained unaccounted for.
A preliminary government toll yes-terday said 23 captives and 32 kid-nappers were killed in the four-day hostage drama.
Some analysts say France’s non-criti-cal stance to the Algerian events reflects the fraught nature of ties with its former colony, and the fact that the French air force requires access to Algerian airspace for its bombing campaign in neighbour-ing Mali.
Hollande said the Algerian events jus-tified France’s military intervention in Mali, which the hostage-takers had cited as the reason for their action.
“If there had been a need to justify the action that we took against terrorism, we now have an additional argument in favour,” the French president said on
a visit to Tulle, his political fiefdom, to meet a delegation from an infantry regi-ment which is deploying troops to Mali.
He added that French troops would stay in the west African state, also a former colony, “as long as is necessary so that terrorism can be defeated in that part of Africa.”
Hollande will today meet the families of seven French hostages being held in the Sahel region.
The kidnappers led by Algerian Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a former Al Qaeda commander in North Africa, killed two people on a bus, a Briton and an Algerian, before taking hundreds of workers hos-tage when they overran the In Amenas complex.
Belmokhtar’s “Signatories in Blood” group had been demanding an end to French military intervention against jihadists in neighbouring Mali.
A security official who spoke to AFP as army helicopters overflew the plant gave the same death tolls, adding it was believed the foreigners were executed “in retaliation”.
As experts began to clear the complex of bombs planted by the Islamists, resi-dents of In Amenas breathed a collective sigh of relief.
“We went from a peaceful situation to a terror situation,” said one resident who
gave his name as Fouad. “The plant could have exploded and taken out the town,” said another.
Brahim Zaghdaoui said he was not sur-prised by the Algerian army’s ruthless final assault.
“It was predictable that it would end like that,” he said.
Most of the hostages had been freed on Thursday when Algerian forces launched a rescue operation, which was widely con-demned as hasty.
Even US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta refused to lay the blame on Algeria.
Panetta added: “They are in the region, they understand the threat from terror-ism... I think it’s important that we con-tinue to work with (Algiers) to develop a regional approach.”
British Defence Secretary Philip Hammond said the crisis had been “brought to an end by a further assault by Algerian forces, which has resulted in further loss of life”.
“We’re pressing the Algerians for details on the exact situation,” he said.
The deaths were “appalling and unac-ceptable and we must be clear that it is the terrorists who bear sole responsibility for it,” he told a news conference with Panetta.
The hostage-taking was the largest since the 2008 Mumbai attack, and the biggest by jihadists since hundreds were killed in a Moscow theatre in 2002 and at a school in the Russian town of Beslan in 2004, according to monitoring group IntelCenter.
Foreign Secretary William Hague said five British nationals and a British resi-dent are dead or unaccounted for.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan said he had received “severe information” about 10 of his country’s nationals who were still missing.
On Friday the gunmen, cited by Mauritania’s ANI news agency, said they were still holding “seven foreign hos-tages” — three Belgians, two Americans, one Japanese and a Briton. However, Brussels said it had no indication any of its nationals were being held. Algeria was strongly criticised for launching the initial assault.
AFP
One of the largest hostage crises ends in bloodbath; local residents relieved after siege
End war with Kurdish militants, Chomsky tells Turkish governmentISTANBUL: The American left-wing philosopher and activist Noam Chomsky urged Turkey on Friday to end its “malignant” war with Kurdish rebels, saying recent peace efforts offered a real chance of a settlement.
Chomsky, whose writings have in the past caused trouble for his Turkish pub-lisher, said the growing independence of the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq and the possibility that Syria’s
Kurdish zone could break away if Syria’s civil war worsens meant Turkey must confront its own Kurdish problem fast.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is backing talks with Abdullah Ocalan, head of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), and says he is sin-cere about trying to end a war with the PKK that has claimed more than 40,000 lives since 1984.
“Turkey must find its place if, of
course, it can heal its internal sores, and none is more malignant than the peren-nial Kurdish issue,” Chomsky said in a talk at Bosphorus University.
“There do appear to be some real pros-pects with recent negotiations despite criminal efforts to disrupt them,” the academic said, referring to the assassi-nation of three Kurdish activists in Paris last week.
Chomsky also criticised Turkey’s
practice of jailing journalists, especially those from Kurdish media.
Reporters Without Borders calls Turkey the world’s biggest prison for journalists, with 72 jailed as of December.
Chomsky’s publisher was accused of violating anti-terrorism laws and “insult-ing Turkishness” for printing criticism by Chomsky of Turkey’s handling of the fight against the PKK. The cases, stem-ming from 2002 and 2006, resulted in
acquittals. Turkey, the United States and the European Union consider the PKK a terrorist organisation.
Chomsky, professor of linguistics and philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), was speaking at a lecture in honour of journalist Hrant Dink, who published an Armenian-Turkish newspaper until his murder on January 19, 2007.
REUTERS
Progress in nuclear talks: IranDUBAI: Iran said it had made some progress in resolving its disputes with the UN atomic watchdog, state media reported, even though the two sides’ latest talks failed to seal a deal on letting inspectors visit a mili-tary site.
The Islamic state and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) met this week, but did not manage to revive
an investigation into Iran’s sus-pected nuclear arms research, the UN organisation’s officials said on Friday.
Iran’s ambassador to the body, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, later said some progress had been made in the talks, Press TV reported. “We had two days of intensive talks and we were able to in fact bridge the gap to some extent,” Soltanieh was quoted as saying late on Friday.
“There was agreement with the agency about some issues, but no document has been signed yet ... In terms of get-ting views closer together and resolving some disputes the negotiations with the agency were successful,” he told state news agency IRNA.
Soltanieh, however, stuck to Iran’s stance that it would not stop uranium enrichment “for a second”. REUTERS
Oil pipeline blown up in YemenADEN: Gunmen in southeast Yemen have blown up an oil pipeline that transports some 8,000 barrels per day to export terminals on the Gulf of Aden, suspending operations, a local official said yesterday.
The unidentified assailants “planted an explosive device under the pipeline” overnight in the village of Rudum in Shabwa province, some25km from the Nushaymah export terminal, the official said.
The blast brought oil pumping to a halt, he added.
The pipeline is operated by the Korea National Oil Co (KNOC), and transfers crude from oil-fields in the Iyadh region, also in Shabwa.
It has been repeatedly attacked, as have other oil and gas installations in the impover-ished Arabian Peninsula nation which relies on its modest energy exports as a main source of revenue.
The attacks, blamed on Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) or tribesmen seeking to barter with the author-ities, have become more frequent in the wake of a 2011 uprising that forced out veteran president Ali Abdullah Saleh.
AFP
A freed Algerian hostage hugs a relative at Algiers airport after he was released by Islamist captors from a gas plant in In Amenas.
Cartoon Arts International / The New York Times Syndicate
BY JOHN O’BRENNAN
AS THE EU continues to grap-ple with a variety of existential challenges, it is easy to forget that the European project has
some genuinely significant achievements to its name. By far the most important of these is the successful eastern enlarge-ment of 2004 and 2007, which brought eight former communist countries into the European “club”, and extended the European zone of peace and relative pros-perity to the Baltic region in the north and the Black Sea in the south.
Yet when the eastern enlargement is mentioned these days, few people tend to talk about peace and fewer still of prosperity. In the public mind, eastern enlargement is viewed almost exclusively through the prism of increased immigra-tion, from east to west and from new to older member states. So how much of this is true?
Eastern enlargement undoubtedly helped to shape the European labour market in dramatic and unanticipated ways. When the new member states acceded to the EU in 2004, only Ireland, Sweden and the UK lifted all restric-tions on workers from the new member states. Other countries, such as France and Germany, were much more hesitant about opening up their labour markets and only proceeded to do so on a sec-tor-by-sector basis. Thereafter the pat-terns of inward migration within the EU diverged considerably.
The European commission has pro-vided extensive analysis of intra-EU population movements after the 2004 and 2007 accessions. These studies demon-strate emphatically that the overall level of migration from new to older member states has been very modest. By the end of 2007, the 27 member states of the EU were home to about 29 million foreign cit-izens between them, of which 10.6 million were intra-EU migrants. Of this figure only about 40% were from the new mem-ber states. About 1.6 million Romanians moved abroad, 1.3 million Poles and about 300,000 Bulgarians. These figures rep-resented about 7.2% of the Romanian population, 3.4% of the Polish population
and about 4.1 percent of that of Bulgaria.Where did these migrants go? The
picture here is rather diverse. In the decade between 2002 and 2012 the UK and Ireland proved amongst the most favoured destinations for new member state nationals, not just because of the attractive employment prospects they offered, but because English is now unquestionably the dominant language in a world of technologically driven globalisation.
In the Irish case Polish migrants were hardly visible in 2002. The 2006 census, however, revealed that there were 63,276 Poles living in Ireland. By 2011, that figure had risen dramatically to 122,585, mak-ing the Polish minority the largest single national group in the Republic.
The figures for the UK reveal that by the end of 2011 about 1.1 million people had moved there from the new member states in the wake of enlargement. While this constitutes a sizable number, it is about equal to the level of migration from the new member states to Germany in the same period.
If we measure these migrant flows in relative terms, nationals from the new member states now make up about 1.5% of the total population of the UK. In Ireland, by contrast, they constitute about 4% of the population, and this fig-ure has decreased from about 4.8% in 2008 (as a result of some return migra-tion caused by deep-seated economic retrenchment). Therefore we can state clearly that eastern enlargement has had a much more significant impact on the Irish labour market than on the British one even allowing for differentials in eco-nomic performance since 2008.
From 2014, curbs on Romanians and Bulgarians coming to live and work in Britain will come to an end. When ques-tioned about the expected volume of immigration from those two countries by the BBC on Sunday, the communities secretary, Eric Pickles, said: “I don’t think anybody knows.” But analysis of previ-ous emigration patterns might give us a clue: whereas Polish nationals tended to choose either the UK or Ireland as their favoured terminus, Bulgarians and even more so Romanians opted for Italy and
Spain. Indeed, by the end of 2011 nation-als from those member states made up about 2.2 percent of the population of Spain (up from 0.6 percent in 2003) and 1.8% of that of Italy (compared to 0.3 per-cent in 2003). Thus in relative terms both Italy and Spain now have significantly larger proportions of their populations originating from central and eastern Europe than the UK.
There are also important differences between and among the new member states in respect of the propensity to emi-grate. While young, well-educated Poles have grasped the new opportunities to live and work outside their homeland in large numbers, significantly fewer Czechs and Hungarians are willing to move. Slovenes also seem reluctant to move in search of work; in fact they do not move very much within their own coun-try, let alone beyond its borders. Within the Baltic region Lithuanians have also demonstrated much more willingness to relocate than their Estonian neighbours.
The commission’s analysis also empha-sises the strong contribution to economic growth that these migration flows made. They clearly helped to alleviate labour market shortages and did so without impacting negatively on either the wage levels or employment conditions of work-ers in Dublin and London. The new arriv-als complemented rather than competed with the existing EU15 labour force and in the process improved the general efficiency and functioning of European labour markets.
The new mobility of Bulgarian and Romanian labour is unlikely to change any of these fundamentals. For one thing, most of the individuals and groups one might expect to take advantage of the new rules have already moved. Madrid, Rome and Nicosia will continue to prove more attractive to new migrants than Galway or Glasgow. Thus the more hys-terical pronouncements about a new “tidal wave from the east” are easily debunked: European migration patterns will continue to evolve in response to both “push” and “pull” factors. And Europe will continue to struggle with the mul-tiple vectors of economic and political crisis. THE GUARDIAN
F RENCH military intervention in Mali entered its seventh day on Thursday. Given the stark contrast between the military
prowess of the French forces and the disorderly extremists, the world should not wait too long before Paris declares victory in the West African country.
French President Francois Hollande has vowed to destroy the “terrorists” in Mali, and he is not alone, as a number of Western and African countries have thrown their weight behind him. That there was a proper excuse for the intervention is beyond question, as he was invited by the
Malian government to put down the rebels and believed to have the back-ing of the United Nations too.
Despite warning of the remote possibility that France might become mired in Mali, Hollande, as the first Socialist head of state in France since 1995, has put himself and his country in the spotlight, and won himself more clout on the diplomatic front, which will bolster French influence on the world arena.
True, stability in Mali is important, as the country sits on the doorstep of Europe, and fighting terrorists is a just cause. Nonetheless, it is more impor-tant to provide sustainable assistance
to African countries like Mali, so that they can embark on the road of poverty alleviation and economic development at an early date. Mali is just a miniature of French-speaking countries on the continent. For years, tribal conflicts, religious rifts, abject poverty have mired these countries in instability and kept them on the list of the world’s least developed countries.
Right now, at least three extrem-ist groups - al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa and Ansar Dine (Defenders of the Faith) - are fighting in Mali. These groups have not emerged overnight. Their rise has
been the result of long-time social tur-bulence and weak state power.
Apparently, military intervention is just the means to throttle extrem-ists and terrorists in Mali. Countries like Mali still have a long way to go before they can shake off the shack-les of poverty and put their shattered social fabrics together.
In the long run, the international community should step up efforts to support the integration process in Africa, improve its overall develop-ment level and create a desirable security environment for the devel-opment of the continent.
CHINA DAILY
The success of eastern EU expansion debunks fears
“Money has no utility to me beyond a certain point. Its utility is entirely in building an organisation and getting the resources out to the poorest in the world.”
Quote ofthe day
Bill GatesMicrosofts Founder
The Other Side
T HE ALGERIAN hostage crisis ended yesterday with the death of seven remaining hostages. A total of 23 hostages and 32 militants were killed after an attack on In Amenas gas plant in the Algerian desert by
Islamist militants and 107 foreign hostages and 685 Algerian hostages had been released. It’s been called one of the most tragic and deadly hostage crises in the decade, and attracted revulsion and condemnation from world leaders.
The militant assault on In Amenas gas plant underlines the chilling reality that Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) is still active and poses a direct threat to the region and the world. The group is active not just in Algeria and neighbouring Libya — where it is believed to have played a role in the killing of US official in Benghazi in September — but also in Mali, where militants have taken over some territory and threatened to capture the rest of the country. Militants have said their action was to retaliate against French attack on Mali Islamists, but reports say that is only a ruse.
The huge death toll in the hostage crisis shows how ill-prepared Algeria is to tackle a situation of horrendous proportions. The government of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika took a unilateral decision to attack kidnappers at the natural gas plant and shunned outside help. It imposed a
virtual information blackout and disregarded international pleas for caution. If the government had cooperated with the Western governments and sought their assistance and expertise in tackling the crisis, the death toll could have been reduced. It is no wonder that the botching up of the operation has strained relations between Algiers and the West. Algeria’s action might have to do with its policy of eradication, which relies on eliminating terrorists rather
than negotiating.Also, the Libyan uprising has emboldened the militants.
One disastrous consequence of the Libyan conflict was arms flowing across regional borders – into the arms of tribes and terrorists. These arms are posing a threat to states and what compounds the woes is the fact that it’s impossible to confiscate them.
Algeria is known as the birthplace of Al Qaeda’s affiliate in North Africa, known as Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM. Most of the group’s leaders and allies are Algerian, including the suspected ringleader of the hostage plot, a one-eyed desert bandit named Mokhtar Belmokhtar. Once the current crisis subsides, the country will be left to continue its battle with Al Qaeda. This is a battle which the country has to win, because a failure would destabilise the entire region. There is also a need for cooperation in the fight against extremists between Algeria and the neighbouring countries.
•
Algeria siege
The hostage crisis in Algeria shows the region has a long battle ahead with Islamist militants.
Editorial
08 VIEWS SUNDAY 20 JANUARY 2013
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Intervention in Mali
VIEWS 09SUNDAY 20 JANUARY 2013
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The NRA’s maximalist
position on guns is theoretically about freedom, but following its lead would result in less freedom, not
more.BY JASON DEMPSEY
I have been in a handful of drunken altercations in my life. Thankfully, I’ve lived to regret them all. That did not have to be
the case, nor was my safe emer-gence from youthful stupidity a foregone conclusion. Maybe my luck had something to do with growing up listening to Johnny Cash. Standing against the tide of a culture glorifying violence, Cash followed stories of impul-sive violence to their inglorious conclusions. In “Don’t Take Your Guns to Town,” an insecure young man drinking while armed meets a tragic end. I’d like to think that having that song in the back of my mind kept me out of mortal trouble, but of course most of my luck stemmed from growing up in a society where, for the most part, we’ve all agreed to leave our guns at home.
That agreement has been chal-lenged consistently by the leaders of the National Rifle Association. Their call for more guns in more public spaces in the aftermath of Newtown may have come as a surprise to some, but is in keeping with the organisation’s outlook over the last 30 years. I know, because I grew up around guns and NRA publications. I own a pistol, and would likely own several more guns if I did not have access to my father’s sizable arsenal — there are only so many weapons a man can use
at once. And for years, American Rifleman, the NRA’s flagship publication, could be found lying around the house. Like a great many gun owners, however, my father and I parted ways with the NRA over their shrill insistence on guns for everyone, everywhere.
The NRA’s maximalist posi-tion on guns is theoretically about freedom, but following its lead would result in less freedom, not more, and mark a step back-ward for the civil society that we Americans have laboured so hard to build. The NRA fantasy that true safety only derives from an openly armed population is not only indulgent, it ignores both human nature and history. It is a philosophy that offers false com-fort to frightened individuals and would do nothing for our collec-tive safety.
The world is full of societies where individuals arm themselves
for safety, and the instability of such countries should serve as an object lesson of what happens when our mutual trust and our willingness to engage in conversa-tion, unarmed, is driven away by fear of both our government and our fellow citizens. Such places are invariably not more polite, as NRA leaders would have it, but much more explosive. Just look at Afghanistan, where I and thousands of other Americans have confronted the realities of a population armed and on edge.
Pashtunwali, the tribal code of the Pashtuns, which empha-sises vengeance and honour, can be confusing for Westerners, and its outcomes can seem downright incoherent. An attempted mur-der can be reconciled with the sacrifice of a goat while a couple that elopes may be sentenced to years in prison, or simply killed. These outcomes have nothing to
do with justice as we commonly understand it, but are part of a necessary dance among armed factions, each seeking stability in a desperate environment. Honour and vengeance represent both sides of the coin of insecurity, and Pashtunwali is most easily under-stood not as a cultural code but as realpolitik for places where the threat of violence is ever-present and people cannot rely on their government to provide stability. In such an environment, there is little room for individual free-dom and justice. There is only the survival of the family and tribe. Everyone is armed. Everyone is defensive. And society is congealed into those elements that can best ensure stability. Eventually loy-alty trumps justice, and survival trumps all.
Therefore our greatest chal-lenge in getting Afghanistan to move beyond its violent past has
been in building the kind of cred-ible local and national institutions that can offer an alternative to brute force as the way to resolve disputes. That some Americans have so little faith in our own institutions that they would will-ingly retreat to the brutality of this kind of frontier justice is a travesty.
Yet in the view of men like the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre, threats to freedom abound, and the only answer is the threat of violence. They believe that every agree-ment to mitigate violence is a direct threat to independence, and one that ultimately leads to subjugation. Such a view suggests that we are incapable of creating a secure society that also allows for individual freedom and lim-its the powers of a central gov-ernment. Not only is this view both paranoid and self-limiting, it also ignores the core strength
of American society. Our police and courts are not perfect, but we understand that collective efforts to ensure the peace will, in the long run, always be more effective than one man with a gun.
It is a mark of all we have accomplished in our two-and-a-half-century history that we do not settle our disagreements with weapons, nor do we avoid voic-ing those disagreements for fear of getting shot. Calls for more citizens to regularly carry guns should be viewed with great scep-ticisms by both NRA members and gun-control advocates alike. We need to remember that we are not a state on the brink of failure. The overwhelming majority of us are not in mortal danger and we do not need to be packing heat to protect our honour. A greater public role for private guns would not add to our freedom; it would detract from it.
There are steps we can and should take to limit the potential for future events like Newtown, but we should scorn the paranoia that sees solutions in even more weapons in more public spaces. America armed would not be a place of genteel men in cow-boy hats keeping everyone calm, but a nation even more on edge. Encouraging an armed populace cedes the ideas of justice and delib-eration that we have worked so hard to build to a brittle strength — one that sees mortal insult in a traffic slight and where arguments are more often than not met with physical challenges.
We can respect the right of Americans to own weapons while agreeing that they should be left largely out of public life. I don’t agree with banning guns, but I categorically reject calls to embrace them more openly as a way to avoid violence. The young Taliban in the news may appear tough but are in fact men in per-petual insecurity, living only a fantasy of purity and strength. Their embrace of armed conflict and intimidation is a sign of the weakness of their ideas and their inability to constructively engage their fellow Afghans. There is a reason we left that model behind, and I am looking forward to leav-ing it behind myself. I am eager to return to America and to the freedom that comes with leaving my guns at home.
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NRA wants to turn America into Afghanistan
The lack of national outrage against the mass rapes perpetrated under Narendra Modi reduces their true cruelty.BY SHIKHA DALMIA
One of the most obscene moments after the death of the gang-rape victim in New Delhi was a tweet by Narendra Modi,
the chief minister of the Indian state of Gujarat, offering regret and condolences to the dead woman’s family.
Modi, who has quelled restive minori-ties by allowing attackers to subject women to unspeakable horrors, has done more than any man to numb his prudish country to sexual violence. Yet he was elected to a third term last month and is the presumptive front-runner of the Bharatiya Janata Party, the main Hindu opposition party, for prime minister in next year’s national elections.
So long as Indians keep rewarding politicos such as Modi, the country’s col-lective outrage after the New Delhi case won’t change the culture that makes such atrocities common in India.
The attack on the 23-year-old physi-otherapy student was depraved. Five men and a teenager in a private bus are accused of kidnapping, beating, raping and violating her with an iron rod — and then dumping her and her semi-conscious boyfriend on a highway, where they also allegedly tried to run her over. But as monstrous as this crime was, consider
what happened in Gujarat in February 2002, a few months after Modi assumed office.
Organised bands of well-armed Hindus — some from groups tied to Modi’s party — fanned across the state seeking revenge against Muslims for allegedly burning a train full of Hindu pilgrims a few weeks earlier. The Hindu rioters systematically sought out and destroyed Muslim homes and businesses, killing more than 1,000 people.
Muslim women were singled out. According to many Indian and foreign sources, including a Human Rights Watch account and a report by an interna-tional research team called “Threatened Existence: A Feminist Analysis of the Genocide in Gujarat,” women were stripped, gang-raped, often publicly, and in almost all cases then burned or hacked to death.
The reason the violence reached such extremes was that the state police stood back and didn’t intervene to stop the Hindu attacks and even told victims that it couldn’t protect them. As if the bloodletting wasn’t horrific enough, Modi subsequently dismantled the shelters constructed by private organisations for dispossessed Muslims, calling them “child-breeding centres.”
Compared with the New Delhi rape, which has triggered a protest movement in India calling for the castration and execution of the suspects, the Gujarat rapes and pogrom elicited barely a whim-per. Many Hindus either deny that the horror even occurred or, if they accept it, claim it wasn’t as grisly as news accounts suggest. And if they believe the accounts, they say Muslims had it coming. Fewer than 100 out of the thousands accused — among them only one state minister and one Bharatiya Janata Party leader — were convicted, and that was a decade later. Modi himself was exonerated.
Whatever public disgust there was against him has dissipated, given the stel-lar economic growth that Gujarat has seen on his watch. Business leaders and
corporations, from India and overseas, turn a blind eye to Modi’s role in allowing the bloodshed, and praise his economic stewardship. His business backers have already managed to get the British gov-ernment to reverse its long-standing ban on him and to give him a visa. Now they are trying to persuade the US govern-ment to follow suit.
What accounts for the wide gulf in the Indian public response to the single crime in New Delhi and the mass crimes in Gujarat?
On a positive side, attitudes toward women have evolved considerably since the Gujarat atrocity 11 years ago. Indian women’s aspirations and opportunities have increased, especially in big cities, and they are demanding that the gov-erning classes keep pace and create an environment in which they are free to move around safely.
After the New Delhi attack, any poli-tician or even religious guru — no mat-ter how revered — who suggested that women need to circumscribe their lives and choices for their own protection was condemned and lampooned, something scarcely imaginable when I was growing up in New Delhi (in a Hindu household) in the 1970s.
But the darker reality is that the young woman’s rape and murder outraged the country’s Hindu urban middle class because it was a random and senseless act that could have just as easily victim-ised their daughters. Not so with attacks on the Muslim women in Gujarat. The premeditated and programmatic violence against them meant that the broader Hindu majority was insulated from it. If the New Delhi woman’s fate made every Indian feel more vulnerable, the attack on the Muslim women made Hindus feel more secure.
There are other reasons for India’s apathy toward Modi’s misdeeds. India is a democracy and has its share of human-rights activists and watchdog groups keep-ing an eye on government brutality. Yet the public at large has little appreciation
of the dangers associated with overly muscular government. Indians complain constantly about government dysfunction and corruption. Yet they have little com-punction about giving draconian powers to their rulers in the name of security. The upshot, tragically, is that Indians care less about state-fuelled rape than when perpetrated by individuals.
The scale of the sexual violence in Gujarat was unprecedented in India. But smaller episodes are a matter of routine. The Indian army has been accused of using rape as a weapon to crush seces-sionist movements in Kashmir and Manipur. After one particularly heinous case eight years ago, Manipuri women stripped naked and stormed the army headquarters with placards plaintively protesting: “Indian Army Rapes Us.”
Tolerating sexual violence for any pur-pose erodes the overall stigma against it, opening a moral space where hoodlums can run amok. The lack of national out-rage against the mass rapes perpetrated under Modi reduces their true cruelty, breaking down the psychological walls that would at least prevent non-socio-paths from going on a rampage. Hindus who turn a blind eye to the rape of Muslim women can’t ultimately protect their own.
How India can restore moral bounda-ries is a difficult issue, but it certainly won’t be solved by electing Modi to higher office — even if he were Adam Smith himself. Protesters shouldn’t just seek justice against the six accused in New Delhi. Modi, too, has much to atone for.
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India’s disturbing apathy towards state-fuelled rape
Flanked by schoolchildren, US President Barack Obama signs executive orders to control gun violence in the South Court Auditorium last Wednesday in Washington, DC. The president also called on Congress to pass legislation to curb gun violence, one month after a school massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, that killed 20 students and six adults.
Demonstrators move towards India Gate in New Delhi during a protest calling for better safety for women in India.
10 INTERNATIONALSUNDAY 20 JANUARY 2013
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GENEVA: More than 140 coun-tries have agreed on the first global treaty to cut mercury pollution through a blacklist of household items and new con-trols on power plants and small-scale mines, the United Nations said yesterday.
The legally-binding agreement aims to phase out many products that use the toxic liquid metal such as batteries, thermometers and some fluorescent lamps, through banning global import and exports by 2020.
The treaty will require coun-tries with coal-fired power plants such as India and China to install filters and scrubbers on new plants and to commit to reduc-ing emissions from existing oper-ations to prevent mercury from coal reaching the atmosphere.
“We have closed a chapter on a journey that has taken four years
of often intense but ultimately successful negotiations and opened a new chapter towards a sustainable future,” said Fernando Lugris, chair of the negotiations.
The deal also includes meas-ures to reduce mercury use in small-scale gold mining, although stopped short of an all-out ban. Gold prices near $1,700 a tonne have spurred the use of mercury as a catalyst to separate gold from its ore.
Emissions of mercury from artisanal and small-scale gold mines, which are usually unofficial and often illegal, more than dou-bled to 727 tonnes in 2010 from 2005 levels, overtaking coal-fired power plants as the main source of pollution from the metal.
The Minamata Convention on Mercury — named after the Japanese city where people were poisoned in the mid-20th century
from industrial discharges of mer-cury — needs ratification from 50 countries and is expected to be formalised later this year.
The treaty requires govern-ments to draw up national rules to comply and could take between three to five years to take effect.
As mercury, also known as quicksilver, is released to the air or washed into rivers and oceans, it spreads worldwide, and builds up in humans mostly through consumption of fish. The brains of foetuses and infants are par-ticularly vulnerable to damage from mercury.
Officials said the financing required to bring in cleaner technology for industry and help developing countries come up with local solutions was one of the major sticking points of the six-day negotiations. “Financing was agreed very early this morning
and it was one of the most dif-ficult aspects,” said Lugris.
Japan, Norway and Switzerland have made initial pledges total-ling $3 million in financing and an interim financial arrangement will be discussed in April by the Global Environment Facility, said Tim Kasten, head of the chemi-cals branch of UNEP. Countries failed to agree on including vac-cines where mercury is some-times used as a preservative.
While negotiators celebrated the deal reached after all-night talks in the fifth and final round of talks, the response from some non-governmental organisations (NGO) was more muted.
“The treaty will not bring immediate reductions of mer-cury emissions. It will need to be improved and strengthened, to make all fish safe to eat,” said David Lennett from the Natural
Resources Defense Council.NGO IPEN, which aims to
reduce the health risk of chemi-cals, described the language of the treaty as “soft” and “somewhat voluntary in nature” and said it was unlikely to result in a global reduction of mercury releases.
“Countries that do not want to do this can escape quite eas-ily,” said IPEN’s Joe DiGangi. In one notable climbdown, countries abandoned their goal of setting concrete targets for pollution lev-els from coal-fired power plants and cement factories, but negotia-tors said they would defer these discussions to a later meeting.
For mining, the treaty requires action from governments to reduce mercury use where arti-sanal and small-scale gold mining is “more than insignificant” but has no list of countries.
REUTERS
UN clinches global deal on cutting mercury emissions
KIEV: Prosecutors on Friday accused Ukraine’s jailed former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko of organising the 1996 murder of a powerful law-maker and warned that a guilty verdict could put her behind bars for life.
Prosecutor General Viktor Pshonka said the fiery 52-year-old has been informed by prosecu-tors that she and another former prime minister detained in the United States are formal suspects in the murder of deputy Yevgen Shcherban.
“We have collected evidence from the pre-trial investigation indicating that Tymoshenko really did order this murder together with (former prime minister Pavlo) Lazarenko,” Pshonka told reporters. “Today, an investigative team from the prosecutor general’s office visited Tymoshenko in order to hand her (her documents on) suspicion of having committed a crime.”
He said the charismatic but divisive opposition leader has been named as a suspect under an article of the criminal code that meant she could spend the rest of her life in jail. Tymoshenko’s defence once again denied her involvement and called the charges political.
“This is not a legal case — it is a political one,” defence attorney Sergiy Vlasenko said.
Tymoshenko was controver-sially sentenced to a seven-year jail term in 2011 amid Western outrage at her treatment by the government of President Viktor Yanukovych — her recent bitter foe. She is being treated for back pain in a hospital outside her prison in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv.
AFP
ABIDJAN/NIONO, MALI: France yesterday called on other world powers to commit money and logistical support for African armies readying their troops to join French sol-diers already battling Al Qaeda-linked militants in Mali.
The appeal came as African leaders met in Ivory Coast where they are expected to agree details of a regional mission that is due to take over from French forces but is short on financing, planning and even ammunition.
France has deployed ground troops and its war planes have bombed a rebel column, halting an Islamist advance. The interven-tion aims to stop militants from tightening their grip on Mali’s northern desert zone and using it as a springboard for attacks in Africa and on the West.
The stakes rose dramatically this week when Islamist gun-men cited the French interven-tion as a pretext to attack a desert gas plant in Algeria and seize hostages. The Sahara cri-sis has forced African nations to
accelerate their own planned mis-sion to Mali, which was originally not expected before September.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said French troops were in no way intended to replace the African operation.
“We must, as quickly as possible, furnish the logistical and financial means required by the Malian army and (the African mission),” he said, calling on donors to make commitments at a January 29 con-ference in Ethiopia.
Mali’s north has been occupied by a mix of gunmen since rebels bolstered with weapons seized from Libya after the 2011 fall of Muammar Gaddafi took up arms last year. Separatist rebels who launched the fighting were soon sidelined by the Islamist alliance of Al Qaeda’s North African wing AQIM and home-grown Malian groups Ansar Dine and MUJWA.
Heads of state are expected to formally confirm pledges to dis-patch some 5,000 African soldiers to join French forces in Mali. “We must intervene because no eco-nomic revival, no region in the
world will be safe if the Sahel goes over to the wrong side,” said Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara.
Nigeria and Togo have already started their deployments, with Niger, Burkina Faso and Chad expected soon. But a Western dip-lomat following the process said plans for the mission were “fluid”.
“The troops are meant to go with 10-day self-sufficiency. But there’s nothing in place to say what happens after,” the diplomat said. “Who’s going to pay for this, and what mechanisms are going to pay for it? The money is a big question.”
Underscoring the scale of the challenge, two other diplo-mats said Senegal’s deployment was being held up by the lack of ammunition for their artillery. “They are waiting for it to be delivered,” said one.
The bombing of a rebel column by French war planes and heli-copters has halted an advance towards the central Malian towns of Mopti and Sevare. Dozens of air raids and the
France seeks support for Africa’s Mali forceQuestions over mission’s planning, financing and supplies
French President Francois Hollande with soldiers of the 126 RI (Infantry Regiment) who are due to leave for Mali, during a meeting in Tulle, central France, yesterday.
deployment of French ground troops have helped Mali’s disor-ganised army fight back.
The town of Konna was seized back from the insurgents earlier this week, but there were conflict-ing reports about the situation in another town, Diabaly.
Malian military sources said French and Malian forces had entered Diabaly after it was
abandoned by the insurgents on Friday following a number of French air strikes. “French and Malian forces are clearing the town, house by house, as the Islamists had sheltered in houses,” one of the officers said.
However, French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said there were no Malian or French soldiers in Diabaly, and dismissed
media reports over recent days of hand-to-hand fighting there.
Le Drian said France had 2,000 troops on the ground in Mali as of yesterday, and the total might eventually exceed 2,500. President Francois Hollande said France’s military intervention would last as long as it takes to “vanquish terrorism” in the region.
REUTERS
Tymoshenko accused of contract killing
BERLIN: The leader of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats in Lower Saxony yesterday predicted victory in a close-run regional election that will gauge Merkel’s chances of winning a third term.
A win today for State Premier David McAllister would end two years of poor results for the Christian Democrats (CDU) in state elec-tions and galvanize Merkel’s re-election cam-paign ahead of a federal vote due in the autumn.
“It was a difficult campaign, a passionate cam-paign, and to the end it has been a neck-and-neck race, but I’m very sure we will win tomorrow,” said McAllister, the 42-year-old son of a British soldier and a German mother.
A survey this week by pollster GMS put the CDU and their Free Democrat (FDP) allies in a dead-heat with Social Democrat (SPD) and Green rivals in the northern region. Some 42 percent of voters were still undecided.
The CDU, on 41 percent, led the SPD on 33 percent in the GMS poll, after Merkel’s conserva-tives lagged their rivals in the middle of last year.
McAllister has played up his Scottish roots in his “I’m a Mac” campaign - complete with bagpipes and the jingle “Our chieftain is a Scot/We’re a tough clan” The SPD dubbed it “a Cuban-style personality cult”.
The CDU’s campaign has also made use of Merkel’s personal popularity in Germany due to her handling of the euro zone debt crisis, as well as focussing on issues such as education.
McAllister, carrying out last-minute cam-paigning on snowy streets, said momentum would carry him to another term. His coalition part-ners in the FDP should secure enough support to meet the 5 percent threshold needed for assembly seats, keeping his centre-right government in power, he said.
The vote in Lower Saxony, Germany’s second-largest state by area, is considered a must win for the SPD if they are to have any hope of unseating Merkel and recovering from a disastrous start to their national election campaign by gaffe-prone chancellor candidate Peer Steinbrueck.
REUTERS
SYDNEY: An Antarctic cruise ship was yesterday racing to rescue a French yachtsman who had abandoned his boat and was drifting in a life raft hundreds of nautical miles off Australia’s southern island of Tasmania.
Australian authorities are coordinating the rescue of the round-the-world sailor, who was forced to leave his yacht after it lost its mast and sustained damage to the hull in rough conditions on Friday.
The expedition cruise vessel, Orion, is not expected to reach the Frenchman until late today and a spokesman for the company said the ship could be in for rough seas on arrival, with seven-metre waves.
“He is a very experienced sailor,” a spokes-woman for the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said, adding that when officials had been in contact with him yesterday via
VHF radio he had not reported any injuries.“Obviously he got into some trouble on
Friday. An associate of his in France made contact with us.” She declined to name the man but said he had been at sea for a number of months as he attempted a round-the-world voyage on his yacht Tchouk Tchouk Nougat.
The yacht is skippered by accomplished sailor Alain Delord and supporters left messages on his Facebook page Saturday wishing him “bon courage”. Three aircraft attended the scene Saturday and dropped communications equipment, food, water and a survival suit. AMSA said it believed the sailor had recovered most of the equipment.
A French interpreter was onboard one of the aircraft and it was hoped they would gain further information on Delord’s condi-tion. “Up to three aircraft will attend the area throughout the night. At this stage, the
focus of the operation is to maintain com-munications with the sailor,” AMSA said in a statement.
It is understood Delord had all necessary safety equipment, including an Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon (EPIRB), satellite phone, VHF radio and a survival suit, when he hit the rough weather.
The Orion has already started making its way towards the yacht’s position, diverting from its course towards Macquarie Island as it returns from a trip to the polar region.
However, it was some 380 nautical miles from the area when it got the call and was not expected to reach the area until 6pm today (0700 GMT).
The vessel could be in for some rough seas on reaching the Frenchman, including 30 knot winds and seven-metre waves.
AFP
Australian rescue under way for French yachtsman
Merkel’s CDU rides popularity wave
Airport blues
Travellers doze off while waiting to board a cancelled flight at Heathrow Airport’s Terminal 5 in London, yesterday. Thousands of passengers were forced to sleep at the airport as over 400 flights were can-celled or delayed due to severe snow storms.
INTERNATIONAL 11SUNDAY 20 JANUARY 2013
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Obama to take oath for 2nd term todayFirst black president of the US braces for third and fourth swearing-in; prepares notes for speech tomorrowWASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama will take the oath of office for the third, fourth and final time this week-end during an inauguration celebration that kicks off his second term in a more muted tone than his historic swearing-in four years ago.
High unemployment and par-tisan fights over fiscal policies have drained some of the hope that marked Obama’s first swear-ing-in after he swept to victory on a mantle of change in 2008 to become America’s first black president.
This time around, there is a less festive inauguration.
Today, following a wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery, Obama will be sworn in officially at the White House at 11.55am EST (1655 GMT), meeting the constitu-tional requirement that he do so on January 20. That portion will be private — except for a media presence — with a small audience of mostly family members.
Obama repeats the procedure tomorrow during a public cer-emony at the US Capitol.
Both times he will be sworn in by Supreme Court Justice John Roberts who, in 2009 after flubbing the oath the first time, administered it to Obama again in the White House the day after his inauguration. The president’s two recitations this year will be the third and fourth time he has taken the oath.
It will be only the second time he has made an inaugural address, however, and millions worldwide will be watching. Some 800,000 people are expected to flock to Washington for the event, down
from a record 1.8 million in 2009.With workers rushing to com-
plete preparations for tomorrow, Obama started his inauguration weekend by joining in a nation-wide day of community service projects honouring slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. The public swearing-in will fall on the national holiday marking
King’s birthday. The president, first lady Michelle Obama and their two daughters went to a local elementary school to help carry out renovations as part of a National Day of Service, a volunteer programme launched when he took office four years ago as a way to pay tribute to King’s legacy.
In his inaugural speech, Obama is expected to talk about the need for political compromise where possible — a nod to the divisive fights with the Republican-led House of Representatives over the “fiscal cliff” and raising the US debt ceiling.
He will emphasise that the val-ues on which the United States
was founded should still guide the country in the 21st century and encourage Americans to make their voices heard to influence lawmakers’ actions, according to an administration official.
He will also touch on the goals he hopes to address in his sec-ond term, while leaving detailed policy blueprints for his State of the Union address next month, the official said. Deficit reduction, gun control, immigration reform, and energy policy are likely to be top priorities in his second term.
SPEECHES, PARADES, BALLS
Obama has been crafting his inaugural address for weeks, scrawling out drafts on yellow legal pads. This weekend, he faces the task of juggling speech preparations and his presiden-tial duties, including briefings on the fate of Americans and oth-ers caught up in a still-unfolding hostage crisis at a desert gas plant in Algeria.
While second inauguration speeches rarely go down in his-tory, tomorrow’s address is a rare opportunity to face millions of television viewers and seek support for upcoming fights with the men and women who work in the Capitol building behind the podium where he will speak.
“This time it’s scaled down, but it’s still historic for all of America,” said Courtney Prater, a construction worker visiting from Detroit, after a tour of the White House.
The White House views the two speeches — he delivers his State of the Union address before Congress on February 12 — as two parts of a package, with the
first one spelling out a vision and the second one specific policy proposals.
“The president, I think, is very appreciative of the fact that the American people have given him this opportunity to deliver a sec-ond inaugural address,” White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters this week.
“He believes that we have work to do, and he believes that both the agenda he has put forward so far and the agenda he will put for-ward in the future will help this country move forward in a variety of ways,” Carney said.
After lambasting Republican opponent Mitt Romney during the presidential campaign for remarks that dismissed nearly half of the US electorate, Obama is likely to offer some words of humility and resolve to represent even those who did not vote for him last year.
After the speech, Obama and his wife, Michelle, will join Vice President Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, at a luncheon at the capitol. Later the two couples will take part in the inaugural parade, returning to the White House in a motorcade and likely getting out to walk part of the way, waving at the crowd and surrounded by Secret Service members.
For weeks, workers have been building viewing stands along the parade route for visitors.
After seeing the rest of the parade from a spot in front of the White House, the Obamas will attend two official inaugural balls, dancing for the cameras and, in the first lady’s case, don-ning a gown that will be scru-tinised closely for its style and fashion sense. REUTERS
Presidential touch-up: US President Barack Obama paints shelves at Burrville Elementary School on a Day of Service, hoping to encourage Americans to follow suit with volunteering projects nationwide, in Washington, yesterday.
Cameron’s speech on EU likely to keep many Tories dissatisfiedLONDON: David Cameron will deliver a “red-meat announcement” on Britain’s future in the EU, which he believes will satisfy all but a hard core of Conservative (Tory) MPs, when he makes his much-delayed keynote speech on Europe in the next few days.
Amid uncertainty over the exact tim-ing of the jinxed address, senior govern-ment sources have said that the prime minister intends to make the speech this
week — possibly tomorrow — if a resolu-tion has been found to the Algerian hos-tage crisis.
“He wants to go ahead as soon as pos-sible. There will be something in it which will pacify all but the hard core,” said the source. “But he could deliver the same kind of speech that Margaret Thatcher gave in Bruges in 1988 and around 25 MPs would not be happy. It is not possible to please everyone.”
Advanced briefing of his speech, which he had been scheduled to give in Amsterdam on Friday but had to post-pone because of events in Algeria, made clear that he would demand repatriation of some powers from Brussels to the UK’s parliament if he wins a majority at the next election. The new deal would then be put to the British people in a referendum.
Journalists were told that he would speak of “growing frustration” with the
EU among UK voters which needs to be addressed if this country is not to slide towards the EU exit door.
But insiders say he will spell out in greater detail his approach — including one significant announcement — while refusing to give a “shopping list” of pow-ers he wants to repatriate. The shopping list idea was rejected after warnings from other EU leaders, government officials and the Foreign Office (the UK’s ministry
for foreign affairs) that he would have no guarantee of bringing home the goods.
It is understood that he foresees a two-stage approach to renegotiation. In the short term he is expected to hold out the prospect of limited progress on issues that do not require reopening EU trea-ties. These would include opting out of elements of police and justice co-opera-tion, while remaining involved in others.
GUARDIAN NEWS
CARACAS: Venezuela’s newly appointed foreign minister said yesterday the decree that installed him in office is proof that ailing President Hugo Chavez is still in control of the oil-rich country.
Elias Jaua was named in a decree signed by Chavez, who remains gravely ill in a Havana hospital some five weeks after com-plications arose during his fourth round of cancer surgery.
“If I am the foreign minister, it is because President Chavez is governing and mak-ing decisions,” Jaua told a Colombian radio station.
The decree has been heavily criticised by Venezuela’s opposition, who have cited its publication in Venezuela’s official govern-ment gazette as further reason to demand that the absent president clarify how sick he is and what he can and cannot do.
The decree — number 9,351 — was marked “Caracas” and carries the signature of Chavez, who underwent surgery in Cuba on December 11 and has not been seen in public for more than a month.
Opposition lawmaker Carlos Berrizbeitia weighed in on the dispute on Thursday, stating there was “reasonable doubt” about
whether the signature on the decree was genuine and demanding the government release the original document.
“It is not possible that the president has signed the decree... in Caracas, because eve-ryone knows he is in Havana,” Berrizbeitia told local media. Meanwhile, Vice President Nicolas Maduro — handpicked by Chavez as his political heir — urged the opposition to make a public apology for talking about the signature’s “falsehood.” The Venezuelan government has been releasing only minimal information on the condition of Chavez.
AFP
Minister hails Chavez decree as opposition frets
Falkland Islands’ referendum on March 10 and 11LONDON: Falkland Islanders will be asked specifically whether they want the archi-pelago to retain its status as a British overseas territory in a referendum on March 10 and 11, its government announced.
Confirming the date and the final wording of the question, the referendum is intended at sending Argentina an unambiguous ver-dict from the 3,000-odd islanders, amid tension between London and Buenos Aires over sovereignty.
Britain has held the South Atlantic Ocean islands since 1833 but Buenos Aires claims they are occupied Argentinian territory.
“The result will demonstrate in a clear, democratic and incon-testable way how the people of the Falkland Islands wish to live their lives,” the islands’ govern-ment said in a statement.
AFP
12 ASIA / PHILIPPINESSUNDAY 20 JANUARY 2013
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Clinton stands by Japan on China rowJapan foreign minister visits USWASHINGTON: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued a veiled warning yesterday to China not to challenge Japan’s control of disputed islands as Tokyo’s new government vowed not to aggravate tensions.
Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida met with Clinton on the first trip by a top Japanese offi-cial since Japan’s conservatives returned to power last month. Clinton announced that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe would visit in February.
Amid signs that China is test-ing control over virtually unin-habited islands in the East China Sea, Clinton said the area was under Japan’s control and hence protected under a US security treaty with Tokyo.
“We oppose any unilateral actions that would seek to under-mine Japanese administration,” Clinton told a joint news confer-ence with Kishida.
Clinton did not mention Beijing directly in the warning, but said: “We want to see China and Japan resolve this matter peacefully through dialogue.”
“We do not want to see any action taken by anyone that could raise tensions or result in mis-calculation that would undermine the peace, security and economic growth in this region,” she said.
The US insists it is neutral on the ultimate sovereignty of the islands — known as the Senkaku in Japanese and the Diaoyu in Chinese — but that they are under the de facto administra-tion of Japan.
China has repeatedly criticised the US position. Chinese sur-veillance ships and state-owned planes have increasingly neared the area, in what some see as a bid by Beijing to contest the notion that Japan holds effective control.
“The frequency and scale of their provocations have drasti-cally increased,” Japanese foreign ministry spokesman Masaru Sato told reporters in Washington.
“The Chinese are trying to
change the existing order by coer-cion or intimidation,” he said.
Abe has been known through-out his career as a hawk on national security. But Kishida took a measured tone on China while in Washington, describing the relationship with Beijing as “one of the most important” for Japan.
“While Japan will not concede and will uphold our fundamen-tal positions that the Senkaku islands are an inherent territory of Japan, we intend to respond calmly so as not to provoke China,” Kishida said.
Kishida welcomed Clinton’s support, saying that the state-ment on the security treaty “will go against any unilateral action that would infringe upon the administration rights of Japan.”
US officials and pundits have largely welcomed the return of the Liberal Democratic Party, believ-ing that Abe’s firm positions and pledges to boost military spending will deter confrontational moves by Beijing.
However, Abe in the past has made controversial statements on Japan’s wartime history, lead-ing to fears that a loose com-ment could set off new tensions at a time that new leaders are also taking charge in China and South Korea.
Clinton said US officials “applaud the early steps” taken by Abe and hoped that new lead-ers in Japan and China would “get off to a good start.”
Separately, Clinton said the United States and Japan wanted “strong action” at the UN Security Council on North Korea, which put a satellite into orbit last month in a launch the two allies fear could bolster Pyongyang’s missile capabilities.
Diplomats at the United Nations said the United States and China, North Korea’s main ally, had reached a compromise under which the Security Council would expand existing sanctions against Pyongyang.
AFP
Student activists (right) scuffle with policemen during a protest in front of the US embassy in Manila yesterday, condemning a US Navy ship that ran aground on a coral reef in a protected Philippine marine reserve.
All crew leave US ship stuck in PhilippinesMANILA: All 79 officers and crew of a US Navy minesweeper stuck on a coral reef in the cen-tral Philippines have left the ship two days after efforts to free the vessel failed, the Navy said yesterday.
The ship ran aground on Thursday while in transit through the Tubbataha National Marine Park, a coral sanctuary in the Sulu Sea, 640km southwest of Manila. There were no injuries or oil leaks and Philippine authori-ties were trying to evaluate dam-age to the protected coral reef, designated by Unesco as a World Heritage Site.
The US Navy’s 7th Fleet ear-lier on Friday said 72 of the crew of the USS Guardian were transferred for safety reasons to
a military support vessel and a naval survey ship. The navy said in a statement hours later that all 79 crew members, including the commanding and the executive officers, had left the stricken ship.
The statement quoted 7th Fleet Commander Vice-Admiral Scott Swift as saying other ships “remain on scene and essential Guardian sailors will continue conducting survey operations onboard the ship as needed until she is recovered.”
He said several support vessels have arrived at the area and “all steps are being taken to mini-mize environmental effects while ensuring the crew’s continued safety.”
The World Wide Fund for Nature Philippines said that
according to an initial visual inspection, the 68-meter-long, 1,300-ton Guardian damaged at least 10 meters of the reef. Aerial photographs provided by the Philippine military showed the ship’s bow sitting atop corals in shallow turquoise waters. The stern was floating in the deep blue waters. The navy said the cause of the grounding, which took place about 2am on Thursday, was under investigation.
Angelique Songco, head of the government’s Protected Area Management Board, said it was unclear how much of the reef was damaged. She said the gov-ernment imposes a fine of about $300 per square of damaged coral.
In 2005, the environmental group Greenpeace was fined
almost $7,000 after its flagship struck a reef in the same area.
Songco said that park rang-ers were not allowed to board the ship for inspection and were told to contact the US embassy in Manila.
Philippine military spokesman Major Oliver Banaria said the US Navy did not request assistance from the Philippines.
US Navy ships have stepped up visits to Philippine ports for refu-elling, rest and recreation, plus joint military exercises as a result of a redeployment of US forces in the Asia-Pacific region.
The Philippines, a US defence treaty ally, has been entangled in a territorial dispute with China in the South China Sea.
THE PHILIPPINE STAR
Kachin rebels sceptical over Myanmar ceasefireNAYPYIDAW: Kachin rebels cast doubt yesterday over a Myanmar government pledge to end a military offensive after weeks of intense fighting that sparked international concern amid reports of fresh shelling.
The government move on Friday came after the country’s fledgling parliament called for a halt to the fighting, which has left dozens reported dead in northern Kachin state and marred opti-mism about the country’s politi-cal reforms.
The conflict between govern-ment troops and the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) has escalated in recent weeks with the use of air strikes by the military, prompting the United States and the United Nations to speak out.
The halt to the offensive was due to take effect from 6am yes-terday but the political wing of the KIA said it was sceptical.
“The Burmese... never keep promises,” Thailand-based spokesman James Lum Dau said, adding “several minutes of shell-ing” had taken place on Saturday near Laiza, the rebel base since the resumption of fighting in 2011.
A witness said that an uneasy peace prevailed in the city itself.
A KIA official, requesting ano-nymity, said the military had gained “the upper hand” by sur-rounding Laiza and was there-fore able to declare an end to the offensive from a position of strength. But he cautioned that the rebels would “wait and see” if military operations ceased.
AFP
Workers recount Algeria hostage dramaMANILA: Foreign workers abducted by Islamist militants in Algeria were garlanded with explosives and put into trucks rigged with bombs, the wife of one of the Philippine cap-tives recounted yesterday.
Ruben Andrada was just days into his job at a gas plant in the north African desert when he was seized by gunmen avenging what they said was Algiers’ support for French military action in neighbouring Mali, his wife said.
“According to him ... they draped a bomb on him, like a necklace,” Edelyn Andrada said in an interview aired by Manila radio station DZMM, which said the incident took place during a rescue bid by Algerian forces.
“Luckily, the bomb planted in his vehicle failed to explode. The bombs in the other vehicles went off and so people died,” she added.
She said her husband, whom DZMM said worked as a surveyor for a Japanese company, communicated to her by text message as he recovered at an unspecified hospital where he was being treated for gunshot wounds and cuts.
As reports began to emerge of the terrify-ing ordeal faced by hostages in Algeria, Jojo Balmaceda, employed by British oil giant BP, told
local television in the Philippines how he had escaped the militants.
Balmaceda and three other Filipino work-ers were taken at gunpoint as they arrived for work, tied up and thrown into a truck along with Japanese and Malaysian hostages, the GMA net-work reported.
Balmaceda escaped when the truck was hit by an explosion but sustained a gunshot wound to his head that affected his hearing, the station added.
“After that I ran away, fearing that the vehi-cle would explode. Then I lost consciousness and when I woke up I was already in hospital,” Balmaceda said in a brief telephone interview.
GMA said it interviewed Balmaceda shortly before he was flown to London.
Philippine foreign department spokesman Raul Hernandez did not address queries on Andrada and Balmaceda specifically, and Philippine embassy officials in London were unavailable for comment. Hernandez said 34 Filipino workers had been evacuated from the Algerian gas field and were on their way home to the Philippines, adding that a team had been sent from the Philippines’ embassy in Tripoli to Algeria.
AFP
Reforms will help the poor: MyanmarNAYPYIDAW: Myanmar’s leader vowed yesterday to put the nation’s impoverished people at the heart of reforms in a speech woo-ing international donors whose help is badly-needed to rebuild the battered economy.
After decades of kleptocratic junta rule Myanmar’s people remain among the world’s poorest, prompting President Thein Sein’s pledge to raise living standards, boost jobs and support farmers and small businesses.
The government “must be people-centred” and respond to their “needs, expectations and wishes”, Thein Sein told donors — including officials from the United States, European Union, Japan, World Bank and IMF — in Naypyidaw, according to an English transcript of his comments.
“While focusing on improvements in produc-tivity, job creation and income opportunities we
will also need to help people have better access to education, healthcare, social welfare, electricity and telecommunications,” he said.
Myanmar will fulfil those aspirations “more effectively and successfully if we... receive assistance from the international community”, he added. The country has asked the IMF for help in 2013, accord-ing to a report released this week by the body.
The study says the country’s economy bounced along in the 2011-12 financial year, posting a 5.5 percent growth rate that is expected to hit 6.25 percent this year.
Speaking at the donor forum, Kan Zaw, Minister for National Planning and Economic Development, said the government was crafting a 20-year eco-nomic plan and welcomed “ideas, knowledge, sys-tems and technology” as well as cash assistance.
AFP
Arrested Taliban
Two men in handcuffs, who the police said belong to the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, are shown after their arrest during a news conference at the Crime Investigation Department in Karachi yesterday.
WASHINGTON: Two Senate Democrats have urged the White House to reconsider plans to shrink Afghan national security forces by a third after 2015, saying a robust Afghan fighting force will be needed to fight Al Qaeda and its allies.
The appeal comes as President Barack Obama weighs how large of an American force to leave behind in Afghanistan after Nato declares the costly, unpopular war over at the end of 2014 and most foreign forces return home.
Officials say the White House is considering keeping between 3,000 and 9,000 troops in the country, a lower range than ini-tially recommended by the top commander in Afghanistan.
Carl Levin of Michigan, head of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and committee mem-ber Jack Reed of Rhode Island said Obama, a fellow Democrat, should use the US troop level announcement — expected in the coming months — as an opportu-nity to revisit plans to slash the Afghan forces from 352,000 to 230,000 after 2015.
“We support the establish-ment of a small number for the post-2014 (American) force,” they wrote to Tom Donilon, Obama’s national security adviser.
“At the same time, we are con-vinced that it will be necessary for the success of the mission to prevent Afghanistan from once again becoming a safe haven for Al
Qaeda and its affiliated organisa-tions, to reconsider plans to reduce the size of the (Afghan forces).”
Ryan Crocker, a former US envoy to Afghanistan, has esti-mated that the United States would end up paying about $2.5bn a year for Afghan security forces totalling 230,000.
Levin and Reed said the addi-tional expense for keeping a larger Afghan force would be affordable, given the projected drop in fund-ing for wartime operations.
“We recommend that when the president announces his decision on the post-2014 force, that he also announce he is reviewing the question of the size of the ANSF after 2015,” they wrote.
REUTERS
Top poll official welcomes reforms deal between cleric, government ISLAMABAD: Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Fakhruddin G Ebrahim has welcomed the electoral reforms agenda agreed to between the Pakistani government and cleric Muhammad Tahirul Qadri, and on Thursday assured that the commission would work out an effective plan to stop fake degree holders and others from contesting the polls.
“We have to do massive cleans-ing,” Fakhru Bhai said while adding that the commission was already working on a mechanism to make the scrutiny effective and meaningful in checking the credentials and standing of the contesting candidates in line with constitutional parameters.
He disclosed that he had already sought details about 55 fake degree holders who had made their way into legislative assem-blies. He said that details on tax evaders and defaulters on utility bills would also be sought.
Fakhru Bhai said that the pro-posal for a month-long scrutiny period for nomination papers was welcome and would help the commission minutely examine the aspirants before clearing them to contest the next parliamentary and provincial elections.
He disclosed that the nomina-tion papers were being revised as per the new demands and challenges.
The accord signed between Qadri and the government on Thursday night agreed to dissolve the National Assembly before March 16, 2013 so that elections may take place within 90 days, and the Election Commission of Pakistan could be given one month for scrutiny of nomination papers for the purpose of pre-clearance of candidates under articles 62 and 63 of the Constitution.
The Constitution bars a person from contesting polls if he or she has obtained a loan of Rs2m or more from any bank.
INTERNEWS
PESHAWAR: Institutional shortcomings, fiscal constraints and defective training are responsible for an ineffective technical and vocational edu-cation and training system in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, result-ing in a growing unskilled workforce in the province.
The Skills Development Plan (SDP), Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, describes competing social and economic demands, underu-tilisation of existing facilities, inflexibility/lack of autonomy, problems with training content, linkage of institutional training programmes with employment market, informal sector train-ing, apprenticeship training and public sector allocations, and the effect of globalisation as con-straints facing the technical and vocational education and training (TVET) system in the province.
To create a road map for the province to reduce its unem-ployment rate and overcome the skilled labour shortage faced by the public and private sec-tor by improving vocation and technical training in the prov-ince, the plan was put in place in October 2012 with the assistance of GIZ, a German development organisation, and other develop-ment partners of the provincial government.
It was prepared for the pro-vincial ministry for technical education, where, according to a relevant source, it remains unattended, accumulating dust because of official negligence.
SDP asks for involving employ-ers in designing training pack-age, terming it vital to achieve the objective of quality control, relevance, and standardisation and making training programme cost effective. Similarly, it empha-sises the need for practicing
public-private partnership as a pragmatic solution to make train-ing programmes more meaningful and effective.
In this respect, it points out that since most of the population in the country lives in remote areas, therefore, it would be cost effective to establish technical/vocational training centres at these places. However, it sug-gests that due to small catch-ments areas, the needs of these localities would not be enough to warrant establishment of institutions.
“The best way is, therefore, to introduce the concept of com-munity based training,” contains the SDP, recommending that CBT should be sufficiently flexible and technically adequate to train the population of the local areas in the appropriate skills.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has developed SDP to plan the actions needed to improve the skills and employability of its people to cre-ate jobs and attain sustainable economic development.
“The plan targets the specific skills development requirements which will allow the province to develop its economy and society,” says the document, which is based on National Skills Strategy (NSS) developed through a national con-sultative process in 2009.
The increase in its popula-tion is duly reflected in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s civilian labour force that, according to the SDP document, increased from 6.23 million in 2007-08 to 6.53 million in 2008-09 as per Labour Force Survey of 2008-09.
Unemployment rate for the province at 8.5 percent is signifi-cantly higher than the national average of 5.5 per cent, according to the plan.
INTERNEWS
KABUL: Nato forces in Afghanistan have stopped send-ing prisoners to some Afghan jails after reports of torture and have asked Kabul to investigate allegations of abuse by members of a US-backed paramilitary police force.
The ban on transfers revives concerns about human rights in Afghan prisons, first raised in 2011 by a United Nations report. The report detailed widespread abuse, including the ripping out of detainees’ toenails and the twist-ing of their genitals, and prompted Nato-led troops to halt prisoner transfers for several months.
Handovers resumed after inspections and training but a new report by the same UN office is expected to confirm there are still serious problems, a few months after torture concerns
prompted Britain’s defence min-ister to drop plans to transfer prisoners to Afghan jails.
The report’s broad findings were detailed in an official email released last year by the Ministry of Defence as part of a court case challenging the UK moratorium on handovers. The report has been repeatedly delayed since last summer, when it was originally expected to be released.
“The report would conclude that torture was continuing to take place at NDS (National Directorate of Security) and ANP (Afghan national police) facilities across Afghanistan, whilst rec-ognising that there had been a decline in the prevalence of abuse at some facilities,” said the email, which detailed a meeting between UK embassy diplomats and UN officials working on the report.
It highlighted a counter-ter-rorism jail run by the intelligence services in Kabul as one major problem, “with a large number of serious recent allegations sur-facing”, and named a man who subsequently became head of the Afghan spy service, Asadullah Khaled, as a “principle (sic) cul-prit” for the torture of Taliban prisoners.
The Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) confirmed a ban on transfers to some jails, but did not confirm if it was a reaction to the UN report.
“Based on concerns over detainee treatment at certain Afghan detention facilities, Isaf suspended the transfer of detain-ees to these facilities,” spokesman James Graybeal said in a written response to questions. He declined to say which prisons or areas of
the country had problematic treatment of prisoners, so it was not clear if they were the same jails identified in the 2011 report.
Then, nearly half of prison-ers interviewed by Afghanistan’s intelligence agency said they had been tortured, while a third of those arrested by Afghan police reported abuse, although the report said the ill-treatment was not “institutional or government policy”.
Nato has also raised torture concerns about a controversial US-backed programme to bolster security forces through militia-like groupings of men armed and paid to defend their home villages or districts, known as the Afghan Local Police (ALP).
“Isaf has formally requested that the GIRoA (Government of the Islamic Republic of
Afghanistan) ministry of interior investigate instances where tor-ture by the ALP has been alleged,” Graybeal said. The Afghan gov-ernment “has committed to uphold its human right obliga-tions”, and was co-operating with efforts to end torture, he added.
But Afghan officials said the claims of mistreatment were unfounded, and there had been no official notice that handovers had been halted by the US or Nato.
“We reject this, we have received no evidence from the Americans that there is tor-ture in our jails,” said National Directorate of Security spokes-man Shafiqullah Tahiri. “The human rights commission and defence commissions visit the prisons and interview prisoners. They are not being tortured.”
THE GUARDIAN
Don’t shrink Afghan forces: US SenatorsSlashing numbers will hinder fight against Al Qaeda
Nato stops using local jails after reports of torture
Job creation plan to fight poverty in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
ISLAMABAD: The hollow-cheeked father of the slain television cameraman, Imran Sheikh, burst into tears while narrating the ordeal of his family.
Imran Sheikh was killed in the line of duty during the recent bombings in Pakistan’s south-western city of Quetta, along with Saifur Rehman of Samaa TV and Iqbal Hussain, a photographer for NNI.
He said he was very happy when Imran got a job as camera-man at Samaa TV, and added that he never thought his son was in a dangerous profession.
Imran’s two orphaned daugh-ters, two-year-old Amna and one-year-old Hafza, were playing with dolls when we were offering
fateha for the departed soul. As a father, he doted on them.
“It pains me when they speak of their father,” Kamran Sheikh, the girls’ uncle, said.
Living in a mud-and-brick house with two rooms, the family has lost its sole breadwinner.
Imran had been working in Samaa TV since the beginning of 2008. He was considered one of the most talented cameramen in the city.
“Ironically, Imran used to advise us to avoid going to dan-gerous spots,” Shehzad Anwar, a DawnNews cameraman, said.
“Please cover explosions from a distance and zoom in the visu-als, he used to tell us,” Shehzad remarked.
Imran died when the second
explosion hit the Alamdar road area on January 10.
TV channels reported his death, which was followed by the news of Saifur Rehman’s killing. Rehman worked as reporter for the same channel.
Saif was initially missing, and the authorities confirmed his death four hours after the explo-sion. The intensity of the blast had damaged their bodies and faces and they could not be easily recognised.
Over 24 journalists have fallen prey to bullets and bomb blasts in different parts of violence-plagued Balochistan over the past six years. The murderers are still at large and the authorities appear helpless.
While reporting on such
heinous crimes, journalists live through a deep sense of insecu-rity. Many media organisations, whether print or electronic, don’t train cameramen or reporters to report from a safe distance.
More than 26 journalists were injured during different sui-cide attacks, bomb explosions and firing because they had not been instructed to avoid stand-ing on the crime scene after its clearance by law-enforcement personnel.
Two cameramen, Ejaz Raisani and Arif Malik, were killed in the same incidents.
The rating race between the channels puts lives of reporters, cameramen and DSNG staff in peril.
INTERNEWS
Ratings race endangers media persons’ lives
A US Army soldier stands guard outside a compound during a joint mission with the Afghan National Army in Kandahar province yesterday.
13PAKISTAN / AFGHANISTAN SUNDAY 20 JANUARY 2013
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14 INDIASUNDAY 20 JANUARY 2013
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Drying scarf
Taking a break
A girl dries her scarf on a beach in Mumbai.
Soldiers dance as they take a break during a rehearsal for the Republic Day parade on a cold winter morning in New Delhi yesterday.
JAIPUR: Rahul Gandhi was yesterday named the Congress vice president, making him officially the number two in the party after his mother and Congress chief Sonia Gandhi.
Congress spokesperson Janardan Dwivedi told report-ers that the decision to elevate Rahul Gandhi was taken by the Congress Working Committee, the party’s highest decision mak-ing body, at the ‘Chintan Shivir’ at the Birla auditorium here.
“With his appointment as vice president of the Congress party today, Rahul Gandhi has been ele-vated to number two position in the party,” Dwivedi told reporters, amid scenes of wild jubilation by Congress workers and supporters.
The supporters also demanded that Rahul Gandhi be named the Congress’ prime ministe-rial candidate for the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. Rahul Gandhi heads the coordination panel for the elections. “This decision will greatly strengthen the party and the hands of the Congress presi-dent,” Dwivedi said.
Rahul Gandhi’s name was pro-posed by Defence Minister A K Antony and seconded by Dwivedi. Congress president Sonia Gandhi nodded in assent. “The whole working committee appreciated the proposal with clapping on the tables and after their support the Congress president gave a nod and Rahul Gandhi accepted the post,” said Dwivedi.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was the first to offer Rahul Gandhi a bouquet. Thereafter, a host of leaders lined up to offer him boquets and garland him. “The party has reposed its confidence in its most effective and accepted young leader, reflecting the strong feelings of the millions of Congress workers,” Dwivedi said.
“Any election or campaign-related decision will be taken at a later stage,” he added. Rahul Gandhi’s role in the coming elec-tions will be decided by the party later, he added.
As soon as the announcement was made, supporters cheered and danced to drum beats, waving posters of Rahul Gandhi. The city sky scape was lit up with spar-kling pyrotechnic fireworks.
Congress leaders, especially Rahul Gandhi’s young brigade, wholeheartedly welcomed the move. “He will try and live up to the expectations of a new India,” said Minister of State for Human Resource Development Jitin Prasada.
Terming Rahul Gandhi’s new post as a “game changer” for the Congress, Minister of State for Home R P N Singh said he has “brought about new thinking in the party” and his appointment reflects the demographics of a young India.
Asked whether Rahul Gandhi would be pitted against Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi in 2014, Singh said the Bharatiya Janata Party had not as yet decided on its prime ministerial candidate. Modi is being touted as the BJP’s frontrunner for the top post.
However, he added that Rahul Gandhi would “definitely be the face of the Congress” in 2014 and the party would choose its prime minister after coming to power. “When he is the face of the Congress party, when we come back to power in UPA-III we will support him (as PM).”
Party spokesperson Sandeep Dikshit said Rahul Gandhi will be the “chief campaigner” for the elections, but the “high com-mand” will take a final decision on his prime ministerial candidature.
IANS
Rahul Gandhi is Congress vice presidentRahul to be party’s face in 2014 polls
NEW DELHI: Mukesh, one of the six accused in the December 16, 2012 gang rape here, has moved the Supreme Court for shifting the case outside Delhi for “free and fair trial”.
Moving the apex court, Mukesh pleaded that free and fair hearing was not possible because of strong public sentiment against him in the city. A fast track court in Saket in south Delhi would start hearing the case on January 21.
In view of regular agitations, police and judicial officials were under pressure to pass an order according to the demand of the agi-tators and fair hearing was not pos-sible, said Mukesh, lodged in Tihar jail along with four other accused.
Mukesh’s lawyer M L Sharma, while filing the petition for shifting the case from Delhi to Mathura in Uttar Pradesh, said: “The sentiment has gone into
the root of each home in Delhi by which even the judicial officers and state are not spared and in these circumstances, he cannot get justice in Delhi at all.”
The plea said due to media reports there were regular public agitations in Delhi.
“Political pressures are mount-ing to hang the arrested persons...Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit and her party leader Sonia Gandhi are taking personal interest to get punished the petitioner and his co-accused,” the petition said.
The plea added that “due to media trial and day-to-day agita-tion, the subject matter has gone into the root of each house in Delhi. Petitioner’s counsel is also under serious threat and even in the court room he has been declined to be heard properly”.
Police filed the charge-sheet against five accused on January
3 accusing them of murder and gang rape, among other charges. Accused Ram Singh, Mukesh, Pawan Gupta, Vinay Sharma and Akshay Thakur were charged with gang raping and brutally assaulting the woman in a moving bus. The victim died in a Singapore hospital on December 29. The case of the sixth accused, who claimed to be juvenile, was being heard by the juvenile justice board.
Rape cases in New Delhi jumped 23 percent in 2012 from a year earlier, according to official figures. For 2012, some 706 rape cases were registered — a 23.43 percent leap from the previous year, police said. Some 45 cases of rape and 75 cases of sexual moles-tation were reported to police in the two weeks after the brutal gang rape attack on the physi-otherapy student. IANS
PANAJI: All educational insti-tutions in Goa could soon have mobile phone jammers and CCTV cameras to keep an eye on miscreants hanging out on campuses.
At a meeting of top police offi-cials and school managements, CCTV cameras were identified as one of the key ways of deterring incidents like the brutal rape of a seven-year-old girl in a school in the port town of Vasco, 35km from here.
“We have said that they (school management) have to install CCTV cameras. Physical security is good, but using technology to deter anti-social elements is extremely neces-sary,” said a police official who attended the meeting said.
A total of 34 heads/repre-sentatives of the schools and colleges in Panaji, attended the meeting which was addressed by Superintendent of Police Vishram Borkar.
“We have also suggested to the school to install jammers is pos-sible inside campuses as a security measure,” the official said, adding that beat patrolling would also be increased near school areas to ensure that students are safe.
The rape of a seven-year-old girl and the inability of police to arrest the accused had caused several protests in the state, known for its reputation as a beach party destination.
Three days after the school-girl’s rape, the police were found dealing with another sex crime after a 19-year-old girl was found raped and stripped, with her head smashed beyond recog-nition in the forests of Assagao, 20km from here.
IANS
KOLKATA: The CPI-M yes-terday said it was not cur-rently concerned about forming a third front, and is instead working on strengthening Left and democratic forces opposed to the Congress and the BJP for the 2014 general elections.
“We are not envisaging the crea-tion of a third front at the moment. We are working on strengthening all the Left and democratic forces. We are working on forging alli-ance of non-Congress and non-BJP forces,” Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) general secretary Prakash Karat said after the con-clusion of the party’s three-day central committee meeting here.
Karat however, did not concur
with the views of Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad who on Friday described the third front “a group of wannabe prime ministers” that will never come into existence. “Lalu Prasad and his party have already decided to align with the Congress. That is why he is saying such things. We do not share his views,” said Karat.
He also said the party was work-ing towards stirring up a nation-wide movement against the faulty economic policies of the govern-ment and determined to effect not only the fall of the Congress led United Progressive Alliance government but also prevent the “communal” Bharatiya Janata Party from coming to power.
The CPI-M will take out four jathas (processions) from across the country from February 25 to propagate its stand on issues affecting the people and alterna-tive leftist policies. “Food secu-rity and price rise, land and house sites, employment, education and health and fight against cor-ruption will be the focus of the jathas,” Karat said.
The four jathas will begin from Kanyakumari, Kolkata, Mumbai and Amritsar and head to Delhi. The jathas will be headed by party leaders R C Pillai, Karat, Sitaram Yechury and Brinda Karat respectively.
Karat was critical of the United Progressive Alliance government
accusing it of allowing business houses to accumulate profits at the cost of the common people.
“Under the UPA regime, the country faced multiple problems. In fact, the UPA has taken the attack to the common people by burdening them with its policies but is shamelessly allowing cor-porate and foreign capital to reap huge profits,” said Karat.
He also lambasted the govern-ment for its decision to deregulate diesel prices and increase railways fare and initiating cash transfer scheme. He also said the CPI-M was against dilution of govern-ment’s role in the proposed Land Acquisition bill.
IANS
BANGALORE: Distinguished space scientist and former ISRO chairman U R Rao will be inducted into the ‘Satellite Hall of Fame’ in Washington on March 19 in recognition of his contribution to space technology.
“The Society of Satellite Professionals International (SSPI) will induct Rao as a member of the prestigious ‘Satellite Hall of Fame’ in Washington for his invaluable contribution in space technol-ogy,” the state-run Indian Space Research Organisation said.
Since 1987, the SSPI Hall of Fame has been recognising the immense contribution of vision-aries transforming life on planet earth for the better through sat-ellite technology.
The 80-year-old Rao, who hails from Bangalore, is currently chair-man of the governing council of the space agency’s Physical Research Laboratory at Ahmedabad. As ISRO chairman for a decade from 1984-94, Rao accelerated the development of rocket tech-nology, resulting in the launch of augmented satellite launch vehicle and the operational polar satellite launch vehicle that put two-tonne class of satellites into polar orbit.
He also initiated the develop-ment of the geostationary launch vehicle and the development of cryogenic technology in the early 1990s. Under Rao’s supervision, beginning with the first Indian satellite ‘Aryabhata’ in 1975, around 18 satellites were designed and launched for providing com-munication, remote sensing and meteorological services.
Rao has published over 350 sci-entific and technical papers cov-ering cosmic rays, interplanetary physics, high energy astronomy, space applications and satellite and rocket technology. IANS
JAIPUR: Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister M Veerappa Moily yesterday ruled out the possibility of gov-ernment rolling back the deci-sion allowing Oil marketing Companies (OMCs) to revise diesel prices from time to time.
“India is the only country where we have the regulation of the diesel prices. We have to pay dollars and billions of crore are paid. If we go on paying in dol-lars ultimately the country will become bankrupt,” Moily said, when asked if government was contemplating rolling back the partial deregulation of diesel prices as demanded by the entire opposition and parties supporting the government.
Diesel accounts for 59 per-cent of the estimated Rs160,000 crore fuel subsidy bill of the
government in 2012-13. The decision is expected to cut the subsidy bill by Rs12,900 crore as a result of the hike in price of diesel sold to bulk consum-ers like the Railways and state transport undertakings.
The oil companies have been permitted to raise diesel prices by a small quantum periodically till such time that they are able to cover Rs9.60 per litre loss they incur on the fuel.
The minister said continuing the heavy fuel subsidies will only burden the economy.
“What will happen if the fiscal deficit rises? Our rat-ings and investment will come down. Nobody will come and invest and when it comes down then we become a junk state,” Moily said.
IANS
Gang rape accused moves Supreme Court to shift trial out of Delhi
Schools in Goa could soon have CCTVs, phone jammers
No rollback in diesel price hike: Minister
No plans for third front yet, says CPM chiefUS honour for space scientist U R Rao
MORNING BREAK16SUNDAY 20 JANUARY 2013
www.thepeninsulaqatar.com
Fajr (Dawn) 5:01
Shorook (Sunrise) 6:21
Zuhr (Noon) 11:45
Asr (Afternoon) 2:48
Maghrib (Sunset) 5:10
Isha (Night) 6:40
PRAYER TIME
Weather Conditions:
Misty to foggy at first, becoming slightly dusty with some clouds.
WASHINGTON 07/-1 Mostly sunny 07/-5 Chance of snow
SYDNEY 26/20 Chance of storms 29/21 Partly sunny
LONDON 0/-9 Snow 0/-1 Partly sunny
PARIS 03/-2 Snow 04/-1 Chance of rain
ISTANBUL 13/08 Mostly sunny 12/07 Mostly sunny
MANILA 29/22 Mostly sunny 29/23 Mostly sunny
DHAKA 28/17 Mostly sunny 28/11 Clear
DELHI 18/06 Clear 18/06 Mostly sunny
ISLAMABAD 17/03 Clear 18/05 Mostly sunny
News in Numbers
Source : http://www.qsa.gov.qa/
WINDOW ON ECONOMIC ACTIVITY 2
Third Quarter of 2012 (QRm)
Exports, Imports and Merchandise Trade Balance
Second and Third Quarter of 2012 (QRm)140,000
120,000
100,000
80,000
60,000
40,000
20,000
0Q2 2012 Q3 2012
Exports Imports Trade balance
Acid attack on ballet director likely driven by jealousyMOSCOW: The artistic direc-tor of Russia’s Bolshoi Ballet will undergo surgery next week to try to save his eyesight after an attacker threw acid in his face, the theatre’s chief said yesterday.
Sergei Filin, 42, spoke to investigators in a Moscow hos-pital, Bolshoi director Anatoly Iksanov said, adding that they also questioned his colleagues, who said the attack was likely triggered by envy, rivalry or com-petition for roles in Russia’s most prestigious theatre.
“Investigators are questioning those who worked in the thea-tre, artists,” said Iksanov on the snowy grounds outside the hos-pital, where Filin was receiving visitors.
A masked assailant threw acid in Filin’s face late on Thursday night outside his house as he returned home from the theatre. Colleagues said Filin believes the attacker had been following him and called him by name before striking.
An icon of Russian culture, the Bolshoi Theatre is a magnet for tourists and has seen power struggles among dancers and directors throughout more than 200 years of history.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, many of those con-flicts, whether driven by egos or artistic conviction, have been played out in public.
Iksanov said he and Filin discussed the theatre’s future during his absence and that a temporary replacement had been chosen.
“It was Sergei’s choice,” he told Russia 24 television, without nam-ing the candidate.
Iksanov said medics feared for his eyesight.
The chief physician at the hos-pital was quoted by Itar Tass as saying Filin was in bandages fol-lowing surgery on Friday but was able to walk and eat.
“The doctors’ biggest fear is the trauma (on) Sergei’s eyes and in the course of two weeks, it will be understood what kind of pro-cedures, what has to be done,” he said.
“The next operation has been decided, it will happen on Tuesday or Wednesday.”
Bolshoi Theatre spokeswoman Katerina Novikova said previ-ously Filin would be transferred to a burn centre in Belgium, but government spokesman Alexei Levchenko, speaking to Interfax, dismissed those plans, saying he would stay in Russia as he was getting the necessary treatment. REUTERS
‘Two Mothers’ premiere
From left: Australian actors James Frecheville, Naomi Watts and Xavier Samuel arrive for the premiere of the movie ‘Two Mothers’ at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, USA.
Digest this: Allergies may be a disability!W A S H I N G T O N : Allergic to gluten? What about peanuts? Federal disabilities law may be able to help.
The US Justice Department said in a recent settlement with a Massachusetts college that severe food allergies can be considered a dis-ability under the law. That gives those who suffer from such allergies a new avenue in seeking menus that fit their diet. But some say it goes too far.
The decision leaves schools, restaurants and other places that serve food more exposed to legal chal-lenges if they fail to honour requests for accommoda-tions by people with food allergies. Colleges and universities are especially vulnerable because they know their students and often require them to eat on campus, Eve Hill of the Justice Department’s civil rights division says. But a restaurant also could be liable if it blatantly ignored a customer’s request for certain foods. AP
Workers change drilling pipes on the rotary table of a natural gas drilling rig near Towanda, Pennsylvania. Even though US natural gas prices have bounced away from the decade lows as of April last year, the country’s Securities and Exchange Commission requires companies to calculate and report year-end oil and gas reserves using 12-month average prices.
BY SATISH KANADY
DOHA: Balance-sheet con-straints, intense competition and undiversified funding port-folios are posing challenges to the growth of Qatari banks. With government funding flowing freely to real estate and construction sector, the banks’ asset quality should also con-tinue to improve, Fitch Ratings noted in its 2013 GCC/Middle East Banks Outlook.
Qatar’s rapid loan growth has been well above the average in the region. It has been more or less matched by deposit growth,
to a large extent public sector, but loans/deposits ratios are gradu-ally creeping up.
A further downside to rapid growth is the concentration of risk that may increase sharply-although risk is mitigated by gov-ernment backing for the largest corporates and the major infra-structure projects in Qatar.
Although all the major banks have diverse revenue sources, margin pressure could arise from higher funding costs linked to increasing reliance on inter-national borrowing, even though the banks currently remain essentially funded by customer
deposits. Competition may also increase following the decision of the Qatar Central Bank (QCB) to separate conventional and Islamic banking operations.
While this may prove an attractive opportunity for exist-ing Islamic banks, there is lit-tle sign to date of any negative impact on the conventional banks.
“Asset quality (of Qatari banks) should continue to improve, with government spending flow-ing freely, mainly into the real estate and construction sectors. Asset quality ratios are perhaps flattered by rapid loan while
interest rate caps will also make retail lending less attractive to the banks. As loans loss cover-age is very high and NPLs (Non Performing Loans) have prob-ably peaked, pressures on earn-ings from impairment charges is likely to be low,” the ratings agency noted.
Some funding pressure is likely for banks, apart from Qatar National Bank (QNB), that already have loans/customer deposits ratios have 100 percent.
Government spending should feed through into increased cus-tomer deposits, but rapid loan growth could exceed deposit
growth in the future. Liquidity is currently reasonable, reflect-ing large holdings of liquid assets including Qatari government securities, but could come under strain due to lengthening loan maturities.
However, in light of past liquid-ity support for the banks, sup-port from the authorities is likely to remains strong. Banks which have issued in the international debt markets have been able to do so at relatively modest pric-ing. Capital ratios remain sound, but could be eroded as loan books expand.
According to the Fitch Outlook,
banks in the Gulf region are set to see a gradual improvement in profitability on rising fee income and lower impairment charges this year.. The ratings agency said the outlook for most banks in the GCC/Middle East region was stable, largely driven by the probability of sovereign support.
Fitch said it expects loan growth to increase in 2013, as con-fidence improves and infrastruc-ture projects come on stream, stimulating the local economies. But the agency also warned that much also depends on the global economy and regional unrest.
THE PENINSULA
Competition and undiversified funding portfolios pose challenges to growth of local banks, says Fitch Ratings
Qatari bank asset quality set to improve
DOHA: Qatar’s road sector will witness a sharp increase in con-tract awards this year as the government initiates a major infrastructure upgrade of the country’s road network.
Qatar, along with Saudi Arabia, has one of the GCC’s busiest road markets to date, with contracts valued $1.8bn awarded so far.
The country’s road market in 2012 has been propped by two major awards, the $640m deal awarded to UAE’s Al Jaber Group for package 13 on the Doha Expressway and the $961m deal awarded to South Korea’s Hyundai Engineering & Construction for the Lusail Expressway.
According to MEED Projects, spending on future projects will significantly increase this year as more than 30 highway projects, valued at $27.5bn, are awarded.
Tracking the growth and devel-opment of Qatar’s transport sec-tor, including details of potential contract awards, will be discussed significantly at the forthcoming
Qatar Projects 2013 conference - the biggest gathering of stake-holders, owners, contractors in Qatar’s project sector that is being held under the patronage of the Minister of Energy and Industry H E Dr Mohammed bin Saleh Al Sada.
Supported by Qatar’s Ministry of Trade and Business, Qatar Chamber and Public Works Authority (Ashghal), the con-ference will take place at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Doha from February 17 to 20.
The year 2013 onwards presents bigger opportunities to do business in Qatar as the coun-try enters the next critical phase of its preparations to host FIFA World Cup in 2022. Contractors, consultants and other stakehold-ers would not want to miss the massive surge of contracts that will be awarded in the next few years, with details and leads to be announced in various pres-entations and panel discussions throughout the duration of the conference,” said Edmund O’
Sullivan, Chairman, MEED Events, organisers of Qatar Projects 2013.
The high profile conference features a keynote address from H E Abdulla bin Saoud Al Thani, Governor of the Central Bank, who will share insights on how government initiatives will drive project developments in the coun-try and broader long-term eco-nomic aspirations.
Other noted speak-ers will include Dr Khaled Alderbesti, Director, Economic and Commercial Promotion Department of the Ministry of Business and Trade; Remy Rowhani, Director General of Qatar Chamber; and Eng Nasser Ghaith Al Kuwari, Manager Drainage Projects Department, Public Works Authority (Ashghal).
Among the critical topics that will be discussed at the confer-ence include tendering and bid preparation insights from major and mid-sized contractors, achieving project efficiencies and
transparency on tenders and project bids, as well as driving costs down for materials, work-force and project resources.
Transport projects throughout the GCC will also be thoroughly discussed, as the region under-takes a massive road building and upgrade, with $4.9bn worth of construction contracts in the road sector already awarded last year, up 22 percent compared to 2011.
Qatar Projects 2013 will provide not just insights and information about the projects industry in Qatar, but important networking opportunities for all participants. In addition to Qatar Petroleum, Ministry of Business and Trade, and Public Works Authority, Qatar Projects 2013 is being sup-ported by United Development Company as Strategic Partner; the International Bank of Qatar (IBQ) as Platinum sponsor; Qatar Islamic Bank as Gold Sponsor; Mashreq as Silver Sponsor; as well as Qatar Insurance Company and Brookfield Multiplex as Bronze Sponsors. THE PENINSULA
Qatar to witness $27.5bn road upgrade
CAIRO: Egypt’s foreign reserves have risen to $15.5bn, helped by a deposit by Qatar to support the economy, its finance minister said, although they are still close to critical levels after being run down to defend Egypt’s currency.
The central bank put reserves at $15.015bn at the end of December. It has implemented a new regime for buying and selling foreign currency and currency controls to try to stem a fall in reserves, which have tumbled from $36bn before the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak in early 2011.
Finance Minister Al Mursi Al Sayed Hegazy told report-ers about the new reserve figure yesterday without giving fur-ther details about the deposit by Qatar, a generous donor to Egypt.
Qatar said earlier this month it had lent Egypt $2bn and given it $500m outright. It has pledged to stand by Egypt to help sup-port the nation, which has been battered by political turmoil and violence that has scared away investors.
Hegazy said reserves should rise further in future after approval of a draft law allowing
Egypt to issue sovereign Islamic bonds, known as sukuk. The draft law was passed by cabinet this week but needs the backing of the Islamist-led upper house of parliament.
The minister said in December that Qatar had deposited $500m, although the reserve figure for that month was still around $15bn, the same as at the end of November.
The central bank has said reserves have reached a critical level. At $15bn, reserves cover roughly three months of imports.
Egypt has spent about $21bn of its reserves since the start of 2011 when the uprising against Mubarak erupted, plus several billion dollars in additional aid and support from Qatar and other donors to defend the Egyptian pound.
Cairo is negotiating a $4.8bn loan from the International Monetary Fund. After the deal was agreed in principle in November, it was delayed after Egypt postponed some unpopu-lar tax rises viewed as needed to secure the IMF funds.
An IMF team is expected to return to Egypt in the coming weeks for fresh discussions.
REUTERS
Qatar aid pushes Egypt’s foreign reserves to $15.5bn
DOHA: Qatari and Moroccan ministers have discussed investment opportunities between the two countries in Riyadh yesterday.
The Minister of Business and Trade H E Sheikh Jassim bin Abdulaziz Al Thani and the Moroccan Minister of Economic and Financial Affairs Nizar Baraka, met on the sidelines of a joint meeting between ministers participat-ing in the preparatory meeting for the third Arab Economic and Social Developmental Summit Saudi Arabia.
A ministry release said that the two ministers had also discussed the possibil-ity of boosting bilateral trade cooperation.
The ministers had agreed on the importance of increas-ing bilateral trade volume and facilitating trade and invest-ment opportunities in both countries. QNA
Business minister meets Moroccan economy minister
KUWAIT: Kuwait’s budget sur-plus for the first eight months (April 2012 to November 2012) of fiscal year 2012/2013 reached KD14.7bn ($52bn), exceeding the KD11.6bn surplus recorded at the end of the same period of FY 2011/2012, an economic report showed yesterday.
The report, by Kuwait Finance House Research, was based on data from the central bank.
It added that the state rev-enues stood at KD21.6bn at end of November 2012, far exceeding the budgeted amount of KD9.3bn.
Oil revenue continues to make up almost all of the government’s income, accounting for nearly 95 percent of the total revenue.
Kuwait traditionally under-estimates oil prices and set it at just $65 per barrel in the FY 2012/2013 budget plan, resulting in a low revenue projection.
Brent oil prices averaged at $111.9 per barrel last year.
QNA
Kuwait’s 8-month budget surplus jumps to KD14.7bn
18 BUSINESSSUNDAY 20 JANUARY 2013
www.thepeninsulaqatar.com
DOHA: Doha hosted the World Gas-to-Liquids (GTL) Congress at a time of height-ened interest in the industry, according to QNB Group.
Recent landmark develop-ments include the commission-ing of the second train of Pearl GTL in Qatar, moves by Qatar Airways to utilise GTL as jet fuel and plans for new GTL plants in the US and elsewhere.
Sasol, a South African firm, brought the technology to Qatar to build the 34,000 bar-rels per day (b/d) Oryx GTL plant in partnership with Qatar Petroleum (QP).
At its launch in 2006 it was the world’s largest GTL plant, but has since been surpassed by Pearl GTL, a joint-venture of Shell and QP. Its first train was commissioned in 2011 and the second last summer. The entire plant is currently oper-ating at around 85 percent of its nameplate capacity of 140,000 b/d of GTL.
Interest in GTL has come in three waves, according to QNB Group. The first was in the early 1990s, when the South African and Malaysian plants were launched. The second wave was in the early 2000s, when the current plants in Qatar were
envisaged, as well as a 33,000 b/d project by Chevron and Sasol in Nigeria, due to be commissioned this year.
However, some other GTL projects, envisaged during the second wave were subsequently cancelled. This happened largely because the LNG market looked like it offered a better rate of return on capital. Qatar backed Oryx and Pearl GTL, alongside its even larger LNG projects, in order to diversify its options for monetising gas.
It is too early to judge which technology—GTL or LNG—will offer better returns on invest-ment in the long-term. This will depend on the average premium of liquid fuels over LNG prices over the lifetime of the projects, compared to the difference in capital and operational costs. Currently, GTL capital costs are about $100k-$200k per b/d, about 2-4 times those of LNG, affected by several factors such plant size and the potentially volatile prices of construction materials.
The GTL conversion proc-ess also consumes some of the gas feedstock. Depending on the particular plant and local cost of gas, GTL is considered to break even at about $40-$80
per barrel. Refined oil prices are currently well above this level, providing strong profit margins.
The US shale gas revolution there has driven down local gas prices at a time of high oil prices, thereby boosting the appeal of GTL.
The US government’s Energy Information Agency (EIA) fore-casts that the ratio of domestic oil to gas prices will be twice as high in the period until 2030 than it was in the previous two decades. This is why Sasol announced plans last month for a 96,000 b/d GTL plant in Louisiana, to start operations in 2018.
Although Sasol and Shell hold most of the expertise and patents for large-scale GTL plants, new firms are entering the sector. Oxford Catalysts, a spinoff from the university sci-ence department, is developing smaller-scale modular GTL technology, suitable for produc-tion ranging from a few hun-dred to a few thousand b/d. This could help capture “stranded” associated gas from oilfields which would otherwise be flared because the volume and/or loca-tion means that it is not eco-nomical to market by pipeline or LNG.
Petrobras, for example, is considering this technology to utilise the associated gas in Brazil’s offshore oilfields. Waste biomass can also be used as a feedstock for small-scale GTL.
QNB Group concludes that the future of GTL will depend on whether capital costs can be kept under control and on long-term expectations for the price premium of oil over gas/LNG.
If the major GTL plants under discussion go ahead, then global production capacity could more than double by the end of the decade to nearly 0.5m b/d.
The new capacity would not significantly compete with exist-ing GTL because it would still be well under one percent of glo-bal oil consumption. Small scale GTL is a new development that has yet to be commercialised, but its prospects look promising.
An optimistic case envis-ages that it has the potential to produce perhaps 3m b/d of GTL from currently flared gas, although the installation of this capacity could take decades. Coal and biomass based GTL capacity is also likely to grow, driven by energy security and sustainability considerations, respectively.
THE PENINSULA
QNB Group: Global interest in GTL expected to grow
SANA’A: Yemen’s parliament approved the transitional gov-ernment’s YR2.77tn ($12.9bn) 2013 spending plan yesterday, four weeks after it was passed by the cabinet, after the former president’s party withdrew objections to some spending.
Yemen, the poorest Arab state, is grappling with the aftermath of political tumult in 2011 that top-pled Ali Abdullah Saleh and two domestic insurgencies that have caused a humanitarian crisis.
Restoring stability is seen as key by Washington and Gulf countries because of Yemen’s location on the important Red Sea oil shipment route and the presence there of an Al Qaeda wing that vows to topple Saudi Arabia’s ruling family and strike international targets.
The cabinet said in December its budget plan for this year pro-jected spending of YR2.77bn and a deficit of YR682bn.
A source in parliament told Reuters the breakthrough came after a meeting on Wednesday between interim President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi and mem-bers of parliament.
Saleh’s party, the General People’s Congress, holds a major-ity in parliament, giving it powers of veto over important laws such as budgets.
It had objected to the amount of “general spending” in the budget plan.
Last year the country did not pass its budget plan until April.
The economy of Yemen shrank 10.5 percent in 2011, further destabilising the country and worsening poverty in a country where two in five people live on less than $2 a day. REUTERS
WASHINGTON: The International Monetary Fund has begun negotiations with Tunisia on a loan programme and hopes to return to Egypt for talks on a $4.8bn funding deal, but only after the govern-ment updates its budget meas-ures, a top IMF official said late on Friday.
Masood Ahmed, IMF director for the Middle East and North Africa, told reporters he hoped to report progress in the talks with Tunisia by early February.
Tunisia, whose uprising two years ago sparked political changes across North Africa, said in November it was seeking a $2.5bn loan from the IMF. Ahmed said current discussions are try-ing to establish the government’s funding needs.
Tunisia’s newly elected Islamist-led government has sought to revive the economy in the face of a decline in trade with the crisis-hit eurozone and
domestic political disputes over the future of the North African Arab state.
In Egypt, the government is keen to move forward to finalize its IMF loan deal, Ahmed said, after an agreement was post-poned in November due to politi-cal unrest triggered by President Mohamed Mursi’s drive to fast-track a new constitution.
Confront by street protests, Mursi postponed planned tax increases seen as part of a pack-age of austerity measures needed to secure the IMF loan.
Ahmed said the government told the IMF during a visit in early January it was ready to move forward. An IMF mission will visit Cairo after the govern-ment updates economic measures to reflect changes in the economy since November, he said.
“Part of it is to make sure that the measures ... will deliver the outcomes and are politically feasible,” he said. “The work
we’ve done provides a very good basis now for us to finalise our discussions.”
Ahmed said the IMF needed to be satisfied that Egypt would be able to implement the program before it gave a final approval. IMF demands for spending cuts and the removal of price subsidies will be a hard sell to an already fractious population ahead of par-liament elections later this year.
Meanwhile, the Egyptian pound hit a new record low against the US dollar this week after the authorities introduced a new system of foreign currency auc-tions to curb a decline in foreign reserves.
Ahmed said the IMF supported the government’s goal of pre-serving and strengthening inter-national reserves and to have a well-functioning market for for-eign exchange.
“It is part of that process that they’ve put in place these auc-tions and in a way the prices are
reflecting supply and demand,” he said. Ahmed said 2013 was likely to be another “difficult year” for the Middle East and North Africa given a recession in Europe and ongoing political transitions and conflict in the region. Elections in Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia this year also pose risks.
Ahmed said the pace of growth in the Middle East was likely to increase but not enough to make a reduce high unemployment levels.
“Balancing the rising expec-tations and growing impatience of populations who want to see results at a time when growth rates are likely to remain low will be a big challenge for many countries,” Ahmed said.
Ahmed said rising fiscal and balance of payment pressures, especially in countries forced to boost spending to deal with a wave of political revolts, will make for tough choices by governments over the next 12 months.
REUTERS
Tunisia in loan talks with IMFIslamist-led govt to revive economy in face of a decline in trade with EU
Chinese economy grows
A labourer works at a residential construction site in Shanghai, yesterday. China’s economy regained speed in the final quarter of last year, pulling out of a post-global financial crisis downturn that pro-duced the slowest year of economic growth since 1999. Evidence of a burgeoning recovery in exports, stronger than expected industrial output and retail sales, together with robust fixed asset investment, all signalled that Beijing’s pro-growth policy mix has gained sufficient traction to underpin a revival without yet igniting inflationary risks.
Yemen parliament okays $12.9bn spending plan
WASHINGTON: The International Monetary Fund will visit Iran in the first half of the year to assess the state of its economy and the impact of Western sanctions, a senior IMF official said on Friday.
The IMF forecast in October that Iran’s economy was likely to contract in 2012 and infla-tion would likely increase to 25 percent.
Masood Ahmed, IMF director for the Middle East and North Africa, said those projections were made before the sharp deprecia-tion of Iran’s currency, the rial, at the end of last year.
“We expect that when we revisit these numbers with the more recent data it will show a greater impact than what was estimated at that time,” Ahmed added. REUTERS
IMF to assess Iran economy in the next six months
SYDNEY: Australian air-line Qantas late on Friday announced it was cutting its order for Dreamliner air-craft by one, but said it had planned the move before the Boeing jets were grounded worldwide and still had 14 on order.
Qantas had initially said it would not be changing its order for 15 of the fuel-effi-cient aircraft after a Japanese jet was forced into an emer-gency landing on Wednesday, triggering the halting of flights. But in a statement on Friday on an update to its fleet, the company said it had cancelled a single Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner on order for low-cost carrier Jetstar.
The remaining 14 B787-8s will be delivered to Jetstar as planned, with the first aircraft to arrive in mid-2013, it said.
Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce said the airline was firmly committed to the Dreamliners for both Qantas International and Jetstar, and it retained options and pur-chase rights for 50 B787s of either -8 or -9 variants avail-able for delivery from 2016.
“... we are using the flex-ibility in our agreement with Boeing to cancel a firm order knowing that we can replace it with one of our 50 options for this aircraft down the track, and with a full view of what market conditions are like at the time,” he said.
The airline, which is strug-gling with an underperform-ing international business, said the decision to amend the B787 order was reached at the end of 2012 and the agreement with Boeing had now been finalised.
Qantas said production of its first B787 aircraft had just begun and it was confident current technical issues would be resolved by Boeing before it took delivery in mid-2013.
A Boeing spokesman said Qantas’ decision was a busi-ness one, adding that over-all customers were standing behind the Dreamliner.
Qantas last year can-celled an order for 35 of the Dreamliner jets to cut costs.
AFP
Qantas cancels one Dreamliner, 14 still on order
JEDDAH: Saudi Arabian dairy and food producer Almarai Co posted a 29.2 percent rise in its fourth-quarter net profit, beating analyst forecasts, the firm said in a bourse statement yesterday.
Almarai made a net profit of SR369m ($98.4m) in the three months ending Decmeber 31, compared with SR286m in the same period a year earlier.
Six analysts polled by Reuters expected the firm to post on average SR320m in the fourth-quarter.
“The reason for higher sales and profit growth for the fourth quarter compared to the corresponding period of the previ-ous year is due to strong performance from all products, especially poultry and bakery,” it said in the statement.
In a separate statement Almarai said it plans to issue a dividend of 1.25 riyals per share for the full-year period.
Operating profit rose 27.4 percent to SR437m in the fourth-quarter. Almarai has been keen to expand its footprint out-side its core presence in the Gulf region. In December it acquired Fondomonte SA, which owns and operates firms in Argentina, to secure feed for its dairy herd and poultry business. REUTERS
Almarai Q4 net profit up 29pc
DOHA: Qatar First Investment Bank (QFIB), has part-nered with Gulf Financial Conferences as the gold spon-sor for two key conferences “Finance & Investment Qatar’ and ‘M&A, Corporate Finance & Advisory MENA’, both to be held on January 21 and 22, at the Al Sharq Village and Spa.
QFIB is the country’s first inde-pendent Shariah compliant bank authorised by the Qatar Financial Centre regulatory authority,
The Finance & Investment Qatar conference will see Ihab Asali, Head of Private Equity at QFIB joining two sessions. The first session entitled “Investment opportunities within Qatar from a global perspective” will exam-ine how Qatar is perceived by foreign investors and the invest-ment opportunities available. The session will highlight the required measures to upgrade Qatar to Emerging Market status.
In the second session, Ihab will join other leading financial experts to highlight the chal-lenges Qatar’s private sector and non-government companies face to raise capital. The session will explore sources of financing avail-able to family and private sector companies including sukuk as an option, the ability of banks to meets demands of private sec-tor clients as well as the assess-ment for growth of private sector business.
Concurrently, Shadi Zubeidi, Managing Director, Head of Corporate Finance, QFIB will spearhead a panel at the ‘M&A, Corporate Finance & Advisory MENA’ conference that will cross check mid-market deals that con-tinue to drive intra-regional and inter-regional M&A activity.
The panellists will also discuss deal-flow and structuring, financ-ing options for family businesses and private equity-driven M&As,
investment opportunities includ-ing those in the Levant and North Africa as well as explore the asso-ciated risks for Gulf investors.
QFIB is an active participant in such leading platforms that
actively encourage dialogue and help to build constructive discus-sions on the opportunities and challenges facing the financial sector both in Qatar and globally.
THE PENINSULA
Bank of America issues 4Q12 results
A woman walks past as a customer uses an ATM at a Bank of America (BAC) banking centre in New York’s financial district yesterday. A BAC report stated fourth quarter 2012 (4Q12) net income of $732m; however, a number of items, including debt valuation adjustments and other settlements, had an impact on results.
19BUSINESS SUNDAY 20 JANUARY 2013
www.thepeninsulaqatar.com
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WASHINGTON: The International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimated on Friday that Greece faced a financing gap of between ¤5.5bn and ¤9.5bn for 2015 and 2016 and said it had assurances from Europe it would deliver the aid in the final years of the bailout.
It was the first time the IMF had estimated a range of possi-ble financing needs for Greece’s international bailout programme beyond 2014. The European Commission said in December the money needed for Greece over the two-year period encompass-ing 2015 and 2016 would amount to ¤5.6bn
Greece, the epicenter of the European debt crisis, has received tens of billions of euros in emer-gency loans from its euro zone partners and the IMF since mid-2010 to stave off bankruptcy. Its economy is likely to shrink for the sixth consecutive year in 2013.
Tensions between the IMF and Europe flared in November over how to reduce Greece’s large debt load, which threatened to delay the next aid tranche to Greece in a year where the program had already suffered setbacks from elections and lack of reform.
Questions also arose over whether Europe would continue to support Greece financially without further reforms, prompt-ing concerns that Athens would need to exit the euro zone.
IMF mission chief for Greece Poul Thomsen told reporters that Europe had promised it would continue to support Greece. Funding estimates were “subject to a lot of uncertainty” and would be reassessed regularly, he added.
Under IMF rules, loan pro-grams need to be fully financed for a 12-month period or the IMF withholds loan disbursements.
Thomsen said the Greek pro-gram was fully financed “well into 2014,” although it was too early to say whether the additional fund-ing for Athens would be needed at the start of 2015 or towards the end of 2014.
“The undertaking of the European partners to fill the gap, whatever that gap will be in 2015-2016, is entirely in line with our policy even if they are not con-crete about it,” Thomsen told a conference call with reporters.
“What is key is that the Europeans know there is a gap and whatever the gap is, they will have to fill it.”
The IMF board agreed on Wednesday to pay the next aid tranche of ¤3.24bn to Greece under the ¤240bn international bailout involving a troika of lend-ers including the IMF, European Union and European Central Bank.
Brazil, which has long expressed concern over the IMF’s large financial exposure to Greece, opposed the decision, arguing that the prospect of Greece regaining market access in the medium term was “highly doubtful.”
“It is unclear whether the current programme provides reasonably strong prospects of success,” Paulo Nogueira Batista, IMF executive director for Brazil and 10 other countries in Latin America and Asia, said in a state-ment to the board.
IMF staff also questioned in documents released on Friday whether Greece would be able to repay the IMF if its program “went irretrievably off track” and Europe halted support for Athens.
Eurozone governments agreed last year on a debt buyback pro-gram for Greece among a series of steps to cover the debt-strapped country’s financing needs.
Thomsen said Europe had not said exactly how it would provide additional debt relief, but options included reducing interest rates on Greek loans.
“The key is that Europe has recognized for the first time that debt is not sustainable without direct transfers in one form or another from Europe to Greece and that there is a commitment to do that,” he added.
Thomsen said confidence was returning to Greece and there was renewed interest from inves-tors in the country, although he cautioned that the country still faced immense challenges.
“There is clearly an improve-ment in confidence compared to where we were in the middle of last year,” he said.
He said the new Greek govern-ment was determined to crack down on tax evaders and to boost tax revenues, although there had been no significant impact on tax collections so far. REUTERS
IMF estimates €9.5bn Greek funding gapBrazil opposes loan tranche to Athens
FRANKFURT: German heavy industry and steel giant, ThyssenKrupp’s supervisory board has agreed to take a 50-percent pay cut in view of disastrous losses last year, its chief said on Friday.
The supervisory board’s 20 members have agreed “to forego half their pay for 2012,” board chief Gerhard Cromme told ThyssenKrupp shareholders at their annual general meeting in Bochum, northwest Germany.
“This gesture is intended as a sign of our dismay and our soli-darity with you, our shareholders,” he said. The move is related to huge losses the company incurred at new steel mills in Brazil and the United States. ThyssenKrupp has been forced to write down the value of those plants, running up an overall year-end loss of ¤4.7bn ($6.3bn) for the business year ended September 30.
Given the magnitude of that loss, the group announced it would not pay a dividend for the first time since the merger of Thyssen and Krupp nearly 14 years ago. The steel mills have since been put up for sale, but negotiations are still ongoing.
The annual meeting was an uncharacteristically stormy one, not only with shareholders calling for Cromme to step down in the wake of the debacle concerning the steel mills, but also anger at a recent string of scandals at the company. AFP
ThyssenKrupp supervisory board takes pay cut
LONDON: Up to 10,000 engi-neering jobs could have been created if the government had supported British companies bidding to win contracts to build North Sea oil rigs for energy giants, it has been claimed.
The contracts went to South Korea, with the result that the industry has shed tens of thou-sands of jobs, something that has major implications for the UK’s ability to build the next generation of carbon-friendly energy infrastructure, such as windfarms.
The claims comes from OGN, a British oil rig-maker, in a let-ter to British MPs. The row has echoes of the furore that greeted the news in 2011 that train man-ufacturer Bombardier, based in England’s East Midlands, had lost out to German manufac-turer Siemens in the battle to win the £1.4bn Thameslink trains contract.
In the letter OGN warns that British manufacturers will go out of business if ministers do not require North Sea oil operators to buy components from them. Dennis Clark, OGN’s chairman, claims that in the past two years only seven percent of new plat-forms ordered for the North Sea were made in Britain.
“Over the past two years, fab-rication contracts for North Sea development worth in excess of GBP10 billion have been placed overseas,” Clark writes. “It is
estimated that more than 10,000 jobs would have been created in this country had those contracts been placed in the UK.”
The privately owned company, one of only four oil rig manufac-turers left in Britain, employs about 4,000 workers, down from a peak workforce of 30,000. It is furious that the Treasury granted Norwegian oil giant Statoil tax concessions to develop the Mariner and Bressay fields in the North Sea but did nothing to compel it to use British expertise.
Clark complains that Norway, like many other countries,
requires oil companies to use local suppliers for its offshore oil and gas projects. But the government claims European Union rules for-bid it from taking such action.
Sajid Javid, economic secretary to the Treasury, recently signalled the British government’s com-mitment to the offshore oil and gas industry. “The North Sea is a vital national asset, with oil and gas production supporting a third of a million jobs,” Javid said. “That is why this government has announced a range of tax meas-ures expected to generate billions of new investment and create
jobs.” But Clark complained that there was no policy requiring tax benefits to be reinvested in the UK. “The UK is the only oil and gas province without a positive policy favouring local content,” Clark said in the letter. “Norway has operated such a policy with great success for 30 years and it has filled its own fabrication capacity.”
He said he had taken the mat-ter up with several ministers including the chancellor of the exchequer (finance minister) George Osborne, and the business secretary, Vince Cable.
“Everyone is interested but nobody will take decisive action,” Clark said. “The government says that it cannot intervene. We do not believe this to be the case and we appear to have the only gov-ernment that adopts this stance.”
A number of MPs in the north east have tabled questions in the House of Commons (the UK’s elected lower house) to ask what the government is doing to pro-tect the UK’s oil rig construc-tors. British Labour party MP, Nick Brown, said he was seeking clarification from the government as to why other countries could ensure contracts went to their companies. “It is reasonable for us to expect the North Sea to sup-port a strong domestic industry,” Brown said. “I’m in favour of free trade, but what is sauce for the goose should be sauce for the gan-der.” GUARDIAN NEWS
UK oil rig jobs lost as contracts go to Korea
An oil rig on the North Sea.
MAPUTO: Mozambique cast doubt on Friday on why global min-ing giant Rio Tinto has made a $3bn (£2.2bn) write-down on its Mozambican assets, which cost chief executive Tom Albanese his job.
The Anglo-Australian diversified miner said on Thursday that prob-lems of transporting coal from its mines in Tete, 600km to the sea had lowered the value of the concession.
But Mozambique’s minerals ministry was not satisfied with the explanation. “I think something inside Rio Tinto motivated this,” said spokesman Custodio Nguetana.
“We are sure the reason will not only be infrastructure,” Nguetana said. “It is a general problem and we are trying to find solutions together — government and companies.”
Albanese and Doug Ritchie, who led the acquisition of the Mozambique assets, stood down on Thursday. AFP
Mozambique suspicious over Rio Tinto coal write-down
20 BUSINESS VIEWSSUNDAY 20 JANUARY 2013
www.thepeninsulaqatar.com
Ailing UK economy faces threat of lost decade T
here could be few bet-ter symbols of the fragile state of Britain’s reces-sion-scarred economy
than the news that with music and video chains HMV and Blockbuster joining the dismal roll call of retailers forced into administration, an extraordinary 1,400 shops on high streets up and down Britain are now at risk of closure within less than a month.
Research by the Local Data Company, which provides the UK with retail location data and insights, suggests that the com-bined impact on the high street of these two latest victims, together with the recent collapse of elec-trical retailer Comet, shoe shop Stead and Simpson, and cam-era specialist Jessops, has been even heavier than during 2009, when the much-loved high street retailer Woolworths closed the doors of its 807 stores for the last time.
Like Comet and Jessops, HMV and Blockbuster had both faced a formidable challenge to reinvent themselves as the relentless rise of online retailing rocked their respective industries. But the
chronic weakness of consumer demand in Britain’s flatlining economy has also been a key factor in driving so many well-known names to the wall. If none of the 1,400 stores is reoccupied, an extraordinary 19 percent of Britain’s shop premises will stand empty.
These latest very visible scars on the fabric of economic life have appeared as the UK’s coalition government faces rising pressure to get a grip on a slump that has now lasted five years: what ratings agency Moody’s last week called a “lost half-decade”, echoing the name given to Japan’s long period of stagnation from the early 1990s.
Despite interest rates that have hovered around zero since the mid-1990s, and repeated rounds of quantitative easing, Japan has never achieved a sustained recov-ery. If, as many UK financial ana-lysts expect, official figures will reveal next Friday that the UK economy slipped into reverse in the final quarter of 2012, chan-cellor George Osborne will face fresh questions about whether the UK is heading for its own “lost decade”.
A new report from left-leaning think-tank Compass, “Plan B+1”, published 12 months after it first set out a blueprint for economic revival, calls for radical meas-ures including increasing jobless benefits to boost the spending power of the poorest in society (who are more likely to spend what they receive); investing in green technologies; and review-ing every pound of government spending to assess its effective-ness in “promoting wellbeing, environmental sustainability and reducing inequality”. David Kern, chief economist at the British Chambers of Commerce, which represents many smaller firms, says he backs the chancellor’s broad aim of tackling the deficit, but believes spending in some key areas could be increased without him losing credibility.
He says: “Our view has always been that what we need is a two-pronged strategy: not abandoning the overall fiscal plan, but adjust-ing it; continuing to do things that may be unpopular, like welfare reform, but taking action in all those various areas where, rather than just increasing demand, you
improve the supply side of the economy.” That might mean, for example, improving the country’s infrastructure.
Peter Spencer, of forecasting group the Ernst and Young Item club, which publishes its quarterly health check of the economy today, agrees: “If they go for infrastruc-ture — let’s say £15bn, financed by borrowing — it certainly wouldn’t cost them their AAA rating; and over time they would get it back in tax and reduced unemployment benefits.”
The chancellor singles out Britain’s cherished AAA bond credit rating as the measure of policy success, but all three of the big credit ratings agencies have warned the Treasury that the UK could be downgraded if growth continues to disappoint. City experts believe a negative GDP reading for the fourth quar-ter of 2012, potentially signalling the onset of a triple-dip recession, could be the trigger.
With little hope that Osborne will relax his grip on the finances, one area some economists have seized on as ripe for a rethink - and one which appears to appeal
to the cornered chancellor - is Britain’s monetary policy regime, the role of the Bank of England in guiding the economy. Mark Carney, the hotshot Canadian hired by Osborne to take over from Sir Mervyn King this sum-mer, sparked a flurry of excite-ment in policy circles before Christmas when he mused that it might be time to ditch the infla-tion-targeting regime that has evolved since the 1990s.
Carney suggested that when, as now, interest rates are near zero and growth is weak, it might be right for central banks to take more radical action. They could, for example, copy the Federal Reserve’s approach of “forward guidance,” announcing that it plans to keep interest rates low for a long time, at least until mid-2015.
If that should fail, he added, the inflation target could be ditched in favour of using a measure of nominal GDP — the total output from the economy, measured in pounds, without adjusting for inflation. Proponents of a nominal GDP target argue that at times when growth is very low, a bit of
inflation should be less of a con-cern than the corrosive impact on the economy of a long period of stagnation.
Aiming at a nominal GDP tar-get could, they claim, force the Bank to shrug off its concerns about inflation and go all out to kick-start growth. And during the boom years, when inflation was low but growth strong, it might have forced policymakers to push up interest rates and prevent a bub-ble inflating. Spencer at the Item club backs a change of regime: “It’s the sum of inflation and growth, and it would put them both on a par. It’s obvious that in the present circumstances it would give the Bank latitude to allow a temporary inflation overshoot.”
However, even within its cur-rent job description of keeping inflation close to two percent, the Bank has “aimed off” its target during the crisis, allowing infla-tion to remain high, because, as King has repeatedly argued, bringing it back to two percent more rapidly would have entailed an even deeper recession and higher unemployment.
GUARDIAN NEWS
As Boeing showed off its multibillion-dollar baby on the Dreamliner’s promotional world tour in 2011, one quirky feature was regularly pointed out: a sleekly designed but redundant ashtray, a compliance with regulations laid
down in a different age. In the darkest torments of Boeing execu-tives during the 787’s past incident-packed weeks, it may have finally appeared of use: somewhere to enjoy the cigarette of the condemned, a quiet smoke to mask the smell of burning battery.
A little over a week ago, the US government and air authori-ties stood shoulder to shoulder with their top exporter, Boeing, to assure the world that the plane was safe after a string of incidents from fuel leaks, windscreen cracks and battery fires. They still say it — only, right now, that no one should fly in it.
By Wednesday, a diagnosis of teething problems was no longer enough. The burning battery was back, and Japanese authorities said the latest incident was “highly serious”. Corrosive fluid had leaked down through the state-of-the-art electronics below the cockpit. Hideyo Kosugi, a Japanese safety investigator surveying the All Nippon Airways’ 787 that had made an emergency land-ing at Takamatsu airport, said the stuff had gone right through the floor.
After the Japanese airlines operating almost half of the Dreamliners worldwide decided they could risk it no longer, the US Federal Aviation Administration grounded all 787s in its juris-diction. From India to Qatar, Poland to Chile and finally Ethiopia, the global fleet was taken out of action, an ignominious fate for a plane that had been so eagerly anticipated for so very long.
In an industry where different models are normally denoted by numbers alone, naming the 787 the Dreamliner was to invite attention: a bold statement that this was to be something fun-damentally different. This craft does not simply carry the com-mercial aspirations of Boeing; it has become symbolic of aviation’s promises for a greener, quieter future.
For passengers, there was the thrill of bigger windows, funky lighting and increased cabin pressure, said to reduce the ill-effects of flying. Thomson, the first UK customer, has built an ad cam-paign around it. But for airlines, the critical selling point was fuel efficiency, where the airline executives’ and the environmentalists’ interests briefly coincide.
While rivals mutter that the aspirations have yet to be matched in operations, the lighter plane promised a 20 percent cut in the soaring fuel bills that have wiped out profits for many airlines.
The Dreamliner also promised a range unique for an aircraft of its size, potentially making direct flights to long-haul destinations viable with fewer passengers, not least, the secondary cities in the emerging Bric economies — Brazil, Russia, India and China — to which business people here apparently clamour to fly.
Improvements in those spheres are by no means unique to the Dreamliner. But perhaps more than any other plane, it has come to represent the technological innovation that the aviation industry claims will allow it to meet its wider obligations to the world: that we can fly and not fry, even with ever more flights.
A carbon dioxide “roadmap” produced by Sustainable Aviation, an industry group addressing environmental issues, sees the fuel efficiencies delivered by the 787 and its successors as a way to cut about a third of all projected carbon emissions, a major part of a plan that would let traffic double by 2050 and still meet the emissions targets aviation signed up to in the wake of the Kyoto climate negotiations.
For airports in Britain’s crowded south-east, the Dreamliner is also a name to conjure with. Briefly in operation in Britain since Qatar Airways’ inaugural flight just before Christmas, it claims a “noise footprint” some 60 percent smaller than other planes its size. Around London’s Heathrow, such contours spell votes: Mayor or London Boris Johnson has spoken of 750,000 Londoners having their lives blighted by aircraft noise
So Boeing’s problems are aviation’s problems too. Little wonder that few airlines, beyond the annoyance of those already operat-ing the now-grounded 787, have offered anything but unqualified support and confidence. With 799 aircraft outstanding, the order book dwarfs the 50 in service. The ambitions of the fleet planners everywhere for new routes and for lower overheads hang on the 787s rolling out of the Seattle factory.
Boeing has said it will do all it can to restore confidence. Chief executive Jim McNerney pledged to “work around the clock” with investigators, adding: “We will make available the entire resources of the Boeing company to assist.”
For a corporation the size of Boeing, worth around £50bn even with its shares sliding, the current problems should amount to little more than a spot of turbulence. Airbus quickly recovered confidence and orders despite cracks in the wings of its pioneer-ing A380 in 2011. From the ashes of its burning battery, the Dreamliner will surely make a phoenix-like return.
GUARDIAN NEWS
Aviation industry needs Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner
Japan hopes new PM can boost economy I
n his first major speech of the year, Japan’s new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, called for a “rocket-like start towards economic recovery”. Next month sees the start of the year of the
snake, which is, he said “a symbol of business prosperity”.
The stock and currency markets responded better than perhaps even Abe could have hoped. The Nikkei average has risen dramatically, while the yen is finally ceding ground to the US dollar, bringing relief to Japan’s embattled exporters. On Friday, the dollar rose to its highest level against the yen for two-and-a-half years.
Voters in last month’s general election were receptive to Abe’s focus on growth in the world’s third-largest economy, even if it meant setting aside measures to tackle public debt, now more than 230 percent of its GDP, according to the International Monetary Fund.
While “Abenomics” marks a departure from the previous government’s priorities of debt reduction and tax increases to fund welfare spending, Abe’s approach has a familiar ring. It marks a return to old-style spending on public works, a time-honoured Liberal Democratic party (LDP) policy pillo-ried in the past for funding the construction of cavernous community centres in rural villages and infamous “roads to nowhere”.
Abe has promised to put an end to such waste, and instead wants to focus invest-ment on three things: the region ravaged by the March 2011 tsunami; making repairs to ageing infrastructure, highlighted by last month’s fatal tunnel collapse near Tokyo;
and quake-proofing schools and hospitals.This month, his cabinet agreed on a stim-
ulus package that includes ¥10.3tn (£70bn) in central government funds. The aim is to add about two percentage points to the country’s real growth rate, and create more than 600,000 jobs.
Business leaders welcomed the stimulus package. “It was well-timed, as wide-ranging measures were taken with a sense of speed,” said Hiromasa Yonekura, chairman of the Japanese Business Federation.
Abe has made it clear that he expects government action to be complemented by a more aggressive monetary policy on the part of the Bank of Japan, including raising the country’s inflation target to two percent from one percent. The government and the central bank are expected to issue a joint statement early this week that will largely incorporate Abe’s demands. He will use his power of appointment to ensure that the next Bank of Japan chief, who replaces the current governor, Masaaki Shirakawa, in April, shares his views on easing.
“We will choose someone who appreciates my basic policies to beat deflation,” he said.
There is a real prospect that the stimu-lus package announced last week - the big-gest Japan has approved since the Lehman Brothers shock — will have an immediate impact. That could earn the LDP enough support to secure victory in key upper-house elections due in July, according to Koichi Nakano, a political science professor at Sophia University in Tokyo.
“It’s striking how focused they have been on the economy - they’ve been remarkably
on-message and promised not to be diverted by other issues,” he says. “But it could turn out to be the same old story, with money going to familiar vested interests, particu-larly in the countryside. It’s important to keep an eye on where the cash goes.”
Robert Dujarric, director of the Institute of Contemporary Asian Studies at Temple University in Tokyo, believes Abe’s plan to pull Japan out of two decades of stagnation and deflation “could work up to a point”.
“Abe comes from a wing of the LDP that really hasn’t paid any attention to these issues. On top of that, his social conserv-atism is obvious: he has little interest in modernising policies towards women and families,” he says.
Polls show that consumers are scepti-cal about Abe’s ability to turn the economy around. A weaker yen will help exporters, but the price of imports on which Japan is heavily reliant, especially in food and energy, will hit households if incomes fail to keep up with inflation. While doubts remain over job security and wages continue to stagnate — they have failed to rise for nine of the past 12 months — consumers are unlikely to embark on a spending spree.
Other advanced economies will be closely following the Abe administration’s fortunes. Like Japan, they are struggling with mount-ing public debt, and face rising welfare costs because of their ageing populations. In many ways, Japan is a test case for the rest of the developed world. In this, the year of the snake, Japan can only hope that it quickly sheds the skin of recession and stagnation.
GUARDIAN NEWS
Cartoon Arts International / The New York Times Syndicate
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TENDERS
GLOBAL ECONOMIC CRISIS MAP (GECM)
Japan warns on impact of weaker yenTOKYO: Japan’s economy minister surprised financial markets on Tuesday by warning of the potential ill effects of a sharply weaker yen in a rare rhetorical departure from years of attempts by Tokyo to talk the currency down. “If the yen becomes too weak, import costs will jump and there would be a negative impact on people’s lives,” Akira Amari told reporters. “I hope it will stabilise at a level that is best for the public good.”
FRANKFURT: Germany’s economy has fallen victim to economic problems hitting the rest of the eurozone and shrank in the fourth quarter of 2012, preliminary government figures show. According to government figures released Tuesday, the German economy grew by a modest 0.7 percent in 2012 - well below the 3 percent growth seen in 2011 and suggests the economy contracted in the last three months of the year.
India to be among three largest economies by 2050: PwC
China trade rebounds in sign of economic recovery
Australian jobless rate hits 5.4pcSYDNEY: Australia’s unemployment rate jumped to 5.4 percent in December, data showed Thursday, with a net 5,500 jobs lost as the mining-powered economy slows and manufacturing struggles. The Australian Bureau of Statistics said the seasonally-adjusted jobless rate increased 0.1 percentage points from an upwardly-revised 5.3 percent in November. Analysts said the scale of the losses was worse than forecast. “Generally the message is that the labour market, whilst it is okay, is softening and therefore unemployment is starting to go up,” said Alan Oster, chief economist at the National Australia Bank.
SA miner in world’s top 10: Survey
Brazil’s real opens stronger ahead of central bank meeting
JOHANNESBURG: Johannesburg -South Africa-based diversified resources group Exxaro Resources has been named one of the top 10 mining companies worldwide to have delivered the highest total shareholder returns over the 10-year period spanning 2001 to 2011.
SAO PAULO: The Brazilian central bank likely will hold interest rates at the current record low of 7.25pc at its policy meeting after markets close Wednesday. But some economists said that with Brazil’s economy remaining sluggish, the bank may indicate its willingness to restart the rate-cutting cycle later this year.
US STOCKS: Wall Street little changed; Intel drags, Morgan Stanley up
NEW YORK: US stocks opened little changed on Friday, a day after the S&P 500 rose to its highest level in five years, as a weak outlook from Intel offset a fourth-quarter profit at Morgan Stanley. Shares of Intel Corp slumped 6.1 percent to $21.30 after the tech company forecast quarterly revenue that was below analysts’ estimates and hiked capital spending plans for the year.
NEW DELHI: Emerging economies are set to grow faster than the developed economies over the next four decades and India is likely to become one of the three largest economies by 2050, says a PwC report.According to the report ‘World in 2050 The BRICs and Beyond: Prospects, challenges and opportunities’, the global financial crisis has accelerated the shift of the economic centre of gravity and China is expected to surpass the United States to become the largest economy in the world by 2050.
BEIJING: China’s trade growth rebounded strongly in December in a positive sign for the gradual and still uncertain recovery of the world’s second-largest economy. Export growth more than quadrupled from the previous month to 14.1 percent while imports — which failed to grow at all in November — rose 6 percent in a sign of increasing domestic demand, data showed Thursday.
Italian machine tool sales rose 3.5pc in 2012
German economy shrank in Q4 in face of euro crisis
MILAN: Italy’s manufacturing technology producers made it through 2012 with an overall positive result, but the trade association that represents them registered concern that the manufacturing sector recovery that followed the 2009 global financial crisis has lost its momentum. UCIMU-Sistemi per Produrre, representing Italy’s machine tool, robot and automation system manufacturing industry, released preliminary output data showing its members’ orders totaled €4.93bn (est. $6.55bn), an increase of 3.5pc over the 2011 total.
Every Sunday
SPORT24 SUNDAY 20 JANUARY 2013
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Rose takes control in Abu DhabiThe world number five leads by two shots; Donaldson, Olesen share second place
Justin Rose of England acknowledges spectators after the end of the third round of the 2013 Abu Dhabi HSBC Golf Championship at Abu Dhabi Golf Club in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, yesterday.
ABU DHABI: World golf number five Justin Rose showed his title rivals a clean pair of heels in the Abu Dhabi Championship third round yes-terday, surging two strokes clear after cramming seven birdies into a four-under 68.
After top-ranked Rory McIlroy and world number two Tiger Woods missed the cut on Friday, Rose had centre stage pretty much to himself at the European Tour event and again showed he revels in the spotlight.
Fellow Briton Jamie Donaldson (69) and Dane Thorbjorn Olesen (69) were tied for second on 10-under 206, one ahead of Thailand’s Thongchai Jaidee (66).
Rose, who led by one stroke overnight, dropped a shot by three-putting the par-four first before launching a dynamic charge with five birdies in six holes to the turn.
The 32-year-old made more inroads on par at the 12th and 18th and would have stretched his lead further but for bogeys at the 13th and 17th, the latter coming after another three-putt.
The 6-foot-2 (1.89-metre) Englishman, still waiting to achieve that elusive first major triumph despite racking up 10 victories around the world, said a win here would hold special significance.
“Anyone who wins, they have beaten the number one and number two in the world,” Rose told reporters. “It gives this tour-nament absolutely huge amounts
McIlroy needs time to bed in new clubs, says manager ABU DHABI: World number one Rory McIlroy always knew it would take time to adjust to his new Nike equipment and will not be perturbed at miss-ing the cut in the Abu Dhabi Championship, according to his manager.
McIlroy, who signed a multi-year contract with the US sportswear firm on Monday that according to media reports is worth around $250m, carded his second successive three-over 75 yesterday and failed to qualify for the final two rounds here.
“It’s going to take time,” man-ager Conor Ridge told reporters. “He’s got to work the clubs in gradually.
“It was always going to be that way, he knew that from the start. Some things will not be quite right at first and some things will be perfect.
“A couple of things will take a few weeks to get used to. He won’t be concerned by this, trust me. You can’t make a change like that and just seamlessly hit the
tracks straight away, it’s just not normal.”
Ridge said McIlroy simply did not play well in his first competi-tive outing with his new clubs.
“He even said himself at the start of the week that it was going to be an unknown going into tournament play versus what he was doing on the practice range,” Ridge said.
“I think if he had 14 Titleist clubs in his bag...it would have been exactly the same.”
McIlroy’s appearance at the European Tour event in Abu Dhabi was his first outing since he won the end-of-season DP World Tour Championship in Dubai in November.
The 23-year-old Northern Irishman will now take another long break before return-ing in four weeks’ time at the WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship in Arizona.
“The reason he played here is because he knew he could take a couple of weeks of testing, a couple of weeks of practice, play
Rory McIlroy of Northern Ireland leaves
the 18th green at the end of his match during
the second round of the Abu Dhabi Golf
Championship at the Abu Dhabi Golf Club on
Friday.
a tournament and then have another four weeks to work on it again,” said Ridge.
“I actually think it’s going to work out well that way.”
The key for US PGA cham-pion McIlroy is to be ready for the first major of the season, the US Masters in April.
“As long as I feel like my
game is in good shape heading into Augusta that’s all I’m wor-ried about,” he said after the first round in Abu Dhabi on Friday. REUTERS
Humana Challenge US PGA Scores
LA QUINTA, California: Leading second-round scores yesterday in the $5.6m US PGA Tour Humana Challenge on the Palmer Course, Nicklaus Course and La Quinta Country Club course (USA unless noted, all courses par-72):
130 Roberto Castro 63-67, James Hahn 63-67
131 Darron Stiles 66-65, Scott Stallings 66-65, Richard H. Lee 66-65
132 Lee Williams 67-65, Jason Kokrak 63-69, Zach Johnson 66-66, David Lingmerth (SWE) 68-64, Kevin Stadler 66-66, Charles Howell 67-65, Charley Hoffman 65-67, Greg Chalmers (AUS) 64-68, Aaron Baddeley (AUS) 64-68
133 Daniel Summerhays 65-68, Stewart Cink 66-67, Ricky Barnes 65-68, Robert Garrigus 66-67, Russell Henley 64-69, Brian Gay 67-66, Bud Cauley 70-63
Hahn, Castro maintain lead at Humana LA QUINTA, CALIFORNIA: Rookie James Hahn and Roberto Castro maintained their lead by shooting five-under 67s in the second round of the PGA Tour’s $5.6m Humana Challenge yesterday.
Hahn and Castro are both chasing a first PGA Tour victory and are at 14-under par.
“Same situation as yesterday, my playing partner was making a bunch of birdies too and we both kind of got going and had the mojo going the right way, so it was a good day,” Castro said.
“I played well all day. Some nice up-and-downs on the par-fives for birdies, a couple slipped away there at the end.
“Yesterday I made a 50-footer on the last on a good putt. Today I felt like I hit a good putt and three-putted. So that stuff is going to even out over 72 holes.”
Hahn had an eagle and a nice birdie stretch in the second half of his round.
“I started off slow,” Hahn said. “But I hit some good shots and had a stretch of a birdie, eagle, birdie, and that was pretty much my round.”
Just one stroke back were Darron Stiles, Scott Stallings and Richard H. Lee who each shot 65 and moved into a tie.
Jason Kokrak had shared the lead with Castro and Hahn.
REUTERS
QCA to coach Al Emaam Al Shafi School pupils
Al Emaam Al Shafi School pupils, teachers and Qatar Cricket Association (QCA) officials pose for a picture. QCA has announced they will offer coaching classes for the pupils, after visiting Al Emaam Al Shafi School. Malik Nazar Mohammed, senior coach and technical adviser, QCA coach Trishanen and coach Abdul Salaam, met with the school’s principal Hamad Mohammad Al Hinzab and also the school’s sports teacher Ahmed Kamel. Prior to the selection of the boy’s team, a four–week training period was organised in the school premises which was attended by 30 students.
NBA ResultsChicago 100 Boston 99
Philadelphia 108 Toronto 101
Charlotte 106 Orlando 100
Indiana 105 Houston 95
Brooklyn 94 Atlanta 89
Memphis 85 Sacramento 69
San Antonio 95 Golden State 88
Washington 112 Denver 108
Oklahoma City 117 Dallas 114
Durant scores 52 as Thunder edge MavsDALLAS: Kevin Durant scored a career-high 52 points as the NBA-leading Oklahoma City Thunder prevailed 117-114 in an overtime thriller against the Dallas Mavericks yesterday.
Durant landed a perfect 21 from 21 at the free-throw line, with Russell Westbrook adding 31 points for the visitors as the Thunder (32-8) won their sixth straight to continue their domi-nance in the league.
“I knew (about closing in on a career-high haul) but I was just trying to focus on the game and get us this win,” Durant told reporters.
“Going into that fourth quarter I had missed like eight shots in a row and my team mates kept telling me to be aggressive and they were giving me confidence every time.”
Durant’s fourth quarter misses allowed Dallas (17-24) to make up a nine point deficit and force overtime when OJ Majo nailed a three-pointer with 2.3 seconds left.
But Durant found his form again, landing nine of the Thunder’s 12 points in overtime
to grab the victory after Mike James failed with a late three-point attempt.
“They’ve got the heart of a champion,” Durant said of Dallas.
“Everybody is going to bring their best against us. Dallas is a championship level team, no mat-ter what their record is.
“I’m glad we gutted this one out.”
Vince Carter scored 29 from the bench to lead Dallas, who had their four game win streak snapped, while Dirk Nowitzki and Mayo contributed 18 each. REUTERS
Kings extend contracts for coach, top execs
LOS ANGELES: The Los Angeles Kings, the 2012 Stanley Cup champions, have handed out new deals to their coach-ing and management staff, the National Hockey League club said yesterday.
Head coach Darryl Sutter, president/general manager Dean Lombardi and the president of business operations Luc Robitaille agreed to multi-year contract extensions, the Kings said in a statement.
“We are ecstatic that we have kept our leadership team in place both on the hockey side with Dean and Darryl and on the busi-ness side with Luc and remain in a position to continue compet-ing for the Stanley Cup for many more years,” said team governor Tim Leiweke.
Sutter, who was hired in December 2011, helped lead the Kings to the franchise’s first Stanley Cup championship as the team went 16-4 in the postseason and, prior to that, 25-13-11 in the regular season.
The Kings start their title defence today when they host the Chicago Blackhawks. REUTERS
Abu Dhabi ScoresScores from the European Tour Abu Dhabi Championship at the par-72 course yesterday in Abu Dhabi
209 Andrew Dodt (Australia) 74 70 65; Ricardo Santos (Portugal) 71 72 66; Michael Campbell (New Zealand) 69 71 69
210 Jbe Kruger (South Africa) 72 69 69; Martin Kaymer (Germany) 71 69 70
of credibility. You can say you’ve beaten the best players and that’s exactly what you need to do. You need to do that in majors and you need to do that most weeks on tour,” he added yesterday after lighter winds led to lower scoring on the difficult Abu Dhabi Golf Club layout.
Rose said the absence of McIlroy and Woods made it easier for the rest of the players.
“If Tiger and Rory are the two guys right behind you there is a lot of hullabaloo about the day and I guess it would be more intense out there just based upon people’s interest,” he said.
“I think what does influence you when you go up against Rory and Tiger is the crowd. There are a lot more people milling around, there are more cameras, more
distractions and that makes it more difficult.” Rose felt his over-all game was exactly where he wanted it to be yesterday.
“I played really well today,” he said. “Every time I had the club in my hand I felt like I was going to hit a good shot and that’s not always the case.
“Some days you have to work harder than others and some days are a bit of a grind. Today it felt pretty smooth.”
The best third-round perform-ances came from India’s Shiv Chowrasia (65) and Australian Andrew Dodt (65) as they carded the lowest scores of the week.
“I got married two weeks ago. I don’t know if that’s got something to do with it,” said Dodt after fin-ishing on 209 thanks to a birdie hat-trick on each nine.
“It’s all going well at the moment - as it probably should be.”
Married life was also a topic of conversation for Chowrasia after his wife decided to have a lie-in yesterday.
The twice former European Tour winner teed off at 0738 local time and quickly catapulted his way up the leaderboard to chalk up a 211 total.
“My wife Simantini has been with me all week but it was too early a start for her today,” said Chowrasia.
“She walked around the course with me on the first two days but then she said, ‘No more, it’s too early for me’,” he said yesterday,
REUTERS
25SPORT SUNDAY 20 JANUARY 2013
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Federer ends Tomic’s runChardy stuns Del Potro in Melbourne; Serena, Murray win in straight sets MELBOURNE: Roger Federer was in no mood to let a trend develop after the first real upsets of the week at the Australian Open tennis yes-terday and slapped down local upstart Bernard Tomic with authority to reach the fourth round.
Juan Martin del Potro stunned Federer to win the US Open in 2009 but the Argentine sixth seed was on the receiving end of the shock yesterday when an inspired Jeremy Chardy led a four-strong French charge into the last 16.
Serena Williams and Andy Murray never looked like losing sometimes challenging contests earlier in the day but defending champion and world number one Victoria Azarenka had a closer call and was forced to dig deep for her victory.
All eyes were on the evening match in Rod Laver Arena, how-ever, where Tomic had been talk-ing up his chances of translating his good early-season form into a victory over a player rated by many as the best to ever pick up a racket.
Tomic gave his best and came within two points of winning a thrilling second-set tiebreak but the 17-times Grand-Slam cham-pion simply upped the gears, pulled out a couple of extraordi-nary winners, and raced away to a 6-4, 7-6, 6-1 victory.
“I had to be able to bring the whole repertoire to the court today, defence and offence, which I enjoy,” said the second seed, who next faces Milos Raonic, before offering some advice to Tomic.
“I think it’s important to be confident but obviously you respect the game and you respect the other players. I think he has a lot of respect for me.”
Del Potro battled back from two sets down to level his third-round contest but the mercu-rial Chardy grabbed a break in the decider and held his nerve to serve out for a 6-3, 6-3, 6-7, 3-6, 6-3 win.
“I had nothing to lose today so it was easy to play,” said the world
Today’s Order of Play
MELBOURNE: Order of play on the main showcourts at the Australian Open today (play starts at 0000 GMT on all courts, prefix denotes seeding):
ROD LAVER ARENA5-Angelique Kerber (Germany) vs 19-Ekaterina Makarova (Russia)
4-David Ferrer (Spain) vs 16-Kei Nishikori (Japan)
Kirsten Flipkens (Belgium) vs 2-Maria Sharapova (Russia)
From 0800
13-Ana Ivanovic (Serbia) vs 4-Agnieszka Radwanska (Poland)
1-Novak Djokovic (Serbia) vs 15-Stanislas Wawrinka (Switzerland)
HISENSE ARENAFrom 0130
10-Nicolas Almagro (Spain) vs 8-Janko Tipsarevic (Serbia)
6-Li Na (China) vs 18-Julia Goerges (Germany)
MARGARET COURT ARENAFrom 0400
Kevin Anderson (South Africa) vs 5-Tomas Berdych (Czech Republic)
Jeremy Chardy of France serves during his third round match against Juan Martin Del Potro of Argentina at the Australian Open in Melbourne, Australia, yesterday. RIGHT: Switzerland’s Roger Federer (left) shakes hands after his victory in his men’s singles match against Australia’s Bernard Tomic.
number 36. “It’s a big win for me, maybe the best of my career,” he said after the match.
After five days without any upsets of note at the year’s first Grand Slam, two came along within minutes.
As Chardy was packing up his rackets on Hisense Arena, Italian Andreas Seppi was secur-ing his place as the Frenchman’s next opponent by wrapping up a 6-7, 6-3, 2-6, 6-4, 6-2 win over Croatian 12th seed Marin Cilic, a semi-finalist in 2010.
Azarenka had to come back from a break down in the deciding set to avoid the same fate against injury-hampered American Jamie Hampton and her relief at her 6-4, 4-6, 6-2 win was clear.
“She took a medical timeout but she rips winners all over the place,” said Azarenka. “I was
like: ‘Can I have a back problem? I’m feeling great but I’m missing every shot’.”
Williams, seeking a sixth title at Melbourne Park, also wobbled a bit at 3-0 down in the second set against world number 72 Ayumi Morita after losing her serve for the first time in the tournament.
The third seed showed no dis-comfort from the ankle strain she sustained in the opening round, however, and stormed back to win the next six games and dismiss the Japanese 6-1, 6-3.
“I feel good,” the 31-year-old American said. “I feel today was actually a really good match for me. I was involved in a lot of longer points, something I defi-nitely wanted.”
US Open champion Murray berated himself for playing “nonsense” tennis at times
but eventually broke down his Lithuanian practice partner Ricardas Berankis 6-3, 6-4, 7-5 after a tricky 132 minutes in the Melbourne sun.
“Sometimes when you are struggling, you get very frus-trated,” said the British third seed. “I need to strike the ball bet-ter. My timing was off and I was leaving a lot of balls very short and allowing him to dictate some of the points.”
Murray was able to put his feet up and watch his next opponent Gilles Simon beat compatriot Gael Monfils 6-4, 6-4, 4-6, 1-6, 8-6 in a four-hour, 43-minute marathon that ensured four Frenchman would be in the fourth round for the first time since 1998.
Ninth seed Richard Gasquet’s progress was by no means smooth and he was a set and a break
down before he charged back to beat Croatian Ivan Dodig 4-6, 6-3, 7-6, 6-0.
His seventh-seeded compatriot Jo-Wilfried Tsonga had an easier day, hammering Blaz Kavcic 6-2 6-1 6-4 as the Slovenian paid the price for the nearly five hours he spent in the sweltering heat on Thursday in his second-round tie.
“We have a lot of good players,” said Chardy.
“I think everybody starts to play well this year. I don’t know what is the thing. We just play good,” he added.
Japan has also had a good tournament but Kimiko Date-Krumm’s fairytale run came to an end with a 6-2, 7-6 defeat to Serbian Bojana Jovanovski, who was born two years after her opponent made her debut at Melbourne Park. REUTERS
A general view of Gilles Simon of France serving to compatriot Gael Monfils during their men’s singles match at the Australian Open in Melbourne, yesterday. CENTRE: Belarus’ Victoria Azarenka serves during her women’s singles match against Jamie Hampton of the US. RIGHT: Former Australian international cricketer Shane Warne (left) and British actress Elizabeth Hurley look on as Switzerland’s Roger Federer takes part in his men’s singles match against Australia’s Bernard Tomic.
Yesterday’s ResultsWomen’s Results
Bojana Jovanovski (Serbia) bt Kimiko Date-Krumm (Japan) 6-2, 7-6(3)
29-Sloane Stephens (US) bt Laura Robson (Britain) 7-5, 6-3
Murray backs anti-doping passports MELBOURNE: Andy Murray yesterday backed a tougher anti-doping regime for tennis, including biological passports and more blood tests, to keep the sport drug-free after the Lance Armstrong scandal.
As Serena Williams called the Armstrong saga “sad” and women’s number one Victoria Azarenka said the disgraced cyclist “deserves everything he gets”, Murray said he would sup-port tighter controls for tennis.
“I think it’s something that all sports are now trying to improve their doping controls and make it better, you know, make sure that every sport’s as clean as possible,” the British major-winner said at the Australian Open.
“If that’s more blood testing or the biological passports, that’s something we need to do and improve in tennis, as well.”
Drug cases are rare in tennis but its anti-doping system has been criticised as outdated.
Men’s number one Novak Djokovic Friday said he had not been blood-tested for six or seven
Andy Murray of Britain signs autographs for fans after defeating Ricardas Berankis of Lithuania in their men’s singles match, yesterday.
months, although Murray said his blood was examined between four and six times a year.
Biological passports are used in some sports including cycling to provide a running record of each athlete’s test results, to detect unusual variations.
After Djokovic said Armstrong should “suffer for his lies” follow-ing his long-awaited doping con-fession, Azarenka also had harsh words for the seven-time Tour de France champion.
“I think he deserves everything he gets. You know, you cannot go through the stuff and be a hero in the end of the day. You cannot lie. You cannot cheat,” said the Belarusian.
Williams said that the Armstrong case would now bring many top athletes under suspicion.
“I think as an athlete, as some-one that works really, really hard since I was four or three, you know, I think it’s a sad day for all athletes in general,” she said.
Williams added: “Unfortunately, I think a lot of people now look and are like, OK, if somebody that great, what about everyone else in every other sport?” AFP
Federer says Armstrong’s cheating hurt all sports MELBOURNE: Tennis great Roger Federer said he was saddened by American cyclist Lance Armstrong’s admis-sion that he cheated his way to seven Tour de France wins and believed it would have a nega-tive impact on all sport.
Armstrong confessed in a tel-evised interview with chat show host Oprah Winfrey this week to using banned performance-enhancing substances to estab-lish himself as one of the biggest names in sport.
“What a sad story,” 17-times Grand-Slam winner Federer said after reaching the fourth round of the Australian Open yesterday.
“I don’t know what to say. It just really saddens me to see that someone did this for such a long time.
“Obviously he’s hurt his sport in a big way, even though he helped it in the beginning. But now the burden they live under, all other sports maybe as well.
“I’m an active athlete right now and it’s not fun times really to be in sports to a degree. I guess all I needed to see was the first few minutes of the interview and then I knew what was the deal, and the rest I don’t really care.
“It’s just very saddening this story, to be honest,” he said yes-terday. REUTERS
Jo-Wilfried Tsonga of France celebrates after defeating Blaz Kavcic of Slovenia in their men’s singles match, yesterday.
SPORT26SUNDAY 20 JANUARY 2013
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Armstrong still keen to competeThe American describes lifetime ban as the ‘death penalty’, told his kids not to defend him NEW YORK: Lance Armstrong says he received the “death penalty” for using per-formance-enhancing drugs and lying about it for over a decade, but the disgraced cyclist still harbors a strong desire to com-pete and hopes his lifetime ban will one day be lifted.
In contrast to the impassive confessions to doping Armstrong gave in the first part of his inter-view with US talk show host Oprah Winfrey on Thursday, Armstrong struggled with his emotions as he discussed the impact his fall had had on his family.
Eyes welling up and pausing to gather his composure, Armstrong recalled the moment he told his children the accusations against him were true and said the fall-out from the affair had left his mother “a wreck”.
The most humbling moment had come when he had to stand aside from Livestrong, the cancer foundation he established, he said.
“The ultimate crime is the betrayal of these people who sup-port me and believed in me and they got lied to,” he said.
Critics said Armstrong had shown little sign of contrition on Thursday, but in the second part of the interview aired yesterday there appeared to be genuine remorse.
The Texan conceded he deserved to be punished for years of doping that helped him win a record seven Tour de France titles.
However, he said the penalty he was given by the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) was much
harsher than the sanctions dished out to other self-confessed cheats, who were given lesser sentences for testifying against him.
“I am not saying that’s unfair, I’m saying it is different,” he said in a comment sure to infuriate his critics.
“I deserve to be punished but I am not sure I deserve the death penalty.”
The 41-year-old said he had no ambitions to return to profes-sional cycling but just wanted to be able to compete in sanctioned events, though he conceded his chances were slim.
“With this penalty, this punish-ment, I made my bed,” he said. “Would I love to run the Chicago marathon when I am 50? I would love to do that but I can’t.
“Realistically, I don’t think that will happen and I’ve got to live with that.”
Armstrong, who had always denied using banned substances, again refuted some of the accusa-tions against him in a 1,000-page USADA report that led to his life-time ban and the voiding of all his race wins.
He denied claims he continued using drugs when he made his comeback in 2009 and said there was no truth to suggestions a rep-resentative of his tried to pay off USADA to drop their investiga-tion into him.
“That is not true,” he snapped. “I think they (USADA) said it was $250,000, it was broad number and that’s a lot of money. I would know about that.”
With his reputation already seemingly beyond repair, the sec-ond part of the interview focused
Cyclist Lance Armstrong is interviewed by Oprah Winfrey in Austin, Texas, in this January 14, 2013 handout photo courtesy
of Harpo Studios.
on his personal torment rather than his sins.
He admitted he was ashamed of what he had done and was closest to tears recalling the moment he told his children that the accusa-tions against him were true.
“I saw my son (Luke) defend-ing me and saying, ‘That’s not true’ ... that’s when I knew I had to tell him. He never asked me, ‘Dad is this true?’ He trusts me,” Armstrong said.
“I said, ‘Listen, there’s been a lot questions about your dad, did I dope and did not dope? ... I want you to know that it is true’. “I told Luke, ‘Don’t defend me anymore
... if anyone says anything to you do not defend, just say, hey my dad said he was sorry.’”
Armstrong said the scandal had taken a toll on his mother, saying “she’s a wreck”, and had hit him financially.
He said he lost about $75m when his sponsors deserted him last year after USADA released its damning report on him.
“All gone. Probably never com-ing back,” he said. “I’ve lost all future income.”
The cancer survivor is already facing a string of challenges that could cost him millions more but said the lowest point was when
he had to quit the Livestrong foundation.
“That was most humbling moment,” said Armstrong, who survived testicular cancer before going on to win the Tour de France seven times.
Armstrong said he had no idea what the future held but said he hoped he could rebuild his life.
“I’ve been to a dark place that was not of my doing where I didn’t know if I would live,” he said.
“You can’t compare this to an advanced diagnosis. That sets the bar. It is close but I’m an opti-mist and I like to look forward.” REUTERS
Today’s riders paying price for doping, says SchleckADELAIDE, AUSTRALIA: Luxembourg’s Andy Schleck said yesterday that today’s rid-ers would pay the price for the systematic doping undertaken by disgraced seven-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong.
“When this all started I was 14, 15 years old so I came into a dif-ferent era,” the 27-year-old said. “I think it’s a bit sad that we now have to pay the price for what happened 15 years ago.”
He said Armstrong’s televised confession to Oprah Winfrey this week had not revealed anything new. “It’s not really a surprise... because we knew the evidence beforehand,” Schleck said.
“I think it’s good for him, maybe it gets some weight off his shoul-ders but I believe the sad thing about it is that cycling is going to pay the price now, and it’s sad if we have to pay the price for it when we weren’t even profession-als 15 years ago.”
Belgium’s Philippe Gilbert said the riders on the professional cir-cuit were sick of talking about Armstrong.
“It is part of the story of cycling of course, but it is the past and we just want to see something differ-ent now,” he said. AFP
Beach Soccer: Barca, Milan to clash in Doha
AC Milan’s Beach Soccer team poses for a picture ahead of a match. RIGHT: Barcelona’s Beach Soccer team are seen before a match. Both clubs will play a match against each other at Katara Beach on January 26.
DOHA: Beach Soccer teams Barcelona and AC Milan will clash in an exhibition match at Katara Beach on January 26.
The match will be played at 7:00pm just before the final of the AFC qualifiers of the FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup 2013.
Nasser Al Khater, Vice Chairman of the Local Organising Committee, is eager to welcome the European giants to Qatar. He said: “We look forward to having two of Europe’s best beach soccer teams square off at Katara during the Asian qualifying rounds. We are positive this will be an excit-ing match-up. Best of luck to both clubs.”
FC Barcelona and AC Milan will arrive in Doha on January 24, and will train at Katara during the morning of January 25.
Training sessions will be open to media, and a mixed zone will be open after the training sessions.
As with the matches of the AFC qualifiers of the FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup, entry to the Barcelona vs AC Milan beach soc-cer friendly will be free of charge.
Barcelona is led by Ramiro
Amarelle, one of the best beach soccer players in the history of the sport.
The Spanish giants have three world champions among their ranks: Egor Eremeeey, Dimitry Shishin and Andriy Buklhitskiy,
who was voted best goalkeeper in the world during the FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup 2011 in Ravenna, Italy.
FC Barcelona have twice reached the quarterfinals in 2011 and 2012 at the Mundialito de
Clubes, a club beach soccer tour-nament held in Brazil.
Meanwhile, Italy’s AC Milan have two key players from the Swiss National team, who are the current European Beach Soccer League champions.
Dejan Stankovic and Stephan Meiser will be supported by the backbone of the Italian Beach Soccer National Team – Paolo Palmacci, Stefano Spada and Simone Feudi.
THE PENINSULA
Drag Race: Al Sarraf, Al Lanjawi record wins DOHA: Kuwait’s Salem Al Sarraf won the first Runabout Stock race after beating Qatar’s Abdullah Naim Al Baker in the final of the first aqua bike Drag Race of the new season.
Hosted by the Qatar Marine Sports Federation (QMSF), the event was held at the Katara cultural village yesterday, which attracted the Gulf ’s (from Bahrain, UAE and Kuwait, as well as Qatar) top aqua bike riders in each of the categories.
Approximately 45 riders took part in the first round in Doha, yesterday.
The Runabout Stock race category winner Al Sarraf had already beaten fellow countryman Mohammed Ibrahim Burbaie in the semi-final and won his open-ing heat.
Al Baker had got the better of Qatar’s Khamis Al Housani in his semi-final and Kuwait’s Yousef Al Abdulrazzaq in his first race.
In the Runabout Super Stock
final, the UAE’s Ali Al Lanjawi edged Kuwait’s Yousef Al Abdulrazzaq to clinch first place.
Al Lanjawi had beaten Qatar’s Muhsin Saeed Al Hajri in the semi-final and cruised through his first heat in yesterday’s ses-sion in Doha.
Al Abdulrazzaq had beaten Bahrain’s Bader Hassan Ali in his semi-final after pipping Kuwait’s Mohammed Jassim Al Baz in his first heat.
The format for yesterday’s racing consisted of a first set of heats for the Runabout Stock, Runabout Super Stock and Open classes.
The second series of heats took place after the lunch break.
Finals in each category brought proceedings to a close before the podium awards’ ceremony.
The next round of the QMSF aqua bike Drag Race competi-tion will be held next Saturday on January 26.
THE PENINSULA
The podium winners along with officials pose for a picture after the Qatar Marine Sports Federation’s aqua bike Drag Race competition at Katara beach, yesterday. RIGHT: A participant in action during the first round of the competition. The second round of the competition takes place on January 26.
Gignac’s late goal gives Marseille winPARIS: A last-gasp goal by Andre-Pierre Gignac gave Olympique Marseille a thrilling 3-2 comeback home win against champions Montpellier in Ligue 1, yesterday.
Striker Gignac found the back of the net one minute into stop-page time to lift OM up to sec-ond place with 41 points from 21 games, one point adrift of leaders Olympique Lyon.
Andre Ayew put the Provence side ahead when he headed home in the 14th minute.
Andre Ayew came close 10 minutes before the interval with a shot from just outside the box that shaved Geoffrey Jourdren’s left post.
Montpellier upped the tempo and Utaka controlled Cabella’s cross into the box and fired past Mandanda to make it 2-1 for the visitors.
In the 80th minute, Jordan Ayew scored before Gignac, ben-efited from a bad clearance to score. REUTERS
27SPORT SUNDAY 20 JANUARY 2013
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Hungary’s Gabor Boczko defeats Russia’s Anton Avdeev to win 2013 Qatar Grand Prix at Gate Mall
Chaiblaine Zinedine, a five-year-old, gets his first lessons in fencing at Aspire Academy yesterday. Zinedine was part of a group of youngsters who attended a coaching clinic conducted by Qatar Fencing Club on the sidelines of the Qatar 2013 Fencing Grand Prix and World Cup. RIGHT: Participants of the United Nations (UN) Youth Leadership Camp in Doha who took part in the fencing coaching clinic pose for a picture along with officials of Qatar Fencing Club at Aspire Academy yesterday.
Gabor Gyula Boczko of Hungary (second left) winner of the 2013 Qatar Fencing Grand Prix poses for a picture along with runner-up Anton Avdeev (left) of Russia, Nikolai Novosjolov ( second right) of Estonia and Alexandre Blaszyck of France, who took bronze at the Gate Mall in Doha yesterday. Boczko won $10,000 for his effort. Today, the final of the women’s semi-finals and final will be held at the Gate Mall from 6.00pm. The Preliminary rounds will be held in the morning at Aspire Academy. On Monday, the championship will conclude with the women’s team event. The Championship in epee is contested by 240 players from 45 countries. This year, the final rounds of the event is being held at the Gate Mall in a new move to attract fans. RIGHT: Boczko (left) and Avdeev in action during their final match. PICTURES BY: KAMMUTTY VP
Franklin steers Kiwis to unexpected victory Visitors script one-wicket win against SA in first ODIPAARL: A superb rear-guard knock of 47 not out from James Franklin helped New Zealand pull off an improbable one-wicket victory against South Africa in the first one-day inter-national yesterday.
New Zealand, who elected to field first, bowled out South Africa for 208 on a slow pitch after debu-tant Mitchell McClenaghan and off-spinner Kane Williamson sti-fled the hosts by taking four wick-ets apiece. Faf Du Plessis (57) was the only South African to reach the half-century mark.
South African-born BJ Watling (45) kept New Zealand above the required rate but the visitors lost their way and stumbled to 140 for eight in the 33rd over.
However, Franklin and lower-order batsman Kyle Mills (26), produced some dogged batting to guide New Zealand to an unlikely one-wicket victory. The result handed New Zealand a 1-0 lead in the three-match series.
The Proteas came into the game on top of the ICC ODI rank-ings but had not played 50-over cricket since September and the top order struggled to cope with the difficult pitch.
Hashim Amla (13), Graeme Smith (7) and AB De Villiers (7) were all trapped in front of their stumps to reduce the home side to 37 for three in the 12th over.
Colin Ingram (29) and debu-tant Quinton de Kock (18) offered du Plessis some support, but both were well caught by Nathan McCullum to end useful partner-ships and leave the home side 119 for five in the 30th over.
Du Plessis remained steadfast, and, with the help of a quick-fire 33 from 39 balls by all-rounder Ryan McLaren, was able to give the innings some much-needed momentum.
The right-handed Du Plessis brought up his fifth ODI fifty
with a boundary to fine leg off Kyle Mills in the 39th over, and by that stage South Africa were 171 for five.
McLaren fell soon after, begin-ning a procession of wickets, including that of Du Plessis, which were shared between Williamson and McClenaghan.
Rory Kleinveldt (26) struck three big sixes to get the score past the 200 mark in the 46th over, and was the last to be dis-missed with 22 deliveries still remaining in the innings.
New Zealand’s reply got off to a poor start as opener Martin Guptill was run out without facing a ball and fellow opener Rob Nicol (4) fell soon after to Lonwabo Tsotsobe.
When Williamson became Tsotsobe’s second victim in the eighth over, New Zealand were in trouble at 21 for three.
Captain Brendon McCullum (26) joined Watling and the pair began to steady the innings. However, their 52-run partner-ship ended amid farcical scenes as a power failure at Boland Park denied the skipper a review when he was adjudged lbw in the 18th over off Rory Kleinveldt.
Wickets continued to tumble during the black-out and when the power was finally restored, Zealand still required a further 69 runs for victory.
But Franklin, who had survived an umpire review for a catch in the 32nd over, and Mills frus-trated the home side.
Mills was bowled by McLaren in the 44th over with 22 runs still needed, but Franklin continued to keep the South Africans at bay and a cover-drive for four guided his team over the line with 26 balls to spare.
The second game of the three-match series takes place in Kimberley on Tuesday.
REUTERS
Yazeed returnsto MERC for full season of rallyingDOHA: Saudi Arabia’s motor sport ambassador and leading rally driver Yazeed Al Rajhi is to make a return to a full pro-gramme of FIA Middle East Rally Championship (MERC) events this season, starting with a full assault at next weekend’s Qatar International Rally.
Al Rajhi finished third over-all at the wheel of a Ford Fiesta S2000 in last autumn’s Jordan Rally with his regular Ulster co-driver Michael Orr, but a full attack at the MERC is a wel-come return for the Saudi star after another impressive outing in Cyprus last November.
Al Rajhi decided to gradu-ate to the FIA World Rally Championship during the WRC round in Jordan Rally a few years ago and he has become a regular face on the international scene outside the Middle East over the last two years, in addition to taking part in several European rallies.
He and Orr will use an M-Sport-prepared Ford Fiesta RRC this season, the car in which the Riyadh driver finished his first full season in the FIA SWRC Championship in third position last year.
The break from regional ral-lying has made Al Rajhi a more accomplished driver and that was clearly demonstrated by his stage times on the recent MERC rallies in Jordan and Cyprus.
“I stopped my career in the Middle East Championship and went to the WRC to develop
myself and gain more experience and professionalism because, if you want to compete with the fast drivers, you have to par-ticipate in external champion-ships and practice more,” said the Saudi.
“In addition to that, the Middle East Championship doesn’t give the driver the same level of experience as the World Championship.
“My participation in the Middle East will not prevent me from taking part n the World Championship with the S2000 car, which will have a new name this year – WRC2. We now have a new system of freedom where drivers can choose which rallies to participate in.”
The Qatar International Rally in being organised by the Qatar Motor and Motorcycle Federation (QMMF) and takes place on new stages to the north of Doha, with a new service park and a revised route. Action will take place on January 25 and January 26.
The FIA Middle East Rally Championship officially began in 1984 and only two Saudi drivers have managed to win the title in that time. Mamdouh Khayat won the series in 1992 and Abdullah Bakhashab was triumphant three years later.
Al Rajhi has already won three MERC rallies and several other FIA events and will be determined to start his 2013 title challenge with a win in Qatar this weekend.
THE PENINSULA
SOUTH AFRICAH Amla lbw Mills .......................................13G Smith lbw McClenaghan ..........................7C Ingram c N McCullum b Williamson .........29A B de Villiers lbw McClenaghan ..................7F du Plessis c Nicol b Williamson ...............57Q de Kock c N McCullum b Franklin ...........18R McLaren c B McCullum b Williamson ......33R Peterson lbw b McClenaghan ...................0R Kleinveldt c Mills b Williamson ................26D Steyn b McClenaghan ..............................0L Tsotsobe (not out) ....................................0Extras (B-4, LB-3, NB-1, W-10) .................18Total (all out in 46 2 overs) ..................208Fall of wickets: 1-25, 2-27, 3-37, 4-83, 5-119, 6-178, 7-179, 8-182, 9-183, 10-208Bowling: Mills 8-1-55-1 (nb-1, w-2); Mc-Clenaghan 10-2-20-4 (w-2); N McCullum 6-0-34-0; Franklin 10-1-44-1 (w-3); Williamson 7 2-0-22-4; Neesham 4-0-22-0 (w-3); Elliott 1-0-4-0.
NEW ZEALANDR J Nicol c Smith b Tsotsobe .......................4M J Guptill (run out-de Villiers) ....................0B J Watling b McLaren ..............................45K S Williamson c du Plessis b Tsotsobe ........5B B McCullum lbw Kleinveldt .....................26G D Elliott c Smith b Kleinveldt .....................1J E C Franklin (not out) ...............................47J D S Neesham lbw McLaren ......................0N L McCullum lbw McLaren .......................24K D Mills b McLaren ..................................26M J McClenaghan (not out) ..........................0Extras (LB-13, W-15, NB-3) .......................31Total (for 9 wkts in 45.4 overs) ............209Fall of wickets: 1-0, 2-4, 3-21, 4-73, 5-81, 6-105, 7-105, 8-140, 9-187.Bowling: D W Steyn 10-3-33-0 (2w); L L Tsot-sobe 8-2-43-2; R K Kleinveldt 9-0-37-2 (1nb, 9w); R McLaren 8.4-0-46-4 (2nb, 3w); R J Pe-terson 10-0-37-0.Player-of-the-Match: Franklin (New Zealand).
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Hosts India take ODI series leadEngland lose third ODI by seven wickets in five-match series; Kohli top scores RANCHI: An overall team effort enabled India clinch the third One-Day International (ODI) against England by seven wickets and go 2-1 up in the five-match series at the JSCA International Stadium here yesterday.
Put in, England were bowled out for a measly 155, and India chased down the target in 28.1 overs in the first international game at the newly-built 39,000-capacity beau-tiful stadium.
Virat Kohli, currently World No.3 in the ICC rankings for ODIs, anchored the innings to return unbeaten 77. His splendid knock included nine boundaries and the two sixes of the match.
In the process, Kohli also became the fastest to get to 4000 runs in ODIs in 96 matches, the same as West Indies legend Viv Richards. He is the second young-est to go past 4000 runs after bat-ting maestro Sachin Tendulkar.
Tendulkar was 22 years and 359 days, while Kohli is 24 years 75 days.
Kohli got ample support from opener and Delhi team-mate Gautam Gambhir (33) and Yuvraj Singh (30) after the home team suffered an early blow when Mumbai batsman Ajinkya Rajane was bowled by pacer Steven Finn for a duck in the third over.
India skipper and local boy
Mahendra Singh Dhoni came out to bat on Yuvraj’s dismissal to oblige his hometown crowd which kept chanting “Dhoni... Dhoni!” right through the match and to their delight he struck the win-ning four.
India got into driver’s seat thanks to a brilliant bowling per-formance by their bowlers. They justified their captain’s faith by dismissing the visitors in 42.2 overs.
Man-of-the-Match in the second ODI at Kochi, Ravindra Jadeja was again the star of the show as he collected three wickets in 6.2 overs.
Jadeja bowled both Craig Kieswetter and Jade Dernbach
and caught Samit Patel plumb in front of the stumps. Incidentally, all three batsmen were out for a duck.
Offspinner Ravichandran Ashwin provided good support, taking two wickets for 37 runs from his quota of 10 overs.
Pacer Shami Ahmed provided the breakthrough when he took the prize wicket of England skip-per Alastair Cook for 17 to start the slide.
Ishant Sharma got the wick-ets of Kevin Pietersen (17) and Joe Root, who top scored with 39, both caught behind.
Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Suresh Raina also chipped in with a wicket each. IANS
ENGLANDA Cook lbw S Ahmed .................................17I Bell c Dhoni b Kumar ...............................25K Pietersen c Dhoni b Sharma ...................17J Root c Dhoni b Sharma ...........................39E Morgan c Y Singh b Ashwin ....................10C Kieswetter b Jadeja .................................0S Patel lbw Jadeja ......................................0T Bresnan b Ashwin ..................................25J Tredwell (not out) ......................................4S Finn c Y Singh b Raina ..............................3J Dernbach b Jadeja ...................................0Extras (LB-6, W-9) ....................................15Total (all out in 42.2 overs) ..................155Fall of wickets: 1-24, 2-68, 3-68, 4-97, 5-98, 6-98, 7-145, 8-145, 9-155, 10-155.
Bowling: Bhuvneshwar Kumar 10-2-40-1; Shami Ahmed 8-0-23-1; Ishant Sharma 7-0-29-2; Ravindra Jadeja 6.2-0-19-3; Ravichan-dran Ashwin 10-0-37-2; Suresh Raina 1-0-1-1.INDIAG Gambhir c Root b Tredwell ......................33A Rahane b Finn .........................................0V Kohli (not out) ........................................77Y Singh b Tredwell .....................................30M S Dhoni (not out) ...................................10Extras (B-1, LB-1, W-5) ...............................7Total (for 3 wkts in 28.1 overs) ............157Fall of wickets: 1-11, 2-78, 3-144.Bowling: Steve Finn 9.1-0-50-1; Jade Dern-bach 5-0-45-0; Tim Bresnan 7-2-31-0; James Tredwell 7-1-29-2.
Scoreboard
India’s Virat Kohli plays a pull shot against England in the third One-Day International (ODI) at the JSCA International Stadium in Ranchi yesterday. India won by seven wickets to take a 2-1 lead in the five-match series.
Silva trims Man United’s leadLONDON: Manchester City cut Manchester United’s Premier League lead to four points by beating Fulham 2-0 yesterday thanks to a brace of goals from Spanish midfielder David Silva.
United are not in action until they visit Tottenham Hotspur on Sunday and defending champions City took advantage to breathe fresh impetus into their title defence.
Silva broke the deadlock after just 96 seconds at the Etihad Stadium, slamming home from six yards after Fulham goalkeeper Mark Schwarzer parried a long-range shot from Edin Dzeko.
Steve Sidwell hit the post for the visitors in the 31st minute and City lost Pablo Zabaleta to injury before Silva added a second with 21 minutes left, gathering a Carlos Tevez flick and beating Schwarzer with a dinked finish.
Meanwhile, Liverpool reacted
to last weekend’s 2-1 loss at United in emphatic fashion by thrashing Norwich City 5-0 at Anfield to close to within three points of the European places.
At the bottom of the table, Adam Le Fondre scored twice in six minutes as Reading dragged themselves out of the relegation zone by coming from behind once again to win 2-1 at Newcastle United.
Yohan Cabaye’s picture-perfect free-kick put Newcastle in front 10 minutes prior to the interval but Le Fondre equalised 65 sec-onds after coming on as a 70th-minute substitute and then curled in a 77th-minute winner.
It was Reading’s second improbable comeback in two games following their dramatic 3-2 success over West Bromwich Albion last weekend and it meant that Newcastle remain two points above the bottom three.
Joe Cole scored the first goal of his second spell at West Ham United.
New signing Loic Remy marked his QPR debut with a coolly-taken 14th-minute goal but Cole gave West Ham a share of the spoils when he converted from close range in the 68th minute.
Sunderland continued their recent revival by coming back from a goal down to win 3-2 at Wigan Athletic, who slipped into the drop zone.
Swansea City warmed up for the second leg of their League Cup semi-final with Chelsea by beating Stoke City 3-1 at the Liberty Stadium.
In the late match, Peter Odemwingie’s late strike saw West Bromwich Albion fight back from two goals down to draw 2-2 at home to Aston Villa in an entertaining Midlands derby.
AGENCIES
Barcelona suffer first Liga defeat of the season MADRID: An injury-time strike from substitute Imanol Agirretxe condemned 10-man Barcelona to a 3-2 defeat at Real Sociedad yesterday, their first of a record-breaking La Liga season.
Lionel Messi scored in a 10th consecutive game for a landmark second time, putting Barca ahead after six minutes with Pedro Rodriguez doubling lead.
But Chory Castro pulled a goal back before the break and then got his second after 63 minutes.
With Gerard Pique off the field after receiving a red card, Agirretxe got the winner in the 91st minute.There appears to be no record out of reach for Messi who scored in 10 straight matches in the 2011-12 season, notching up 18 goals in the process.
It equalled the mark set by Ronaldo, who scored 12 in 10 games during the 1996-97 sea-son, and Mariano Martin who put away 18 in 10 matches between 1942 and 1943.
Messi has now hit 15 goals in 10 games and 29 overall in the league this season, but it counted for lit-tle on the night.
Barca went into the game hav-ing set a new record for a La Liga start with 18 wins -- and just one draw against Real Madrid -- for 55 points from a possible 57.
Despite the loss, they are still 11 points ahead of Atletico Madrid, who play Levante on Sunday, and Real Madrid in third, who face
Valencia, a huge 18 points off the pace. Barca once again began with Andres Iniesta in attack along-side Messi and Pedro Rodriguez with Alexis Sanchez struggling for form and David Villa injured.
Real Sociedad played the more defensive Markel Bergara in mid-field rather than Ruben Pardo but even so they were under threat right from the start with a ball over their backline from Iniesta saw Messi scamper clear on goal.
On this occasion, he slotted the ball the wrong side of the post but he was not so forgiving minutes later as he fired Barca ahead.
Iniesta was once again involved as he slipped the ball to Messi on the edge of the area and he picked his spot in the corner past the desperate dive of keeper Claudio Bravo. A weakened Barca had drawn 2-2 with Malaga at Camp Nou in the first leg of the Spanish Cup quarter-final after they dropped their level after the break but they came out all guns blazing in San Sebastian.
Still Real have a dangerous forward line of their own and they went close to equalising after 10 minutes when Carlos Vela knocked a free-kick to Xabi Prieto, who had been left unmarked in the box, but he hit the side netting. AFP
Manchester City’s David Silva celebrates scoring against Fulham during their English Premier League match in Manchester, northern England, yesterday.
