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BUSINESS | Page 1
SPORT | Page 5
INDEX
QATAR
2 – 9, 28
26, 27
COMMENT
1 – 6, 13 – 16
REGION
10
BUSINESS
ARAB WORLD
11
CLASSIFIED
7 – 13
SPORTS
1 – 12
INTERNATIONAL 12 – 25
Qatar National Bank (QNB) will
open a representative office in
Vietnam’s economic hub of Ho Chi
Minh City on March 30, according to
Qatar’s new ambassador, Abdullah
Sultan al-Hamar. The branch will
be followed by another one in the
capital Hanoi “in the future”, the
ambassador said. The opening
of the first QNB office in Vietnam
comes after the bank received
a licence from the State Bank
of Vietnam in September 2014.
The representative offices will
function as a “liaison entity to make
market research and promotion
of investment projects of QNB
in Vietnam”, it was announced.
AFRICA | Election
Nigeria begins
tense vote count
Nigeria counted ballots in its closelyfought general election yesterday
after failures in controversial new
technology pushed voting into a
second day, with officials calling for
calm in the tense wait for a winner.
Despite violence linked to Boko
Haram militants and sporadic unrest
elsewhere, UN chief Ban Ki-moon
and others praised the conduct
of the vote and urged vigilance to
avoid a repeat of deadly rioting that
followed 2011 elections. Page 12
SRI LANKA | Politics
Premier pledges
‘political solution’
Sri Lanka’s new Prime Minister
Ranil Wickremesinghe has
pledged a “political solution” for
the island’s war-torn north, where
ethnic minority Tamils have long
demanded greater autonomy.
Page 25
Life in Qatar A Woman’s Perspective
American Josephine fell in love
with a Qatari young man, who
was her college mate in Texas and
married him 27 years ago, only to
settle down in Qatar two years later.
Josephine tells her story in the
second interview of “Life in Qatar- A
Woman’s Perspective” series. Page 9
-2.56
-4.98%
MONDAY
www. gulf-times.com 2 Riyals
Arab summit
agrees on joint
military force
A
HH the Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani signing the condolence book for
Singapore’s former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew yesterday. HH the Emir, on a visit
to Singapore, offered condolences to President Tony Tan Keng Yam and Prime
Minister Lee Hsien Loong on the death of Lee. The Emir also condoled the family
of the former premier during the funeral service, held at the National University of
Singapore yesterday afternoon. The funeral service was attended by a number of
heads of states and government and senior officials. More than 100,000 people
lined Singapore’s streets to bid farewell to Lee as a week of mourning ended in the
city-state he led to prosperity. Page 14
Al Wakra Hospital
starts new services
A
l Wakra Hospital (AWH), a member of the Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC), has launched a
range of new services.
The new services, including a neurology clinic and a range of new evening
clinics, are part of HMC’s “innovative
model of care which brings more specialist services to community hospitals”,
an official said.
AWH has also announced the opening
of evening clinics for some of its clinical
services like orthopaedics, respiratory/
pulmonary, oral and maxillofacial, gastro-intestinal (GI), urology, nephrology,
ear, nose and throat (ENT), dermatology
and cardiology. The hospital is to start
evening clinics for general surgery and
physiotherapy.
The hours of operation for these clinics are from 3pm to 5pm from Sunday
through Thursday.
The neurology clinic offers comprehensive consultation, evaluation, and
treatment for problems that result from
disorders in the nervous system, such
as muscle weakness, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy and dizziness. The clinic,
managed by Dr Abbas Elsiddig Khalid
El Hadi, consultant neurologist, is open
on Mondays and Tuesdays from 7:30am
to 12pm.
The clinic is part of the Outpatient
Department at AWH and can be accessed
following referral from either a Primary
Health Care Corporation (PHCC) physician or an HMC physician via an internal referral. In some cases referrals from
physicians at private healthcare facilities
may also be accepted. This new service
covers emergency cases at AWH that
need urgent neurological consultation
and support.
“Since the opening of this clinic, we
have already provided neurology consultation to more than 35 patients and
we are receiving more patients each day.
We receive all kinds of neurology cases;
however, the most common are patients
with stroke and epilepsy,” Dr ElSiddig
said.
AWH now offers a valet parking service to patients, families and visitors. The
service is available at the main entrance
of the hospital, at the Outpatient Department A and at the Adult Emergency
Unit.
Wilson Ross, AWH’s acting CEO,
commented: “We are absolutely delighted to bring these patient-centred
services to AWH and closer to the community we serve. Our top priority is to
ensure that all patients who arrive at the
hospital feel welcomed and well-taken
care of - knowing that they have easy access to the best care possible.”
Dr Mahmoud Heidous, acting medical
director AWH said: “This new endeavour
supports our commitment to provide the
safest, most effective and most compassionate care to each and every one of our
patients. We are certain that the introduction of these services will result in
improved clinical and operational efficiencies and will create a more positive
experience for our patients.”
Vol. XXXVI No. 9677
March 30, 2015
Jumada II 10, 1436 AH
Reuters/AFP
Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt
REGION | Negotiations
Iran and six world powers yesterday
tried to break an impasse in nuclear
negotiations, but officials cautioned
that attempts to reach a preliminary
deal by a deadline in two days could
yet fall apart. The two sides explored
compromises in areas including
numbers of centrifuges used to
enrich uranium that Iran could
operate, and its nuclear enrichment
work for medical research. Page 10
48.87
+77.66
+0.68%
Arab representatives will meet
over the next month to study the
creation of the joint force
Business page 1
Iran, world powers
explore compromises
11,488.41
+34.43
+0.19%
in
QNB to open first
branch in Vietnam
17,712.66
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BUSINESS | Expansion
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In brief
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Latest Figures
GULF TIMES
Emir offers condolences
DOW JONES
pu
Sheikh Faisal signs
JV agreement with
leading Indian hotelier
Australia
win fifth
World
Cup
rab leaders at a summit in
Egypt yesterday announced
the formation of a unified
military force to counter growing security threats from Yemen to
Libya.
Working out the mechanism and
logistics of the unified force could
take months.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh
Shukri told a news conference the
Arab force would be voluntary,
meaning no one country would be
forced to take part and it could give
member states flexibility should
differences arise. At least two countries have committed to the force, he
added.
The unified force would be supervised by the chiefs of staffs of Arab
armed forces, Egyptian President
Abdel Fattah al-Sisi told the summit.
The dangers facing the region
since the Arab Spring uprisings of
2011 are stark and complex.
While conflicts intensify in Yemen and Libya, the civil war in Syria is
entering its fifth year.
Islamic State militants have taken
over swathes of Iraq and Syria and
spawned splinter groups across the
Arab world.
The summit’s final communique
HE the Foreign Minister Dr Khalid bin
Mohamed al-Attiyah attending the
closing session of the Arab summit in
Sharm El Sheikh yesterday.
called for “co-ordination, efforts
and steps to establish an unified
Arab force” to intervene in countries
such as Yemen.
The move came after Saudi Arabia
formed a 10-nation Arab coalition
against Houthi fighters who have
made rapid advances in Yemen and
launched military strikes against
them on Thursday.
Arab representatives will meet
over the next month to study the
creation of the force and present
their findings to defence ministers
within four months, according to
the resolution adopted by the leaders.
The decision was mostly aimed at
fighting extremists who have overrun swathes of Iraq and Syria and
secured a foothold in Libya, Arab
League chief Nabil al-Arabi said
ahead of the summit.
Yesterday, Arabi told the meet-
ing the region was threatened by a
“destructive” force that threatened
“ethnic and religious diversity”, in
an apparent reference to the Islamic
State group.
“What is important is that today there is an important decision,
in light of the tumult afflicting the
Arab world,” he said.
Arabi, reading a statement at the
conclusion of the summit, said the
Saudi-led campaign in Yemen would
continue until the Houthis withdraw
from regions they have overrun and
surrender their weapons.
Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu
Mansour Hadi at the start of the
summit called for the offensive to
end only when the Houthis “surrender”, calling the rebel leader an Iranian “puppet”.
James Dorsey, a Middle East analyst with the Singapore-based S
Rajaratnam School of International
Studies, said that despite support
for a joint-Arab force, “it would still
take months to create and then operate on an ad-hoc basis”.
Chaos in Libya may be one key test
for the unified force if it intervenes
in a country with factions allied to
two governments, vying for control
of territory and oil facilities.
Sisi has repeatedly called for concerted Arab and Western action
against what he sees as an existential threat posed by militant groups
operating in Libya and elsewhere.
He ordered air strikes against Islamic State militants in Libya after the group beheaded 21 Egyptian
Christians there. Page 10
Rossi wins thrilling Grand Prix of Qatar
M
otoGP great Valentino Rossi,
on a Yamaha, won a spectacular Grand Prix of Qatar
yesterday as he withstood a furious
onslaught from fellow Italian Andrea
Dovizioso over the ﬁnal laps to take
the opening race of the season.
A see-saw battle saw the lead
change hands numerous times before the 36-year-old Rossi opened up
a slight gap on the ﬁnal two laps and
held off the charging Dovizioso on his
Ducati, who was looking for his ﬁrst
win in MotoGP.
It was a stunning 109th victory for
the iconic Rossi and his 197th podium
as Italy swept the board with Andrea
Iannone, also on a Ducati, coming
home third.
It was a ﬁrst time Italy took the top
three places since the Japanese MotoGP in 2006.
Rossi won by 0.174sec with Iannone 2.250 back, Spaniard Jorge
Lorenzo in fourth and world champion Marc Marquez well back in ﬁfth
Italy’s Yamaha rider Valentino Rossi
receiving the Commercial Bank Grand
Prix of Qatar trophy from Qatar Motor
and Motorcycling Federation president
Nasser Khalifa al-Attiyah at the Losail
International Circuit yesterday.
at 7.036 after a nightmare start.
“This was one of the best victories
for me,” said Rossi with his trademark
grin.
“The bike was fantastic, I never
gave up but it was a real ﬁght with the
Ducatis and the Hondas who were really strong.
“I’m so happy for me, for the team
and for Yamaha. The second part of
the race was really good and I’m very
happy because we had difficulties in
testing and practice but my experience helped today.
“This is a great, great victory but I
had a good feeling this morning.” he
added.
Lorenzo, also on a Yamaha, was
also in the hunt for victory and led
midway through the race before
Rossi, who began from eighth on
the grid, charged to the front and
went into battle with his compatriot
Dovizioso.
It came down to an all Italian battle with Rossi seizing the lead for the
ﬁnal time with two laps to go and just
hanging on to cross the line ahead of
Dovizioso, who started from pole position. Sport page 1
Qatar Museums and ictQATAR sign agreement for digitising 3D materials
Q
atar Museums has become the
3D Conversion Centre for the
country, according to a memorandum of understanding (MoU)
signed with the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology (ictQATAR) for digitising 3D materials.
The agreement was signed by Reem
al-Mansoori, assistant undersecretary
of Digital Society, ICT and Society,
ictQATAR; and Mansoor bin Ebrahim
al-Mahmoud, acting CEO of Qatar
Museums.
ictQATAR is responsible for developing programs and taking the necessary
actions required to digitise Qatar’s national cultural heritage as well as publishing it online in collaboration with
authorities concerned.
Qatar Museums is the national body
responsible for developing, promoting
and sustaining Qatar’s cultural sector.
This MoU comes within the framework of the Media, Culture, and Heritage National Digitisation Plan unveiled
in 2014. It also translates an ongoing
governmental commitment to improv-
ing access to Qatari heritage and culture
by digitising and making them available
online in multiple digital formats.
“The Ministry of Information and
Communications Technology believes
in the importance of preserving Qatar’s
heritage by harnessing the potential of
ICT and capitalising on considerable
expertise and skills owned by the parties connected to that sector,” al-Mansoori said.
“Working closely with all bodies in
ﬁelds of media, culture and heritage,
we can develop new methods not only
on how to preserve our national heritage but also on how to make it available
and accessible in newer digital formats
in line with best international practices,” the official explained.
Al-Mansoori described the MoU as
“another step forward on implementing ictQATAR’s digitisation project that
aims at preserving and sharing the Arabic and Islamic heritage of the State of
Qatar”.
“3D materials digitisation is important in making our heritage available
for students and researchers here and
from around the world thus enriching
the knowledge of our history by introducing it to local and international audiences,” al-Mahmoud said.
3D digitisation allows for the virtual
examination of 3D objects, reduces the
risk of damage to 3D objects and facilitates comparative study. It also assists
with the restoration of 3D objects by
making it easier to replicate delicate
parts.
On the sidelines of the MoU signing ceremony, ictQATAR and the Qatar
National Library organised a workshop
on heritage digitisation. A total of 24
professionals, enthusiasts and project
owners from various institutions such
as the Emiri Diwan, the Supreme Education Council, Qatar University and
QNA, attended.
In 2014 during Qatar’s Qitcom, a tripartite MoU was signed by ictQATAR,
QNL and the Ministry of Culture, Arts
and Heritage for the digitisation of the
2D materials owned by the Ministry
of Culture, Arts and Heritage. As per
that MoU, QNL became the national 2D
conversion centre of Qatar.
2
Gulf Times
Monday, March 30, 2015
QATAR
Labour Minister meets Polish envoy
Qatar-Ecuador ties reviewed
In brief
GCC finance
undersecretaries
to meet in Doha
HE the Minister of Labour and Social Affairs Dr Abdullah Saleh Mubarak al-Khulaifi holding talks
with the Polish Ambassador to Qatar Krzysztof Suprowicz in Doha yesterday. Talks dealt with
aspects of co-operation and means to develop them in addition to other topics of common
interest.
Pearl diving
contest draws
good response
The organising committee of the
fourth pearl diving and fishing
competition – Senyar - at Katara,
the Cultural Village Foundation,
has received a large number of
applications for participation.
Scheduled for April 22-25, the
heritage festival contest features
three main categories. Ahmed
al-Hatmi, chairman of the
organising committee said that
the management of the event
is going to hold a meeting with
the participating divers on April
5 at 6.30pm to give them the
information and instruction.
Each participating team would
be allowed to include a child
under 10 years old as an active
participant on condition that the
child should be accompanied
by his parent or a first degree
relative. All the participating
dhows would undergo a technical
inspection test to confirm
their readiness for the event.
Registration would remain open
until April 1 at Katara.
Gulf national gets
25-year jail term
The Criminal Court has
sentenced a Gulf national to
25 years in jail for causing the
death of the owner of a house
where he had broken into with
the intention of committing
theft, local Arabic daily Arrayah
reported.
The accused also has to pay a
blood money of QR200,000 to
the victim’s family. The armed
accused fought with the house
owner, a heart patient, who
collapsed and died. Therefore,
the court punished the accused
person under the most stringent
articles 1/306, 85 and 84 of the
Penal Code, the daily added.
HE the Minister of Finance Ali Sherif al-Emadi meeting the Finance Minister of Ecuador Fausto
Herrera in Doha yesterday. They discussed ways to develop relations between Qatar and Ecuador.
Major traffic diversion
on Doha-Wakrah road
T
o facilitate the construction of the Red Line segment of the Qatar Rail
among other projects including
an interchange, a major traffic
diversion has been announced
near Barwa Village on the main
road between Doha and Al Wakrah.
Announcing this yesterday
Public Works Authority (Ashghal) said the diversion would be
in place starting from near the
Barwa Village interchange to Al
Wakrah roundabout.
It said both Ashghal and Qatar
Rail have assessed the current
road use before developing the
best alternative routes to facilitate traffic diversion.
It would help reduce the impact of the diversion on the trafﬁc ﬂow for the duration of the
work.
The diversion will facilitate
the construction work of the
Doha Metro project (The Red
Line South Elevated and atgrade) being implemented by
the Qatar Railways Company.
The work to be carried out will
also allow the construction of
the interchange 27, one of four
interchanges of the East Corridor Expressway project.
The traffic diversion has been
designed in accordance with the
highest standards and requirements in order to ensure the
safety of road users and smooth
traffic ﬂow on the alternative
road, said the Ashghal communique.
The main road, consisting of
three lanes in each direction, will
be closed and diverted to a temporary alternative road that has
been built with as many lanes
and in each direction.
A traffic light has also been
installed to facilitate vehicular
movement from and to Ras Abu
Funtas road (as shown in the
map).
The traffic diversion will be
implemented in two phases. At
ﬁrst the diversion will be open
on southbound towards Al
Wakrah starting from tomorrow
(March 31).
The diversion will then be
open on northbound towards
Doha on April 8. The traffic
diversion will be open on both
directions from April 8, until
the last quarter of next year
(2016).
Earlier this month, the left
lane (fast lane) of the main road,
northbound towards Al Wakrah,
was closed in order to facilitate
the opening of the temporary
road for the diversion.
The East Corridor Expressway project is part of Ashghal’s
vital Expressway Programme,
and it includes the construction of a new, approximately
Undersecretaries of Finance
Ministries in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) States
will hold a preparatory meeting
for the upcoming meeting of the
GCC Committee on Financial and
Economic Co-operation slated for
May in Doha.
The undersecretaries will
discuss topics including the
recommendations of the GCC
States Central Banks Governors’
committee and the GCC Customs
Union Authority regarding the
updates on the completion of
the requirements of the Customs
Union Authority in addition to
the recommendations of the
Committee on the Gulf Common
Market.
They will also discuss the
recommendations on the
amendments proposed by
the Industrial Co-operation
Committee on the controls to
exempt industry inputs, and on
the general framework for the
study of deepening economic
integration among the GCC
countries, in addition to the report
by the General Secretariat on the
priorities of the GCC countries,
which suggest the resumption
of negotiations with countries
and economic groups, and the
proposals submitted by GCC States
on the activation of economic
integration among Member States.
Deputy PM
returns to Doha
from China
HE the Deputy Prime Minister
and Minister of State for
Cabinet Affairs Ahmed bin
Abdullah bin Zaid al-Mahmoud
yesterday returned to Doha After
participating in the Boao Forum
for Asia, which was held in Boao,
South China.
HE al-Mahmoud was seen off at
Sanya International Airport by
Qatar’s Ambassador to China
Sultan bin Salmeen al-Mansouri
and a number of officials in the
Chinese government.
MEC launches free
recall of Dodge
Viper vehicles
The area where road diversion is effected is marked in red.
11km-long, dual carriageway.
It consists of ﬁve lanes on each
direction. The road extends
from the west of the access to
the Barwa Development as far
as Al Matar Street, south of the
Air Force roundabout. It will
create a new strategic link in
the south area.
The Ministry of Economy and
Commerce (MEC) has launched
a free recall campaign for Dodge
Viper vehicles (models 2013 and
2014) for a potential problem
regarding the glass window of
the doors going up more than the
limit. The campaign is conducted
in co-operation with United Cars
Al Mana, the dealer of Dodge
vehicles in Qatar.
Single-lane traffic for 90 days
on a stretch of Najma Street
S
An inspector from the MEC at a commercial outlet.
Ministry officials conduct
surprise inspection campaign
T
he Ministry of Economy
and Commerce (MEC)
has issued 16 different
licensing violation notices to a
number of commercial outlets
at Al Rayyan Municipality.
MEC inspectors recently
conducted a surprise inspection campaign at various shops
that have different commercial
activities such as clothes, mobile phones, hair cutting, supermarkets and women clothes.
Most of the violations spotted by MEC inspectors of the
Department of Registration and
Commercial Licensing were
regarding practising activities
other than those stated in the
licence.
Some of these violations
were regarding using the commercial outlet as a staff accommodation. In addition to being
issued violation notices, such
outlets were told to amend their
situation.
tarting from tomorrow
(March 31), only singlelane traffic would be possible through a nearly 100-metre
stretch of Najma Street as part
of the infrastructural development works to be carried out in
the area.
The stretch and the street
would be completely ready
for traffic only towards the
end of June, according to
an announcement from the
Public
Works
Authority
(Ashghal).
The authority said in the
statement that the temporary closure would be in place
between the intersection of
Najma Street with Al Hilal
and Abha streets (Hot Breads
roundabout) and the intersection of Najma Street with
Ibn Shuaib and Nawfal bin Al
Hareth streets (Near Regal Department Store).
Motorists moving towards
Najma Street from Al Hilal must
use only one of the lanes of the
street (after the Hot Breads
roundabout) which will remain
open throughout the duration of
the works.
Meanwhile,
commuters
coming from Al Mansoora Signal towards Al Hilal and Abha
Streets (Hot Bread roundabout)
should ﬁrst turn right on Nawfal bin Al Hareth Street (870),
then make a left on Salim bin Al
Hareth Street, and ﬁnally make
another left turn to enter Abha
Street.
Ashghal will also close Bin
Al Hareth Street (990) (where
Bruce Lee Restaurant used to
be located) as part of the infrastructural
development
works, and vehicles com-
ing from Al Hilal Street must
make a right before they reach
Bin Al Hareth Street and take
the open lanes to reach their
destination.
Gulf Times
Monday, March 30, 2015
3
QATAR
1,000 delegates set to
attend medical congress
By Joseph Varghese
Staff Reporter
A
Officials, dignitaries and guests at the opening of the new Quality Hypermarket in Bin Mahmoud.
Quality Hypermarket
opens in Bin Mahmoud
Q
uality Group of Companies opened its sixth
retail outlet, Quality
Hypermarket, in Bin Mahmoud
on Saturday.
The outlet was inaugurated by Shamsudheen Olakara,
managing director of Quality
Group of Companies, Sheikh
Jassim bin Thamir al-Thani,
chairman of New Quality
Hypermarket, and Ebrahim
Abdullah al-Malki, chairman of Quality Group of
Companies.
The ﬁrst sale at the outlet
was launched by TK Ibrahim H
Malabari, founder and president of Mercy Foundation, by
delivering to young Islamic
scholar Umar Ul Farooq.
The inaugural function saw
the presence of a large number
of customers who had turned
up with their families and children. A number of promotions
and price discounts were offered as part of the inauguration.
The hypermarket is spread
over three ﬂoors with a total
area of 100,000sqft. A wide
variety of products and brands
are available, catering to the
tastes and preference of customers from all walks of life,
according to a statement.
The ground ﬂoor features
various shops and kiosks, including a pharmacy, optical
care, counters for ﬂowers and
chocolates, coffee shops, ATMs
of leading banks and automatic
utility payment machines, in
addition to a supermarket for
food and non-food.
On the ﬁrst ﬂoor, mobile
phones, watches, beauty parlours for men and children,
fashion items, garments and
readymade products, footwear,
home furniture and decor, stationery, fashion jewellery etc
are available.
The second ﬂoor is exclusively designed for electric,
electronic, IT & technology
products and home appliances
of leading brands. Spacious
and convenient parking is also
available.
Besides featuring products
of renowned brands, the new
hypermarket will also provide
a variety of additional services
for customers, the statement
adds.
The hypermarket also features an advanced travelator
facility for the convenience of
visitors.
In addition to the three retail
outlets of Quality Retail Group
in Qatar on Salwa Road, Airport Road and in the Industrial
Area, Parco Mall in Mamoura
was taken over by the group
last month as the fourth outlet
and renamed as Quality Mall.
In addition, it has a hypermarket in Bengaluru, India.
The management has also
informed that Quality Mall in
Hilal will be opened in the last
week of next month as the seventh outlet of Quality Retail
Group.
bout 1,000 delegates and
10,000 visitors are expected to attend the ﬁrst
Qatar International Medical
Congress (QIMC) that will be
held at Qatar National Convention Centre from 26 to 28 May.
There is also an exhibition
along with the congress which
will have about 350 exhibitors
showcasing latest, cutting edge
products, services and technologies in the medical ﬁeld.
Supreme Council of Health
(SCH), Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) and the Primary
Health Care Corporation (PHCC)
are the strategic partners of the
congress.
The organisers said that the
event will be bigger in the coming
years with over 40,000 visitors in
the next three years.
The details of the congress
were announced at a press conference at St Regis Doha yesterday.
Abdulrahman Ahmad al-Mannai,
Officials of QIMC along with representatives of partnering
organisations.
vice-president, QIMC, Abdullatif Ali Abdulrahman al-Abdulla,
manager, International Health
Relations Department, SCH, Ali
Abdulla al-Khater, executive director Corporate Communications, HMC, Marriam Yaseen
al-Hamadi, executive director,
Corporate Communication & PR,
PHCC, Fahad Rashid al-Kaabi,
CEO, Manateq and Rabih Karam,
managing partner, Art &Art took
part in the press conference.
Al-Mannai, said: “In line with
the Qatar National Vision 2030,
QIMC 2015 aims to continuously
support events that will lay the
foundations for a healthier and
strong society, and encourage
innovation in Qatar’s healthcare
sector. This year’s exhibition will
serve as the initial stepping stone
in our country’s journey towards
the development of the local, regional and international medical
sectors, and markets that depend
on the medical industry.”
“SCH support comes as an
evidence of its importance in supporting medical industries, the
importance it attaches on investors in the health sector and encouraging competition among
them to provide the best in this
ﬁeld, which essentially contributes in the development of medi-
cal equipment and devices in Qatar and attract local, regional and
global companies working in this
ﬁeld,” stated al-Abdulla of SCH.
The event will attract researchers, experts, and leading
medical companies from around
the world. QIMC will be helping
introduce medical discoveries
and advancements in the ﬁeld to
the local healthcare sector, providing better treatment for the
residents of the country.
The event will bring together
renowned international companies, connecting them to
leading entrepreneurs, doctors,
researchers and industry professionals.
Topics to be covered at the
QIMC conference include internal medication and autoimmune
diseases, oncology, cardiology,
diabetology, pulmonology and
other subjects of interest. Innovation and new ﬁndings in video
capsule endoscopy, antalgia, and
sensitive, yet crucial, new concepts of end-of-life (palliative
care) will also be debated and discussed amongst the participants.
Unesco launches training workshop
T
he Unesco Doha ofﬁce launched yesterday
a training workshop on
world heritage natural sites and
Man Biosphere Reserve concepts
and process of inscription.
The workshop, concluding tomorrow, is organised by Unesco
in co-operation with the Ministry of Environment (MoE) General Directorate of Natural Reserve (GDNR).
The workshop is based on the
recognition that sustainable de-
velopment and nature conservation in Qatar is at the core of the
national plans, including Qatar
National Vision 2030.
Further, it is a follow up of the
recommendation of the previous
two preparatory Qatari stakeholders meetings held by Unesco
Doha office in co-operation with
MoE/ GDNR last year.
The main objectives of the
workshop include presenting the
process of inscription of natural areas as Unesco world herit-
age (WH) natural site or as Man
and the Biosphere Programme
(MAB) reserve, introducing the
concepts of MAB and WH sites
nomination, presenting the
most successful examples of WH
natural sites and MAB sites, and
providing the government entities with the technical support
needed to start any nomination
process.
The World Heritage Convention concerning the protection of
world cultural and natural herit-
age was adopted by the General
Conference of Unesco on November 16, 1972. The number of
world heritage sites continued to
grow reaching after the 38th session of the World Heritage Committee in June 2014 in Doha, the
1007 site. Among those 197 are
natural sites and 31 of mixed cultural and natural value. The WH
sites inscribed on the WH list are
sites of Outstanding Universal
Value which are fully maintaining their integrity.
Gulf Times
Monday, March 30, 2015
4
QATAR
Media meet
The Doha Centre for Media Freedom (DCMF) has taken part in the 64th International Press Institute World Congress
and General Assembly 2015 in Myanmar. The congress adopted the topic ‘On the path to a free media’. The DCMF was
among the main supporters of the event alongside Al Jazeera Media Network, which has announced that it would host
the next year’s edition of the global event in Doha during April 30-May 3, 2016.
Qatar Airways to increase
capacity to Bengaluru
Q
atar Airways has announced
that it is continuing its expansion plans in India with a significant increase in capacity on its ﬂights
from Doha to Bengaluru from August
1 to meet the increasing passenger demand on the route.
Currently, Qatar Airways operates
a Boeing 787 on the Doha-Bengaluru
route with 254 seats.
From August 1, the Boeing 787 will be
replaced by a Boeing 777, with a capacity of 335 seats, which will connect to
more than 140 destinations worldwide
via the airline’s hub in Doha.
Qatar Airways Group chief executive
Akbar al-Baker said: “The strengthening of the Doha–Bengaluru route reﬂects increased passenger demand and
reaffirms our continuous expansion
strategy for the Indian market. With
our increasing capacity, we aim to offer
our customers a superior travel experience and seamless connectivity into
the State of Qatar.
“India is growing as an economic hub
and shows enormous potential, and our
growth strategy has always stressed the
signiﬁcance of the Indian market where
we plan to seek even more capacity and
increase frequency on existing routes.”
With the new upgraded service between Doha and Bengaluru, more passengers ﬂying to Doha - or onwards to
their ﬁnal destination - will have the
opportunity to experience Hamad International Airport, which has been
designed with customer experience
ﬁrmly to the fore.
The Qatar Airways’ Boeing 777 has
been designed to ensure that its passengers can ﬂy long distances while immersed in complete comfort and enjoy
the airline’s hospitality, all while enjoying ﬁne cuisine and more than 1,000
on-board entertainment options, the
statement adds.
The airline recently announced that
it would double the number of movies
and TV shows on-board over the coming months, increasing the choice of
entertainment channels to more than
2,000.
The Doha-Bengaluru daily ﬂight
schedule from August 1 will be as follows: QR572 departing Doha at 8pm
and arriving in Bengaluru at 2.45am
(next day), and QR573 departing Bengaluru at 4.15am and arriving in Doha
at 5.40am.
Gulf Times
Monday, March 30, 2015
5
QATAR
‘Made in Turkey’ expo
set for December
T
he second edition of
“Made in Turkey”
exhibition will be
held in Doha, in December
with the participation of
more than 150 exhibitors
representing different companies of building materials, real estate, electronics
and others.
Dursun Topcu, vice president of Istanbul Chamber of Commerce (ICOC),
announced this yesterday
after a meeting with Qatar
Chamber (QC) vice chairman Mohamed bin Ahmed
bin Tuwar.
Topcu invited QC and
Qatari business community
to take part in the upcoming
exhibition.
“Qatar is an active economic power and plays a
key role in the Gulf region.
Accordingly, both Qatar
and Turkey should beneﬁt
from the available potential
and enhance their mutual
Mohamed bin Ahmed bin Tuwar and Dursun Topcu, centre, during a meeting yesterday.
co-operation in economy
and business spheres,” said
Topcu.
He added that the “Made
in Turkey” exhibition would
be a good opportunity for
Qatari and Turkish business
leaders to meet and discuss
issues of mutual interest.
He hoped that such meetings would result in active partnerships and joint
enterprises
among
the
businessmen of the two
countries.
Topcu stated that ICOC
is considered the largest chamber of commerce
in Turkey and includes
360,000 companies as its
affiliates. A large volume of
investment in Turkey goes
through ICOC, which has
signed a memorandum of
understanding with QC.
The QC vice chairman
stressed that QC welcomes
participation in the upcoming exhibition and would
present the event to the
business community in Qatar to encourage them to
take part.
QC board member Mohamed Ahmed al-Ubaidly
attended the meeting.
Workshop on cyber probe gets under way
A
training workshop on “cyber
investigation” began at the CID
Training Centre yesterday. The
workshop is being hosted by the Drugs
Enforcement Administration (DEA) of
the Ministry of Interior (MoI).
The course is being held in association
with the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (Dubai Office).
Captain
Mohamed
Abdullah
al-Khater, head of International Affairs and Studies Section at the DEA,
said the course is a Ministry of Interior initiative to have a better understanding of the global developments in
tackling cybercrimes.
He said one required better access to the
latest means of technology to track down
the perpetrators and bring them to book.
The workshop began at the CID Training Centre yesterday.
The MoI official said the workshop
will deal with two aspects - theoretical
study of the traditional investigative
techniques and skills of interrogation,
surveillance, operations, in addition to
Internet protocols and use of telecommunications and media like Whatsapp
and Instagram.
The workshop will conclude on
Thursday.
6
Gulf Times
Monday, March 30, 2015
QATAR
Domasco
launches
new service
for Volvo
customers
QF honoured
for activities
of National
Sport Day
Q
atar Foundation (QF) has
been honoured by the
Ministry of Youth and
Sports for its successful organisation of activities to celebrate
the National Sport Day last
month.
The QF was commended by
the ministry for adhering to
the guidelines, earning praise
and adulation for organising a
healthy and fun-ﬁlled educational day.
Minister of Youth and Sports
HE Salah bin Ghanem bin Nasser
al-Ali presented the ministry’s
award to Mohamed al-Naimi,
chairman of Qatar Foundation’s
National Sport Day Committee,
who accepted the accolade on
behalf of QF.
The accolade reﬂected Qatar Foundation’s commitment
in staging a variety of sporting
activities for all ages, attracting
over 11,500 participants from
across the community in Qatar
during the national holiday on
February 10.
Almost 50 day-long activities
were held at QF’s Education City,
including the overwhelmingly
popular walkathon, supporting Qatar Foundation’s mission
to promote productive change
through various projects and
programmes including healthy
living through sports in line with
the goals and objectives set out in
the Qatar National Vision 2030.
Saad al-Muhannadi, president
of Qatar Foundation, commented:
“We are delighted to have received
this award which recognises QF’s
unwavering dedication to encouraging men, women and children of
all ages and athletic abilities to lead
healthier lifestyles and become
more active.”
“Qatar Foundation is
extremely honoured to
receive this recognition
from the Ministry of
Youth and Sports”
QF is dedicated to integrating
sports and exercise into everyday
lives to encourage the population
to become more active. Its leadership supported the National
Sport Day celebrations with participation from HH Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, the Father Emir, and HH Sheikha Moza
bint Nasser, chairperson of QF.
The Ministry of Youth and
Sports prepared a number of
guidelines and criteria for local
organisations to adhere to when
planning their National Day activities. These included activities
that appeal to a cross-section of
the community, organising activities while being cost effective
and showing how to successfully
promote healthy living.
Al-Naimi said: “Qatar Foundation is extremely honoured to
receive this recognition from the
Ministry of Youth and Sports for
the many activities we arranged
through team effort that involved
volunteer staff from departments
across the organisation.
“Following the success of staging National Sport Day activities
in previous years, we demonstrated once again the importance
that Qatar Foundation places on
engaging the community in our
activities and encouraging people
to lead healthy lifestyles as a core
element of QF’s mission.”
The highlight of this year’s activities at QF was the walkathon
through Education City. Under
the theme of ‘Unlock Your Inner
Athlete,’ each stage of the 3.8km
route included educational activities to inspire people to lead
healthier, more active lifestyles,
and learn about Education City
and the role QF plays in promoting its three core pillars.
D
Minister of Youth and Sports HE Salah bin Ghanem bin Nasser al-Ali presenting the award to Mohammed
al-Naimi, chairman of Qatar Foundation’s National Sport Day Committee.
One of the activities of QF’s National Sport Day programmes this year.
omasco has announced
that it has launched Volvo Service 2.0 with free
software updates.
With Volvo Service 2.0, both
the car and the customer are
taken care of in new ways and
the concept of car servicing is
“taken to a new level,” the company said in a statement.
The name Volvo Service 2.0
alludes to the fact that Volvo
now offers free updates to the
latest version of the car’s software while servicing at Domasco
Volvo service centre on Street
10, gate 3, in the Industrial Area.
This is crucial for customers as
there are many computers in
today’s cars that control various systems, and just like with
other computers, their software
should be updated from time to
time.
It is also a new level of servicing in terms of service to the
customer, since Volvo Service
2.0 includes more than what
one would usually expect from a
workshop, the statement added.
The customer will be offered
alternative transport, a complimentary car wash and a personal
service contact. The car will also
get a special health check and a
free breakdown help called Volvo
Assistance will be extended for a
year at no extra charge.
This is in addition to the usual
beneﬁts of servicing at Domasco’s main Volvo service centre,
such as expertly trained technicians using the manufacturer’s
methods and genuine parts.
Examples of functions or systems that can be optimised with
a software update are air-conditioning, engine, passive safety
and driver information.
8
Gulf Times
Monday, March 30, 2015
QATAR
‘Smarter grid must for
green environment’
W
ith a goal to generate a
long-term smart grid
research agenda relating to smart grid and renewable
energy, Texas A&M University at
Qatar (TAMUQ) recently hosted
the ﬁrst workshop on Smart Grid
and Renewable Energy.
“The workshop brought together leading experts from international research institutions and
universities, as well as government and private sector research
and development, to discuss the
progress and future challenges of
smart grid and renewable energies,” said CEO and dean Dr Mark
H Weichold.
The participants exchanged information on medium- to longterm research and future challenges of smart grid and renewable
energies. Ongoing and future research toward next generation
smart grid technologies and applications, leading to research
collaboration opportunities, were
discussed.
It was pointed out that a smarter
electric grid is necessary for maintaining rapid economic development, improved social lifestyle and
a greener living environment.
The workshop generated awareness in industries, engineers and
researchers about advanced smart
grid technologies and their beneﬁts; renewable energy resources
and their integration with the
smart grid and information and
communications technologies and
their adoption in the smart grid.
The event was also co-organised by Qatar University, Qatar
Environment and Energy Research
Institute (QEERI) and supported
through sponsorship from Qatar
Petrochemical Co.
Dr Weichold addressing the
workshop.
Dr Mladen Kezunovic, director,
Smart Grid Centre Extension in
Qatar and professor of electrical
engineering at TAMUQ, observed
that the workshop positions Qatar
as the one of the centres of excellence in research, education and
deployment of the future smart
grid solutions for the beneﬁts of
the citizens of Qatar and the world.
The programme also featured
a poster session, which included
a competition of separate tracks
for students and researchers, with
ﬁrst-place winners from each
track receiving QR5,000 and with
second-place winners from each
track receiving QR3,000. Students and researchers presented
the outcomes of their research and
impact on advancing the industry
in Qatar.
Dr Rashid Alammari, dean of
College of Engineering at Qatar
University, said the workshop set
the tone of collaboration among
academic institutions, research
institutes and industry. “The
workshop is expected to generate
research on smart grid and renewable energy, which is in alignment with Qatar national research
strategy.”
Dr Haitham Abu-Rub, chair of
electrical and computer engineering programme at TAMUQ, senior
research scientist at QEERI and
managing director of the Smart
Grid Centre-Extension in Qatar, said electric energy is key to
every economy and for societal
prosperity across the globe.
“The smart grid effort aims to
transform this critical infrastructure into the 21st century using
computer-based remote control
and automation. The smart grid
has been called “electricity with a
brain,” the “energy Internet” and
the “Electronet.”
“Basically, the smart grid integrates electricity and information
and
communication
infrastructures to produce electricity more efficiently and reliably,
as well as cleanly and safely for the
environment,” he added.
Workshop on community
policing inaugurated
T
he importance of community policing in a multi-lingual, multicultural and multi-national society as in Qatar was highlighted at a
workshop organised at the Civil Defence
Officers Club by the community policing
department of the Ministry of Interior.
The programme was inaugurated by Lt
Col Ahmad Zayed al-Mohannadi, director,
community policing department. Officers
from Civil Defence, Drugs Enforcement
Administration, Al Fazaa and traffic are
participating in the two-day workshop.
A session on the ﬁrst day hosted a discussion on “community policing and
communication with local communities”.
Captain Abdul Aziz Mohamed alRabeea and Captain Ibrahim Mohamed
Ibrahim Mabyuo from Sudan’s interior
ministry recited their experiences.
Lt Col Ahmad Zayed al-Mohannadi said
the workshop aims to exchange experiences of Sudan’s interior ministry in community policing which, he said, helped a
lot to improve relations between the local
police there and community members.
While thanking the Qatar community
policing department for the invitation,
Captain Abdul Aziz al-Rabeea said the exchange of ideas between two police forces
would contribute to improvement in the
ways to be adopted in the community
policing.
Al-Rabeea said the community policing in Sudan is known as community and
popular police (CPP) and they succeeded
to accomplish many positive results in
dealing with the people. Their initiatives,
he said, had helped to win the support of
the public for policing system.
The workshop will feature paper presentations on the Sudanese concept of
community policing, major projects of
Sudanese CPP and their working methods, CPP security and community groups
in residential neighborhoods, comprehensive security and method of internal coordination with police and use of values
in attracting the community members and
building relations with local community.
Workshop on community policing progressing at Officers Club at the Civil Defence
headquarters.
Muayed Mohamed al-Sharshani and his son, Hassan, receiving a cheque for QR1mn from
an Ahlibank executive.
Ali al-Khalaf, director, GRSIA.
GRSIA opens
24-hour call centre
T
he General Retirement and Social
Insurance Authority (GRSIA) has launched
a call centre to serve citizens and customers better.
Citizens can now call
hotline 183 for their queries round-the-clock.
Ali al-Khalaf, director
at GRSIA, said the new call
centre will provide quality
communication service
that will beneﬁt its target
Ooredoo
launches
‘Go Hala!’
campaign
Ahlibank announces
O
winner of QR1mn prize
A
hlibank has announced the winner of its Al Rabeh
saving scheme for Q1 of
2015, with quarterly winner Muayed Mohamed alSharshani bringing home
QR1mn, the bank said in a
statement yesterday.
“With 469 cash prizes
to be awarded this year, the
latest big money winner
expects the Al Rabeh savings scheme will continue
to grow in popularity,” the
statement added.
Al-Sharshani said, “I was
very happy when Ahlibank
said I was the quarterly
QR1mn prize draw winner.
I have been a customer for
over 20 years and have been
extremely satisﬁed with
them. I have also recommended Ahlibank to other
members of my family. I
am sure the Al Rabeh savings scheme will go from
strength to strength.”
“The prize will help me
diversify and add value to
my investments as I look to
the future. I will deﬁnitely
invest in Al Rabeh again by
opening an account for my
children, which will give us
more opportunity to win. It
was great to bring my son,
Hassan, here today to receive the cheque,” he added.
The Al Rabeh savings
scheme reward structure
offers a range of cash prizes
with 93 draws in 2015, including: Every week, 10 customers win QR5,000 and one
customer wins QR15,000 in
a grand weekly draw; Every
month, three customers win
QR100,000 in the grand
monthly draw; Every quarter,
one customer wins QR1mn in
the quarterly draw; and Every year to mark National Day,
a further QR1mn winner is
announced.
Andrew
McKechnie,
deputy CEO, retail banking, Ahlibank, said, “The
Al Rabeh savings scheme is
a simple, safe, and secure
savings opportunity with
instant access to funds deposited. It gives savers the
opportunity through its
prize draw to become mil-
lionaires through electronic
draws held quarterly and to
celebrate National Day. The
savings scheme will provide
469 cash prizes this year.”
Hassan al-Frangi, head of
retail banking services, said,
“As a community bank, we
have created a ‘best in class’
savings scheme exclusively
for Qataris or Qatar residents. Having personally
congratulated Mr al-Sharshani on his QR1mn prize
draw win, I was pleased to
hear how this money will
provide additional investment opportunities for him
and his family. We are delighted to provide such opportunities through our Al
Rabeh savings scheme.”
Ahlibank customers are
eligible for entry into the
Prize Draw by depositing
QR500 for a minimum of
seven days in either an Al
Rabeh Savings Account or by
investing in a Savings Certiﬁcate (This is the shortest
qualifying period and the
lowest balance required for a
bank prize draw).
Portable Bluetooth speaker from top brand
L
uxurious audio-visual brand Bang &
Olufsen’s B&O PLAY has brought to
Qatar BeoLit 15, the latest powerful
portable Bluetooth speaker designed by
award-winning Danish designer Cecilie
Manz.
BeoLit 15, which comes shortly after the
arrival of the ultra-portable BeoPlay A2,
packs the best of modern technology with
acclaimed acoustics, premium materials
and Scandinavian design.
The new BeoLit 15 is now available at the
Bang & Olufsen store at Lagoona Mall, in
addition to iSpace and Fifty One East’s Lagoona Mall and Al Maha Centre branches.
BeoLit 15 comes with True360 omni-directional sound, up to 24 hours of continuous playtime from a single battery charge,
the acclaimed Bang & Olufsen Signature
Sound and features premium quality materials such as anodised aluminium and full
grain leather.
BeoLit 15, improves upon BeoLit 12, released in 2012, and considered an iconic
product, by completely redesigning the
acoustic structure. It is the best music system of its kind in the market.
The output of 240 Watts of peak power is
enough to ﬁll even larger rooms. Bluetooth
4.0 technology makes it easy and fast to
connect and play music from any Bluetooth
device.
BeoLit 15 stands out with its anodised
aluminium grill wrapped around the speaker
and its full grain leather strap that adds to
the portability.
The speaker body is made from strong
and durable polymer and there is a non-slip
rubber tray on top of the speaker for holding
mobile devices.
BeoLit 15 speaker.
clients, as well as their
partners and employees.
GRSIA has trained a
special team to activate
the call centre service. AlKhalaf noted that all teams
in each department have
been coached separately.
“This service will be
available to provide 24/7
answers from questions
of pensioners, subscribers
and employers inside and
outside Qatar,” he added.
oredoo continues
to enhance and
improve its Hala
service in a bid to make
it one of the best prepaid
mobile services in the
region.
The ‘Go Hala!’ campaign has been launched
to enable people to ﬁnd
out more about the
service, which will be
supported by a range of
value-packed offers, Fatima Sultan al-Kuwari,
director,
community
and public relations,
said in a
statement
yesterday.
As its most popular
service, Ooredoo had
worked hard to offer a
wide range of options for
its customers as “they
pay-as-they-go.”
“We’ve launched the
Go Hala! Campaign to
shine a light on some of
our less well-known but
exceptional features that
could offer more value and
greater convenience,” she
said, adding: “In addition,
we’re planning a range of
enhancements for Hala in
2015.”
Among the most popular Hala features are a
range of international
keys, which enable customers to enjoy the best
rates when they call their
home countries.
This month, Ooredoo
has added Hala Nigeria
International Keys, which
enable customers to enjoy the lowest rate of just
30Dhs per minute for calls
to Nigeria for one month
at QR1 per week.
Other
value-packed
International Keys include special keys for
Egypt, India, Bangladesh and the Philippines,
along with the International Saver Key which
offers great rates for 121
countries.
Customers can top
up their Hala accounts
through a wide range
of channels, including
the Ooredoo website,
Ooredoo mobile application, scratch cards, evouchers and Ooredoo
self-service machines,
and in-person at any
Ooredoo shop.
Since the launch of 4G+
in December 2014, Hala
customers have been able
to enjoy Qatar’s fastest Internet service.
The company recently
revamped its Hala Smart
bundles to enable customers to enjoy more Ooredoo
minutes and data at the
same price every week.
Gulf Times
Monday, March 30, 2015
9
QATAR
Life In Qatar - A Woman’s Perspective
Commercial Bank launches
Cross-cultural new online rewards portal
marriage: when
love knows no
boundaries
By Joey Aguilar
Staff Reporter
A
ll it takes is a special
person in your life for
you to adapt to whatever changes that may come
along.
For a lady like Josephine,
who knows no boundaries
in love, marrying a man of a
different religion and culture
27 years ago was a choice she
will never regret.
“We met in college in class.
Then I saw him at the student
centre and began talking to
him about his country and I
asked him a lot of questions
about his culture,” Josephine
told Gulf Times.
‘I ate peanut butter and
jelly sandwiches every
day for the first year I
was here. I didn’t like
the spices in the food
and wasn’t crazy about
the fried fish having
‘eyes’... but slowly I got
used to it and now I
wouldn’t trade it
for anything’
Both were then studying
in Texas, taking foundation
courses. It was during those
times when Josephine felt
the sincerity and honesty
of Muslims, especially with
her boyfriend, who showed
utmost care and love to her,
her friends and family.
After a couple of years,
she converted to Islam and
the two got married and settled in Doha in 1990. She described her husband as respectful, religious and kind
– traits she was attracted to.
Unlike other parents,
who usually have objections
to their children marrying
someone from a different
society, Josephine’s mother
and father liked her Qatari
husband without any hesitation.
“They were not afraid
of me marrying him. I also
changed my religion at the
same time, so the only question they had was ‘Does
Islam believe in God and
does Islam believe He has
no partners?’” she said. “Of
course, both answers were
“yes”.
Josephine added that she
was lucky to have a husband
who treated her parents like
his own parents, willing to
extend a helping hand at
every given opportunity.
On the other hand, her
mother-in-law was a bit
upset at ﬁrst since the latter
had already picked out a wife
for her son.
“But towards the end of
her life, she said she loved
me more than she loved
her own flesh and blood,
and thanked Allah over and
over for sending me to her
son and to her,” recounted
Josephine. “I took care of
her in her old age, so there
was mutual respect and
kindness.”
Gulf Times
Exclusive
Josephine admits she had
a hard time adjusting to
the cultural and religious
changes during her first
two years in Qatar. First
was the food and then the
dress, something that she
personally had difficulty
coping with.
Compared with the
environment in the
West, she thanked
God for her children
grew without getting
addicted to drugs, safe
from criminals and
immoral acts such as
pornography ,
and disrespect,
among others
“To tell you the truth, at
first it was very hard. The
first two years here, I cried
a lot. I missed my home,
culture and food,” she
stressed.
“I ate peanut butter and
jelly sandwiches every day
for the ﬁrst year I was here.
I didn’t like the spices in the
food and wasn’t crazy about
the fried ﬁsh having ‘eyes’,”
she quipped. “But slowly
I got used to it and now I
wouldn’t trade it for anything.”
Asked why, Josephine said
there is no other reason except their love for each other: some differences can be
ﬁxed easily by making small
adjustments.
However, some considerations and realities cannot
be ignored, too, according
to her. She noted that Qatar
was one of the best and safest places on earth to raise
children. The couple had
been blessed with four girls
and a boy, their ages ranging
from 14 to 26.
‘But towards the end
of her life, she said she
loved me more than
she loved her own flesh
and blood, and thanked
Allah over and over for
sending me to her son
and to her,.. I took care
of her in her old age,
so there was mutual
respect and kindness’
Compared
with
the
environment in the West,
she thanked God for
her children grew without
getting addicted to drugs,
safe from criminals and
immoral acts such as pornography, and disrespect,
among others.
She believes the Arab
community has a huge
level of respect for elders,
“which I am sad to say is
not the same in the US.”
She was all praise for the
teachings of Islam.
Despite living a good
life in Qatar, Josephine admits she missed a lot of
things back home. First,
she missed her family and
friends who had been very
supportive of her endeavours.
She also missed the seasons: the rain and the snow
where they used to play
before. And of course, the
food that had satisﬁed her
taste buds.
C
ommercial
Bank
has
launched a new online rewards portal, powered by
Inﬁnia Services & Solutions, making
it “easier” for its credit card loyalty
programme customers to redeem
their Commercial Bank rewards
points online for ﬂights, home furnishing, fashion, spas, electronics
and more.
www.cbqrewards.com is a fully
automated loyalty rewards portal,
where customers can instantly view
and redeem their current Commercial Bank rewards points balance
online, anytime, anywhere, with no
paper forms to be ﬁlled and no waiting time at branches or retail outlets
to receive or redeem vouchers.
All Commercial Bank credit cardholders are automatically enrolled
into one of three types of generous
rewards programmes when taking a
Commercial Bank credit card, and
earn reward points each time they
spend using their credit cards.
To view the points accumulated
and to redeem these, all that customers need to do is register and activate
their online rewards account by visiting www.cbqrewards.com, click “redeem your points” and then choose
what to redeem their points for.
Customers can opt to redeem
their rewards points for FlyMiles,
Accolades vouchers or simply transfer their points to other preferred
airlines or hotel loyalty schemes.
FlyMiles allows customers to redeem reward points to ﬂy to any
destination, on any date, with any
airline, and was the ﬁrst loyalty programme to offer this to customers in
Qatar when launched in 2013.
Commercial
Bank
custom-
The Commercial Bank headquarters in West Bay.
ers opting to redeem their reward
points for Accolades vouchers are
able to choose from the widest
variety of redemption partners in
Qatar, and now, with the launch of
this new platform, customers receive their vouchers via their mo-
bile or e-mail for immediate use.
Customers can then visit any one
of Commercial Bank’s partners and
enter their voucher number at the
point of sale to enjoy great discounts
on jewellery, fashion, electronics,
home furnishing and more.
This now eliminates the need for
customers to complete forms and
collect paper vouchers from Commercial Bank’s branches.
Commercial Bank EGM (Retail and
Consumer Banking) Dean Proctor
said, “Commercial Bank’s new online redemption portal makes it even
easier for customers to enjoy our market-leading loyalty programme and to
redeem their rewards points, all from
the comfort of their home or office.
“This is another step forward in
the bank’s goal to making life simpler
and more convenient for our customers. By receiving e-vouchers on
a customer’s phone or smart device,
customers can now instantly enjoy
the beneﬁts of our enhanced online
rewards programme and beneﬁt from
their use on our range of credit cards.
“The real-time, personalised and
state-of-the-art platform takes
customer loyalty to the next level.
Instant online redemption is already
enabled through a partner network of more than 900 airlines and
450,000 hotels worldwide, through
FlyMiles and now through e-vouchers, which are easily redeemable at
hundreds of Commercial Bank partner outlets across Qatar.”
Prashant Khattar, founder and
managing director of Inﬁnia Services
& Solutions, said: “We are delighted
to extend our partnership with Commercial Bank of Qatar, one of the leading banks in the country. Commercial
Bank’s aim is to make life simpler for
customers and to reward them for
their loyalty. Our platform enables
them to do this easily and simply. We
are conﬁdent that Commercial Bank
customers will be delighted with this
newly enhanced rewards programme.”
Officials at the inauguration of the fourth Annual Career Fair for Universities & Work Sectors held at Al Wakra Secondary Independent School.
Qatar Steel
sponsors
career fair
Q
atar Steel recently participated, as an official sponsor, in the fourth Annual Career Fair for Universities & Work Sectors held at Al Wakra Secondary
Independent School.
A number of local and overseas industrial companies, universities and educational institutions took part in the fair.
The event was attended by Ali al-Buainain, director
of the Scholarship Office at Higher Education Institute,
Ahmed al-Buainain, chairman of the school trustees’
council, Dr Saleh al-Ibrahim, vice-principal for administrative and students affairs, a number of principals of independent schools, event sponsors and other officials from
government offices and institutions.
Qatar Steel was represented by Mohamed Saleh al-Mahdi, HR manager, Yousef Abdullah al-Mansouri, learning
and development manager, and a team from both departments, who briefed the students on job opportunities and
internship programmes available. They also answered all
queries from the students about potential learning disciplines and career prospects.
The career fair aims at familiarising the students with
the work opportunities and academic careers offered by
industrial companies and educational institutions in terms
of internships and scholarships programmes, updating
them on the disciplines required by the job market, giving them a chance to meet officials from various important
sectors to enquire about the internships that can be granted
to national high school students to complete their undergraduate or postgraduate studies.
Qatar Steel is keen to participate in this annual
event, hoping to attract qualified and high-performing
students so as to recruit them in the company’s different departments. Its participation is also aimed at providing academic guidance to high school students and
help them choose the right career paths, according to a
statement.
10
Gulf Times
Monday, March 30, 2015
REGION
Iran, powers
move toward
accord, Israel
sounds alarm
AFP
Lausanne, Switzerland
I
People stand on a tank that was burnt during clashes on a street in Aden yesterday.
Air strikes target Sanaa
airport, rebel troop base
The “coalition operations
will increase pressure on
Houthi militia” who will “no
longer have a safe haven
within Yemen”, a spokesman
says
AFP
Sanaa
S
audi-led
warplanes
bombed Yemen’s main
international airport and
struck a renegade troop base
in the capital, as Arab leaders vowed yesterday to pummel
Iranian-backed rebels until they
surrender.
The raids on the country’s
main air gateway came just
hours after UN workers were
evacuated following deadly
ﬁghting that has sent tensions
between Tehran and other Middle East powers soaring.
India and Pakistan also moved
to airlift their citizens from the
chaos-wracked country.
Yemen’s President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi has urged his
Arab allies to keep up the bombing until the Houthi Shia rebels
are defeated, branding them
Iran’s “puppet”.
His Foreign Minister Riyadh
Yassin said there could be “no
negotiations and dialogue” with
the rebels “until the legitimate
government has control over all
Yemeni lands”.
Arab League chief Nabil alArabi said at a regional summit
in Egypt yesterday the offensive
would go on until the rebels “surrender” their weapons and withdraw from areas they seized.
The Houthis and allied renegade military units have overrun much of the country and
prompted Hadi to ﬂee what had
been his last remaining refuge in
the main southern city Aden for
Saudi Arabia.
Dozens of people have been
killed in clashes in Aden in recent days, dimming prospects
of Hadi returning any time soon.
At least 38 people were killed
yesterday in ﬁghting near the oil
region of Usaylan in southern
Shabwa province after tribesmen attacked rebel positions,
security and tribal sources said.
In the capital, witnesses reported hearing three loud explosions and seeing a large ﬁre when
Sanaa International Airport was
bombed during a fourth night of
Saudi-led air raids.
“This was the ﬁrst time they
hit the runway” since the campaign began, an aviation source
said. “The airport is completely
out of service.”
A civil aviation official at the
airport later told AFP that work
to repair the runway had begun.
More than 200 staff from the
UN, foreign embassies and other organisations had been ﬂown
out from the airport on Saturday.
A jumbo jet sent by Pakistan
ﬂew out of Hodeida in western
Yemen yesterday with nearly
500 of its citizens on board, including the ambassador, officials said.
India said it had received permission from the Arab coalition
to airlift out its stranded citizens
and would also send a ship.
Overnight air strikes hit the
headquarters of the rebel republican guard at Al Subaha base in
Sanaa, killing 15 soldiers, a military official said.
The Houthis are backed by
army units loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, who
stepped down in 2012 after a
year-long popular uprising and
is accused of supporting the
rebels.
The latest Saudi-led strikes
also hit an airbase in rebel-held
Hodeida, witnesses said.
Other raids targeted a base
of the First Artillery Brigade in
Saada, the northern stronghold
of the Houthis.
Spokesman Ahmed Assiri told
reporters in Riyadh that the “coalition operations will increase
pressure on Houthi militia” who
will “no longer have a safe haven
within Yemen”.
At the regional summit in
Sharm El Sheikh, Egyptian
President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi
said Arab leaders had “agreed on
the principle” of creating a joint
military force.
The proposal has taken on
added urgency since the Houthis
seized swathes of Yemen, although Saudi Arabia has said
there are no immediate plans to
send in ground troops.
The Arab coalition is said to
have been spurred into action by
the prospect of an Iran-backed
regime seizing power in Yemen.
Russia has voiced concern
that the clashes could undermine nuclear negotiations between world powers and Iran
in the Swiss city of Lausanne,
although diplomats said a ten-
tative deal was emerging.
In talks with Yassin in Egypt,
Russian deputy foreign minister Mikhail Bogdanov called on
“all sides of the conﬂict to cease
military action in the name of
preserving the unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity of
Yemen”, his ministry said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a vociferous
critic of Tehran, denounced the
“Iran-Lausanne-Yemen
axis
which is dangerous for all of
humanity and which must be
stopped”.
According to Saudi Arabia,
more than 10 countries have
joined the coalition defending
Hadi. Washington and Britain
have pledged logistical support.
Late Saturday, anti-Houthi
local ﬁghters were reported to
have taken full control of Aden
airport with the loss of ﬁve men,
and nine rebels killed.
The rebels also set up a base in
Dar Saad on the city’s northern
fringe after clashes in which six
people, including four Houthis,
were killed, a military source
said.
Nearly 100 people are reported to have died in violence in
Aden in recent days.
ran and world powers have
reached tentative agreement
on parts of a deal sharply
curtailing Tehran’s nuclear programme, Western diplomats said
yesterday while cautioning that
the deal is by no means done.
As negotiators raced against
the clock in a rainy Switzerland,
in Israel Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu launched a blistering
attack on the “dangerous” accord
that may be emerging.
One Western diplomat said Iran
had “more or less” agreed to slash
the number of its centrifuge machines by more than two-thirds
and to ship abroad most of its
stockpile of nuclear material.
A senior Iranian negotiator
denied any such thing, saying
any such claims were aimed at
“disturbing” the talks.
“No deal has been reached,
and the remaining issues have to
be resolved,” the Iranian official
said.
But at the same time Iranian
officials have expressed guarded
optimism that after 18 months
of tortuous negotiations and
two missed deadlines, a breakthrough might be in sight for a
deal ending 12 years of tensions.
“If we manage to resolve all
the remaining issues today or in
the next two to three days, then
we can begin to draw up a text.
But for the moment we are still
in discussions,” a source close to
the Iranian delegation said yesterday.
In Lausanne, US Secretary of
State John Kerry cancelled plans
to leave for an event in Boston today in order to keep negotiating,
the State Department said.
“It’s going all right. We’re
working,” Kerry said yesterday
during a break from talks with
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohamed Javad Zarif at a luxury
hotel in the Swiss town.
His French and German counterparts, Laurent Fabius and
Frank-Walter Steinmeier, also
scrapped plans to go to Kazakhstan, diplomats said. Steinmeier said on Saturday talks
were in the “endgame”.
Chinese
Foreign
Minister Wang Yi arrived yesterday
morning. Russian and British
top diplomats Sergei Lavrov and
Philip Hammond were expected
later, completing the line-up of
foreign ministers.
The aim is to agree broad outlines for an accord by tomorrow’s
midnight deadline, and then
ﬂesh out a series of complex annexes containing all the technical details by June 30.
The mooted deal would see
Iran scale down its nuclear programme and allow unprecedented inspections of its remaining
activities.
The hope is to prolong the
theoretical “breakout” time
that Iran would need to produce
enough ﬁssile material to build
a nuclear bomb to at least a year
from the current estimate of several months.
This would require a combination of slashing the number
of centrifuges, converting existing nuclear plants such as the
underground Fordow facility,
exporting its stocks of enriched
uranium and limiting the development of newer, faster equipment.
The latter is thought to be a
particularly thorny issue, as is
the issue of sanctions.
Iran is insisting that in exchange global powers must lift
sanctions that have choked its
economy by strangling its oil exports and banks.
The issue of UN sanctions is
proving particularly thorny, diplomats said, with global powers
insisting the sanctions should be
eased only gradually to ensure that
they can be “snapped” back into
place if Iran violates the deal.
“Ultimately, it’s time for the
Iranians to send a clear signal
to the international community
about whether or not they’re
willing to make the serious
commitments required,” White
House spokesman Josh Earnest
told ABC television yesterday.
But for Israel and US President
Barack Obama’s Republican opponents, the agreement will not
go far enough to stop Iran one
day getting the bomb.
Kerry is under pressure to return from Lausanne with something concrete to head off a push
by Republican lawmakers to introduce yet more sanctions, potentially torpedoing the whole
negotiating process.
“The dangerous accord which
is being negotiated in Lausanne
conﬁrms our concerns and even
worse,” Netanyahu said in remarks broadcast on public radio.
Putin letter draws Saudi rebuke
Reuters
Sharm El Sheikh
S
audi Arabia accused Russian
President Vladimir Putin of
hypocrisy yesterday, telling
an Arab summit that he should not
express support for the Middle East
while fuelling instability by supporting Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.
In a rare move, Egyptian President
Abdel Fattah al-Sisi announced that
a letter from Putin would be read
out to the gathering in Egypt, where
Arab leaders discussed an array of
regional crises, including conﬂicts
in Syria, Yemen and Libya.
“We support the Arabs’ aspirations for a prosperous future and for
the resolution of all the problems the
Arab world faces through peaceful
means, without any external interference,” Putin said in the letter.
His comments triggered a sharp
attack from Saudi Foreign Minister
Prince Saud al-Faisal.
“He speaks about the problems in
the Middle East as though Russia is
not inﬂuencing these problems,” he
told the summit right after the letter
was read out.
Relations between Saudi Arabia and Russia have been cool over
Moscow’s support for Assad, whom
Riyadh opposes. The civil war between Assad’s forces and rebels has
cost more than 200,000 lives in four
years.
“They speak about tragedies in
Syria while they are an essential part
of the tragedies befalling the Syrian
people, by arming the Syrian regime
above and beyond what it needs to
Prince Saud attends the summit in Sharm El Sheikh yesterday.
ﬁght its own people,” Prince Saud
said.
“I hope that the Russian president corrects this so that the Arab
world’s relations with Russia can
be at their best level.”
The Saudi rebuke may have been
awkward for summit host Egypt,
which depends heavily on billions of
dollars in support from Saudi Arabia
and other Gulf Arab allies, but has
also improved ties with Moscow.
In February, Putin received a
grand welcome in Egypt, signalling a
rapprochement.
Gulf Times
Monday, March 30, 2015
11
ARAB WORLD
Syrian forces
regroup after
fall of Idlib
The city’s capture is praised by
opposition forces across the
spectrum of Syria’s uprising
AFP
Beirut
S
yrian troops regrouped yesterday after a coalition including Al Qaeda’s local afﬁliate seized the city of Idlib, the
second provincial capital to fall
from government control.
The capture is a blow to the
government and raises the prospect that the city will become the
effective capital of territory held
by Al Qaeda’s Syrian wing, Al
Nusra Front, analysts said.
Yesterday, the city in northwestern Syria was largely quiet,
after sporadic government aerial bombardment overnight, the
Britain-based Syrian Observatory
for Human Rights monitor said.
A security source in Damascus
and Syrian media said government forces were regrouping outside the city.
“Forces are repositioning on
the outskirts of Idlib in order to
face the terrorist battalions... and
be in the best position to repel
their attack,” a security source in
Damascus said.
The Al Watan newspaper,
which is close to the government,
said troops had carried out a
“successful operation regrouping
south of the city”.
“Army reinforcements were
sent to start a military operation
to regain control of the areas that
were vacated after the evacuation of the local population to safe
areas,” the daily added, citing a
source on the ground.
A coalition of Islamist forces
overran Idlib on Saturday, after an
operation that began just ﬁve days
earlier and killed at least 170 opposition and regime forces.
The city becomes only the
second provincial capital to fall
from regime control after Raqa, in
northern Syria, which was seized
by rebel groups in March 2013.
Those groups were subsequently ousted from the city by
the Islamic State jihadist group,
which has made Raqa the de facto
Syrian capital of its self-declared
Islamic “caliphate” on Syrian and
Iraqi territory.
The group that seized Idlib calls
itself the Army of Conquest and
includes Al Nusra and the powerful Islamist Ahrar al-Sham group,
as well as other smaller conservative Islamist rebel forces.
They touted their victory on
social media, with Al Nusra’s
Twitter accounts posting photos
of its ﬁghters in front of government buildings.
Al Nusra also posted video of
its forces entering a prison in the
city, where they discovered the
bodies of detainees apparently
executed by government forces
before their withdrawal.
The Observatory said at least 15
prisoners had been found dead at
a military intelligence detention
facility in the city.
The city’s capture was praised
by opposition forces across the
spectrum of Syria’s uprising,
which began in March 2011 with
anti-government protests before
descending into a brutal war after
a regime crackdown.
The opposition National Coalition, which is recognised by much
of the international community,
welcomed it as “an important
victory on the road to the full liberation of Syrian territory”.
Its statement made no reference to the composition of the
forces that seized the city, saying only it had “conﬁdence” they
would protect civilians and abide
by international law.
Analysts said Al Nusra’s role in
Idlib’s capture had put the Coalition and other “moderate” rebels
in a difficult position.
“The capture of Idlib is a huge
boost for the Syrian opposition,
but it’s one that once again will
serve to underline the relative
inadequacies of genuine ‘moderates,’” said Charles Lister, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha
Centre think tank.
“Considering the posture established by Al Nusra in Idlib over
the last nine months, it seems
pretty implausible that the city
won’t eventually end up representing Nusra’s effective capital
and stronghold,” Lister said.
More than 215,000 people have
been killed in Syria since the conﬂict began, and half the country’s
population has been displaced in
the war.
Essebsi , Hollande and Abbas lead an anti-extremism march in Tunis yesterday.
Militants’ leader killed as
thousands march in Tunis
AFP
Tunis
T
unisia said yesterday it
had killed the leader of the
militants behind the massacre at its national museum, as
foreign leaders joined thousands
of Tunisians in a march against
extremism.
Chanting “Tunisia is free!
Terrorism out!” the demonstrators marched in a sea of red Tunisian ﬂags to the capital’s Bardo
Museum, where 21 foreign tourists were killed in the March 18
shooting rampage.
“The Tunisian people have
proven that they will not give in
to terrorism. My thanks go out to
all and I tell the Tunisian people:
‘Forwards. You are not alone,’”
President Beji Caid Essebsi said
after joining the march with foreign dignitaries.
French President Francois
Hollande, whose country held
a similar march after January’s
Enemy ﬁre, bombs slow Tikrit offensive
Reuters
Baghdad
I
raqi security forces battled Islamic
State militants in central Tikrit yesterday as the United States and its
allies provided aerial support and local
officials warned that the battle to retake the Sunni Muslim city would not be
quick.
“A rapid advance in a city where the
ground is littered with bombs and booby-traps is too tough to achieve,” said
Mayor Osama al-Tikriti.
IS ﬁghters stormed into Tikrit last
June during a lightning advance in
which they seized swathes of Sunni Iraqi
territory before ﬁnally being halted outside Baghdad.
Complicating matters around Tikrit
was a decision by most Iranian-backed
Shia armed groups to boycott the current offensive in protest against the US-
led air strikes that began on Thursday at
the request of the Baghdad government.
The Shia militias, aligned with Tehran, have repeatedly said they do not
need US support to drive the IS militants
from Tikrit, home city of late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussain.
The security forces and Shia militias,
who provided the largest number of
ﬁghters, began their offensive on March
2 but halted operations after two weeks
due to heavy casualties and tensions
within the government and with US ofﬁcials over Iran’s prominent role.
The battle remains slow-going. At
least 17 security personnel have been
killed in ﬁghting and another 100
wounded around Tikrit since Thursday
when the US air strikes began, a security
officer said.
Yesterday, an attempt to inﬁltrate
Tikrit from the southern district of
Shisheen was thwarted by militants.
They used anti-tank missiles to destroy
a bulldozer being used by the military
to clear a path around booby-trapped
roads, an official said.
Fighting to the south of Tikrit underscored the high stakes of the war against
IS as even areas under government and
militia control near Baghdad remain
vulnerable to lightning-fast attacks by
the militants.
IS ambushed an Iraqi army and Shia
paramilitary base near Dujail yesterday,
killing six paramilitary volunteers and
wounding 14 others, a security official
said.
The clashes in the countryside around
Dujail, just 54km from Baghdad, lasted
until sunset and involved two suicide
bombers and machine gunners in pickup trucks.
In Baghdad, at least seven people
were killed in three bombings yesterday, while a soldier also died in a bomb
blast targeting a convoy in Tarmiyah just
north of the capital.
Israel unearths
ancient Egyptian
vessels for beer
Fragments of pottery used by
Egyptians to make beer and
dating back 5,000 years have
been discovered on a building
site in Tel Aviv, the Israeli
Antiquities Authority said
yesterday.
Excavation director Diego
Barkan said 17 pits were found
that had been used to store
produce in the Early Bronze
Age, from 3500 to 3000 BC.
“Among the hundreds
of pottery sherds that
characterise the local culture,
a number of fragments of
large ceramic basins were
discovered that were made in
an Egyptian tradition and were
used to prepare beer,” he said
in a statement.
The excavation is the first to
offer evidence of an “Egyptian
occupation” in the centre of Tel
Aviv 5,000 years ago.
“This is also the northernmost
evidence we have of an
Egyptian presence in the early
Bronze Age,” he said.
According to the antiquities
authority “beer was the
Egyptian national drink and
was a staple along with bread”.
It said beer was consumed by
the entire population of Egypt,
regardless of age, gender or
status.
“It was made from a mixture
of barley and water that was
partially baked and then left
to ferment in the sun,” the
statement added.
attacks in Paris, was among the
ﬁgures attending along with Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi
and Palestinian leader Mahmoud
Abbas.
“We must all ﬁght against terrorism,” Hollande told reporters after the march. “Tunisians
wanted this international solidarity.”
Tunisian authorities earlier
said Lokmane Abou Sakhr—an
Algerian who allegedly masterminded the museum attack—
was killed along with at least
eight others from the notorious
Okba Ibn Nafaa Brigade.
Officials had accused Abou
Sakhr and his group of organising
the attack on the Bardo National
Museum carried out by two gunmen who were shot dead, despite
a claim of responsibility from the
Islamic State jihadist group.
Tunisian forces “were able
yesterday (Saturday) to kill the
most important members of the
Okba Ibn Nafaa Brigade including its head Lokmane Abou Sa-
khr”, Prime Minister Habib Essid
told reporters.
Interior ministry spokesman
Mohamed Ali Aroui said security
forces had killed “nine terrorists” in an operation in the westcentral area of Sidi Aich.
Authorities say Okba Ibn Nafaa has been behind a series of
attacks on security forces that
have left some 60 dead since late
2012.
During the official march, a
stone tablet was unveiled with
the names of the foreign tourists
and a Tunisian policeman killed
in the attack.
The authorities gave no immediate estimate for the number
of participants in the march,
which took place amid tight security.
“Tunisia is not a country of jihad, extremism and terrorism!”
yelled Majda Friga, a participant
wrapped in the Tunisian ﬂag.
“Let the terrorists leave our
lands. Let them go to hell and
leave us in peace,” said Fadhila
Lahmar, a woman in her 60s.
Tunisia has seen an upsurge in
Islamic extremism since overthrowing long-time strongman
Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in 2011,
but has taken pride in forming
a democratic government since
the Arab Spring—in marked contrast to countries such as Libya,
Syria and Yemen.
The moderate Islamist Ennahda main opposition party
called on its supporters to join
the march “as an expression of
Tunisian unity in the face of this
danger and of their determination to defend their country
and... preserve their freedom”.
The country’s powerful UGTT
trade union also urged its supporters to take part.
However, the leftist opposition Popular Front called for a
boycott, accusing some participants of “hypocrisy”, referring to
accusations that the Islamists in
power after Tunisia’s 2011 revolution had failed to act against
militants.
12
Gulf Times
Monday, March 30, 2015
AFRICA
Nigeria opposition
protests in oil state
Reuters
Port Harcourt
C
onfusion and sporadic violence
blighted Nigeria’s tensest presidential election since the end
of army rule, with opposition supporters yesterday disputing results from a
turbulent southern state even before
they were announced.
The opposition All Progressives
Congress (APC) in Rivers state accused
supporters of President Goodluck
Jonathan of being behind killings of its
campaigners, and denounced the vote
there as “a sham and a charade”.
Dismissal of the vote in Rivers - the
centre of Africa’s biggest oil industry
- raises the prospect of a disputed national outcome and the risk of a repeat
of the violence that erupted after the
last election in 2011, when 800 people
were killed and 65,000 displaced in the
mainly Muslim north.
Hundreds of protesters chanted
‘APC’ outside the main INEC electoral
commission office in Port Harcourt,
watched by dozens of police.
Senator Magnus Abe accused the
ruling party of intimidation.
“There was no election in Rivers,”
APC polling agent Achinike WilliamWobodo told Reuters, calling for a
fresh ballot.
In a sign the opposition will challenge results elsewhere, the APC governor of southern Imo state, Rochas
Okorocha, denounced on television
the conduct of the election in his region and accused the military of meddling in the result.
There was no immediate comment
from INEC.
Kano and Kaduna, the northern
cities worst-hit by the 2011 violence,
were calm.
Voting in Saturday’s election was
extended into yesterday at a relatively
small number of polling stations af-
All Progressives Congress party supporters march towards the Independent
National Electoral Commission Office in Port Harcourt during a demonstration
calling for the cancellation of the presidential elections in the Rivers State.
ter technical glitches hit voter ID machines.
Islamist Boko Haram militants also
killed more than a dozen voters in the
northeast, while at least two people
were shot dead in Port Harcourt, a city
with a long history of political thuggery.
The vote pits Jonathan against
former military ruler Muhammadu
Buhari for the favour of an electorate
divided along a complex mix of ethnic,
regional and in some cases religious
lines in Africa’s most populous nation.
It is also the ﬁrst time since the end
of military rule in 1999 that an op-
position candidate has had a serious
chance of unseating the incumbent,
raising the stakes compared to previous years.
Buhari’s APC reported violence in
Rivers state and blamed it on “armed
militias” backed by Jonathan’s People’s Democratic Party (PDP).
“Whatever trash will (be) announced
as the result of today’s election is not
acceptable to us,” the APC concluded.
“A sham and a charade.”
PDP officials did not respond to a
request for comment and it was not
possible to corroborate the claim independently.
Islamist insurgents launched several attacks on voters in the northeast
on election day, killing three in Yobe
state and 11 in neighbouring Gombe,
including an opposition parliamentary
candidate.
The militants, who are trying to
establish an Islamic caliphate, reject
democracy and their leader Abubakar
Shekau has threatened to kill voters.
A string of military victories by
troops from Nigeria and neighbouring Chad, Cameroon and Niger has
reclaimed much of the territory the Islamists controlled earlier this year, but
they retain the ability to mount deadly
attacks on civilians.
Voting was beset by problems from
the start as officials turned up late and
biometric card readers, introduced
to prevent the vote-rigging that has
marred previous polls, failed to work.
Even Jonathan had to wait 40 minutes.
Electoral commission spokesman
Kayode Odowu said just 350 polling
stations out of 120,000 were still voting. “You can’t say that is too sizeable,”
he said, adding that results would be
collated within 48 hours of the polls
closing.
Anybody who announced results before the commission would be breaking
the law, he added.
Turnout appears to have been high,
and with up to 56.7mn voters to process, results could take a while to collate.
Buhari and Jonathan have appealed
for calm and signed a “peace accord”
on the eve of the vote, but many Nigerians still fear a repeat of the postelection violence that erupted in 2011,
when Jonathan defeated Buhari.
“The danger is post-election,”
former Malawian President Bakili Muluzi, who is leading a Commonwealth
observer mission, told Reuters. “We’ve
been assured by the peace accord between the leaders but how that trickles
down is the danger.”
Ivory Coast and Ghana spar
over disputed zone oil hunt
Reuters
Hamburg
I
vory Coast argued in an international tribunal yesterday that allowing Ghana to continue oil exploration in a disputed offshore area
pending a ruling on their border line
would do irreparable damage to its
economy and energy policy.
The two West African neighbours
have asked the International Tribunal
of the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) in Hamburg to rule on the location of their
shared maritime boundary.
London-listed Tullow Oil is due to
ﬁnish work on its TEN project in the
disputed zone and start pumping oil
by mid-2016.
Ivory Coast has submitted a request
to ITLOS for a suspension of Ghana’s
ongoing exploration activities in the
zone pending a ﬁnal ruling, which
could take three years.
A decision on Ivory Coast’s request
is expected next month.
In its ﬁrst round of oral arguments,
Ivory Coast said Ghana was accelerating development in the zone, which
would leave it to face a fait accompli.
Michael Wood, a special adviser to
the Ivorian delegation, said that not
granting the suspension “could irreparably compromise Cote d’Ivoire’s
entitlement to formulate and pursue a
national policy with respect to the use
of natural resources”.
Paul Reichler, a member of Ghana’s
legal team, said that Ivory Coast had
for at least the last 40 years accepted
the demarcation that Accra considers
to be the boundary between the two
nations.
“There was an agreed border separating their respective maritime territories, and it consisted of an equidistant line whose speciﬁc co-ordinates
were identiﬁed and were reﬂected in
their oil concession agreements,” he
said.
The argument was rejected at the
tribunal by Ibrahima Diaby, directorgeneral of hydrocarbons for Ivory
Coast’s energy ministry.
“I regret that Ghana should rewrite
our shared history by asserting that
Cote d’Ivoire expressly accepted as a
maritime boundary between the two
states the line along which oil blocks
were granted by the two states,” he said.
Ghana is seeking a dismissal of
Ivory Coast’s request for a provisional
suspension.
Fifth Kenyan minister
steps down temporarily
AFP
Nairobi
A
ﬁfth Kenyan minister has temporarily stepped down over a
probe by the country’s anticorruption commission, leaving the
cabinet without more than a quarter
of its members, the presidency announced yesterday.
President Uhuru Kenyatta had earlier asked those named in a conﬁdential
report by the east African nation’s Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission
to step aside while its work continues.
The probe is expected to continue for
about 60 days and the allegations involved have not yet been made public.
“Lands, Housing and Urban Development Cabinet Secretary Charity
Ngilu has stepped aside to allow for
ongoing investigations by the Ethics
and Anti-Corruption Commission
(EACC) in line with President Uhuru
Kenyatta’s directive,” a presidency
statement said.
On Saturday, Kenyatta spokesman
Manoah Esipisu said that “the president
reaffirms that there are no sacred cows
and that this is just the beginning of an
unwavering war against corruption.”
Liberia moots sexual abstinence to cut Ebola risk
By Alphonso Toweh, Reuters
Monrovia
L
iberia yesterday called on
Ebola survivors to strictly
observe a period of sexual
abstinence after recovering from
the disease, amid fears the country’s last case may have resulted
from sexual transmission.
The West African nation suffered a setback in its efforts to
end a year-long outbreak of the
disease earlier this month when
it recorded its ﬁrst new case of
Ebola in several weeks.
The patient, a 44-year-old
woman, died on Friday. More than
10,300 people have succumbed to
the disease across Liberia, Guinea
and Sierra Leone, the three countries hardest hit by the worst Ebola epidemic on record.
Deputy Health Minister Tolbert Nyenswah, who heads Liberia’s Ebola response, said health
officials were monitoring 211 individuals known to have come in
contact with the woman but that
none had presented symptoms of
the disease.
“New information indicates
that sexual transmission may
have occurred, but remains unproven. Additional tests are be-
UN official warns against complacency as Ebola fight draws to a close
The head of the UN’s Ebola
fighting force yesterday warned
against complacency as the battle
against the disease entered its
final lap while also hailing Guinea
for tightening surveillance.
Mauritanian Ismail Ould Cheikh
Ahmed’s comments came a day
after Guinea announced a health
emergency in five regions in the
south-west and west for 45 days.
Guinean President Alpha Conde
announced a series of measures on Saturday, including the
temporary closure of hospitals
and clinics where there have been
cases of Ebola.
Since the Ebola outbreak began
in Guinea in December 2013,
more than 24,000 people in nine
countries have been infected
with the virus, and over 10,000 of
them have died. All but a handful
of those deaths have occurred in
Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.
“On behalf of the international
community and the UN, I hail
this brave decision,” Ould Cheikh
Ahmed told AFP.
“Guinea has made tremendous
efforts,” he said. “There have been
very positive results but we are
now at the most critical moment...
the last phase in the fight against
Ebola.”
“Our biggest enemy today is
complacency.”
In Sierra Leone, which imposed
a three-day nationwide lockdown
Friday to prevent a resurgence of
the deadly virus, the restrictions
were eased for seven hours for
Christians to attend Palm Sunday
services.
Many priests prayed for a
speedy end of the epidemic, a
recurrent theme across churches
in the country.
“By God’s grace, the current
stay-at-home will signal the last
kick of the dying Ebola horse,” said
Pastor Henry Williams in a church
in a western district of the capital
Freetown.
Yvonne Aki Sawyerr, the director of planning at Sierra Leone’s
National Ebola Response Centre
said Sunday that regional authorities were co-operating to stamp
out the disease.
“It’s a race against time as we
want to get Ebola out quickly as
we are approaching the ...start of
the rainy season,” she said.
“We are sharing contact
information and follow up on case
searches in the border communities. We are working as a single
team to monitor the situation.”
Sierra Leone health officials check passengers transiting at the border crossing with Liberia in Jendema.
ing undertaken to investigate this
possibility,” he told journalists.
Research has shown traces of
Ebola in semen of some survivors
for at least 82 days after the onset
of symptoms.
There is no conclusive scientiﬁc proof these traces are infectious. But anecdotal evidence of
several cases in West Africa and
conﬁrmed transmission of Marburg, another viral haemorrhagic
fever, have led experts to warn
of the potential risk of sexually
transmitted Ebola.
As a precaution, the World
Health Organization (WHO) advises Ebola survivors to abstain
from sex during a 90-day period
following recovery, or, failing
that, to practice safe sex.
Nyenswah
reiterated
the
WHO’s advice and suggested
survivors go a step further until
the modes of transmission are
better understood.
“Ebola survivors should con-
sider correct and consistent use
of condoms for all sexual acts
beyond three months until more
information is available,” he said.
Liberia has largely succeeded
in getting its Ebola outbreak under control and was on its way to
completing the 42 days without a
new case necessary to declaring
the country free of the disease
when it recorded the most recent
infection.
Its neighbours, however, have
faced more difficulties in containing their own outbreaks.
Guinea’s President Alpha
Conde announced on Saturday new emergency measures
Tanzania wary of rising religious tensions
Reuters
Dar es Salaam
T
anzania’s president said
tensions between Muslims and Christians were
rising ahead of a constitutional
referendum and elections and
warned religious leaders against
political meddling, saying this
could stoke violence.
A spate of violent attacks on
Christian and Muslim leaders over the past few years has
raised concerns of an escalation
of sectarian tensions in relatively stable and secular Tanzania, east Africa’s second largest
economy.
Jakaya Kikwete told a meeting
of religious leaders in a speech
seen by Reuters yesterday that
the referendum slated for April 30
and presidential and parliamentary elections set for October had
raised the spectre of violence.
“The threat to peace is high,”
he told the gathering, late on
Saturday in the commercial
capital Dar es Salaam.
“You don’t need to be a master of astrology to know that
the current situation, if left
unchecked, could plunge our
country into a major conﬂict between Christians and Muslims.”
Tanzania’s population of
45mn is roughly evenly split between Muslims and Christians.
The new constitution would
replace one approved in 1977
when Tanzania was under oneparty rule and it has drawn criticism from some Christian clergy.
Kikwete said their opposition to the proposed charter
was probably meant as retalia-
tion for his government’s decision to present legislation that
would allow Tanzanian courts to
recognise verdicts from Islamic
‘Kadhi’ courts.
“I’ve been saddened and dismayed by these statements because
I did not expect religious leaders
whom we all respect to do this,” said
Kikwete, who is a Muslim.
The courts would allow Muslims to enforce marriage, divorce,
inheritance and family rights
in their community, but some
Christian leaders say they undermine Tanzania’s secular state.
Kikwete said the Kadhi courts
would only adjudicate on Muslim issues and would receive no
state funding, adding that the
secular courts would remain superior to them.
“The government will not set
up Kadhi courts. Instead these
courts will be established by
Muslims themselves ... I do not
see any reason whatsoever for
religious leaders to instruct their
worshippers to vote against the
proposed constitution.”
Many Muslims living along
Tanzania’s coast feel marginalised by the secular government,
providing fertile recruitment
grounds for Islamist groups
such as Somalia’s Shebaab,
which operates further north
along Africa’s eastern seaboard.
The semi-autonomous Zanzibar islands have posed the
biggest headache for the Tanzanian government because
of religious tensions and deep
social and economic divisions,
but there has been a lull in sectarian violence in the mainly
Muslim archipelago over the
past year.
enabling authorities to restrict
movements in western Guinea,
where Ebola transmission continues a year after the epidemic
was declared. Sierra Leone, the
worst affected country, launched
a three-day national lockdown
on Friday aimed at accelerating
the end of its Ebola epidemic.
Mozambique president
elected head of party
M
ozambique’s President Filipe
Nyusi was yesterday elected
head of the ruling party Frelimo,
allaying fears his predecessor was planning to cling to power behind the scenes.
Nyusi took over at the helm of the
party from Mozambique’s ex-president
Armando Guebuza, Frelimo spokesman Damiao Jose told reporters, ending
weeks of uncertainty.
He was elected with 98.4% of the
vote at the annual congress of the supreme decision-making body of the
Marxist-Leninist party, which has ruled
the former Portuguese colony since independence 40 years ago.
Guebuza, 72, was succeeded by
56-year-old former defence minister
Nyusi as leader of the southern African
nation in January following an October
election.
Guebuza was not eligible to run for
president as he had served a second and
ﬁnal term, but he could have stayed on
as party head as his mandate was not
due to expire until 2017.
Gulf Times
Monday, March 30, 2015
13
AMERICAS
Utility found ‘hazardous situation’ in gas link before NY blast
Reuters
New York
U
tility workers dispatched
in August to one of three
buildings destroyed in an
explosion and ﬁre in Manhattan
last week found dangerous gas
line connections that created a
“hazardous situation,” a Con Edi-
son spokesman said on Saturday.
The crew was sent to the building after a Con Edison worker
reading gas meters smelled gas on
Aug. 6 in the basement, said Con
Edison spokesman Allan Drury.
The basement could hold the
key to the cause of the devastation, in which 22 people were injured - four critically - and two
people remained unaccounted for,
police said. New York Mayor Bill
de Blasio said on Friday that the
blast was possibly tied to someone “inappropriately” tapping
into a gas line.
The owner of the sushi restaurant where the explosion occurred
told The New York Times that
utility workers determined that
gas intended for his restaurant
was being siphoned off illegally
for use in newly renovated apartments upstairs.
Drury said that utility workers
found multiple leaks on Aug. 6 in
hoses that had been connected to
the gas line leading to a restaurant
in the building, creating a “hazardous situation.” He noted that
Con Edison shut off the building’s
gas for about 10 days, until it was
determined to be safe.
On Saturday, rescue crews with
cadaver dogs clawed through
smoldering rubble in the search
for two people still unaccounted
for. Authorities said it could take
a week of careful digging through
twisted debris, bricks and splintered wood before the basement
is reached.
In all 11 buildings were evacuated, leaving residents of 144 apart-
ments needing places to stay.
Investigators were looking into
whether gas and plumbing work
being done privately in one building led to the explosion.
An hour before the blast Con
Edison utility inspectors had been
at the scene and determined that
pre-existing work was not satisfactory, but the problems were
not safety related, the mayor said.
The contractor, identiﬁed as
Dilber Kukic, was one of 50 people arrested in February in a sweep
of the city by building and housing inspectors. He was accused of
bribing an undercover investigator to dismiss violations at two
properties, the Manhattan District Attorney’s office said. The
hospitalised Kukic could not be
reached for comment.
Questions linger
after Pao’s loss in
Silicon Valley trial
Tribune News Service
Los Angeles
A
jury has spoken in a case
that riveted Silicon Valley,
but that doesn’t mean all’s
An Air Canada Airbus A320 lies in the snow after it skidded off the runway at Halifax International Airport, Nova Scotia yesterday. At least 23 passengers and crew suffered
non-life threatening injuries.
Air Canada plane ‘exits’
Halifax runway, 23 hurt
AFP
Montreal
A
t least 23 people were
hurt and petriﬁed passengers described how
they feared for their lives when
an Air Canada plane careened
off a runway in heavy snow at
Halifax airport yesterday.
All but one of the injured
were later released from hospital but the incident caps a
traumatic week for the airline
industry, coming ﬁve days after a pilot killed himself and
149 others when he slammed
his Germanwings plane into the
French Alps, obliterating the
aircraft.
Like the doomed Germanwings ﬂight, the Air Canada
plane was an Airbus A320.
Flight AC624 from Toronto
“exited runway upon landing
at Halifax,” the airline said on
Twitter, and pictures showed
the nose of the plane sliced off,
its landing gear collapsed and at
least one engine badly mangled.
Passengers said the plane
had circled over the airport before coming in to land and had
“bounced” upon impact, shortly
after midnight.
Investigators were probing
what caused the incident, but
heavy snow was falling in the
eastern Canadian city and Environment Canada had issued
a snowfall alert, warning of low
visibility.
Five crew and 133 passengers
were on board the plane, according to Air Canada.
Passengers described scenes
of panic.
“There was a couple people,
all bloodied. Everybody was able
to get out, but what was worse
was that they left us for an hour
outside in the blowing snow,”
Lianne Clark told the Canadian
Broadcasting Corp.
Some ran from the plane
“because the fuel was coming
out and we were scared,” she
said.
Halifax airport spokesman
Peter Spurway said passengers
had appeared shaken as they left
the plane, describing the incident as “scary.”
Greg Wright was waiting at
the airport to meet his 13-yearold son.
He told CBC News he initially
thought his son was joking when
he called to say there had been
an accident.
“He said, ‘We crashed, we
Train-car crash
crashed,’” Wright told CBC. “I
was panicked.”
Power was out at the airport
at the time of the incident, but
Spurway did not say whether
there was any link to the accident.
“We did lose power, we’re not
sure if the two incidents are connected. They may be but we’re
not sure,” he said.
Back-up generators were running when the ﬂight landed and
the runways were lit, he added.
Spurway could not conﬁrm
reports that the plane’s wings
became tangled in electricity
wires upon landing, saying only
the Transportation Safety Board
of Canada was on site to investigate.
Both runways were closed
overnight but the airport was
slowly returning to normal-
ity yesterday morning. Images
showed the aircraft sitting on
the airﬁeld with its badly damaged nose as thick snow covered
the ground. Spurway reported
the damage as “extensive” and
at least one emergency chute
had opened.
Several counties in the eastern
coastal province of Nova Scotia
were affected by Saturday’s winter weather alert.
“We at Air Canada are greatly
relieved that no one was critically injured,” said Klaus Goersch, executive vice president
and chief operating officer of Air
Canada.
“Yet we fully appreciate this
has been a very unsettling experience for our customers and
their families, as well as our employees, and we are focused on
caring for all those affected.”
Home comfy
atop box office
AFP
Los Angeles
A
The remains of a car that collided with a Metro Train in Los Angeles on Saturday. At least 21 people
were injured in the accident which occurred next to the University of Southern California campus. The
21-year-old driver, who was hospitalised in critical condition, was travelling in the same direction as
the train on Exposition Boulevard and was trying to make an improper left turn into the USC campus
when the collision occurred, Metro officials said.
nimated children’s ﬂick Home,
about an unpopular space alien
forced to ﬂee his own kind, took up
residence over the weekend at the top of
the North American box office, estimates
showed yesterday.
The computer-generated movie, featuring Jim Parsons as the voice of “Oh”
the extraterrestrial and Rihanna as his
Earthling friend, landed $54mn in its ﬁrst
weekend out, box-office tracker Exhibitor
Relations reported.
Trailing by $20mn, comedy Get Hard,
about a prison-bound white executive
(Will Ferrell) who hires a black car washer
(Kevin Hart) for lessons on surviving the
slammer, debuted in second place with
$34.6mn, despite criticism from some
corners for racist and homophobic jokes.
Dystopian thriller Insurgent, the second
big-screen adaptation based on Veronica
Roth’s best-selling Divergent series, fell to
third with $22mn, after its debut at the top
last week.
Meanwhile Disney’s live action Cinderella remake worked its magic in fourth,
earning $17.5mn, with Lily James as the
enchanted princess and Cate Blanchett as
her wicked stepmother.
Indie horror ﬂick It Follows, which
opened weeks ago but debuted over the
weekend in wide release, took ﬁfth place
and $4mn in ticket sales.
Sixth went to British spy spoof Kingsman: The Secret Service, with $3.1mn in its
sixth weekend out.
Action ﬂick Run All Night, featuring
grizzled tough guy Liam Neeson playing
a hit man going up against the mob, was
seventh with $2.2mn.
over.
In a verdict delivered on Friday,
a San Francisco County Superior Court jury found that Kleiner
Perkins Cauﬁeld & Byers, one of
the nation’s most prominent venture capital ﬁrms, didn’t discriminate against one its employees,
Ellen Pao, and didn’t ﬁre her in
retaliation for her protesting her
treatment. The decision has left a
number of uncertainties.
Will male-dominated Silicon
Valley change its ways?
No time soon, some fear.
“The outcome of the trial sends
a message that women simply
have to accommodate to such
disappointing cultures,” said Bernice Ledbetter of the practitioner
faculty of organisational theory
and management at Pepperdine
University.
But in the weeks leading up to
the hearing of the case, some venture capitalists said the lawsuit
put them on notice and that they
were stepping up efforts to ﬁnd
ways to promote women. Only
about 5% of decision-makers at
venture-capital ﬁrms now are female, according to research ﬁrm
PitchBook.
Chris Sacca, an investor in Uber
and Instagram, said on Twitter
that the conversation about technology’s “deep gender discrimination problem” shouldn’t end
with Pao’s loss.
Meanwhile, Google, Facebook,
Intel and other big tech companies have acknowledged the low
representation of women and minorities in engineering roles and
are implementing programmes
that they hope will improve their
records.
Will women now suing Twitter,
Facebook and others lose hope?
“It’s got to look like a more difﬁcult proposition,” said Debra
Katz, an attorney at Katz, Marshall & Banks.
The dynamics of a venture capital ﬁrm, with small staffs often on
the road, differ from big organisations with more human resource
department attention on hiring
and promotion, so the new batch
of cases won’t be carbon copies.
But legal experts said Pao’s loss
certainly offers a bar for what a
jury needs to see to ﬁnd bias.
“We don’t know ... whether the
claims that she underperformed
are valid, but it does send a reminder to women: You’d better
work hard and make sure everyone around you knows the quality
of your work and make sure that
quality is unquestionable,” Ledbetter said.
Even thou Pao lost, the publicity of the trial could encourage
more lawsuits. Felicia Medina,
an employment attorney in San
Francisco, said she had recently
heard from at least 10 women in
tech with discrimination or harassment complaints, a signiﬁcant
increase for her office.
What’s next for Ellen Pao?
Pao is the interim chief executive
of Reddit, a popular online bulletin
board. In one conversation thread
on Reddit on Friday, anonymous
users bashed Pao and said the company should get rid of her.
Attorneys who’ve worked gender suits and women who’ve followed such cases said Pao can expect more criticism in the weeks
to come.
“I suspect there will be quite a
backlash against her,” said Melinda Briana Epler, chief executive
of ChangeCatalyst, a San Francisco organisation that supports
women entrepreneurs. “People
are likely to talk more and more
about the reasons why she didn’t
win the trial and stuff about the
speculation that she’s just not a
likable person is likely to come out
more and more.”
As for Pao herself, she said:
“Now it’s time for me to get back
to my career, my family and my
friends.”
14
Gulf Times
Monday, March 30, 2015
ASEAN
Grandchildren of Singapore’s former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew carry his portrait during a funeral procession at the University Cultural Centre in Singapore yesterday. Right: Members of the public react as the ceremonial gun carriage bearing Singapore’s late
former prime minister passes by during his funeral procession.
Grateful Singapore gives founding
father Lee Kuan Yew a hero’s funeral
AFP
Singapore
M
ore than 100,000 people lined Singapore’s
streets to bid farewell to
its founding father Lee Kuan Yew
yesterday, officials said as a week
of mourning ended in the citystate he led to prosperity.
Torrential rain soaked the
crowds as howitzers ﬁred a 21gun salute to the country’s ﬁrst
prime minister and jet ﬁghters screamed across the sky in a
grand farewell normally reserved
for a head of state.
“The light that has guided us
all these years has been extinguished,” his son, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, told a state
funeral attended by 2,200 people
including Asia-Paciﬁc leaders at
the National University of Singapore.
Lee’s coffin, draped in the redand-white national ﬂag and protected by a glass case atop a twowheeled gun carriage, was taken
in a procession from parliament
to the university with close to
2,000 police officers ensuring
security. Officials said 454,687
12 dead in
Indonesia
landslide
AFP
Jakarta
T
welve people were killed
and 11 houses buried after
a landslide triggered by
heavy rain in Indonesia’s main
island of Java, an official said
yesterday.
The landslide hit Tegal Panjang village in Sukabumi district
in west Java late Saturday after
a particularly heavy downpour,
according to national disaster agency spokesman Sutopo
Purwo Nugroho. “We found all
12 bodies,” he said in an update,
revising the earlier death toll of
10 and two missing.
He said heavy rain caused a
cliff to collapse and hit the village, burying 11 houses.
Landslides triggered by heavy
rain and ﬂoods are common in
tropical Indonesia during the
rainy season.
The national disaster agency
estimates around half the country’s 250mn population lives in
areas prone to landslides.
Leaders (bottom left-right) Kazakhstan’s Prime Minister Karim Massimov, Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe,
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Sen, Australia’s Prime Minister Tony
Abbott and former US president Bill Clinton attend the funeral service for former Singapore leader Lee Kuan
Yew at the University Cultural Centre at the National University of Singapore. On top is Bhutan’s Queen Jetsun
Pem, King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck and Brunei’s Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah (right).
people — in a nation with just
3.34mn citizens — had paid their
last respects to Lee, 91, before
his wake ended in parliament on
Saturday.
People chanting Lee’s name
wept openly, waved miniature
ﬂags and threw ﬂowers on the
street as the motorcade drove
through districts associated
with his 60-year political career.
Four Air Force F-16 jets staged
a ﬂy-past as the cortege made its
way through a square where Lee
was ﬁrst sworn in as prime minister in 1959.
He kept the position for 31
years, ruling with an iron ﬁst
to transform Singapore from a
sleepy British colonial outpost
into a gleaming metropolis that
now enjoys one of the world’s
highest standards of living.
Singapore became a republic
in 1965 after a brief and stormy
union with Malaysia.
Lee died less than ﬁve months
before the island celebrates its
50th anniversary as a nation on
August 9.
Civil defence sirens sounded
across the island at the start of
one minute of silence during the
state funeral.
It ended with the singing of
the Malay-language national
anthem “Majulah Singapura”
(Onwards Singapore), after
which Lee’s remains were driven
to a suburban crematorium with
mourners still lining the roads.
Lee said in a note to his children in 2011, one year after the
death of his wife of 63 years Kwa
Geok Choo, that “for reasons of
sentiment, I would like part of
my ashes to be mixed up with
Mama’s, and both her ashes and
mine put side by side in the columbarium.”
One of the mourners on the
streets yesterday was Tan Yen
Lee, 26, a nurse at the Singapore
General Hospital where Lee died
on Monday after a seven-week
conﬁnement for severe pneumonia.
“We have seen over the last
week amazing scenes, a massive
outpouring of emotion for our
national hero, and it culminates
today,” she said.
Strangers huddled together
under umbrellas and families
came early to grab choice spots
along the 15-kilometre route of
the funeral procession.
“As Singaporeans we may
have our differences, but when it
comes to a crunch we stand together. That is what Singapore is
about and that is Mr Lee’s legacy,” said teacher Joel Lim, 35.
Lee stepped down in 1990 in
favour of his deputy Goh Chok
Tong, who was succeeded by
Lee’s son.
Former US president Bill
Clinton and Lee’s close friend
former US secretary of state
Henry Kissinger, Japanese Prime
Minister Shinzo Abe, South Korean President Park Geun-Hye,
Australian Prime Minister Tony
Abbott, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Cambodian
Prime Minister Hun Sen and Indonesian President Joko Widodo
were among the dignitaries in
attendance. William Hague, the
former foreign secretary and
current leader of the House of
Commons, represented old colonial ruler Britain.
Lee, a British-educated lawyer, is revered for his economic
and social legacy but criticised
by rights groups for sidelining
political opponents, muzzling
the press and clamping down on
civil liberties.
A number of his opponents
went bankrupt due to costly libel
damages or went into self-exile.
Phil Robertson, deputy Asia
director for Human Rights
Watch, called on Singapore to
mark Lee’s passing by reconciling with the dwindling number
of political exiles still afraid to
return home.
Singapore now has one of the
world’s highest gross domestic
product per capita incomes at
$56,284 in 2014, from $516 when
it gained independence.
About 90% of Singaporeans
own their homes thanks to a
public housing scheme launched
by Lee, the crime rate is low, and
highly paid civil servants are
consistently ranked among the
world’s most honest.
Vietnam rice boom heaping pressure on farmers, environment
AFP
Can Tho
R
ice farmer Nguyen Hien
Thien is so busy growing
his crops that he has never even visited Can Tho, a town
only a few miles from his farm in
the southern Mekong Delta.
“When I was a child, we grew
one crop of rice per year - now
it’s three. It’s a lot of work,”
60-year-old Thien, who has
been farming since he was a
child, said on the edge of his
small paddy ﬁeld.
Experts say Vietnam’s drive
to become one of the world’s
leading rice exporters is pushing
farmers in the fertile delta region to the brink, with mounting costs to the environment.
The communist country is already the world’s second largest
exporter of the staple grain. But
intensive rice cultivation, particularly the shift to producing
three crops per year, is taking
its toll on farmers and the ecosystem.
“Politicians want to be the
world’s number one or two rice
exporter. As a scientist, I want
to see more being done to protect farmers and the environment,” said Vietnamese rice
Farmers walk on a rice field in the southern Mekong delta province of Can Tho.
expert Vo Tong Xuan. A major
famine in 1945 and food shortages in the post-war years led
to the government adopting a
“rice ﬁrst” policy.
This now generates far more
of the crop than needed to feed
Vietnam’s 90mn population
and has catalysed a thriving export industry.
Rice yields have nearly quadrupled since the 1970s, official
ﬁgures show, thanks to highyield strains and the construction of a network of dykes that
today allow farmers to grow up
to three crops per year.
The amount of land under
cultivation in the Mekong Delta
has also expanded and quotas
are in place to prevent farmers
from switching to other crops.
But experts are questioning
who really beneﬁts.
According to Xuan, farmers
don’t reap the rewards of the
three crop system -- the rice
is low quality and they spend
more on pesticides and fertilisers, which become less effective
year by year.
He argues the delta would be
better off if farmers cultivated
a more diverse range of crops,
from coconuts to prawns, with
just the most suitable land used
to grow rice.
The country should consider
abandoning the third crop and
focus on improving quality and
branding to sell Vietnamese rice
at higher prices, he said.
Currently, the bulk of Vietnam’s rice is exported at cutprice costs on government-togovernment contracts through
large state-owned enterprises
(SOEs) like the Southern Food
Corp, known as Vinafood 2.
“Over the last ﬁve years, the
trend is towards lower-quality
rice,” admitted Le Huu Trang,
deputy office manager at the
ﬁrm.
Some argue that such SOEs
have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo as they
earn lucrative kickbacks from
the huge contracts.
But even as salt water intrusion, drought and ﬂooding
increase in the delta — to say
nothing of agricultural chemical pollution — it is also hard to
convince farmers to change.
“The prevailing mindset is to
grow three crops... we have to
explain two crops is better,” said
Nguyen Tuan Hiep from the Co
Do Agriculture company.
Over the last 20 years, Co Do
— which is state-run but a ﬂagship model of how the industry
could evolve - has identiﬁed the
best rice-growing land in the
delta and helped farmers expand their farms.
They now work with 2,500
families on 5,900 hectares
(14,600 acres) of land, enough
for each family to make a living
- typically the average rice farm
in the delta spans less than one
hectare. The ﬁrm invests heavily in high-quality seeds and
improving irrigation, while also
advising farmers on the best
chemicals to use.
“Two crops is more sustainable long term -- the soil is not
degraded, the environment isn’t
polluted, and value of the rice
increases,” Hiep said.
Climate change is another
factor threatening the delta,
according to the World Bank
Group’s vice president and special envoy for climate change
Rachel Kyte.
“This is really ground zero for
some of the most difficult adaptation, planning challenges
that any country in the world
has,” she said. Ultimately Vietnam has tough choices to make,
including whether to help people transition from a rice-based
economy to aquaculture (ﬁsh
or shellﬁsh farming) or other
crops, Kyte added.
The environmental costs of
maintaining Vietnam’s current
level of rice production are also
rising.
The system of dykes, which
blocks ﬂood water, are preventing soil nutrients from ﬂowing
freely and over time “soil fertility will fade”, said Tran Ngoc
Thac, deputy director of Vietnam’s Rice Research Institute.
Scientists there are busy trying to breed new strains of rice
that require fewer fertilisers and
can survive in extreme weather.
“If farmers don’t change, if
we can’t ﬁnd a suitable new rice
strain, pollution will continue
and incomes will drop,” Thac
said, adding these measures
were essential to save the delta.
Gulf Times
Monday, March 30, 2015
15
AUSTRALASIA/EAST ASIA
Style parade
Huge rise in
family day-care
numbers
across Victoria
Agencies
Sydney
T
Models parade creations by Chinese designer Liu Jia during the Comme Tu Es Liu Jia Parent-child Outfit Collection at China Fashion Week in Beijing yesterday. The biannual
China Fashion Week is being held from March 24-31.
Court jails Uighur for six
years for growing beard
AFP
Beijing
A
court in China’s mainly
Muslim Xinjiang region
has sentenced a man to
six years in prison for “provoking
trouble” and growing a beard, a
practise discouraged by local authorities, a newspaper reported
yesterday.
The court in the desert oasis
city of Kashgar sentenced the
38-year-old Uighur to six years,
Tokyo eyes
six-way
talks on
North Korea
AFP
Tokyo
J
apan has sounded out other
members of long-stalled
talks about North Korea’s
nuclear programme about holding an informal meeting in Tokyo possibly by the end of June,
reports said yesterday.
Japan hopes to bring together
envoys from the six states involved when the next round of
the Northeast Asia Co-operation Dialogue, hosted by a US
research institute, is held in Tokyo, Kyodo News agency said.
The Sankei Shimbun newspaper, citing government sources,
also reported that Tokyo wants
to host a “preliminary” meeting aimed at restarting the formal talks.
The talks, which group North
and South Korea, Japan, the US,
China and Russia, were aimed
at getting North Korea to give
up its nuclear weapons in return for economic and diplomatic benefits and security
guarantees.
But they have not been held
since December 2008. In April
2009 the North, in an angry
response to UN criticism of
its failed satellite launch, announced it was quitting the
forum and would restart its
nuclear programme.
while his wife was given a twoyear sentence, according to the
China Youth Daily.
The man “had started growing
his beard in 2010” while his wife
“wore a veil hiding her face and a
burqa”, the paper said.
The couple were found guilty
of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”, a vague accusation
regularly used in the Chinese judicial system.
For more than a year the authorities in Xinjiang have been
campaigning against men grow-
ing beards — a practice officials
associate with extremist ideas.
A campaign dubbed “Project
Beauty” also encourages women to leave their heads bare and
abandon wearing the veil, a
relatively widespread practice
among the Uighurs -- the main
Muslim ethnic group in Xinjiang.
The Kashgar couple had “received several warnings” before
being charged, the newspaper
reported, citing local officials.
“Since the beginning of the
year, a certain number of people breaking the regulation on
beards, veils and burqas have
been prosecuted and sentenced,”
officials in Kashgar were quoted
as saying by the paper.
Kashgar authorities could not
be reached for comment yesterday. Rights groups believe Beijing’s repression of the Uighurs’
culture and religion has fanned
tensions in Xinjiang, a resourcerich region that abuts central
Asia.
Violence increased last year
and at least 200 people were
killed in a series of bombings
and deadly clashes with security forces, blamed by Beijing on
“separatists” and “religious extremists”.
In April last year authorities in
Xinjiang’s Shaya county offered
cash to informants to report on
neighbours with excessive facial
hair.
In August authorities in Karamay city banned people with
large beards or Islamic clothing
from travelling on public buses.
he number of childcare
educators operating out
of family homes across
the country has skyrocketed in
the past year, as more parents
struggle to ﬁnd a place for their
child in a traditional facility.
The number of services rose
40% in the 12 months to June
30, 2014, with most operators
having been running for three
years or less, Sydney Morning
Herald reported.
However, only 31% of operators have so far been awarded a
quality rating by the Australian
Children’s Education and Care
Quality Authority.
A lack of places in large
childcare centres is pushing more parents to the family day-care sector, which is
growing as a result, a recent
Productivity Commission report said.
Although family day-care
comprises just 4% of the industry, between 2013 and
2014, the number of accredited
services increased from 512 to
735 across the country.
“Anecdotal evidence suggests that families often turn
to nannies or family day-care
where they are unable to access a long-day-care place,”
the report said.
Family Day Care Australia,
the national peak body for the
sector, said that because the
sector offered more ﬂexibility
and care outside of standard
hours, it was becoming increasingly attractive to parents.
“Family day-care is provided in a nurturing, homebased setting with smaller
group sizes, which research
suggests is more beneficial
to a child’s emotional and
cognitive development,” a
spokesperson for the organisation said.
“The small group settings
also mean children have more
one-on-one time with the
educator and children are
able to form secure, ongoing
bonds with their educator.”
Victoria has the most family day-care centres in the
country, with 190.
Of the 269 services that
have a Children’s Education
and Care Quality Authority
quality rating, only two were
deemed “excellent” and 66
were exceeding standards.
Samantha Page, chief executive at Early Childhood
Australia, said there were
some unscrupulous operators
that were only set up to take
advantage of federal government funding.
“There has been a problem
with new start-ups, some of
which are not there for the
right reasons,” she said. “Government has been concerned
with the level of fraud and the
fact quality standards are unlikely to be met.”
Chinese nationals to be
evacuated from Yemen
Agencies
Beijing
T
he Chinese government launched preparatory work for the
evacuation of Chinese nationals from Yemen, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang
Yi said yesterday at the Boao
Forum for Asia in China’s
southern Hainan province,
China Daily reported
Wang said that there are 590
Chinese nationals in Yemen
and the Chinese government
launched the evacuation plan
Thursday evening, when Saudi
Arabia and its allies launched
airstrikes in Yemen. The
evacuation will help ensure
Chinese nationals come back
safely.
Violence has been spreading across the country on the
Arabian Peninsula since last
year, when Iranian-backed
Houthi militia seized the capital, Sanaa. They effectively removed Yemeni President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi
Taiwan protesters pelt eggs over China ﬂight route
AFP
Taipei
T
aiwanese demonstrators
threw eggs and slippers
to protest against China’s
launch of a controversial new
ﬂight route yesterday, accusing the government of failing to
stand up to Beijing.
Thirty-odd members from
the radical anti-China opposition party Taiwan Solidarity
Union (TSU) attempted to push
their way through a police line
that guarded the entrance of
a shrine where President Ma
Ying-jeou was visiting.
After chanting slogans like
“Ma Ying-jeou betraying, humiliating country” and a series of tussles with police,
several of the demonstrators
broke through the line but were
blocked from going further.
“People of Taiwan by no
means accept M503,” a protest
leader said, referring to the new
route near the middle of the Taiwan Strait which separates the
island from mainland China.
“Ma is a coward. He dares not
say ‘No’ to China.”
Holding protest signs, the
crowd angrily pelted eggs and
slippers at Ma’s motorcade, but
the projectiles fell short.
No one was injured or arrested in the clash.
M503 is one of four routes
which would take planes over
the Taiwan Strait from China’s
coastal province of Zhejiang and
the cities of Fuzhou and Xiamen
in Fujian province.
Beijing says they are necessary to ease congestion
In this handout photograph provided by the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU), demonstrators tussle with police during a protest in Taipei yesterday.
on an existing flightpath.
But Taiwan’s authorities
have slammed the unilateral
move and said it poses a potential air defence threat, prompting China to postpone the inauguration of M503 and move it
slightly closer to the mainland.
The other three routes have
been indeﬁnitely postponed,
according to Taiwan’s Civil Aeronautics Administration.
The run-up to yesterday’s
route launch saw protesters
scuffle with police, and the arrest of 13 demonstrators who
splashed red paint on the walls
of the presidential residence.
The government has said that
negotiations with China over
the routes will help safeguard
the island’s aviation security. It
has also said that Chinese ﬁghter jets would not use M503.
China considers self-ruled
Taiwan a part of its territory
awaiting reunification, by
force if necessary. They split in
1949 at the end of a civil war.
Ties have improved markedly
since Ma came to power in 2008
on a China-friendly platform,
but some fear Taiwan is becoming over-dependent on the
mainland.
16
Gulf Times
Monday, March 30, 2015
BRITAIN
Pre-election survey
boost for Labour
Milliband has to overcome voters
doubts on Labour’s economic
credentials
Reuters
London
B
ritain’s opposition Labour Party has
taken a four point lead over Prime
Minister David Cameron’s Conservatives after the ﬁrst TV encounter of an
unusually close-fought national election,
an opinion poll showed yesterday.
The poll is a morale boost for Labour
and its leader Ed Miliband, and prompted
party strategists to say it showed they
could win an outright majority on May 7.
Miliband’s earnest personality is
mocked by the country’s mainly rightleaning press, and the left-wing party
hopes voters will see past caricatures and
warm to him during the campaign.
“As the polls this morning indicate, this
is a winnable election for Labour,” Douglas
Alexander, Labour’s campaign chairman,
told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show.
“It is difficult, but it is certainly doable that we can get a majority,” he added,
saying he was conﬁdent Labour could increase its support in the coming weeks.
Britain’s future in the European Union
could ride on the outcome as Cameron
is pledging an EU membership referendum.
The poll, by YouGov for the Sunday
Times, put Labour on 36%, the Conservatives on 32%, the centrist Liberal Democrats, now in coalition with Cameron’s
Conservatives, on 8%, the anti-EU UK In-
Ed Miliband
dependence Party (UKIP) on 13%, and the
Greens on 6%.
It also suggested, contrary to an earlier poll, that most Britons - by a margin
of 49% to 34% - thought Miliband had
performed better than Cameron in last
Thursday’s ﬁrst TV encounter of the campaign.
A snap poll conducted immediately afterwards suggested Cameron had won,
albeit by a slimmer margin than expected.
Cameron is still far ahead when Britons
are asked to say who they think would be
the best prime minister and his party enjoys a commanding lead over Labour when
it comes to what it hopes will be the decisive issue of economic credibility.
Polls also show Labour struggling to
stem what looks like a devastating loss of
support in Scotland to Scottish national-
ists who have surged since losing a referendum on independence last year. That
makes it harder for Labour to win outright.
But Cameron’s appearance in the ﬁrst
TV encounter was less assured than expected and he had to use his ﬁnal debate in
parliament last week to defend his surprise
decision to announce he wouldn’t seek a
third term in power if re-elected.
Most polls in recent months have put
Labour and the Conservatives neck-andneck, though both have brieﬂy notched up
leads of up to four points only to see them
swiftly evaporate.
YouGov’s Joe Twyman said yesterday’s
poll showed the TV encounter had given
Labour momentum ahead of what is regarded as the formal start of the campaign
on Monday.
“The big question is whether this is a
talking point or a turning point. Will they
be able to make it stick and turn the momentum into sustained gains?” he said.
The Scottish National Party pledged
Saturday to “shake up” the British
parliament if they seize the balance of
power at the general election in May.
SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon said her
pro-independence party would act in
the interests of left-wingers across the
United Kingdom if they are in a position of
inﬂuence after the May 7 polls.
Scotland’s ﬁrst minister used her
speech to reach out to people in the rest
of the United Kingdom with a “message of
friendship and solidarity”.
“I won’t pretend that the SNP doesn’t
still want Scotland to be independent,” she
told a party conference in Glasgow, in reference to the September referendum vote
to remain part of the three-centuries-old
union with England.
“But... I say this to people of progressive
opinion all across the UK.
“As long as Scotland remains part of the
Westminster system, we will be your allies in
seeking to shake up and reform that outdated
and discredited system once and for all.”
Sturgeon said SNP lawmakers would
“demand an alternative to slash and
burn austerity” -- referring to the public
spending reductions being made in a bid to
balance the budget.
She said the nationalists would stand
against any attempt to renew Britain’s
nuclear weapons deterrent, and added it
was time to abolish parliament’s unelected
house of lords upper revising chamber.
At the last general election in 2010,
the Labour main opposition won 41
of Scotland’s 59 seats in the British
parliament’s 650-member lower house of
commons, to the SNP’s six.
But following a surge in support, the
nationalists are tipped to win at least 40
seats this time around, making it difficult
for centre-left Labour to form a majority
government.
The SNP have proposed backing a
Labour minority government on a voteby-vote basis, with prime minister David
Cameron’s centre-right Conservatives
claiming that would mean the separatists
perpetually holding Labour to ransom.
“If you want a Labour government to
have backbone and guts, you need to elect
SNP MPs to provide it for them,” Sturgeon
said.
“You must elect SNP MPs to force
Labour’s hand and keep them honest.”
Earth Hour
Former
007 denies
racism over
Bond role
AFP
London
J
ames Bond legend Roger
Moore insisted Saturday
he had said nothing racist about fellow British actor
Idris Elba — tipped to play the
superspy next — in a French
magazine interview.
The 87-year-old star, who
played the suave British agent
in seven ﬁlms from 1973 to
1985, insisted his meaning had
been lost in translation.
“An interview I gave to
Paris Match implies I said
something racist about Idris
Elba. That is simply untrue,”
Moore wrote on Twitter,
using the hashtag “Lost in
translation”.
He added: “When a journalist asks if ‘Bond should be
English’ and you agree, then
quotes you saying it about Idris Elba it’s out of context.”
Reproductions of the interview have led to Moore being
blasted by Twitter users.
In the interview, Moore was
talking about the different actors who have played agent
007 on screen.
In the 23 official Bond ﬁlms
to date, the title role has been
played in turn by Sean Connery, George Lazenby, Moore,
Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig, who
is currently shooting Spectre,
due out in November.
In a translation of the quotes
printed in French in Paris
Match, Moore told the magazine: “Though James has been
played by a Scot, a Welshman,
an Irishman, I think he should
be English-English. It’s nonetheless an interesting idea, but
unrealistic.
“Some years ago, I said that
Cuba Gooding Jr would make
an excellent Bond but it was a
joke!”
Benjamin Locoge, who is in
charge of Paris Match’s culture section, said the recording
Idris Elba
of the conversation “backs up
that Roger Moore’s words have
been faithfully transcribed”.
“The journalist (who conducted the interview) is certain
about the term “English-English”: he said it like that, it’s on
the tape,” he added.
He claimed: “Roger Moore
implies that it would be difficult to have a black James Bond
in the sense that one cannot
imagine General de Gaulle being played by a black actor and
James Brown by a white (actor).”
“One should not interpret
his words as racist and the
Twittersphere has without
doubt got carried away a bit
too hastily.”
Elba, 42, is from Hackney in
east London and was born to
a Sierra Leonean father and a
Ghanaian mother.
His most famous ﬁlm role
to date is that of former South
African president Nelson
Mandela in Mandela: Long
Walk to Freedom.
On television, he played
drug lord Russell Stringer Bell
in US crime drama series The
Wire and the title role in the
BBC detective series Luther,
which won him a best actor
Golden Globe.
British bookmakers across
the board have Elba as their
clear favourite to be the next
Bond after Craig, who has held
the role for 10 years.
William Hill price Elba at
2/1, followed by Tom Hardy
at 9/2, Henry Cavill at 6/1,
Michael Fassbender at 13/2.
Paddy Power and Ladbrokes
have the same actors as their
top four.
BBC chief
gets death
threats
The houses of parliament in darkness for the Earth Hour environmental campaign on Saturday.
AFP
London
For poor, food aid now a way of life
AFP
Cornwall
C
lutching a bag of pasta, canned
pears and beef, David Kirk leaves a
food bank in one of Britain’s poorest corners -- his sixth visit in a few weeks.
“It’s certainly a big help,” the tattooed
54-year-old said as he loaded the free supplies into his car in the town of Camborne
in Cornwall in the southwest of England.
“My wife has been diagnosed with cancer and I’m not able to work at the moment,” Kirk said.
The growing numbers of Britons turning to food banks run by charities to get
by has become a key political issue weeks
from a May 7 general election.
The ﬁrst question thrown at Prime Minister David Cameron in a prime time television grilling on Thursday was about how
many food banks had sprung up during his
ﬁve years in power.
Cameron parried, saying his government had created jobs to lift people out of
poverty and rejected the idea of a “broken
Britain”.
But the reality looks different at a food
bank in the backroom of a church in Camborne on a peninsula famous for its beaches, holiday homes and rich history.
It is less known for being one of the
country’s poorest regions, with average
Salisbury foodbank volunteer sorts a
donation of food.
wages of around £14,300 a year — ﬁve
times lower than in London, according to
European Union data.
Near a piano covered with a blanket and
old Bibles, volunteers ﬁll bags with vegetables, tea, rice and other staples.
Nicola Bacca, 32, came with her daughter and said her beneﬁts had been cut
“through no fault of our own”.
“That left us with very little money,”
said Bacca, who has four children and
complained that all of her money was used
up paying bills.
“Food is the ﬁnal thing on the list and
with four children? You got to feed them.”
The Camborne food bank opened in
2009 in the wake of the global ﬁnancial
crisis.
But rather than becoming less frequented as the economy has strengthened, the
opposite has happened, according to its
70-year-old founder Don Gardner.
“The ﬁrst month we did about 150
meals,” Gardner said. “Now it’s 2,000
meals on average. Weekly.”
A former tin-producing town, Camborne has never truly recovered from the
closure of its mines — their remains still
visible under encroaching vegetation.
The poverty here is no anomaly.
Britain has at least 850 food banks and
more and more are opening every year,
according to a parliamentary inquiry into
hunger in the country released last year.
Over the 2013-2014 tax year, the Trussell Trust, which runs around 400 food
banks, served meals to 913,000 people,
compared to 61,500 in 2010-2011.
“The situation is an issue of concern,”
Alison Inglis-Jones, a spokeswoman for
the trust, told AFP.
“There has been an increase in number
and use of food banks over the last 10
years,” she said.
Inglis-Jones said food banks were cropping up around the country, including in
London, the wealthy capital.
The parliamentary inquiry found the
reasons to be mainly the 47% rise in food
prices between 2003 and 2013 and a 30.4%
increase in housing costs, which salaries
have failed to keep up with.
But there is also the austerity policies
applied by Prime Minister David Cameron’s government, which has cracked
down on welfare to bring down the country’s spiralling public deﬁcit.
“There has been a change in the political culture in the UK from anti-poverty
to anti-poor,” economists Joanna Mack
and Stewart Lansley wrote in their book
Breadline Britain — The Rise of Mass Poverty.
“This toughening stance against the
poor has been used to roll back the state
and to justify a succession of deep cuts in
beneﬁt levels,” they said.
Ed Miliband, leader of the main opposition Labour party, has accused Cameron
of creating “a country founded on rising
inequality”.
Cameron has responded by saying that
his government is “lifting people into work
and out of poverty”.
But in Cornwall, the political debate
sounds far away.
“Nobody cares about us. We are a forgotten area,” said Gardner as he drove his
battered old Renault car through the grey
streets of Camborne, pointing to all the
shops that have shut down in recent years.
“The economic downturn was like cofﬁn nails but we were already in the coffin”.
B
ritish police were yesterday investigating death
threats against BBC
director-general Tony Hall
following his decision to drop
popular Top Gear presenter
Jeremy Clarkson.
Scotland Yard police headquarters conﬁrmed it was examining allegations made on
Wednesday, when Hall conﬁrmed Clarkson’s contract
would not be renewed at the
end of March after he hit a
producer.
“Police in Westminster
(central London) are investigating an allegation of threats
to kill. The allegation was reported to police on Wednesday,” a spokesman said.
“Inquiries continue. No arrests have been made.”
The Mail on Sunday newspaper said Hall’s home had
been under 24-hour guard
since the threat was received.
The weekly tabloid printed
pictures showing security
outside, claiming it was costing £1,000 a day to protect the
corporation’s top executive.
A BBC spokeswoman said:
“We wouldn’t comment on security matters.”
Top Gear is the world’s most
popular factual television programme, with 350mn viewers
per week in 170 countries.
Clarkson, who was the main
presenter, is caricatured by
Jeremy Clarkson
fans as a straight-talking manof-the-people and by detractors as a boorish bigot.
More than a million people
have signed a petition calling
for Clarkson to be reinstated.
Clarkson’s contract was not
renewed after an internal BBC
investigation found he physically attacked Top Gear producer Oisin Tymon following
a lengthy verbal tirade, reportedly because the presenter was
annoyed at a lack of hot food
after a day’s ﬁlming.
The 30-second attack saw
Clarkson strike the producer, giving Tymon a swelling,
bleeding lip.
The outspoken presenter,
54, ﬂagged the incident to the
BBC after Tymon took himself
to hospital.
Clarkson’s departure will
have ﬁnancial implications
for the British Broadcasting
Corporation, as its commercial arm BBC Worldwide earns
around £50mn a year from the
show.
Gulf Times
Monday, March 30, 2015
17
EUROPE
Germanwings airliner captain
shouted ‘open the damn door’
The co-pilot’s medical
problems are the subject of
intense scrutiny
AFP
Berlin
T
he captain of a passenger jet that investigators
believe was deliberately
crashed into the French Alps,
killing all 150 aboard, shouted at
the co-pilot to “open the damn
door” as he desperately tried to
get back into the locked cockpit,
a German newspaper reported
yesterday.
Forensic teams meanwhile announced that they had isolated
78 distinct DNA strands from
body parts at the mountain crash
site with investigators describing the difficulty of the search as
“unprecedented” due to the arduous terrain.
French officials say the plane’s
black box voice recorder indicates that Andreas Lubitz, 27,
locked the captain out of the
cockpit of the Germanwings jet
and steered Flight 4U 9525 into a
mountainside.
They believe that the more
senior pilot, identiﬁed by Germany’s Bild newspaper as Patrick
S, tried desperately to reopen
the door during the Barcelona
to Duesseldorf ﬂight’s eightminute descent after he left to
use the toilet.
The mass-circulation paper’s
Sunday edition reported that
data from the cockpit recorder
showed the captain shouted:
“For God’s sake, open the door”,
as passengers’ screams could be
heard in the background.
It said “loud metallic blows”
against the cockpit door could
A French rescue worker inspects the remains of the Germanwings Airbus A320 at the site of the crash. Right: A French Gendarmerie rescue helicopter drops rescue workers next to the debris.
then be heard, before another
warning alarm went off and then
the pilot is heard to scream to a
silent Lubitz in the cockpit “open
the damn door”.
Investigators in the Alps said
the violence of the impact and
the remote location was severely
hampering the search for both
body parts and the second “black
box”.
“We haven’t found a single body intact,” said Patrick
Touron, deputy director of the
police’s criminal research institute.
“We have slopes of 40 to
60 degrees, falling rocks, and
ground that tends to crumble,”
said Touron. “Some things have
to be done by abseiling.”
As investigators seek to build
up a picture of Lubitz and any
possible motives, media reports
have emerged that he suffered
from eye problems, adding to
earlier reports he was severely
depressed.
German prosecutors believe
Lubitz hid an illness from his
airline but have not speciﬁed the
ailment, and said he had apparently been written off sick on the
day the Airbus crashed.
The Sunday edition of Germany’s Bild tabloid and the New
York Times, which cited two ofﬁcials with knowledge of the
investigation, said Lubitz had
sought treatment for problems
with his sight.
It is thought to be a retinal de-
tachment, the German weekly
said.
It also reported that Lubitz’s
girlfriend with whom he lived in
the western city of Duesseldorf
was believed to be pregnant.
It gave no sources but said the
teacher, who taught maths and
English, had told pupils a few
weeks ago she was expecting a
baby.
Bild’s Saturday edition had
published an interview with a
flight attendant who it said had
had a relationship last year with
Lubitz and recalled him saying: “One day I’m going to do
something that will change the
whole system, and everyone
will know my name and remember.”
If Lubitz did deliberately crash
the plane, it was “because he
understood that because of his
health problems, his big dream
of a job at Lufthansa, of a job as
captain and as a long-haul pilot
was practically impossible”, the
woman told Bild.
German prosecutors revealed
Friday that searches of Lubitz’s
homes netted “medical documents that suggest an existing
illness and appropriate medical treatment”, including “tornup and current sick leave notes,
among them one covering the
day of the crash”.
Police have found a number
“of medicines for the treatment
of psychological illness” during
a search at his Duesseldorf home,
Welt am Sonntag newspaper said.
It added that the Germanwings
co-pilot was suffering from being overstressed and was severely
depressive, according to personal
notes found.
French police investigator
Jean-Pierre Michel told AFP Saturday that Lubitz’s personality
was a “serious lead” in the inquiry but not the only one.
The investigation has so far
not turned up a “particular element” in the co-pilot’s life which
could explain his alleged action,
he said.
Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr
has said that Lubitz had suspended his pilot training, which
began in 2008, “for a certain period”, before restarting and quali-
fying for the Airbus A320 in 2013.
The second-in-command had
passed all psychological tests
required for training, Spohr told
reporters.
Germany is to hold a national
memorial ceremony on April 17
for the victims of the disaster,
half of whom were German, with
Spain accounting for at least 50
and the remainder composed of
more than a dozen other nationalities.
France’s Investigation and
Analysis Bureau (BEA), tasked
with investigating civil aviation
accidents, meanwhile said it
was “dismayed” by the revelations in the German press which
it said smacked of “voyeurism”.
Page 26
French local election tests strength
of far-right, Sarkozy comeback
Belgian coalﬁeld
shows where Van
Gogh emerged
Reuters
Paris
Reuters
Mons, Belgium
F
I
rance’s
far-right
National Front is expected
to strengthen its hold on
grassroots politics in a second
round of local elections yesterday that ex-president Nicolas
Sarkozy’s conservatives are forecast to win.
Marine Le Pen’s anti-immigrant, anti-euro FN party aims
to build a base of locally elected
officials to become more mainstream and thus better placed to
contest national ballots.
In a setback to its claims to
have become France’s leading
party, the FN placed second last
week in the ﬁrst round of the local elections, but it did win one
in four votes and is all but certain
to see a big jump from its current
two councillors.
“The FN has now put down
roots nationwide, it has reached
a level that is high, too high,”
French prime minister Manuel
Valls, a Socialist, told Le Journal
du Dimanche weekly.
Valls, whose deeply unpopular government is trying to play
up modest signs of recovery in
the eurozone’s second largest
economy, has stressed his “fear”
of the FN’s rise in an attempt to
mobilise left-wing voters.
The second round is also a key
test for Sarkozy, who has put a
shaky political comeback back
on track by steering his conservative UMP party and its allies to
an unexpected victory in the ﬁrst
round but still faces resistance
within his party.
Opinion polls see the UMP and
its allies winning the local elections with nearly twice as many
seats as president Francois Hollande’s Socialists and their allies.
The polls see the Socialists
losing 20 to 40 of the 61 “departments” they now hold, but
Valls said his government would
press on with reforms to tackle
France’s economic stagnation,
adding that a cabinet reshuffle
was not on the cards for now.
The FN, which topped last
year’s European parliament elections in France, had eight of its
French far-right National Front leader Marine Le Pen leaves the polling station after casting her ballot in Henin-Beaumont.
candidates elected in the ﬁrst
round of the local polls and could
see as many as 220 more elected
yesterday, an Ifop poll showed.
That would be far fewer than
the mainstream parties but a big
jump from all past elections in
the “departements” councils.
The far-right party is hoping to win one or two “departements” at most due to unfavourable electoral arithmetic but it is
eyeing a bigger win in regional
polls later this year. Surveys also
show that Le Pen is likely to make
it to the second round of France’s
presidential election in 2017, but
not winning.
The complex election system,
in which a duo of councillors is
elected per constituency who
then elect the presidents of 98
“departements” councils, means
it may take time to form a clear
picture of how many councils
each party has won.
In total, 4,108 councillors
with limited powers over roads,
schools and social services will
be elected. At 1700 (1500 GMT),
voter turnout stood at 41.94%,
nearly six points higher than in
the previous local elections in
2011.
A heavy defeat for the Social-
ists would be a bad sign in the
run-up to the 2017 presidential elections, in which Sarkozy
hopes to wrest power back from
the leftist government that has
struggled with a sluggish economy and high unemployment.
Shortly before heading to Tunisia to take part in an anti-terrorism march, president Francois
Hollande cast his vote in the rural
area of Tulle, where he was mayor
from 2001 to 2008.
Voter disappointment with
what some see as Hollande’s economic failures mean Sarkozy’s
centre-right coalition is likely to
dominate the ballot after topping
last week’s ﬁrst-round vote.
“The situation is catastrophic,
maybe things will change,” said
Paul, a 52-year-old maintenance
worker living in Lille, near the
Belgian border.
Despite the widespread thirst
for change, the Socialists did
better than expected, taking 21.%
of the ﬁrst-round vote.
However, government officials
fear the ruling party may lose between half and two-thirds of the
60 councils it currently controls
in the run-off round.
The local vote has put Sarkozy
back in the limelight after a sluggish
return to politics in September.
“Change is under way, and
nothing will stop it,” he said after
his UMP-UDI alliance took 29%
last week.
Sarkozy had been criticised
since his return for being distant,
preoccupied and even bored. But
his energetic leadership of the
current campaign has restored
some of his allure.
“If results match the forecasts,
the right’s victory will help repair damage Sarkozy inﬂicted
on himself with his weak, sleepy
start,” political analyst Stephane
Rozes, president of the CAP political consultancy in Paris, said.
“It will also signal he has appreciated the importance of the
centrist vote, which he ignored
in 2012 as he shifted his position
farther to the right to rival the
FN.”
The Socialists are heading in
the opposite direction after a
campaign that mostly focused
on the threat of the far-right, and
said little about key economic issues.
A boost in Hollande’s poll ratings after the January jihadist attacks in Paris proved short-lived.
“Everyone in the (Elysee) is
scared he will be eliminated in
the ﬁrst round in 2017,” a presidential advisor told AFP, adding
that Hollande had no choice but
to continue unpopular austerity
reforms that have alienated the
public and many in his own party.
Gilles Finchelstein, a political strategist close to the Socialists painted an even darker picture this week in an article for
L’Express magazine, saying “the
left is in danger of dying, (and)
risks becoming nothing more
than a residual political force”.
However, Rozes said there is
still hope for the Socialists, since
voters approach local elections
very differently from national
contests.
“You can’t project results from
one to what will occur in the others,” he said.
The same is true for the farright, according to analysts, despite claims from Socialist Prime
Minister Manuel Valls that Le
Pen “is at the doors of power.”
“Yes, she’s had recent signiﬁcant successes, particularly
gaining the most votes in European elections,” political analyst
Nonna Mayer said.
“(But) despite what you hear
these days, it’s mad to imagine
Marine Le Pen in the Elysee.”
t is ﬁtting tribute to the role
the Belgian coalﬁeld around
Mons played in Van Gogh’s
emergence as an artist that the
city has made a rare show of his
early works a focus of its year as
European Capital of Culture.
From the clumsy sketches
with which the 25-year-old
Dutch lay preacher began to
drawings ﬂowing with the
energy that marked his later
painting, ‘Van Gogh in the
Borinage: Birth of an Artist’
at Beaux Arts Mons is a treat
for the academic and casually
curious alike. It ought, too, to
inspire perseverance in any
would-be creator — even Van
Gogh started out with dross.
“I can see it is not any good
yet,” Vincent wrote to his art
dealer elder brother Theo Van
Gogh in a letter accompanying two small pencil drawings
showing the weary lives of the
miners of the Borinage coalﬁeld
among whom he lived from
1878 to 1880.
“But,” he added, “It is starting to come”.
Alongside letters scratched
out from the colliers’ cottages
where the well-born Van Gogh
lodged, the show traces progression in technique, in pencil
and paint. Largely early work,
it does culminate in the sumptuous, sunlit Impressionism
of Street in Auvers-sur-Oise,
painted in the weeks before his
death aged 37.
Van Gogh drew the pitheads,
the simple homes, the miners’
potato patches, even, after an
underground visit, the coalface itself. In the grip of the
youthful religiosity that later
gave way to suicidal despair,
he wrote: “Those who work
in the shadows, in the belly of
the earth, like the miners deep
in the black coalworkings, are
very touched by the word of the
gospel.”
Also on display are works by
others who inspired him as well
as versions he made of them,
notably Jean-Francois Millet’s
paintings of peasant life such
as The Sower and The Angelus.
From hesitant copyist to inspired original, the Van Gogh
at Mons labours as hard as
those he saw around him in the
Borinage.
In a ﬁnal touch to encourage
today’s amateur, the last room
shows how he returned in his
last months to studying the
human form from a bestselling
textbook of his day. Hung next
to the clean Classical lines of
the printed models, Van Gogh’s
ﬁgures are no accurate copies.
Yet they leap from the wall with
life.
The exhibition in the neat
modern BAM gallery just off
Mons’ ﬂorid Renaissance town
square, an hour south of Brussels, has packed in 100,000
visitors since January. It will
open extended hours for its
last six weeks once the city celebrates its year in the European
eye by opening ﬁve new museums on April 3.
Next Sunday, for Easter, entry to the Van Gogh is free.
There is a wealth of art, architecture and history to take
in around Mons, including new
exhibitions on the city’s place
in the two world wars. But as a
complement to the Van Gogh,
contemporary Flemish master
Luc Tuymans’ print show in
the nearby ex-mining town of
La Louviere is thought-provoking.
Best known for his paintings,
often exploring troubling histories and based on photographs
and other printed images, Luc
Tuymans: Suspended offers 25
years of his collaboration with
printmakers to create ﬂuid, layered, intriguing effects.
The Temple consists of etchings of watercolours of Polaroids of watercolours of Polaroids of a TV screen showing a
documentary about Mormons.
For all the lost levels of clarity,
they still convey a clear sense of
each image to the human eye.
Van Gogh, battling in the
Borinage to command his pencil and paintbrush to extract an
essence of life, would have understood.
18
Gulf Times
Monday, March 30, 2015
EUROPE
Lights off
Bulgaria
struggles
to manage
pensions
Reuters
Sofia
T
People hold balloons with lights inside as they wait for the start of the Earth Hour outside Madrid’s Royal Palace on Saturday.
Uzbeks set to re-elect
strongman Karimov
The result appears to be a foregone
conclusion
AFP
Uzbekistan
U
zbeks voted massively in a presidential election yesterday with
turnout topping 70% halfway
through the poll expected to deliver another landslide victory for strongman Islam Karimov.
Few doubted the outcome after all three
of Karimov’s challengers endorsed his
campaign to extend an iron-ﬁsted rule
that dates to before the fall of the Soviet
Union.
The central electoral commission said
almost 15mn people had cast their ballots
at more than 9,000 polling stations as of
the halfway point in voting, for a turnout
of 71.6%.
Karimov, 77, cast his ballot at midday
in the lopsided vote in the Central Asian
country of more than 30mn, where voting
began at 6am (0100 GMT) as snow fell in
the streets of the capital Tashkent.
Karimov, who won around 90% of the
vote in 2007, is running for a ﬁve-year
term following two seven-year stints.
Before those, the man who held onto his
leadership position when the Soviet Union
collapsed in 1991 extended his post-Soviet
rule by referendum in 1996.
While exit polls are prohibited under
A woman walks past an election board of Uzbekistan’s president Karimov near a polling
station in Tashkent.
Uzbek law, many voters in Tashkent told
AFP they had voted for Karimov.
Burkhon, a 63-year municipal transport mechanic who declined to give his
surname, cited periodic unrest in neighbouring Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, as well
as the ongoing crisis in Ukraine, as reasons for casting his vote for the longtime
strongman.
“We haven’t had such bad things, thanks
to Karimov, and we don’t want them happening in the future,” Burkhon told AFP.
Gulhayo Khujanova, an 18-year-old
student casting her vote for the ﬁrst time,
told AFP: “I voted for our president, Islam
Karimov. I am really satisﬁed with what he
is doing for young people.”
One voter, a taxi driver who requested
anonymity, was undecided, saying: “I really wanted our respected president Karimov to retire, give the rule to someone
younger and enjoy his happy retirement...
But this is not going to happen, so I don’t
care now and I don’t know who to vote for.”
The ageing Karimov has contended
with increasing rumours of illness and
physical frailty but appeared healthy
last weekend when dancing at celebra-
tions to mark the beginning of spring.
He stressed the importance of stability
during the low-key six-week campaign.
“What do Uzbek people need? We need
peace and well-being,” Karimov told the
crowd.
On Wednesday he defended the need for
“strong government”, telling a small group
of voters in comments aired by state media that otherwise “there will be chaos in
society”.
He added: “The time will come when
we will give full freedom to our citizens, all
human freedoms, and ﬁrst and foremost,
freedom of the media.”
Karimov has continually warned of the
danger posed by Islamic radicals based in
Afghanistan, some of whom are ethnic
Uzbeks.
“If we retain stability in Uzbekistan, we
secure order in the entire Central Asian
region,” Raﬁk Sayfullin, a political analyst
based in Tashkent, told AFP. “Let these
elections pass normally so that we can
keep the same team.”
Strategically located Uzbekistan provided support to the US-led military operation in its southern neighbour Afghanistan and maintains close ties with both
Russia and China.
More than 300 international observers
from 43 different countries are monitoring the vote. The Organisation for Security
and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) is expected to issue its assessment of the ballot
today.
Brain drain as Greenlanders leave
for Denmark’s ‘greener’ shores
AFP
Copenhagen
A
s hopes fade for a commodities boom in Greenland there is growing
concern that an exodus of young
people could cripple the economy of a territory already facing
an uncertain outlook.
“People come down here to
study and then they become so
rooted that it’s difficult to go back
again,” said Angunguak Egede, a
28-year-old Greenlander working as an office clerk for the Copenhagen municipality.
Together with a group of
friends, Egede left home in
2004 for Denmark, Greenland’s
former colonial master and some
4,000km away, because “it was
just the thing to do”.
Danish cities offered a “fastpaced” lifestyle many young
Greenlanders have only seen on
the Internet, and seemingly endless options for recreational activities compared to home: The
remote territory’s ﬁrst public
swimming pool opened in 2003,
ﬁve years after Coca Cola became
available.
“If you go to the cinema in
Nuuk, the capital, you have one
option,” Egede said in a bustling
Copenhagen coffee shop.
The same goes for the number
of jobs available and higher education. “In general there is just
much more to choose from in
Denmark,” he said.
Over the past 25 years Greenland has had an average annual
net emigration of 500 people,
many of whom are young and
well educated.
With a population of just
55,000 and widespread social
problems, it is an exodus the
Arctic territory can scarcely afford, as a 2012 survey found that
62% of 16 to 18-year-olds had
dropped out of school.
Greenland prime minister
Kim Kielsen told AFP that there
“should be no doubt that we
want our young back to Greenland after an education in Denmark or abroad”.
To that end, ﬁnancial aid has
been made available to help them
repay student loans if they re-
turn, and Greenland job fairs held
in Denmark’s major cities, he said
in an e-mail.
But there are many like Egede.
Twisting a single polar bear
claw that he wears around his
neck, Egede said he wants to
move back to Nuuk at some point.
He just doesn’t know when.
A 2009 agreement allows
Greenland to secede from Denmark completely, but to do that
it needs to wean itself off an annual 3.6bn kroner (€483) subsidy
from Copenhagen, representing
more than half of the home rule
government’s budget.
Adding to its problems is what
observers call “the death gap”
-- a widening chasm between a
shrinking economy and the rising cost of an ageing population.
Kielsen’s predecessor Aleqa
Hammond, who had to step
down in September following a
corruption scandal, had promised economic independence
from Denmark based on exploitation of the territory’s oil and
mineral riches, but the plunging
price of commodities has put a
damper on those plans.
The territory’s unemployment
rate, twice that of Denmark’s at
around 10%, mostly affects unskilled workers and there is demand for those with an education
in some sectors, Kielsen said.
However, he admitted that if
the economy continued to deteriorate it could eventually lead to
even higher emigration.
“But that is currently not believed to be the case,” he said.
But Torben Andersen, an economics professor and the head of
the Economic Council of Greenland, said there was already “an
element of brain draining.”
The most common reason for
Greenlanders to move to Denmark was to pursue an education
not available at home, followed
by those moving for jobs, he said.
“Up until now we have seen that
emigration patterns mirror economic development,” he added.
Thomas Johansen, a 28-year
old engineering student in Copenhagen from the western
Greenland town of Ilulissat, said
many young Greenlanders in
Denmark felt “a certain responsibility to give something back to
Greenland” but that at the same
time “there are better opportunities abroad”.
“I think it’s a problem. I think
there is a brain drain,” he said.
Naja Motzfeldt, a 28-year-old
management student, said that
after her studies she planned to
go back to the southern town of
Qaqortoq with a population of
just 3,200.
“I know a few people who plan
to stay here. They don’t see any
future in returning to Greenland,” she said.
But as much as jobs it was the
Danish lifestyle that was keeping them from returning, with
Greenland sometimes feeling
“very small”, she added.
“Everyone knows each other
and rumours spread quickly.
Things can also get a bit boring,
you can’t just drive from one
town to the next like in Denmark.
You have to sail or ﬂy,” she said.
As for herself, she said any
culture shock upon returning
from the Danish capital would be
manageable.
“Creative people never get
bored,” she said.
he poorest country in
the European Union
enables some public
sector workers to retire in their
forties. Elena Yaneva hopes
she won’t be caught up in Bulgaria’s pending pensions overhaul.
“I do hope I can retire by
the end of the year, otherwise
I will have to race with the increase (in retirement age) for
who knows how many years,”
said Yaneva, an accountant
who turned 60 this month.
“And I do not want to die at my
workplace.”
Her anxiety underscores
how, for all the noisy debate in
western Europe about foreign
workers, mass emigration puts
a strain on the economies of
former Eastern Bloc countries.
Poland has lost about 1.2mn
workers since joining the EU
over a decade ago, while in
some villages in Romania the
few remaining children are
brought up by grandparents
while the parents work abroad.
The exodus of young Bulgarians since Communism fell
in 1989 means Bulgaria’s pension system swallows 37.5%
of the central government’s
budget, up from 12.8% in
2003. That could rise to 70%
in 10 years, according to labour minister Ivailo Kalﬁn.
Prime minister Boiko Borisov’s government is considering raising the pension age,
curbing early retirement and
tackling fraudulent disability
claims.
Bulgaria is “facing a demographic collapse”, Bozhidar
Danev, executive president of
Bulgaria’s largest industrial
association BIA told Reuters,
urging reforms to curb unsustainable costs.
Bulgaria’s population has
shrunk by a ﬁfth since 1990
to 7.25mn. Yet the average
age when Bulgarians ﬁrst receive an old age pension is
57, the lowest in the EU along
with Poland, Romania, Slovenia and Slovakia, according
to 2012 Eurostat data. A 2013
World Bank report estimates
just one in two Bulgarians will
be of working age in 2050.
The pension system is also
riddled with dodges such as
employers paying the minimum wage on the books, then
some more in cash, reducing
pension contributions to the
state.
Moreover, claims for disability pensions have more than
doubled as a percentage of
GDP since 2001. One in eight
Bulgarians is officially disabled in some way.
“Everybody knows the
reasons for the deﬁcit,” said
Krassen Stanchev, a founder
of the think tank that has published a study on pensions.
“But nobody dares to do anything,” he said, because the
proportion of younger voters
who are net contributors to
the budget is shrinking.
Those who beneﬁt still
struggle to live on the thinlyspread payments. Simeon
Naidenov, a
58-year-old
former policeman who ﬁrst
started drawing a pension aged
42, has taken jobs as a security
guard, a construction labourer
and a driver for a casino.
“I cannot even afford to go
the seaside,” said Naidenov, a
former commando in the “Red
Berets” counterterrorism unit
who draws a monthly pension
of €240.
Borisov has already faced
street protests since becoming
premier again in November
over plans to raise the pension
age by four months every year.
Trade unions want a slower
increase. A full set of reform
proposals could be sent to parliament in April.
At the same time Borisov
pushed a law through parliament to end mandatory
payments to private pension
funds, a move he defended as
giving workers more choice
but that business and coalition allies panned as a savings
grab.
If he moves too slowly to
tackle pensions, healthcare
and endemic corruption in the
judicial system, he risks alienating his main partner, a rightwing group of parties called
the Reformist Bloc.
“If they don’t push on with
the reforms, the coalition will
fall apart and this will bring
down the government,” said
Kamen Kolchev, the head of
ELANA Financial Holding in
Soﬁa.
Two charged for
spying on Erdogan
AFP
Istanbul
A
Turkish court yesterday charged two former
policemen with illegally eavesdropping on president
Recep Tayyip Erdogan following their extradition from Romania, state-media said.
Sedat Zavar, a former police
chief, and Ilker Usta, were detained at Istanbul airport late
Saturday after their arrival
on a ﬂight from Bucharest,
the Anatolia news agency reported.
The court in Istanbul formally charged the two policemen with “forming a crime
syndicate”, “violating privacy”
and “illegally obtaining personal information,” Anatolia
said.
The police officers, who
were placed in pre-trial detention, are expected to appear in
court on May 4 and face up to
36 years in jail if found guilty.
The detentions are a part
of an intensifying crackdown
against followers of US-based
preacher Fethullah Gulen, accused by Erdogan of setting
up a “parallel state” seeking
to oust him from power and of
concocting a corruption scandal that rocked the government in late 2013.
The authorities accuse police of bugging Erdogan and
other top officials at the be-
President Erdogan
hest of Gulen, whose extradition is being sought by Turkey.
Since becoming president
in August 2014 after serving
as prime minister since 2003,
Erdogan has intensiﬁed his
offensive against Gulen followers.
The authorities have conducted raids against dozens of
police officers accused in the
spying case and others in the
police force and the judiciary
suspected of being Gulen supporters.
Erdogan described the two
detained policemen as “spies”
and said: “Why did you ﬂee if
you were innocent? You ﬂed to
Romania but you were caught
there.
“You had been employed
to serve the prime minister...
When did you set out to become a spy?” he told a rally in
Istanbul.
“We told them we would
pursue them (Gulen supporters) into their lairs. We will
ﬁnd whoever is behind them
no matter where they go.”
Gulf Times
Monday, March 30, 2015
19
INDIA
LIFESTYLE
TECHNOLOGY
EDUCATION
CRIME
RESERVATION
Bollywood stars love
unusually shaped handbags
New healthcare system
for pregnant mothers
Amrita ties up with
Dutch university
1,000 impersonators held
during police recruitment
Maneka wants quota
for women in police
Some women like to carry XXL-size
handbags, while others are happy
with a cloth bag, a clutch or a
shoulder bag. But on the red carpets
of India’s film production capital,
Mumbai, female stars like to carry
something more eye-catching.
Bollywood actress Alia Bhatt recently
clutched a handbag in the shape of
a camera and Sonam Kapoor sported a bag that
looked like a cat, according to the Hindustan Times.
Kiara Advani wore a Chihuahua-shaped handbag
and Richa Chadda even had a cake-shaped one.
The handbags had one thing in common: they all
had plenty of bling and sparkle.
The cumbersome days of stressful, manual,
wired monitoring of the unborn child in pregnant
mothers will soon end - thanks to a new system
unveiled at a hospital in Mumbai. The Lokmanya
Tilak Municipal General Hospital, known as
the Sion Hospital, has introduced India’s first
Wireless Foetal Monitoring System, a state-ofthe-art product invented and developed by
the University of Nottingham. The Monitoring
and Care (MONICA) system has been made
available through a donation by Steel Chambers
Charitable Foundation of India. The Sion Hospital
holds the record for conducting around 14,000
child deliveries a year, the highest in India, its
dean Suleman Merchant said.
Leading higher education provider Amrita
University has entered into an agreement with
Vrije University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands
to extend its collaboration to more departments
and programmes. “We are extending our
collaboration with the European university after
a five-year rewarding association with it through
student exchange programme, online lectures,
conferences, and adjunct faculty,” Amrita University
vice-chancellor Venkat Rangan said. The new
agreement envisages expanding the collaboration
to health sciences, involving advanced speciality
services, precision robotic surgery, radiotherapy,
oncology, translational medical research, nano
medical sciences, biotechnology and public health.
After widespread cheating in Bihar’s secondary
school board examinations hit the headlines,
over 1,000 impersonators have been arrested in
the state during the screening of documents for
constable recruitment exam in the past 13 days,
police said yesterday. A police officer said: “Never
before such were a large number of aspirants
arrested for impersonating.” He said a total of
1,068 impersonators have been identified and
detected during the screening test that ended
on Saturday. “The highest number of 200 were
arrested on March 28,” the officer said. They were
caught when they came for physical test and
produced fake documents. Those arrested were
hired by aspirants for taking the physical test.
The women and child development ministry
has urged the home ministry to take up
with various state governments the issue
of 33% reservation of posts for women in
police forces, official sources said yesterday.
In a letter to Home Minister Rajnath Singh,
Women and Child Development Minister
Maneka Gandhi said: “I request you to take up
the issue of 33% reservation for women
in police forces at your level so that together
we can address the problem of violence
against women.” Gandhi has pitched
reservation for women in police forces as
one of the key steps which can stop violence
against women.
India to airlift
citizens from
Yemen, to
send ship too
Agencies
New Delhi
I
ndia said yesterday it was
preparing to airlift stranded
citizens from war-torn Yemen
despite the bombing of the country’s main international airport.
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said air evacuations
would take place from Yemen,
which has been plunged into
chaos by a Houthi rebellion that
has triggered Saudi-backed airstrikes on the capital Sanaa.
Some 4,100 Indians are currently in Yemen, including 3,100
in Sanaa, 500 in Aden and the
rest around the country, the
minister said.
“Today we got permission to
ﬂy from Sanaa for three hours
a day. We will use this slot for
evacuating our citizens every
day,” Swaraj said on Twitter.
“The end of runway of Sanaa
airport was damaged. That is repaired. It is now functional,” she
said.
India will also send a ship to
help evacuate its workers and
other citizens, many of whom are
nurses from Kerala, the minister
said. Meanwhile a Kerala minister said Swaraj has urged the Gulf
Co-operation Council (GCC) to
persuade Saudi Arabia to lift the
ban on ﬂying through its air space.
Minister of Diaspora K C
Joseph said Chief Minister
Oommen Chandy was told this
when he had a talk with Swaraj.
“We are told that things have
calmed down a bit and yesterday
(Saturday) the airport was opened
for a few hours. A ﬂight carrying
90 Indians, including 15 Kerala
nurses, has departed from there.
The Kerala nurses will arrive from
Doha tomorrow (Monday) morning at Kochi airport,” said Joseph.
“We are in touch with the Indian embassy officials in Yemen
and they have said that every day
the airport will be kept open for
a few hours. In order to make use
of that, we have to get permission from Saudi Arabia to use
their air space for which India
has got in touch with the GCC to
prevail upon Saudi Arabia. Once
we get that permission, India
will send aircraft to evacuate our
people,” Joseph added.
Chandy said on Friday that
New Delhi planned to send two
ships to take the Indians to nearby Djibouti, from where they
would be airlifted.
The chief minister said workers
had complained of having their
passports and other documents
seized by hospital authorities,
preventing them from leaving.
The Saudi-led airstrikes have
hit Sanaa’s airport and a renegade troop base, as Arab leaders
vow to pummel the rebels until
they surrender. India’s government last week asked all its nationals to leave Yemen, where
deadly ﬁghting has sent tensions
in the Middle East soaring.
Two killed, 12kg heroin seized
The Border Security Force has
killed two suspected Pakistani
smugglers along the IndiaPakistan border in Punjab and
recovered 12kg heroin, valued
at Rs500mn, an official said
yesterday. BSF troopers also
recovered one AK-47 assault
rifle, magazines and 31 rounds
of ammunition from the place in
the Amritsar sector following a
search operation yesterday. The
heroin, wrapped in 12 packets,
was found near the border
outpost of Rattan Khurd in the
sector, 285km from Chandigarh. A
BSF spokesman said the troopers
saw suspicious movement near
the outpost late Saturday. The
men were using a plastic pipe
to bring the heroin into India, he
said, adding the smugglers were
challenged but they opened fire
on the troopers, who retaliated.
With the latest seizure, the BSF
has seized over 123kg of heroin
this year in the Punjab sector
valued at over Rs6.15bn.
‘Driving’ a camel
A man pulls his camel as he sits in an auto-rickshaw during a dust storm in Ahmedabad, Gujarat yesterday.
Rebel leaders worked
against AAP: Kejriwal
Party replaces former navy
chief Ramdas as internal
Lokpal
IANS
New Delhi
D
issident leaders Prashant
Bhushan and Yogendra
Yadav had been conspiring against the Aam Aadmi Party for the past one year, Delhi
Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal
has said.
In a 44-minute, partly emotional speech at Saturday’s National Executive meeting here,
the video of which was released
yesterday, Kejriwal made several accusations against the other
two co-founders of the party.
He alleged that the two men
had made every leadership
meeting of the party a cantankerous affair. He had bowed to
many of their demands but they
never appeared to relent.
“People of Delhi trusted us
and voted us to power but our
own friends backstabbed us.
They called me a cheat, which
even the Congress and the BJP
did not dare to,” said an emotional Kejriwal.
He said Bhushan and Yadav
had worked against the party
for the past one year while being
within, and had prevented people from funding it ahead of the
2014 Lok Sabha election.
Bhushan and Yadav were expelled from the National Executive on Saturday after which
they called the chief minister an
autocrat.
The AAP chief blamed the
two men for the mess the party
was ﬁnding itself in despite
winning a smashing victory in
the Delhi election in February.
He said both Yadav and
Bhushan kept leaking to the
media information that harmed
the AAP.
“Who beneﬁted from this?
I? Yogendra Yadav? Prashant
Bhushan? No! Parties like the
BJP and the Congress beneﬁted.”
The 46-year-old chief minister accused Bhushan and Yadav of tripping the party when
they should have honoured the
Delhi mandate.
Claiming that his barely
two-month-old
government
had achieved much more than
what Prime Minister Narendra
Modi had managed to do in 10
months, Kejriwal lamented that
it had all gone waste.
“People of Delhi trusted
us and voted us to power
but our own friends
backstabbed us. They
called me a cheat, which
even the Congress and the
BJP did not dare to”
“We should have worked to
make Delhi a model city. When
we should have been in news for
our positive work, we were on
the front pages because of all
the wrong reasons.”
P
rime Minister Narendra
Modi hailed Singapore’s
founder leader Lee Kuan
Yew, who was cremated yesterday, as “among the tallest leaders
of our times” and a friend of India.
Shortly after arriving here to
attend the funeral of Lee who
died on March 23, Modi said
Lee believed in India’s potential
“more than many of us did.”
The prime minister was
among the world leaders who
gathered here to pay their last
respects to Lee.
“The passing away of Lee
Kuan Yew marks the end of an
era. He was among the tallest
leaders of our times,” Modi said.
“He was a global thinker who
saw things ahead of others. He
was an advocate of economic
progress, but also made tireless
efforts to advance peace and sta-
bility in our region,” he added.
Stating that Lee’s personal life
was an “inspiration for many like
me,” the prime minister wrote in
the condolence book: “He was a
torchbearer of hope, not just for
Singapore, but for all of Asia.
“Today, the ﬂame is no more,
but this was a torch that lit the
lamp of hope in many new nations. As long as these lamps
ﬂicker, he will continue to inspire, eternally.
“...I bow to this committed
Karma Yogi, this great man. On
behalf of all Indians, I pay homage to him.”
Modi said Lee believed in India’s potential “more than many
of us did,” adding “India’s relations with Singapore is one of
our strongest relationships in
the world and Singapore is a key
pillar of India’s Act East Policy.”
The prime minister met a host
of leaders on the sidelines of the
funeral including senior Singapore leader Goh Chok Tong,
Australian Prime Minister Tony
Abbott, Singapore’s Deputy
Prime Minister T Shanmugaratnam, Israeli President Reuven
Rivlin, former US president Bill
Clinton and Governor General
of Canada David Johnston, the
Prime Minister’s Office said.
Among the others who attended the funeral were Japanese
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and
British Secretary of State William Hague.
As a tribute to Lee, the government yesterday observed a day of
national mourning with the national ﬂag ﬂown at half-mast and
no official entertainment, a home
ministry official said.
“National mourning was observed in the country today. The
national ﬂag remained at halfmast and there was no official
entertainment in the country,”
additional director general K S
Dhatwalia said.
Lee, 91, died after a long battle
with pneumonia.
The AAP also decided to lay
siege to parliament on April 22
to protest against the land acquisition bill.
Bhushan and Yadav have
vowed to approach the Supreme
Court and the Election Commission against their sacking.
But the AAP sought to underline yesterday that Ramdas, a
former chief of the Indian Navy,
was not removed or sacked but
his term had ended.
“A new Lokpal committee has
been constituted. The tenure
of Ramdas was over, so a new
Lokpal had to be appointed. It
should not be considered he was
removed or sacked,” party leader Sanjay Singh told reporters.
Ramdas, however, said he
was surprised to hear from the
media that the AAP no longer
required his services.
“I am disappointed that the
leadership of the party did not
accord me the courtesy of informing me ﬁrst before making
this decision public. I still await
their phone call,” he said in a
statement.
Kashmir Valley faces
no ﬂood threat: official
Lee among tallest leaders
of our times, says Modi
IANS
Singapore
Amid repeated applause, Kejriwal cited examples to claim
that many of the accusations
heaped against him by the dissidents were baseless.
Before concluding, he said:
“It is for you to understand
whether the ﬁght that has been
going for the last one-and-ahalf months is a ﬁght of principles or ambitions.”
“You have to select them or
me,” he said, taking out his resignation as the National Convener
and from the Political Affairs
Committee, the National Executive and the National Council.
“If you select them, then I
will step down from all posts
and work as an ordinary party
worker.”
Meanwhile, AAP yesterday
replaced its Lokpal, retired Admiral L Ramdas, with a team of
three ombudsmen, who include
two former police officers.
AAP leaders who met at Kejriwal’s residence also set up a
new disciplinary committee and
a panel to study the party’s state
of affairs in various states.
IANS
Srinagar
T
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is accompanied by an official as
he arrives at the University Cultural Centre (UCC) for the funeral
services for Lee Kuan Yew yesterday.
he Kashmir Valley faces
no ﬂood threat, authorities said yesterday,
as many residents of Srinagar
began shifting to safer areas as
the water level in the Jhelum
river rose menacingly.
The Jhelum’s level reached
12ft at the Ram Manshibagh
in Srinagar overnight following incessant rains, triggering panic in many parts of the
city that faced unprecedented
ﬂoods in September 2014,
killing over 200 people and
affecting some 700,000 residents.
Sonam Lotus, director of the
meteorological office, yesterday dismissed any ﬂood threat
to the Kashmir Valley.
His word should bring relief
to residents in Rajbagh, Jawahar Nagar and Gogjibagh areas of Srinagar, many of whom
began shifting valuables to the
homes of friends and relatives
in other parts of Srinagar.
The flood control department, which is on high alert,
said the present water level in
Jhelum was much below the
danger mark of 18ft at Ram
Munshibagh and so there was
no reason to panic.
“We have kept the entire
administration including the
ﬂood control department
on alert,” Gazanfar Hussain,
Kashmir’s divisional commissioner, told reporters here.
“There is no reason to panic.”
Official assurances, however, mean little to the people
of ﬂood-prone areas where
the September 2014 ﬂooding
caused widespread destruction. The scars and memories
of that period still haunt the
locals.
Lotus said: “Although there
has been a rise in the water
level of rivers and streams
in the Kashmir Valley due to
overnight incessant rains,
there is no reason to worry.”
20
Gulf Times
Monday, March 30, 2015
INDIA
Tamil Nadu
Roundup
By Umaima Shafiq
Protest against
Karnataka
dam project
Tamil Nadu observed a statewide
semi-curfew to protest against a
recent decision by the Karnataka
government to build a new
dam across the river Cauvery at
Mekedatu in the neighbouring
state.
The Karnataka government
had sanctioned Rs250mn for
the project. Many government
buses and trucks kept off the
road. Shops and other businesses
which were closed in the morning
opened in the evening.
More than 55 Tamil Nadu
parliamentarians cutting across
parties met Prime Minister
Narendra Modi seeking his
intervention to stop the project.
They also urged the prime
minister to set up the Cauvery
Management Board and Cauvery
Water Regulatory Authority to
settle the inter-state river dispute.
Modi has promised to consider
their request.
Taj Corridor now an animal graveyard, garbage dump
IANS
Agra
T
he Taj Corridor, a vast
wasteland situated along
the Yamuna river and
lying between world heritage
monuments the Taj Mahal and
the Agra Fort, has now been reduced to a dumping ground for
garbage and an unofficial burial
ground for animals.
Foreign tourists have taken
numerous images of bloated
camels, swollen and stinking
donkeys, dead dogs and heaps
of ﬁsh bones along a stretch that
is now a visually ugly sight and
mars the scenery between the
two great monuments visited by
millions round the year.
“The Taj Corridor is an example of how we hardly care for
our heritage and the tourism,”
Surendra Sharma, president of
the Braj Mandal Heritage Conservation Society, said.
“Such an ugly sight near the
world’s most beautiful monument can be repulsive and nauseating,” Rajesh Kumar, a nonresident Indian, said.
Despite a 2006 Supreme
Court order to the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) to green
the wasteland, neither the Uttar
Pradesh forest department nor
the ASI has made any move to
clear the debris and turn the area
into a green lung. Once at the
centre of a huge political furore,
the ill-conceived Taj Corridor
brought down the Uttar Pradesh
government of Mayawati in
2003 on charges of corruption.
The Supreme Court in the same
year stayed construction on the
site.
Agra Development Foundation president and eminent
lawyer K C Jain said: “In December 2005, the apex court
constituted a committee of
experts to give its recommendations. In February 2006, on
the basis of this report, the Supreme Court directed the ASI to
present a plan of action. Since
then the matter has been hanging ﬁre, despite promises by
former tourism minister Ram
Naik and present Culture Minister Mahesh Sharma.”
“It is not our responsibility to
clean up the area. We will ask the
municipal authorities and send
them a notice,” the regional ofﬁce of the UP Pollution Control
Board said.
Govt calls
for studies
on health
hazards of
cell phones
IANS
New Delhi
National awards
for Tamil films
and debut actors
Several Tamil debut film artistes
including children won awards at
the 62nd National Film Awards
announced last week.
Tamil film Kaakkaa Muttai won
the best children’s film and its
actors Vignesh and Ramesh the
best child artistes, while Kutram
Kadithal directed by Brahma
was selected the best Tamil film
Jigarthanda won three awards
for best editor Vivek Harshan,
best supporting actor Bobby
Simha and best lyricist Na
Muthukumar.
Ten-year-old Uthara won the best
female playback singer award
for her song Azhagu in the film
Saivam. She is the daughter
of noted playback singer
Unnikrishnan.
Exploratory filmmaker Nalla
Muthu Subbiah has won the
national Rajat Kamal award
for his documentary on the
biodiversity of the Western
Ghats.
Dead man’s
organs save
five lives
Organs harvested from a 39-yearold road accident victim helped
save the lives of five patients in
Puducherry, about 180km from
Chennai last week.
U Anand’s liver, heart and kidneys
were flown by air ambulances to
hospitals in Chennai and Tiruchi
and successfully transplanted.
Anand was on his way to work
on his two-wheeler when he met
with an accident.
Similarly, a 39-year-old woman’s
kidneys and corneas were
harvested and transplanted at
the Madurai-based Meenakshi
Mission hospital. The woman had
died of high blood pressure.
Girl writes board
exam despite
falling into well
A 17-year-old girl fell into a
well behind her house but was
rescued within an hour and
wrote her Class XII board exams
at Madipakkam in suburban
Chennai last week.
S Supraja fell into the 30ft-deep
well while walking up and down
studying her textbook early that
morning. Her family woke up on
hearing her cries and informed
the fire service. Since it was a
narrow well, only one fire service
officer was able to enter. He
successfully brought Supraja
out.
Cellar found at
heritage temple
Archaeologists discovered a
200sq ft cellar inside the eighth
century Sri Ranganathasamy
temple at Srirangam in Tiruchi
district during excavation last
week.
The excavation was conducted
after a wall behind a heritage
stone deity caved in.
Archaeologists said that such
cellars were used in olden times
to store temple jewellery during
invasion.
The Srirangam temple is
protected by the Archaeological
Society of India and is one of the
major deities for Hindu devotees
in South India.
A district official said: “The
Taj Corridor is court property
and we cannot interfere till the
stay is lifted.”
Agra Development Authority
officials said they had put up an
iron gate to regulate the movement of undesirable elements.
The gate, however, always remains open and there is no one
there to look after the incomplete corridor which has become
a dumping ground of municipal
waste.
I
The family members of potato farmer Foring Gosh, who committed suicide, mourn at his home at Gazole in Malda district of West Bengal yesterday. Ghosh committed
suicide by consuming pesticide at his home the previous night after he could not repay agricultural loan of about Rs80,000 due to low potato prices.
Modi has let us down,
say debt-laden farmers
The prime minister’s
popularity in rural India is
punctured by discontent,
suicides
Reuters
Vaidi, Uttar Pradesh
O
ver a dozen debt-laden
farmers have committed
suicide in recent weeks
in India, and discontent in many
rural areas against government
policies is turning into anger
against Prime Minister Narendra Modi less than a year after
he swept into office.
Unseasonal storms have badly damaged the winter crop in
large parts of the fertile northern plains, most likely contributing to the suicides, and
villagers have blamed Modi for
not stepping in to help the distressed farmers or ensuring that
crop prices remained stable.
The farmer suicides in India’s
most politically sensitive region
are the latest in several setbacks
for Modi’s Bharatiya Janata
Party (BJP), which is hoping to
consolidate power by winning
local elections in large, predominantly rural states over the next
two years.
The government has delayed
a comprehensive health plan as
it shifts focus from subsidies
to investment, while religious
tensions have made minorities
uneasy. Nevertheless, Modi has
made progress with economic
reform in his ﬁrst year - although not as rapidly as some
investors would like - and has
reined in inﬂation.
In a village in India’s most
populous state, Uttar Pradesh,
Dharmendra Singh mourned
his brother Babu Singh, who
committed suicide after rain
destroyed wheat growing on the
ﬁve-acre farm he leased from a
landlord.
Babu Singh, who had run up
debts amounting to Rs800,000
($13,000), soaked himself in
kerosene and set himself on ﬁre
on March 19. He succumbed to
burn injuries six days later.
“My brother was banking on
the crop so the loss came as the
last straw,” Dharmendra Singh
said in his village, Vaidi, 185km
southeast of Delhi.
“For God’s sake why hasn’t
the government reached out to
us? We overwhelmingly voted
for Modi as he promised to take
care of us but he has stabbed us
in the back.”
In more than a dozen villages
across the state that sends the
most lawmakers to parliament,
farmers said there was a “crisis”
in the countryside, where 70%
of India’s 1.2bn people live.
Angered by low farmgate
prices and the lack of state
compensation for crop damage,
some villagers said they have
ostracised local members of the
BJP and barred them from attending weddings.
Parties crushed by the BJP in
last year’s general election have
coupled the discontent with
street protests against a land
acquisition bill that will make
it easier for businesses to buy
farmland, a potent issue in the
countryside.
For the BJP, the next major
election will be in November in
the large, mostly rural state of
Bihar, and a poor performance
will be a huge setback.
India’s states send representatives to the Rajya Sabha,
the upper house of parliament,
where the BJP is struggling to
form a majority to match its
domination of the lower house
Lok Sabha.
With global food prices low,
an anti-inﬂation policy that has
hit rural incomes and the shift
Kerala CM leaves for Dubai,
says decision on George ‘soon’
By Ashraf Padanna
Thiruvananthapuram
K
erala Chief Minister
Oommen Chandy left
for Dubai amid growing
demand for the ouster of his
government’s chief whip, P C
George, a perennial headache
for the fragile ruling coalition.
Chandy, a senior Congress
Party leader, said he would soon
take a decision on the demand of
the key partner, Kerala Congress
(M), of which George is the vicepresident.
“I’ll be back on Thursday and
soon take a decision after consulting other leaders. There’ll
be no delay,” Chandy, whose options are limited given a wafer
thin majority, told reporters in
Kottayam.
KC (M) chairman K M Mani
and working chairman P J Joseph,
both senior ministers, last week
met Chandy and handed over a
letter saying George no longer
represented the party.
Mani has since made it clear
that George should be sacked
immediately.
George wants Mani to expel
him from the party to avoid disqualiﬁcation under India’s strict
anti-defection law and Chandy’s help to revive his Kerala
Congress (Secular), and remain
a coalition partner.
The KC (S) merged with the
KC (M) in 2010 after switching his allegiance from the Left
Democratic Front (LDF), which
was in power, to the Congressled United Democratic Front.
Joseph’s K C (J) quit the LDF
and joined them later.
George is now at the mercy of
Mani and Chandy to remain in the
assembly. If he resigns from the
party, he needs to get a fresh man-
date to continue as a legislator.
Disregarding George’s threat
to “reveal all” as usual and
“teach him (Mani) a lesson”
in the elections, Mani told the
chief minister that he wanted
immediate action against him.
“We went to the chief minister together and conveyed our
decision. He has given us an assurance that he would take action accordingly. It’s a collective
decision, approved by all legislators,” said Joseph, also a victim
of George’s vitriolic tongue.
George is left with no friends
in the UDF and many in the
Congress were baying for his
blood since he started attacking
Chandy and his ministers last
year.
Meanwhile, the chief minister
has a tight schedule in Dubai,
attending various functions organised by community groups
and meeting potential investors.
from subsidy to investment
spending, debt-laden farmers were already suffering when
rain devastated standing winter
crops across north India.
Over 10mn hectares of crops
were damaged, but the government says there is no clear link
to the suicides.
“Only the state governments
can ﬁgure out cases of farmers’
suicides,” said a senior federal
agriculture ministry official, who
did not wish to be identiﬁed.
“We’ll work closely with the
affected states if they ask for any
speciﬁc help.”
In the case of Singh at least,
his family says there is no doubt
why he died.
The rains earlier this month
washed out his entire crop. The
ﬁelds would have paid for his
son’s education and daughter’s
wedding, relatives said.
“He knew that he couldn’t
pay his debt and live with dignity after the crop loss. A little
help from the government could
have saved my brother,” Dharmendra Singh said.
It is not unusual for federal
and state government compensation for crop damage to trickle
down slowly, but farmers said
they expected more from Modi,
who came to power promising
efficient and responsive government.
Modi tried to address the issue in a radio address last week,
arguing that the land bill would
help create rural jobs. But in the
villages of Uttar Pradesh, farmers were not impressed.
“Instead of ensuring some
concrete help to farmers, especially after rains this month,
Modi and his government are
spending time and energy on the
land bill,” said Buddha Singh,
a district chief of the Bharatiya
Kisan Union, a leading farmers’
body.
The turnaround is dramatic Modi swept Uttar Pradesh last
year, winning 73 of 80 seats with
rural voters swayed by a promise to pay high crop prices along
with religious tensions that favoured his party.
Now the same farmers say
they regret their support.
“Modi has let us down. We
have decided to socially boycott BJP politicians, including
lawmakers we elected,” said Jitendra Kumar, a farmer in Sisola
Khurd village.
“Some of us had joined BJP as
part of its membership drive but
we are now going to surrender it.”
n the backdrop of the recently concluded spectrum
auctions, the science and
technology ministry has commissioned research studies on
health aspects of mobile phone
radiations from 16 scientiﬁc institutions, the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI)
said yesterday.
“This is the ﬁrst time the
government of India is going
for a massive evaluation and
project proposals received from
institutions have been identiﬁed for ﬁnancial support from
the Department of Science and
Technology following an interministerial committee directive
in 2011,” the COAI said in a statement here.
Among the prestigious institutions to be conducting studies are the All India Institute
of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in
the national capital, the Post
Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research
(PGIMER) in Chandigarh, the
National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences
(NIMHANS) in Bengaluru and
the Guru Nanak Dev University,
Amritsar.
The key focus of these studies
will be on the impact of electromagnetic ﬁelds, brain-related
effects, biochemical studies, reproduction pattern, comparison
of animal and human models
and remedial measures, among
others, the COAI said.
The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) is currently engaged in a study on
these lines as recommended by
the inter-ministerial committee
of 2011, with a target group of
4,500 people in Delhi, while the
Tata Memorial Centre is doing
research in Mumbai, the statement said.
“In compliance with the direction of the Allahabad High
Court, a committee was set
up by the government in 2012,
which submitted its report in
2014 on issues relating to radiations from cell phone tower and
handsets,” it said.
“In this report, it was recommended that the Department of
Science and Technology and the
Indian Council of Medical Research
TDP celebrates formation day
Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu pays homage at the memorial to former
chief minister N T Rama Rao on the 34th formation day of Telugu Desam Party, in Hyderabad
yesterday. It was on this day in 1982 that NTR, a famous Telugu actor, formed the TDP on the
slogan of Telugu self-respect. He created a record of sorts by coming to power within nine months
of forming the party.
22
Gulf Times
Monday, March 30, 2015
LATIN AMERICA
Swiss pilot on a
solo odyssey dies
in Ecuador
volcano crash
AFP
Quito
A
Locals walk next to a damaged railway line after a flood at Diego de Almagro town.
‘Bleak’ scene in ﬂood-hit
north stuns Chile leader
AFP
Santiago
C
hilean President Michelle
Bachelet pointed to a
“bleak” situation in the
country’s ﬂood-hit north Saturday,
after deadly rains swept through
the normally arid area last week.
The president spent two days in
the devastated Atacama region and
in nearby Antofagasta, where ﬂoods
left at least 12 dead, 20 missing and
hundreds of people homeless. The
death toll is expected to rise.
“The outlook is bleak and we
need to speed things up to get to
villages that remain isolated and
need our help,” Bachelet said.
“As we are able to reach different
places, these ﬁgures are probably
going to climb.”
The downpour began on Tuesday in the Atacama region, home
to the world’s most arid desert,
and lashed the area for hours, turning riverbeds that had been dry for
years into torrents.
Desperate residents scrambled
onto the roofs of their homes or ﬂed
to high ground to escape the ﬂoodwaters, as streets morphed into rivers that swept up nearly everything
in their path.
Victor Zamora, one of the 33 Chil-
ean miners who captured worldwide
attention in 2010 after spending
more than two months in a collapsed
mine, lost his house in ﬂooding that
washed away most of his village.
“This is another tragedy, we have
lost everything,” Zamora told AFP,
speaking from the town of Tierra
Amarilla. He said the waters came
around 3am on Tuesday when everyone was asleep. He was only able
to get away with the few items he
had with him.
“We’ve got nothing left. But me
and my neighbours are trying to
help each other,” said Zamora, who
in October 2010 was the 14th miner
to be pulled safely to the surface af-
ter spending 69 days trapped deep
underground.
Residents in the city of Copiapo
were seen emptying buckets of water from ﬂooded homes, while some
neighbourhoods were completely
submerged after the heavy rains.
The interior ministry declared a
state of emergency on Wednesday
and invoked a constitutional clause
transferring power from the regional government to the military.
After two days of rain, the sun
came out Friday and revealed the
extent of the destruction.
As water levels subsided, some
streets were left covered in thick
mud, and several residents headed
out with shovels to unclog drains
and clear roadways.
The weather service has said the
rains were at least 10 times greater
in volume than the region normally
gets in a year. The area has seen
years of drought and was not prepared for the deluge - the last major
ﬂood was in 1997.
Meanwhile, a 6.0-magnitude
earthquake struck Chile just north
of the ﬂooded Atacama region, but
produced no immediate reports of
injuries or damage. The US Geological Service said the quake hit
at 1.36pm (1636 GMT) at a depth of
109km, around 240km northeast of
Antofagasta.
Swiss aviator attempting to circumnavigate the
world in 20 months in a lightweight two-seater
aircraft died on Saturday after crashing into a
volcano in central Ecuador, officials said.
Eric Guilloud, 62, was declared dead following the
accident in Cotopaxi province, Ecuador’s Directorate
General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) said in a statement.
An aide to the pilot said Guilloud’s Aerospool WT9
Dynamic aircraft had slammed into the Cotopaxi volcano shortly after taking off from Latacunga airport
south of Ecuador’s capital Quito.
Sixteen soldiers went to the site to try to save him,
the aviation agency said.
Guilloud had been attempting to ﬂy around the
globe in a series of stages over 20 months.
He had already ﬂown through several countries in
Europe and Africa before reaching South America,
where he ﬂew over Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina and
Brazil.
He was en route to the city of Tabacundo, northeast
of Quito, when his plane crashed.
According to a blog maintained by the aviator,
money raised through his marathon odyssey were to
go towards funding orthopaedic surgeries in central
Burkina Faso.
Guilloud, a pharmaceutical entrepreneur, had
planned to visit 34 countries aboard the lightweight
aircraft he had nicknamed “Baby.”
He said he would ﬂy a total of 76,000km, clock 384
ﬂight hours and perform 106 landings, DGCA said.
His two-seater plane had enough space for just a
suitcase and a small refrigerator.
Guilloud decided to ﬂy around the world after a close
friend died in a plane accident, motivating him to see
the world from the sky in honour of his companion.
Ecuador’s aviation agency said Guilloud’s enthusiasm for all things that ﬂy started as a young man.
“His passion for soaring in the air dates back to his
youth. At 23, he started hand-gliding and won the
Swiss championship in 1976,” DGCA said. “And now at
62, he chose to ﬂy over mountains and oceans from his
ultralight plane.”
Brazil uncovers new tax fraud
D
ozens of Brazilian ﬁrms, including industrial
companies and banks, are under investigation
amid allegations they paid $5.9bn in bribes to
tax officials, police said on Saturday.
Brazil is already reeling from the biggest graft scandal the country has known, a $3.8bn scam involving
inﬂated contracts between construction companies
and state oil giant Petrobras, causing a storm after dozens of politicians were implicated.
The new scandal, dubbed Operation Zeal, comes
following a federal police probe into an alleged scam at
CARF, an offshoot of Brazil’s tax authority that oversees appeals on tax disputes.
According to police, the body managed to obtain tax
appeals board rulings in the companies’ favour by either cutting penalties or waiving them altogether. In
return, officials allegedly received bribes from some 70
companies believed to have beneﬁted from the scheme.
“The investigations, begun in 2013, showed the organisation acted within the body sponsoring private
interests, seeking to inﬂuence and corrupt advisors
with a view either to securing the cancellation or reduction” of penalties from tax authorities, a police
statement explained.
Colombia tackles landmine issue amid peace talks
By Jim Wyss
Sonson, Colombia
A
s a child soldier for Colombia’s
largest guerrilla group, Jairo
watched his fellow ﬁghters seed
trails and pastures with anti-personnel
mines designed to kill and maim.
Sometimes they made careful maps
indicating where the explosives were
buried. Other times they carried the
knowledge in their heads - and when
they died in combat the mines became
a perilous mystery.
“Even a (guerrilla) commander
stepped on one of them,” said Jairo, who
was forced to join the Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia, Farc, when
he was 15 years old, and who asked to
remain anonymous to avoid guerrilla
retaliation. “They just forgot where
they put it and he stepped on it.”
Colombia’s half century civil conﬂict
has turned large swaths of the country,
quite literally, into a mineﬁeld. In 2013,
Colombia had more landmine-related
deaths than any country in the world
except for Afghanistan.
Now, however, there’s an effort under way to try to clean up the mess. And
current and former guerrillas like Jairo
could play a leading role.
Government and Farc negotiators
in Havana are working on a plan that
would allow a few guerrilla members
to leave their strongholds and, in conjunction with the military and Norwegian People’s Aid, help identify three or
four mineﬁelds that put civilian populations at risk. The army’s de-mining
brigade would clear the explosives.
The deal is part of efforts to de-escalate violence even as negotiators have
spent more than two years trying to
cobble together a comprehensive peace
plan.
A worker with the HALO Trust looking for landmines near Sonson, Colombia.
“The virtue of this measure is that,
with or without a peace, the Farc, the
government and international organisations have agreed to start clearing
landmines,” said Gen. Oscar Naranjo, a
former chief of police who was recently
named minister of post-conﬂict. “It’s
an agreement with limited reach. It’s a
pilot project that will allow us to learn
lessons and learn from this new model.”
In a sense, people like Jairo are already proving it works.
The former guerrilla, now 29, is one
of a handful of ex-combatants who
have been hired by the HALO Trust, a
United Kingdom nonproﬁt and the only
organisation doing humanitarian mine
removal aside from the Colombian
military.
Jairo, whose work location needs to
be kept secret for security reasons, said
that once de-mining operations move
to the part of the country where he was
an active guerrilla, he’ll be able to share
information about mineﬁelds. Imagining a post-conﬂict future where the
Farc are part of the work force, he said,
they would be invaluable in this line of
work.
“If anyone knows where the mines
are it’s the guerrillas,” he said. “This
would give them a job and let them do
something good for the civilian population.”
Nick Smart, HALO’s programme
manager in Colombia, said that among
the 165 civilians the group has hired
there are a handful of former combatants employed through an agreement
with the Colombian Agency for Reintegration. The Farc de-mining deal
in Havana only gives the hiring strategy
more credence.
“We are hoping now that in the future we can roll out this model on a
much larger scale as we expand in Colombia,” he said. Even so, the former
combatants will never make up more
than 20 or 30% of the work force, he
said.
The Havana deal could also offer
other beneﬁts.
Under Colombian law, HALO and
organisations like it are only allowed
to work in “green zones” - areas where
there hasn’t been ﬁghting for three
to ﬁve years and where the landmines
have no strategic value. That also
means many of the landmines they’re
ﬁnding have degraded with time.
The new deal could open the door to
operations in areas where the conﬂict is
just dying down.
“With this new agreement we are
hoping to be able to go into areas where
mines have been laid more recently,
where mines are killing people right
now,” Smart said. “In terms of saving
life and limb we could have a greater
impact.”
Anti-personnel mines have injured
or killed at least 11,068 people in Colombia since 1990. In 2013, landmines
claimed 368 lives, including those of
165 civilians, according to the Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor.
That puts the South American nation
only behind Afghanistan (1,050 casualties) in terms of landmine deaths.
The government says 31 of 32 geographic departments have some type of
landmine contamination, and clearing
those areas will be key to allowing millions of people who have ﬂed the violence to return home.
That’s where organisations like
HALO come in. Hiring locals to work
as landmine investigators, the group
canvasses villages until they gather
enough information to roughly identify a mineﬁeld. Then it’s up to trained
mine-clearing teams to inch their way
through the area with metal detectors
and trowels.
In a tiny hamlet about three hours
from the city of Medellin, dozens of
HALO workers clad in blue Kevlar
ﬂack-jackets and blast visors were
carefully clipping grass and digging
through the dirt like cautious archaeologists.
The village sits on high ground between three municipalities, making it
a favoured guerrilla lookout. The Farc
spiked the area with homemade landmines - sometimes crafted from coffee
cans and PVC pipes, and using medical
syringes as plungers - to keep the military at bay. But when the guerrillas left
around 2007, the mines stayed.
Donaldo Gomez, 53, who has house
near the mineﬁeld, said he was removing brush near his home about a year
ago when his machete hit the top of a
landmine. The explosive - encased in a
glass jar - was old and inert, but Gomez
said he had reason to worry: In 2003,
his father was killed after stepping on
an explosive.
“My father was super sharp and a
hard worker,” Gomez said. “In his 79
years he never got sick, and then one
of those landmines kills him.”- Miami
Herald/TNS
Gulf Times
Monday, March 30, 2015
23
PAKISTAN/AFGHANISTAN
HEALTHCARE
ENERGY
POLITICS
RIGHTS
CRIME
Pakistan brings medical
devices under rules
Lahore’s first biogas plant
to start supply from April
PTI seeks army deployment
inside polling stations
House panel to take up
bill against child marriage
Afghan cop sentenced for
killing German journalist
The Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan
(DRAP) has notified the Medical Devices
Rules 2015, bringing medical devices under
comprehensive regulatory control for the first
time in Pakistan. The purpose of the regulation
is to protect public health by providing safe
and effective medical devices, to ensure that
new technology is made available for use for
patients in a timely manner, and to prevent
the alarming increase in deadly blood-borne
infectious diseases like Aids, Hepatitis B and C,
Viral haemorrhagic fever, septicaemia, etc. “After
promulgation of these rules, Pakistan is now
standing ahead of its neighbouring countries.
A first of its kind and a role model biogas plant
constructed at Ichu Gill, a locality situated in the
outskirt of Lahore, will start supplying biogas to
the local community next month enabling the
residents to get benefit from the green waste
and animal rubbish, said Managing Director
provincial metropolis by the Lahore Waste
Management Company (LWMC) Khalid Majeed
yesterday.
The plant has the capacity to produce biogas
from green waste and animal refuse being
abundantly produced in the Ichu Gill and will
help fulfil the need of almost 200 households at
a marginal cost.
The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) of Imran Khan
has sought the help of the station commander
Rawalpindi in stopping the ruling PML-N from
‘influencing the cantonment elections’. It also
demanded the deployment of army personnel
inside the polling stations on the polling day.
Zahid Kazmi, the secretary general of the PTI
Punjab north, made the demand in a letter sent to
the station commander, who is also the president
of the Rawalpindi and Chaklala cantonment
boards. When asked why he did not register
a complaint with the Election Commission of
Pakistan (ECP), the PTI leader said the copy of the
letter had also been sent to the ECP.
A parliamentary committee in Pakistan’s national
assembly will take up next week a significant
bill seeking amendments to the 85-year-old
British-era law on child marriage and making the
practice a cognisable offence. The Child Marriage
Restraint (Amendment) Bill 2014, a private
member bill moved by four lawmakers of the
PML-N last year, is on the agenda of a meeting
of the National Assembly’s Standing Committee
on Religious Affairs to be held on April 3. The
proposed law seeks to change the definition of
“child”, saying that “child means a person who is
under 18 years of age” as declared by the United
Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
The Afghan Supreme Court sentenced a police
officer to 20 years in prison for killing a German
photojournalist in 2014, a judicial official said
yesterday. The officer identified as Naqibullah
opened fire on Associated Press photographer
Anja Niedringhaus and reporter Kathy
Gannon during the April election campaign.
Niedringhaus was killed and Canadian reporter
Gannon was wounded in the incident in the
eastern province of Khost.
A court official who requested anonymity said
Naqibullah was initially sentenced to death, but
the court commuted the sentence to 20 years
in prison.
Pakistan sends
plane, frigate to
rescue citizens
from Yemen
A jumbo jet sent by Pakistan
flew out of Hodeida in
western Yemen yesterday
with nearly 500 of its citizens
on board, including the
ambassador
Reuters
Islamabad
P
akistan has sent a jumbo
jet and a naval frigate
to evacuate its citizens
and diplomatic staff stranded
in war-torn Yemen, as Saudiled air strikes hammered Shia
Houthi rebel targets, officials
said yesterday.
Pakistan’s ambassador to
Yemen Irfan Shami told state television that 482 Pakistanis will
be evacuated on the ﬁrst ﬂight.
“The plane has landed at Hodeidah and boarding has started.
On seeing the plane landing,
stranded Pakistanis expressed
their happiness by clapping,” the
ambassador told Pakistan Television.
Pakistan TV has interviewed
distraught nationals in Yemen
who have pleaded for help, saying nothing was being down to
rescue them.
“The Saudi civil aviation authorities had given us clearance
to send our passenger planes to
Yemen,” a Defence Ministry ofﬁcial said earlier.
Pakistani Prime Minister
Nawaz Sharif was personally
monitoring the evacuation and
had directed the officials to ensure safe return of every citizen,
a spokesman of Sharif’s office
said.
Earlier, PIA (Pakistan International Airlines) spokesman Hanif
Rana said that a 747 aircraft had
been ﬂown to Hodeidah.
A second, smaller plane with
a capacity of 230 passengers was
also being kept on stand by in
Pakistan, he said.
A convoy of 600 Pakistanis
was moving towards the Red
Sea port of Hodeida, where “arrangements for their brief stay
before their return journey to
Pakistan have been made”, Foreign Secretary Aizaz Chaudhry
was quoted by media as saying.
A frigate had also been sent to
assist.
“A Pakistan navy frigate today
left Karachi to rescue stranded
Pakistanis in Yemen,” a naval
spokesman said.
The frigate will remain on
stand-by in the Gulf of Aden
with full preparedness and, if the
need arose, will participate in
the evacuations, he said.
Pakistani Foreign Secretary
Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry said late
Saturday that around 3,000 Pakistanis lived in Yemen with some
1,000 trying to leave the country.
A convoy of 16 buses was
carrying stranded Pakistanis
from the capital of Sanaa to Hodeidah, he said, while some remained stranded in the southern government stronghold of
Aden and were awaiting a lull in
the ﬁghting so they too could be
rescued.
Pakistan is a longstanding ally
of Saudi Arabia with close military ties, but Islamabad has not
yet committed to the operation,
which has drawn strong criticism from its neighbour Iran.
Defence Minister Khawaja
Asif told parliament on Friday
Pakistan had made no decision
on whether to give military support to the Saudi-led coalition,
while pledging to defend Saudi
Arabia against any threat.
“We have made no decision to
participate in this war. We didn’t
make any promise. We have not
promised any military support to
the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen,” Asif said.
Asif said there was no danger
of Pakistan getting caught up in
a sectarian war.
Pakistan has been plagued
with sectarian violence for years,
with militant Sunni groups targeting its Shia minority.
“So many minorities and
sects live in Pakistan,” Asif said.
“Whatever assurances we give
Saudi Arabia is to defend its territorial integrity, but I assure
that there is no danger of us getting involved in a sectarian war.”
Sharif has long enjoyed close
relations with the Saudi royal
family. After his second term as
prime minister was ended by a
military coup in 1999, he went
into exile in Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia last year loaned
$1.5bn to Pakistan to help Islamabad shore up its foreign
exchange reserves, meet debtservice obligations and undertake large energy and infrastructure projects.
Sharif assures support to Saudi king
Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has told
Saudi King Salman bin Abdul Aziz that he will soon
send a high-level delegation to Riyadh to discuss
co-operation for the Saudi-led strikes on Yemen, a
top diplomat said.
Foreign Secretary Aizaz Chaudhry told a press
conference late on Saturday that the delegation
could depart within 24 to 48 hours, Xinhua
reported.
“The prime minister told the Saudi king that the
security of Saudi Arabia is very important for
Pakistan and any threat to Saudi Arabia will be a
matter of serious concern for us,” he said.
“Our leadership is in contact with the Saudi leaders
and has told them Pakistan will send a delegation
to assess the situation and will later make
decisions,” Chaudhry said.
Chaudhry denied reports that Pakistan has joined
the Saudi-led coalition in strikes against the Houthi
rebels in Yemen.
“All these reports are false and based on
assumptions,” the foreign secretary said when
commenting on Saudi state news agency’s report
that Islamabad has agreed to join the Saudi-led
coalition.
Defence Minister Khawaja Asif will lead the
Pakistani delegation that will also comprise the
country’s security adviser and military officials.
Afghan firefighters hose down the site of a suicide attack targeting lawmaker Gul Pacha Majidi, in
Kabul yesterday.
Afghan MP survives
suicide attack in Kabul
AFP
Kabul
A
suicide attacker targeting a prominent Afghan
MP killed three people
and wounded seven others in
Kabul yesterday, just days after Washington announced it
would slow the withdrawal of
US troops from Afghanistan.
President Barack Obama
last Tuesday reversed plans
to withdraw around 5,000 US
troops from Afghanistan this
year, an overture to the country’s new reform-minded leader, President Ashraf Ghani.
The Taliban, waging a deadly
insurgency since they were
ousted from power in late 2001,
warned that the announcement
would damage any prospects
of peace talks as they vowed to
continue ﬁghting.
The suicide bomber detonated himself yesterday evening as
Gul Pacha Majidi, a lawmaker
from eastern Paktia province,
was leaving a meeting of Afghan elders in central Kabul. He
escaped with shrapnel wounds
to his leg.
“Majidi was attending a jirga
(assembly of elders)... and as he
was exiting the premises, a suicide attacker on foot detonated
himself,” Kabul police chief Abdul Rahman Rahimi told AFP.
Interior ministry spokesman
Sediq Sediqqi conﬁrmed the
incident but did not offer any
details on casualties.
No group has so far claimed
responsibility for the attack
but Taliban insurgents have
stepped up suicide attacks on
government targets following an Afghan army offensive
which began in southern Helmand province more than two
months ago.
This is the second suicide
bombing in the Afghan capital
in less than a week and highlights the fragile security situation as the country prepares
for the start of the traditional
spring-summer ﬁghting season.
Hosting Ghani at the White
House for their ﬁrst presidential
head-to-head last week, Obama
agreed to keep the current level
of 9,800 US troops in Afghanistan until the end of 2015.
Hours later, a suicide car
bomber struck close to the
presidential palace in Kabul,
killing at least seven people and
wounding dozens more.
Last November, prominent
female Afghan MP Shukria
Barakza survived a suicide attack on her convoy near the
parliament in Kabul but three
civilians were killed and nearly two dozen others were left
wounded.
Since coming to power in
September after protracted
power-sharing negotiations,
Ghani has sought to establish a
peace process with the Taliban
to end their 13-year insurgency.
Supportive signals from Pakistan, which has long held
signiﬁcant inﬂuence over the
Taliban, have boosted hopes for
possible dialogue.
The Taliban have always denied talks with the government.
They maintain they will not
negotiate while foreign troops
remain on Afghan soil.
Balochistan’s displaced tribals eager to return home
Internews
Islamabad
M
ohamed Murad just
wants to go back to his
hometown. He had ﬂed
his home in Phelawagh, a small
town of Dera Bugti district in Pakistan’s south-western province
of Balochistan, after his brother
got killed when his motorbike hit
a landmine said to have been laid
by Baloch militants ﬁve years
ago.
Now he has signed up with
the Pakistan Poverty Alleviation
Fund, which is facilitating the
return home of the 900 Masoori
Bugtis families settled all over
Rajanpur - a south Punjab district bordering with Balochistan
- for the past four to 10 years.
“I cannot wait to get back
home and start all over,” Murad
said.
“I knew it was time to take our
family to some place safe when
my brother got killed - between
60 and 70 people had died in my
town because of landmines. But
I haven’t heard of any such incident in the last couple of years.
Now it’s time to head back home.”
Several thousand Masoori
Bugtis were forced to ﬂee their
hometown between 2005 and
2010 when they found themselves caught in the crossﬁre between the army and the Baloch
militants.
Most families took refuge in
southern districts of Punjab as
they found them closer and safer.
“Most of us kept living there
despite the deteriorating security conditions following the
death of Nawab Akbar Khan
Bugti [in a military strike at his
mountain hideout in 2006],”
recalled Wali Mohamed, whose
family walked around 50km to
cross over to Punjab.
“But when the army left Dera
Bugti and Baloch Republican
Army ﬁghters returned to lay
landmines everywhere to punish those who had sided with the
army, it became impossible for
the rest of us to survive there any
longer,” he said, adding that he
was happy that they could now
return home without the fear of
‘accidentally’ getting killed by a
landmine.
A vast majority of ‘internally’ displaced Baloch tribesmen
are settled all over Rajanpur
Several thousand Masoori Bugtis were forced to flee their hometown between 2005 and 2010.
while others have made DG
Khan their home, working as
farm workers in exchange for
temporary shelter and nominal wages in the form of a small
share in the farm produce.
“These people are the poorest
of the poor, living in extremely oppressive conditions here
without any source of income,”
said Asad Bugti, chief of the Nohkani Bugtis, a sub-tribe of the
Masooris, who persuaded the
PPAF to ﬁnance his tribesmen’s
return and rehabilitation back
home. “There’s no one to take
care of these displaced people
here,” he said.
He was of the opinion that
militancy in Dera Bugti had been
under control for some time. “At
this moment we’ve an opportunity to let the people know that
they can go back home and live
a peaceful, normal life without
any fear.
It is also time to dismantle
whatever is left of the old Sardari
system and help the Baloch people improve their lives by providing them education, healthcare, etc.
They are not destined to live in
absolute poverty and on charity.
Are they?” he said of the crowd
gathered at a tobacco factory in
Jampur to collect food, clothes
and cash for their travel from the
PPAF staff.
The PPAF decided to facilitate the journey after getting
the go-ahead from both the
army and the government of
Balochistan. “They want to do
right by these internally displaced people who have lived
under the open sky like animals
all these years,” PPAF boss Qazi
Azmat Isa said of the govern-
ment and the military.
The journey back home for
many is ﬁlled with both hope
and fear. “I do not know what is
in store for us when we get back
home, but I know that I want to
be home again.
How long can I live here like a
refugee?” said Saib Khan, whose
family ﬂed to Rajanpur immediately after the military action
began in Dera Bugti in 2005.
Asad Bugti agreed. “There is
hope and there is uncertainty
about the future. We need the
government to provide protection to the people so that they
don’t have to ﬂee again. The
people should be convinced that
problems of Balochistan can be
ﬁxed. But ﬁrst the government
will have to establish its writ in
the troubled area.”
Wali, who lives and works on
the land of the Legharis in Kot
Hassoo in Mauza Darkhwast
Jamal Khan of D.G. Khan, wants
the government to do a little more than just protect them
when they get back home.
“We’ve lost our livelihood due
to the conﬂict. It is the duty of
the government to help us stand
on our own feet again.”
24
Gulf Times
Monday, March 30, 2015
PHILIPPINES
Households with
savings ‘rise
to record high
in ﬁrst quarter’
By Mayvelin U Caraballo
Manila Times
T
he number of Filipino
households with savings rose to a record
high in the ﬁrst quarter of 2015
based on the latest Consumer
Expectations Survey (CES)
conducted by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.
According to the survey,
31.6% of 5,818 households
surveyed said they had savings
during the quarter, up from
25.7% in the previous quarter.
More than two-thirds, or
68.5%, said they save in banks,
39% kept their savings at
home, while the rest put their
money in co-operatives, paluwagan (rotating savings and
credit association) and other
credit/loan associations.
Respondents said their savings were intended for emergencies; education; health and
hospitalisation; retirement,
business capital and investment.Meanwhile, the percentage of respondents who
reported that they were able
to set aside money for savings during the quarter also
reached an all-time high of
40.9% from 35.6% in the previous quarter.On the other
hand, the survey also showed
that the proportion of Filipinos willing to save 10% or
more of their monthly income
declined to 36.2% in the ﬁrst
quarter compared to 38% in
the previous quarter.
The CES also revealed that
the number of households
with savings from remittances
received from relatives abroad
dropped in the ﬁrst quarter.
Of the 602 households
polled, the percentage of overseas Filipino worker (OFW)
households that used their
remittances for savings fell
to 39.4% from 42.1% in the
fourth quarter. The survey
showed that 98.5% of OFW
households used the remittances that they received
to purchase food and other
needs.
More than half, or 56.6%, of
the OFW households allocated
part of their remittances for
medical expenses while 41.9%
went to debt payments and
65.6% to education.
The survey also showed that
respondents’ outlook on buying conditions for big-ticket
items increased to a record
high during the quarter.
The survey said the percentage of households that
considered the current quarter as a favourable time to buy
big-ticket items increased to
an all-time high of 28.4%.
“The outlook on buying
conditions for real estate
was the most optimistic, followed by consumer durables
(appliances and gadgets)
and motor vehicles, which
all posted record-high indices since the first quarter of
2007,” it stated.
The CES said respondents’ outlook was driven by
the view that: a piece of real
property is a good investment; consumer durables are
affordable and motor vehicles can be utilised both for
business and for personal
use.Respondents also cited
cheaper oil prices as a reason
for buying motor vehicles.
The CES is a quarterly
survey of households drawn
from the Philippine Statistics
Authority-National Statistics Office’s Master Sample
List of Households, which is
considered a representative
sample of households nationwide.
The survey was conducted
from January 26 to February
5, 2015 and surveyed 5,818
households nationwide.
Four trafficking victims
rescued in Tawi-Tawi
By Al Jacinto
Manila Times/Zamboanga City
P
hilippine
authorities
yesterday arrested a man
trying to illegally transport four women into Malaysia’s state of Sabah from the
southern province of TawiTawi, officials said.
Ensign Chester Ian Ramos,
spokesman for the Joint Task
Force Zambasulta (Zamboanga-Basilan-Sulu-Tawi-Tawi),
said military and police units
nabbed the suspect, Henry Alsamala, on board the boat ML
Sea Glory that docked on a pier
in Bongao, the capital town of
Tawi-Tawi, following a tip off
by an informant.
He identiﬁed Alsamala’s
victims as Marilou Olico,
Clarisa Pardines, Claiza Ann
Lorez and Ritz Pas.Among
those who took part in the
operation to rescue the four
women were members of the
Naval Intelligence and Security Group-Western Mindanao, Provincial Women and
Children Protection DeskBongao, Tactical Operations
Group-Sultaw, Regional Intelligence Unit-9 and the
304th Area Intelligence Security Service, according to
Ramos.
“Alsamala is currently being investigated by the police,
while the trafficking victims
were handed over to the Department of Social Welfare and
Development,” Ramos said.
He added: “We are intensifying our law enforcement
operations. With this arrest,
we hope to curb the human
trafficking activities of lawless groups in the province,”
Ramos said.
Palm Sunday observance
Roman Catholic devotees wave their palm fronds during Palm Sunday mass in Manila yesterday. Palm Sunday marks the sixth and last Sunday of the Christian Holy month
of Lent and the beginning of Holy Week.
Philippines in Sabah offer to
win Malaysia’s UN support
By Tessa Jamandre
Manila Times
T
he Philippines has offered
to downgrade its claim
on Sabah in exchange for
Malaysia’s support for its case
against China before the UN.
The quid pro quo was contained in a note verbale that the
Department of Foreign Affairs
(DFA) handed to a representative of the Malaysian Embassy
last week, shortly after the visit
of Malaysian Defence Minister
Hishammuddin Hussein.
The note verbale, a copy of
which was obtained by Vera Files,
referred to the May 6, 2009 joint
submission by Malaysia and Vietnam to the UN Commission
on the Limits of the Continental
Shelf (CLCS) in which Malaysia
claimed an extended continental shelf (350 nautical miles from
baseline) that was clearly projected from Sabah. The Philippines, in an August 4, 2009 note
to the UN Secretary General,
protested the joint submission
because it declared Sabah to be a
Malaysian territory.
The Philippines claims ownership of Sabah, which is at
present occupied by Malaysia,
based on the title of the Sultan
of Sulu who ceded proprietary
rights over the 76,115-square-
kilometre land to the Philippines
in 1962.
In last week’s note verbale,
the DFA informed the Malaysian government that it is “reviewing” its 2009 protest and
its action would depend on
Malaysia’s response to Manila’s
two requests related to the West
Philippine Sea (South China Sea)
conﬂicting territorial claims.
The ﬁrst request is for Malaysia to “conﬁrm” that its claim to
an extended continental shelf
is “entirely from the mainland
coast of Malaysia, and not from
any of the maritime features in
the Spratly islands.”
The DFA requested Malaysia to conﬁrm that it “does not
claim entitlement to maritime
areas beyond 12 nautical miles
from any of the maritime features in the Spratly islands it
claims.”
Under the UN Convention on
the Law of the Sea (Unclos), a
state is entitled to 12-nauticalmile territorial sea over which it
exercises sovereignty.
Malaysia, like the Philippines,
claims parts of the Spratly islands, which are being claimed
almost wholly by China, Vietnam and Taiwan. Brunei Darussalam is another claimant to
some parts of the Spratlys.
There are some parts in the
Spratlys where the 200 nautical
mile exclusive economic zones
(EEZs) of the Philippines and
Malaysia overlap.The DFA did
not issue any statement when
Vera Files sought its comment
on the note verbale and its implications.
Former Philippine Permanent
Representative to the UN Lauro
Baja Jr said the Philippine claim
to Sabah will be “prejudiced” if
Malaysia accedes to the DFA’s
request.“We are in effect withdrawing our objection to Malaysia’s claim of ownership to
Sabah,” he noted.
A DFA official who requested
anonymity, said, however that
the Philippine claim to Sabah
will remain intact even if Manila
withdraws its 2009 objection
to Malaysia’s submission to the
UN.
Baja countered: “Even if we
are not formally dropping the
Sabah claim, it (the withdrawal
of the protest) can be used as
evidence against our claim.”
A DFA source said officials involved in the case against China
before the UN Arbitral Court
said if Malaysia conﬁrms it does
not claim beyond 12 nautical
miles from any maritime features in the Spratlys islands it
claims, the Philippine case will
be strengthened because one
of Manila’s demands for relief
from the UN court is to declare
that certain features, such as
rocks, do not generate maritime
entitlement beyond 12 nautical
miles.
This would clarify that the
12 nautical miles surrounding among others, the Panatag
Shoal, also known as Scarborough Shoal or Bajo de Masinloc
(Chinese name: Huangyan Island), are part of the Philippines
200-nautical-mile EEZ.
The Philippine suit, which
primarily sought to nullify China’s all-encompassing ninedash line map invalid, also
wants the UN court to rule that
submerged features within and
beyond 200 nautical miles of
the Philippines are not part of
China’s continental shelf. This
would make China’s occupation
of these features a violation of
Unclos.
A diplomatic source said Malaysia may ﬁnd the Philippine
request “too hard to handle” because it has adopted the policy
of “playing it safe”–expressing
concern on China’s aggressiveness in the disputed waters while
maintaining good relations with
the economic superpower.
“A maritime entitlement of
only 12 nautical miles for their
reefs, as the essence of the Philippines request, will not be in
the interest of Malaysia. Besides, Malaysia will not risk its
close economic ties with China,
its biggest trading partner,” the
source added.
The source said China also
protested the 2009 MalaysiaVietnam submission to the UN.
So even if the Philippines withdrew its objection, the Chinese
protest would stand, the source
said.The CLCS would not proceed on the Philippines’ withdrawal of its protest unless and
until the Chinese nine-dash line
claim is rendered invalid.
Baja said the Philippine position on Sabah is much stronger
than its Spratly islands claim.
Economically, the timber and
mineral-rich Sabah is much
more valuable than Spratlys, he
added.
There are more than 600,000
Filipinos in Sabah, most of
them considered by Malaysia
as illegal residents and are often subject to harassment.
Sabah (North Borneo) originally belonged to the Sultan of
Brunei, who gave it to Sultan
of Sulu Salah ud-Din Karamat
Bakhtiar in 1658 as a reward
for helping quell a rebellion. In
1878, Sulu Sultan Jamalul Alam
Kiram leased North Borneo to
the Hong Kong-based British
North Borneo Co of Baron Gustavos von Overbeck and Alfred
Dent for 5,000 Malaysian dollars a year.
LEGAL
Bangsamoro law
changes ‘inevitable’
The Moro Islamic Liberation Front
(MILF) should be open to changes
in the proposed Bangsamoro Basic
Law (BBL) because the revisions
that will be introduced by lawmakers will make the bill withstand legal
scrutiny, senators said yesterday.
Sen. Francis Escudero said revisions
are inevitable because many lawmakers believe that some provisions
of the proposed law that seeks to
establish a Bangsamoro region that
will replace the Autonomous Region
in Muslim Mindanao, are unconstitutional, Manila Times reported.
The senator added that the Citizens’
Council on Bangsamoro Law that
President Benigno Aquino wants
established should not only work
on helping the public understand
the proposed BBL but explain to the
MILF that changes are needed to
make the bill acceptable. “I hope the
council together with the government peace panel will help sell the
congressional amendments to the
BBL to the MILF and for the MILF to
accept them,” Escudero said.
Sunset in Manila
Binay meets family of Filipina
facing death in Indonesia
Manila Times
Manila
V
Workers are silhouetted against the sun, during sunset in Manila yesterday.
ice President Jejomar Binay yesterday assured
the parents of the overseas Filipino worker (OFW) facing execution in Indonesia that
the government will exhaust all
“legal remedies and options” to
spare the life of their child.
Binay, the Presidential Adviser on OFW Concerns, met
with Celia and Cesar Veloso at
the Makati City Hall, where he
discussed the government’s next
move to save Mary Jane Veloso.
During the meeting, Binay
called up Assistant Secretary
Minda Calaguian-Cruz of the
Department of Foreign Affairs’
Office of Asia and Paciﬁc Affairs,
who assured the vice president
that the government will be ﬁling a second petition for judicial
review.
“Let us check what we can do.
(Veloso) is a ﬁrst time offender
and a widow with two young
children,” Binay told CalaguianCruz.
Jakarta had said it will wait for
any outstanding legal appeals
to conclude before executing all
10 drug convicts — including
Veloso — at the same time.
Veloso, 30, was sentenced to
die by ﬁring squad after she was
apprehended at Java’s Yogyakarta Airport in April 2010 for carrying 2.6 kilograms of heroin in
her luggage.
But Celia denied the heroin
seized from Mary Jane’s luggage were her daughter’s, saying
the contraband was secretly put
there by Christine, who she said
was the wife of her daughter’s
godbrother.
“My daughter really had
no idea. She was only carrying a small bag. But Christine
was wily. She bought plenty of
clothes. When Mary Jane was
about to leave for Indonesia, she
suddenly handed her a piece of
luggage,” Celia said.
The couple sought the vice
president’s help after the Indonesian Supreme Court denied
the Philippine government’s
request for a judicial review of
Veloso’s case.
In their appeal for judicial review, Veloso’s lawyers argued
that the Filipina was not provided with a capable translator
during her trial.
Gulf Times
Monday, March 30, 2015
25
SRI LANKA/BANGLADESH/NEPAL
Lanka pledges ‘political
solution’ in war-hit north
AFP
Colombo
S
ri Lanka’s new Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has pledged a “political
solution” for the island’s wartorn north, where ethnic minority Tamils have long demanded
greater autonomy.
During a two-day visit to the
Tamil heartland of Jaffna, Wickremesinghe also repeated his
government’s promise of national reconciliation six years after the island’s ethnic war ended, his office said in a statement
yesterday.
“If you want a stable and secure country, we must have a
political solution (with Tamils)
and move forward,” Wickremesinghe said in an address in the
Jaffna peninsula on Saturday
and released by his office in the
statement.
Minister’s
brother
found
dead in
Dhaka
By Mizan Rahman
Dhaka
P
olice recovered the body
of Bangladesh railways
minister’s
brother
at
the Dhanmondi Lake in Dhaka
yesterday.
Abdul Latif, the elder brother
of railways minister Mujibul
Haque, was a former additional
secretary.
Police said Latif had been
missing since Saturday evening
when he went out for an evening
walk in the lake area.
Later locals spotted his body
ﬂoating in the lake around 11:30
am and informed the police.
The body had no injury marks,
but torn grass was found in one
of the hands, police said. “It
seems he tried to grab the grass
while falling down.”
Some cash was found in his
pocket, but his mobile phone is
missing.
“Family members suspect he
fell into the lake accidentally
while walking. And that’s why
they do not want an autopsy,”
said the police.
The family hails from Sripur
Union of Comilla district’s
Chouddagram sub-district.
Latif was the seventh of the
eight siblings while the minister
is the youngest. He was buried
at the family graveyard in his ancestral home in Basuara village.
Latif retired in 2002 as an additional secretary of the industries ministry and is survived
by his wife, two daughters and
a son.
bring about reconciliation with
Tamils.
Rajapakse had also refused to
co-operate with a UN-mandated investigation into allegations
that troops possibly killed up
to 40,000 Tamil civilians while
defeating the separatists.
Wickremesinghe said his government has won support from
the UN Human Rights Council
to establish a credible domestic
inquiry into alleged war crimes.
The new government has already taken steps towards reconciliation since January, including
by lifting travel restrictions to
the north and beginning to return Tamil-owned land taken
over by the military.
In a major sign of rapprochement, the country’s main minority political party, the Tamil
National Alliance, attended last
month’s national day celebrations hosted by Sirisena, for the
ﬁrst time in four decades.
He did not give details of any
proposed political agreement
with Tamils, many of whom
have for decades pressed for regional autonomy rather than full
independence.
Tamil Tiger rebels, however,
fought for outright separation
but were crushed in a military
offensive in May 2009 - ending 37 years of ethnic bloodshed which had claimed at least
100,000 lives.
“The war is over, but we do
not have unity among ethnic
communities,” Wickremesinghe
said. “Tamils have shown their
willingness to ensure reconciliation. We must have a political
settlement and move forward,
protecting peace and stability.”
In the January presidential
election Maithripala Sirisena
defeated long-time strongman Mahinda Rajapakse, who
enjoyed support among majority Sinhalese but failed to
By Gopal Sharma/Reuters
Kathmandu
L
Prime Minister Ranil Wickramasinghe: “If you want a stable and secure
country, we must have a political solution (with Tamils) and move forward.”
Dhaka seeks transit facility
through Indian territory
By Mizan Rahman
Dhaka
B
angladesh has proposed
inclusion of a new transit
provision in the current
Indo-Bangladesh bilateral trade
agreement for ferrying goods
from the country to Nepal and
Bhutan across Indian territory, a senior foreign ministry
official said yesterday.
The proposal was made apparently to strike a balance in
the trade agreement as India
enjoys similar facility in the
trade pact for carrying goods
from its one state to another
using Bangladesh land.
The three-year trade agree-
ment will expire on Thursday.
The ministry of commerce
has yet to have a response from
the Indian government to the
proposal.
“We are waiting for response
from the Indian authorities to
our proposal, ahead of the trade
pact renewal,” commerce secretary Hedayet Ullah Al Mamun
told newsmen yesterday.
He, however, refused to give
details of the proposal the
Bangladesh government has
made.
“It is a sensitive issue which
I cannot disclose for the sake of
diplomatic norms and bilateral
ties,” Hedayet added.
Sources in the foreign ministry said they had sought transit
facility under the existing trade
agreement so that goods could
be carried from Bangladesh to
Nepal and Bhutan using Indian
corridor.
“India enjoys an edge over
Bangladesh regarding transit under the current IndiaBangladesh trade agreement,
signed originally in 1972,” a
high official in the foreign ministry said, adding, “It is nothing
wrong on Bangladesh’s part to
seek a similar facility from its
counterpart 40 years into the
agreement.”
According to the IndiaBangladesh trade agreement,
the two governments agreed to
make mutually beneﬁcial arrangements for the use of their
waterways, railways and road
ways for commerce between
the two countries and for passage of goods between two
places in one country through
the territory of the other.
A trade expert in the commerce ministry said words
like ‘for passage of goods between two places in one country through the territory of the
other’ included in the trade
agreement had so far been used
only in India’s interests and not
in the interest of Bangladesh.
Officials in the commerce
ministry said the existing trade
agreement would need an
amendment by both sides once
India accepted Bangladesh
proposal.
T
he 45-year-old elephant
Man Kali saunters around
in her half-hectare of
freedom with her two-year-old
offspring Hem Gaj.
They walk slowly, pausing
to tug at a branch, lean against
each other, swing their trunks
and walk on again.
They are among the 47 captive elephants that have been
unchained through the efforts
of American elephant lover
Carol Buckley.
Buckely has been working to
help the animals - which form
a backbone of Nepal’s elephant
safari tourism and conservation
- running a project that unchains working elephants.
Buckley started the “Chain
Free is Pain Free” project after
her ﬁrst visit to Nepal ﬁve years
ago. She was on a tour of Asia,
awmakers from nine
countries vowed yesterday to put aside politics
and join forces to help protect
children from being forced
into manual labour or trafﬁcked into slavery.
In an initiative led by Nobel
peace laureate Kailash Satyarthi, 22 parliamentarians
from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Brazil, India, Nepal, the
Netherlands, Pakistan, Paraguay and Turkey pledged to
protect and promote the rights
of children.
The lawmakers concluded
a two-day conference in Nepal by forming a group called
the Parliamentarians Without
Borders for Children’s Rights
to ﬁnd ways to work across
borders to protect children.
“This is a unique initiative,
and we believe child-centric politics will begin from
here,” said Satyarthi, who was
awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
last year for his work ﬁghting
child slavery in India.
Delegates at the conference
said the world was riddled with
slavery, abuse and exploitation of youngsters with an estimated 168mn child labourers
globally of which 85mn are engaged in hazardous work.
The International Labour
Organisation
estimates
that there are 21mn people
in forced labour worldwide,
of which 5.5mn, or 26%,
are aged under 18.
“The abuse of children is
not a local problem, it is a
global problem, and needs a
global response,” a conference
document said.
“As long as there is a single
child denied of her right to live
freely, it is a disgrace to our
values of freedom, dignity and
democracy.”
The conference heard that
many children were victims
of cross-border trafficking,
work in armed conﬂicts or
were forced into prostitution. They had no access
to education or adequate
healthcare.
22 parliamentarians from
Afghanistan, Bangladesh,
Brazil, India, Nepal, the
Netherlands, Pakistan,
Paraguay and Turkey
pledged to protect and
promote the rights of
children
Brazilian Senator Cristovam Buarque said the newlyformed group would bring
together politicians to work
across borders to protect
children’s rights.
Satyarthi said the network
of parliamentarians would
be expanded to make it a global platform to address the
problem of child labour.
His non-government organisation Bachpan Bachao
Andolan (BBA) has been credited with freeing over 80,000
child labourers in India over
30 years.
China woos Nepal with more infrastructure projects
IANS
Beijing
F
Nepalese President Ram Baran Yadav speaks during the opening
ceremony of the 2015 annual conference of the Boao Forum for
Asia (BFA) in Boao, south China’s Hainan province.
irming up ties with Nepal, Chinese President Xi
Jinping has said the two
countries should strengthen cooperation in interconnectivity,
infrastructure, and hydropower
development as Kathmandu
pledged to keep up the crackdown on protests supporting
the Dalai Lama.
China is willing to initiate
talks on free trade agreement
with Nepal at an early date,
Xi said. He suggested that the
two countries should work on
traffic interconnectivity, infrastructure, hydropower development, modernisation of
agriculture and science and
technology.
The Chinese president on
Saturday met his Nepalese
counterpart Ram Baran Yadav
on the sidelines of Boao Forum
for Asia in Hainan province,
Xinhua reported. Xi welcomed
Nepal’s participation in the Silk
Road projects unveiled by him
at the forum to improve China’s
connectivity to Europe through
a maze of road, rail and port
network.
Though no speciﬁc projects
were mentioned with Nepal, the
two sides are planning to beef
up the connectivity with rail and
road links, amid concerns in India
over China’s growing inﬂuence
in the Himalayan country.
Early this month, China had
Breaking the chains, one elephant at a time
By Pratibha Tuladhar/DPA
Chitwan, Nepal
Lawmakers
from nine
countries
unite to ﬁght
child abuse,
slavery
which took her to tourist spots
in Nepal, India and Thailand
that offered elephant safaris.
“In all three countries, I saw
the same thing: elephants in
captivity working in horrible
conditions,” she says. “And
I knew something had to be
done.”
Buckely set up the Elephant
Aid Foundation, raising funds
to help working elephants. She
began in Nepal, where she has
managed to unchain 47 captive
elephants.
“We began with a pilot
project aimed at freeing retired elephants,” says Chiranjibi Pokharel, project chief
at Nepal Trust for Nature
Conservation.
“The project has now been
replicated by all the 15 government-run elephant shelters,
because we could see that the
elephants were healthier when
they were set free.”
An eight-year-old elephant
named Prakriti Kali, which appeared depressed, was the ﬁrst
to be put to test.
“Elephants in captivity sway
because they are depressed, and
swaying helps them release serotonin, which makes them feel
good,” Buckley says. “Prakriti
stopped swaying and bobbing
when she was unchained and
that was a real change.”
Over the years, Buckley has
brought in technicians and
equipment from India every six
months to build electric corrals. Every corral costs between
$5,000 and $7,000.
“The aim is to secure at least
one acre (about 0.4 hectare) of
land per elephant close to a forest, away from human settlements, if possible,” she says.
But the campaign faces resistance from mahouts, who
are used to managing their elephants under chains.
“When they are unchained,
it’s difficult to clean them and
they won’t listen sometimes,
so it’s hard. But it’s good for the
elephants as they can be free,”
says Sri Narayan Dhami, Man
Kali’s caretaker.
The mahouts say unchaining
is a viable option for female elephants, which enjoy spending
time with their friends, but not
for males.
“It’s good to see that the elephants have their space to roam
and they look happier. But it is
not possible to unchain the bulls
because they are aggressive,”
says Jalendra Prasad Chaudhary, who has been working as a
mahout for 24 years.
In February, an unchained
bull in a government elephant
shed broke through an electric
fence and ran amok into the forest, killing a female elephant.
Traditionally,
elephants
used on tourist safaris or antipoaching patrols in the forest were brought back to their
sheds and chained.
“Trying to help the elephants
is a transformative experience
for both the elephants and me,”
Australian volunteer Chantelle
Ridley says.
“Having the working elephants in chains is a culture,
so you have to teach the mahouts that it’s not right and you
can’t teach them that unless
you make them see the difference,” says German volunteer
Marina Loch.
But there are some who
contest the method.
“The chain-free concept is
challenging to maintain. It’s
less stressful for elephants, but
traditional culture is difficult
to break and (the mahouts) feel
threatened,” Pokharel said.
Although she has made
progress, Buckley says sustaining the project is her main
problem, because constant
monitoring is needed to ensure
that elephants are not put back
in chains.
increased its annual aid to Nepal to $128mn from $24mn. Yadav was one of the 13 heads of
state and government who took
part in the annual conference at
Boao town.
“China appreciates Nepal’s
ﬁrm support on issues concerning China’s core interests, including issues related to Tibet
and Taiwan,” Xi said, apparently referring to Kathmandu’s
crackdown on Tibetan refugees
crossing over to meet the Dalai
Lama at Dharamshala in India.
Xi hoped that Nepal would
not allow any forces to use Nepal’s territory to engage in antiChina separatist activities.
He said China will continue to
support Nepal’s effort in safeguarding independence, sover-
eignty and territorial integrity.
Yadav said Nepal would never
allow its territory to be used by
any anti-China activities. Nepal called for strengthened cooperation between the South
Asian Association of Regional
Co-operation (Saarc) and China, in a bid to promote regional
interconnectivity and economic
development, he said.
China made a pitch to join
Saarc at the last year’s South
Asian regional grouping’s conference at Kathmandu which
was stalled by India. Yadav also
said Nepal supports China’s
initiatives of jointly build the
Silk Road Economic Belt, 21st
Century Maritime Silk Road
and the Asian Infrastructure
Investment Bank.
Constitution protest
Protesters holding sticks shout anti-government slogans
during a protest organised by the opposition alliance led by
the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), to demand
the new constitution be drafted with the consensus of all
political parties, in Kathmandu yesterday. Nepal’s political
parties have repeatedly missed deadlines to write the new
republic’s first constitution. At the heart of the dispute is
disagreement over creating new provinces based on
ethnicity, a move backed by the former rebels.
26
Gulf Times
Monday, March 30, 2015
COMMENT
Chairman: Abdullah bin Khalifa al-Attiyah
Editor-in-Chief : Darwish S Ahmed
Production Editor: C P Ravindran
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GULF TIMES
Make it a habit to
minimise energy
consumption
Earth Hour, observed globally yesterday from 8.30pm
local time, was a big success, going by the fact that
more than 170 countries and territories and close to
1,200 landmarks and 40 Unesco world heritage sites
participated.
Earth Hour, which began in Sydney in 2007 but
quickly went global, encourages citizens, communities,
businesses and organisations to switch the lights off for
an hour to highlight the plight of the planet.
Earth Hour’s goal is not to achieve measurable
electricity savings but to raise awareness of the need
for sustainable energy use, and this year also to demand
action to halt planet-harming climate change.
In Qatar, the Qatar Tourism Authority (QTA) and
a large group of its partners in the public and private
sectors, including hotels and tourist establishments,
joined the world in marking Earth Hour.
All non-essential lights in these establishments were
switched off or dimmed from 8.30pm to 9.30pm. Hotel
guests also participated in this global campaign by
turning off or dimming lights in their rooms or hotel
apartments.
The usually well-lit Doha skyline also looked different
during Earth Hour, thanks to all the companies and
establishments that joined the initiative.
QTA said it “seeks to emphasise the importance of
the Qatari tourism
sector’s commitment to
preserving energy and
the environment as well
as raise public awareness
about the importance
of Earth Hour and the
need to protect the
environment”.
A drive through the
bustling commercial
areas of Doha after nightfall will prove that lot of energy
is being wasted in many buildings, which remain lit from
top to bottom. It may be a beautiful sight to behold,
but the practice is an avoidable wastage of precious
electricity.
When viewed from outside, it is evident that almost all
these buildings are deserted with absolutely no activity
going on. The office chairs are vacant and there is not
even a soul in sight. But all the lights will be on.
Similar is the case with many households throughout
the country. There are lights on the compound walls
on the exterior walls of the houses and they remain lit
throughout the night, even when street lights provide
ample lighting throughout.
Those responsible might say that they have replaced
all the conventional bulbs with CFL lamps or LED
lights and therefore the energy used is very little. Well,
switching to energy efficient lighting is a welcome move
every business establishment and household ought to
do. But the question is whether lights are being switched
on unnecessarily, irrespective of the energy they
consume.
There is a limit to which the government could enforce
energy saving regulations. It is up to each individual
to practice energy efficient measures. Energy saved is
equal to energy produced. Less the amount of energy
used translates into a proportionately less strain on the
production system.
Whether we pay for energy from our pockets or not,
let each one of us make it a habit to minimise energy
consumption. Let us make switching off a habit, when
energy use is not essential, and in the process help our
planet to heal.
The Germanwings tragedy:
inside the mind of a pilot
As a qualiﬁed pilot and
psychiatrist, I am certain
that no prior psychological
test to Andreas Lubitz would
have predicted his actions
By Michael Bloomfield
Guardian News & Media
F
rench prosecutors have
reported that ﬁrst officer
Andreas Lubitz appeared to
want to destroy the aircraft
carrying 149 innocent people aboard
Germanwings ﬂight 4U9525. As a
qualiﬁed pilot and a psychiatrist,
I have since repeatedly imagined
nightmare scenarios in that cockpit.
Although we will never know what
was truly going through Lubitz’s mind
as the aircraft plunged, one of the
many alarming aspects of this tragedy
is that his depression is being quickly
blamed.
Obviously depression cannot be
the sole cause of a likely mass murder.
Understanding this could yield many
important lessons, and for now, the
black box ﬂight recorder will continue
to yield vital information.
So far, we have been told that after
the captain left the ﬂight deck, the
cockpit door was closed behind him
and then Lubitz entered the command
in the ﬂight computer to descend the
aircraft. The captain can be heard
asking to be let in, then attempting to
bang down the door while Lubitz is
chillingly silent. Investigators know
Lubitz was still alive until the moment
of impact because he can be heard
breathing.
Was Lubitz able to remain calm
by psychologically blocking out the
reality of what was happening?
Clearly we need to wait for
investigations to be concluded, but
it may be possible to deduce critical
clues to Lubitz’s state of mind by
listening to his breathing, which
could reﬂect his physiological and
psychological state in those ﬁnal
moments.
Obviously depression
cannot be the sole
cause of a likely mass
murder
Simply put, despite knowing the
command to descend the plane would
result in his and everyone else’s death,
despite the pilot attempting to bang
the door down, despite the alarms
from the computers, despite seeing
the mountains become dangerously
close, and ultimately despite hearing
the screams from those on board - was
Lubitz calm or panic-stricken?
Excluding unlikely medical
conditions such as rare forms of
epilepsy, calm and normal breathing
may indicate the cold and calculating
nature of a psychopath, a person who
does not feel guilt and has a callous
disregard for the welfare of others.
This might imply a high degree of
premeditation necessary to coldbloodedly kill so many. Alternatively,
was this an impulsive act of ultraviolence?
Although a pilot’s noisecancelling headphones may well
have been blocking out some sensory
information, was he able to remain
calm by psychologically blocking out
the reality of what was happening,
disconnecting from reality via a
process called “dissociation” - akin
to entering a trance-like state in the
face of overwhelming threat or fear?
Otherwise, was Lubitz’s breathing
quickened and deep?
Did he become as terrorised as
everyone else on board and freeze in
fright?
Thinking about these questions,
together with evidence from what
Lubitz has left behind, will enable
a psychological postmortem to be
conducted, so that he can be proﬁled.
Apart from practical steps that
airlines can take, such as now making
sure that there are always two crew
members in the cockpit , will this
change how pilots are selected and,
perhaps more importantly, how they
are supported during their careers?
A few years ago I worked as an
air ambulance doctor and, knowing
how much I loved ﬂying, my crewmates encouraged me to learn to ﬂy
and become a pilot myself. I knew I
would have to pass the Civil Aviation
Authority’s medical requirements. I
once asked a doctor who conducted
these medicals about depression in
pilots and he chuckled: “This needs
psychiatric evaluation - no one wants
a pilot throwing a wobbly in the
cockpit!” I took his point but thought,
“How dare you imply that, because
someone goes through something so
awful (and common) as depression,
that would make them compromise
the safety of others?”
Potential pilots who have had
depression will often need to be
assessed by two separate psychiatrists
in order to be deemed ﬁt to ﬂy. Such
a psychiatric evaluation will focus on
whether a mental illness is currently
present and ask detailed questions to
formulate risk. What was someone’s
childhood like? Their past? Their
experience of depression?
Did they have violent and impulsive
tendencies? Would they seek help
appropriately? Thinking about this
now, does mental health stigma
prevent pilots, like many others, from
seeking help early?
Most airlines include some
psychological assessment, often using
variations of common personality
questionnaires such as the widely
used “ﬁve-factor inventory”. In simple
terms, they are looking for people
with well-rounded personalities.
Many airlines also put candidate pilots
through group exercises to pick out
good team-workers and leaders. They
will exclude people with a criminal
record.
One issue, however, is that
pilots are not routinely subjected
to psychological or psychiatric
assessment. The awful truth is that
even this would not be able to predict
such a horriﬁc act. If indeed this was
the act of a psychopath, despite leaps
and bounds in neuroscience, there is
no screening tool, blood test or brain
scan for psychopathy that is good
enough.
Ultimately, all this provides little
consolation to the families and friends
of the victims of this catastrophe.
I struggle to imagine their pain at
this dark hour. As I prepare to board
a plane to travel to America, my
thoughts are with them. However, we
must remember that being depressed,
“throwing a wobbly” and being a mass
murderer are very different entities.
zMichael Bloomﬁeld is a research
fellow in psychiatry at Imperial College
London.
There is a limit
to which the
government
could enforce
energy-saving
regulations
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Debris of the Germanwings Airbus A320 on the crash site.
Blaming depression alone will be irresponsible
By Masuma Rahim
Guardian News & Media
N
ews of the Germanwings
crash which left 150 dead
has, inevitably, led to
questions about what went
wrong. In the absence of any technical
fault, attention has shifted to Andreas
Lubitz, the pilot who appears to have
deliberately caused the crash . Reports
are now suggesting that Lubitz had
a history of depression. Predictably,
this has resulted in a barrage of
stigmatising, fear-mongering
media reports, both in the UK and
internationally.
Depression is among the most
common of mental illnesses, and is
experienced by around 20% of adults.
Characterised by feelings of guilt,
hopelessness and reduced interest
in pleasurable activities, it can affect
anyone, from manual workers to heads
of FTSE companies. Indeed, many
successful people have experienced
depression - among them Winston
Churchill, Charles Dickens and Henri
Matisse - and there is virtually no
evidence to suggest that the depressed
pose a danger to others as a result of
their illness. This is true of the full
range of mental health problems: the
scientiﬁc literature is clear that people
with schizophrenia, long demonised
and reviled by the press, are far more
likely to be harmed by others or
Andreas Lubitz taking part in the Airport Hamburg 10-mile run in 2009. Reports
now suggest that Lubitz had a history of depression.
themselves than to enact violence.
It is now known that Lubitz’s
aviation training was interrupted for
six months, quite possibly because he
was recuperating from depression.
This is not an uncommon scenario in
any industry, and something which
wouldn’t have necessarily made him
unﬁt to ﬂy (he did, after all, pass all
required physical and psychological
assessments before being allowed to
do so).
To conclude that his role in the crash
was the automatic consequence of
any history of mental illness would be
irresponsible and damaging. There has
been no suggestion that males should
be prohibited from becoming pilots,
that Germans are unﬁt to ﬂy, or that
27-year-olds should not be let loose in
the cockpit. Only one factor has been
picked over: Lubitz’s mental health.
The truth is that people with
depression are all around us - they
are our teachers and solicitors; our
plumbers and health professionals.
Data obtained following a recent
freedom of information request in the
UK revealed that more than 40,000
NHS staff took sick leave as a result
of stress , anxiety and depression
in 2014. Up to 20% of those are
likely to be medical doctors; indeed,
doctors are signiﬁcantly more likely
to experience depression than the
general population.
Having depression does not
necessarily make you unﬁt to work,
but, based upon the headlines in many
of today’s papers you could be forgiven
for thinking that it does.
We may never fully understand why
Lubitz crashed ﬂight 4U9525. Despite
that, the assumption that his mental
health was the sole reason 149 others
died will do nothing to diminish the
stigma attached to mental health
problems.
Fear and discrimination continue
to discourage people from disclosing
their problems and seeking help early
on. Media outlets could have used this
tragedy to explore the impact of stress
and to highlight the need for greater
support.
Instead some have chosen to
vilify Lubitz and, by association, the
millions who share his diagnosis.
They have taken the easy option.
Worse, they have added to the
stigmatisation of a group that
society already does a superb job of
demonising.
zMasuma Rahim is a clinical
psychologist.
Gulf Times
Monday, March 30, 2015
27
COMMENT
What comes after Lee Kuan Yew?
Several volumes of memoirs
attest to Lee’s concern about
his legacy, although
Singapore’s extraordinary
success under his leadership
speaks for itself
By Bill Emmott
London
A
ll political leaders worry
about their legacies. Lee
Kuan Yew, who presided over
Singapore either directly
or indirectly for more than a halfcentury – remaining inﬂuential right
up to his death at 91 – had more time
in power than most to do so.
Several volumes of memoirs attest
to Lee’s concern about his legacy,
although Singapore’s extraordinary
success under his leadership speaks
for itself. Like him or not – and many
did not – there is no denying the
city-state’s remarkable and enduring
prosperity and stability.
Yet the effort put into those
memoirs by the man who called
himself “minister mentor” during his
later years offers a clue about Lee’s
ultimate concern. His legacy in terms
of Singapore’s past success may be
clear, but what about the future?
That, of course, is one of the few
things he could not control, beyond
offering his teachings to future
generations.
Yet in one crucial respect –
determining who Singapore’s new
generation of leaders will be – the
tight control that Lee exercised in the
past may now make that future more
difficult.
The issue is certainly solvable,
especially given an excellent education
system and high-quality institutions
of all kinds. But Lee’s own actions
suggest that he harboured doubts.
Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong with his wife Ho Ching acknowledging guests during the funeral service for Singapore’s late former prime minister Lee
Kuan Yew yesterday.
The succession to Lee was clear:
after handing over the premiership
in 1990 (at the surprisingly young
age of 66) to a trusted associate, Goh
Chok Tong, he groomed his eldest son,
Brigadier-General Lee Hsien Loong,
for the job.
After serving as Singapore’s trade
minister, ﬁnance minister and deputy
prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong took
over the top post in 2004. What is
unresolved is where power goes next,
and how.
Perhaps the answer will simply
be that the ruling People’s Action
Party will choose a successor in
the conventional way. Certainly,
Singapore’s cadre of talented and
experienced officials and ministers
is deep. Still, the question is an
open one, owing to Lee Kuan Yew’s
somewhat paradoxical sensitivity to
the prominence of his family members
in some of the country’s most senior
posts.
Lee fought many battles with
the international media over their
coverage of Singapore, especially
from the mid-1980s onward, by
which point the country’s success had
become abundantly clear.
As a Cambridge-trained lawyer, he
was especially keen on using the law
to browbeat his media (and political)
critics, knowing full well that he
had no serious chance of losing in
Singapore’s own courts.
During my time as the editor-inchief of The Economist (1993-2006),
I received such browbeatings on many
occasions.
What eventually became clear was
that under no circumstances could Lee
Kuan Yew countenance one particular
word or concept: nepotism. After all,
he had set up Singapore as an intensely
meritocratic society, in which
competition, under clear and accepted
rules, was king.
So when his own son became prime
minister, and his daughter-in-law,
Ho Ching, took the helm at Temasek,
one of the state’s huge investment
companies, any insinuation that they
had done so on anything other than
their own merit was unacceptable.
Lee established a high-minded
committee to establish that nepotism
was not the reason, and then set about
suing anyone who dared to suggest
otherwise. Yet this abhorrence of
nepotism was illogical – and Lee
was generally nothing if not logical,
even ruthlessly so – because in this
case a perfectly good justiﬁcation for
it followed smoothly from his own
analysis of Singapore.
A tiny, multi-racial society ejected
from Malaysia in 1965, Singapore was
born in an atmosphere of vulnerability,
lack of legitimacy and trust and ethnic
conﬂict.
Up through the 1980s and 1990s,
Lee often justiﬁed the continuation of
authoritarian policies by reference to
those communal riots, and to the everpresent possibility of a loss of social
trust and a return to conﬂict.
So, in passing the baton to his eldest
son, he could be said to have dealt
with that risk in the most logical way
possible. If you trusted the founder of
Singapore and thought him legitimate,
who better to trust than the founder’s
own son?
Indeed, the father would remain on
the scene, ﬁrst as “senior minister”
and then in his mentor role, and had
made his son prove his abilities openly
in a series of prominent positions.
It worked, and Lee Hsien Loong
has by all accounts done a good job
as prime minister, whatever the
explanation for his rise. There is no
current risk to Singapore’s political
stability, and the younger Lee is only
63 years old; he could remain in office
for a long time to come.
The question, though, remains:
What happens next? Lee Kuan Yew
dealt with the question of succession
by deferring it. His son will need
to provide the answer. - Project
Syndicate
zBill Emmott, a former editor-in-chief
of The Economist, is the author of
Good Italy, Bad Italy, and The Rivals:
How the Power Struggle Between
China, India, and Japan Will Shape
Our Next Decade.
Weather report
Letters
Three-day forecast
TODAY
A healthy
outlook
Dear Sir,
It is said that health is wealth. But
we often ignore the saying at our own
peril. If health is lost, everything is
lost. It doesn’t matter how wealthy
we are, we wouldn’t be able to enjoy
anything of it if we are unhealthy.
Good health, which is essential to
lead a happy and fulﬁlling life, cannot
be bought. One has to make efforts to
remain healthy.
One of the basic requirements for
good health is to live in a clean and
good environment.
Secondly, one has to cultivate
good personal habits. Positive habits
like getting up early, maintaining
personal cleanliness, doing regular
physical exercise, having a good
sleep, etc are vital to maintain good
health.
Thirdly, the importance of having
a “healthy” mind for our physical
wellbeing cannot be overestimated.
Depression and negative thoughts
ruin our health. We should develop a
positive approach and be optimistic in
our attitude.
A Spanish proverb says that “A man
who is too busy to take care of his
health is like a mechanic too busy to
take care of his tools”.
Unfortunately, very few heed the
saying. It is great that authorities in
Qatar are aware about the importance
of health and have taken a series of
initiatives to make people aware about
it.
Schools must think
about shift system
Expected fog at places in the early
morning
Please send us
your letters
Dear Sir,
Getting admission for children in
Indian schools in Qatar has become
extremely difficult these days because
of the limited number of seats in them.
This problem can be solved to some
extent by schools working in two shifts.
This way the schools will not need
any new buildings. They will need
more teaching staff, though. But the
educational institutions can easily
hire them with a bit a planning and
preparation.
Schools will have double the capacity
overnight if they adopt the shift system!
Hafsa Khatoon
PO Box 6094
Doha
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V Krishnan
(e-mail address supplied)
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OFFSHORE DOHA
Wind: SE-SW 05-15/18 KT
Waves: 2-4/5 Feet
INSHORE DOHA
Wind: SE-SW 05-15/20 KT
Waves: 1-2/3 Feet
Around the region
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Live issues
Baghdad
Dubai
Kuwait City
Manama
Should anybody care how hard you tried?
By Gina Barreca
The Hartford Courant/TNS
D
o you believe
that “showing
effort” should
count more
than it does, or do you think it’s a
disingenuously misleading reward
system undermining the character,
both in school and out?
Let’s put it another way: Do you
respect an individual more because he
or she struggled to achieve or create
something, or do you applaud more
vigorously if what they do appears
accomplished through an astonishing
act of grace, a hidden wellspring
of talent or a moment of dazzling
inspiration?
To be perfectly honest, if I hadn’t
been awarded points for effort, I might
have never completed grade school.
On our report cards, as I remember,
the “E” hovered right there over the
“F”: Effort was dangerously close
to failure but you could keep the
worlds from colliding if you tried hard
enough. You could do extra-credit
reports and stay after school for study
groups.
My inability to complete the most
basic forms of arithmetic would have
kept me in fourth grade long past
menopause if the principal hadn’t
taken pity and permitted me to move
along despite the fact that I was way
behind.
I’ve only recently realised that I
automatically reverse the last two
digits in any string of numbers.
This glitch renders me less
mathematically adept, for example,
than certain horses who when
asked, “What’s two plus three?” can
paw the ground and offer correct
responses while I’m still counting on
my fingers.
I passed my classes because
I displayed effort, not because I
learned math. But how can we
help young people understand life
rarely gives partial credit for effort,
especially if that effort doesn’t lead to
understanding or success?
Outside of school, very few
people will ask you to show your
work or explain how you arrived
at your results: They just want to
know you can do the job effectively,
efficiently and without too much
fuss.
Rarely in life do we actually
appreciate something more fully
because it took a lot of effort. Do you
really want a contractor who says,
“I could be a couple of years late
installing your bathroom because I
have a really hard time measuring
stuff ”? Nobody wants to hear her
surgeon announce, “Boy, did I ever
have trouble getting your gallbladder
out! I had to get three guys to help me
and they weren’t doctors, either. They
were pharmacists on their way to get
coffee.”
Why, then, do we like to think
that somebody must suffer to
produce a work of art? I recently
Rarely in life do we
actually appreciate
something more fully
because it took a lot
of effort
learned from Pamela Katz’s book
The Partnership that the song Mack
the Knife, composed by Bertolt
Brecht and Kurt Weill for The
Threepenny Opera, took less than
24 hours to write.
And in my office I have printed out,
for my own beneﬁt as well as that of
my students, the following line from
New York literary agent Betsy Lerner’s
book The Forest for the Trees: “Your
struggle to produce a piece of writing
of interest and value means nothing
to the reader. The reader doesn’t care
what you went through to produce
your work. He only cares if the piece
succeeds, if it looks as if it arrived
whole.”
Sometimes things can take a very
long time and still not be very good. It
took us all of evolutionary history just
to get where we are today, for instance,
and mostly where we are today is on
the couch.
Let’s not pretend there’s no
difference between effort and
accomplishment; let’s not pretend
there’s no difference between those
who try hard and those who do
well.
Those we respect, admire and
remember bring to their work
diligence, focus and an indefatigable
passion for improvement. They
aren’t perfectionists but they’ll
reject the shoddy and the secondrate.
We should learn to take genuine
pride in a job well done and not expect
praise for one simply carried out.
What we need is an honest
assessment of our abilities, our talents
- and our limitations. And that will
take some real effort.
zGina Barreca is an English professor
at the University of Connecticut, a
feminist scholar who has written eight
books, and a columnist for the Hartford
Courant. She can be reached through
www.ginabarreca.com
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Gulf Times
Monday, March 30, 2015
QATAR
QIFF visitors had the chance to participate in the live cooking demonstration.
QA’s Cooking Theatre hosted live cooking sessions led by celebrity chefs.
Artistes entertain visitors at the festival.
The Dine in the Sky provided guests with authentic Qatar Airways Business Class hospitality and menu.
Huge turnout for food festival
M
ore than 170,000 visitors, including tourists,
attended the ﬁve-day
Qatar International Food Festival
(QIFF) 2015 which concluded on
Saturday at the Museum of Islamic Art Park.
Organised by Qatar Tourism
Authority (QTA) and Qatar Airways (QA), the festival showcased
Qatari, Gulf, Arabic, and international cuisine at the festival’s different zones.
The International zone showcased dishes from 31 of Doha’s
most high proﬁle restaurants with
69 participants.
A number of celebrity chefs
prepared sumptuous international dishes at QA’s Live Cooking
Theatre, which included high-
tech equipment and a seating area
for more than 100 people to watch
and participate in the live demonstrations.
“QIFF is a great platform to
showcase global cuisines and to
show Qatar’s culinary delights as
well as the elegance of its variety of
hotels and restaurants,” said QTA’s
chief marketing and promotions
Officer Rashed al-Qurese.
He expressed conﬁdence that
the success of the festival will create a positive impact in the tourism and hospitality sector. QTA
sees more innovation and creativity in next year’s edition.
“We are delighted to see the
high turnout of tourists and visitors who attended QIFF’s sixth
edition,” said al-Qurese. “I would
like to thank all participants, partners, and sponsors who helped to
make this event a great success.”
He noted that they always seek
to make the festival exceed all expectations every year by hosting a
larger number of restaurants and
exhibitors.
Visitors and tourists also enjoyed the wide-ranging entertainment activities that catered
to family members of all ages and
tastes as the MIA’s beautiful green
spaces were crowded with families enjoying the festivities. Music
performances and ﬁreworks ﬁlled
the atmosphere with joy during
the festival.
Hotels and tourist facilities in
Qatar saw a huge increase in the
number of regional and interna-
tional visitors during the ﬁve-day
event.
“Authentic Qatari hospitality is
at the heart of our business, and
we are very pleased that this year’s
festival provided visitors with the
opportunity to experience QA’s
hospitality and Business Class
menu and taste the delicious food
that our internationally renowned
chefs prepare for our passengers
on board of our ﬁve-star ﬂights,”
said Salam al-Shawa, senior vice
president of Marketing and Corporate Communications at QA.
QA’s Live Cooking Theatre attracted a large number of visitors, giving them a chance to taste
delicious food cooked live by top
chefs, including celebrity Chef
Vineet Bhatia and Chef Massimo
Capra who stunned the audience
with their culinary skills.
QIFF’s sixth edition included
a wide range of areas including a
special entertainment zone speciﬁcally targeting families. Tourists and visitors sampled mouthwatering local and Turkish dishes
at the Qatar Turkey 2015 Year of
Culture zone, where delicious
food was prepared under traditional Qatari tents.
The Instagram Market zone
was ﬁlled with stalls from top Qatari female chefs who are active on
Instagram for live preparations of
local dishes as the organisers are
supporting local culinary talents
and intend to promote the festival
on social media channels.
The festival included an excit-
ing programme of contests, workshops and live cooking activities.
QA’s Live Cooking Theatre
provided the audience with the
opportunity to learn how to cook
enabling them to meet celebrity
chefs. Live cooking sessions, consisting of 30 minutes each, were
organised for those who wished to
learn culinary arts with the help of
skillful chefs.
The activity also provided
training to prepare Qatari cuisine,
providing 50 participating professional hotel chefs in Qatar with
guidelines and tips on how to prepare traditional and fusion Qatari
dishes.
The training was delivered by
two skillful chefs, Qatari cuisine
expert Chef Aisha al-Tamimi and
renowned Kuwaiti Chef Fawwaz
al-Amim.
Qatar culinary professionals
also held an ice sculpting competition while Philips sponsored an
amateur cooking contest.
This year’s festival hosted
number of new activities among
those is the High Tea-Lounge
zone by the Kempinski. The festival this year also saw participation
of Fetafeat famous Chefs, Chef
Salma Soliman and Chef Daad
Abu Jaber. Also among participants was Kulluna for health and
safety initiative.
In addition, the Festival hosted
this year BBQ Doughnut by Diplomatic Club. Souq Waqif Boutique
hotels sponsored the “Dinner on a
dhow” activity.
QDF opens four new
retail outlets at HIA
Q
The new PSG store stocks a wide range of club branded merchandise
and products.
Passengers can buy products such as L’Oréal, Bourjois, Toni & Guy,
Rimmel, OPI and Lanocreme at Blush.
Bazaar is based on the style of a traditional souq where guests can buy
last-minute Middle Eastern and Qatari souvenirs and gifts before they
leave Doha.
beIN Sports now has a dedicated boutique at HIA.
atar Duty Free (QDF) has
announced the opening of four new exclusive
retail outlets at Hamad International Airport (HIA).
Bazaar, Blush, Paris Saint Germain (PSG) and beIN Sports are
the latest additions to QDF’s premium portfolio of brands located
within the airport’s 25,000sq m
duty-free shopping area, which
incorporates more than 70 retail
outlets, according to a statement.
“We are delighted to announce the opening of these
four important stores that will
add a dynamic new ﬂavour to
the vibrant retail mix at Qatar
Duty Free in Hamad International Airport,” said senior vicepresident of QDF, Keith Hunter.
“Both Bazaar and Blush are
homegrown brands that we are
very proud to have conceptualised and developed especially
for this market, and we believe
they will be a major attrac-
tion for passengers looking for
unique gifts and products at affordable prices.”
The concept of Bazaar is
based on the style of a traditional souq where guests can buy
last-minute Middle Eastern and
Qatari souvenirs and gifts before
they leave Doha. The wide range
of gift items includes colourful
pashminas, jewellery, soft toys
and Qatari-themed souvenirs
such as mugs, pens and keyrings.
Blush is QDF’s own beauty
emporium, which rivals any
high-street multi-brand beauty
store for the breadth and diversity of its products, all available
at duty-free prices, the statement adds. The large selection of
popular brands at Blush includes
L’Oréal, Bourjois, Toni & Guy,
Rimmel, OPI and Lanocreme.
Paris Saint Germain fans passing through HIA are also in for a
treat now as the new PSG store
stocks a wide range of clubbranded merchandise and products.
In addition, Qatar’s own beIN
Sports TV channel now has a
dedicated boutique at HIA stocking branded sports apparel, accessories and gifts from the Qatari homegrown sports network.
At HIA, Qatar Duty Free offers
40,000sq m of combined retail,
food and beverage facilities, establishing the retailer as a premier shopping and dining destination, the statement adds. With
more than 70 retail outlets offering a wide range of designer labels, fashion, electronics, gourmet foods and more, QDF at HIA
caters to all passengers’ tastes. In
addition, more than 30 cafés and
restaurants offer a selection of
global and local cuisine.
Other luxury brands available
at HIA include Bulgari, Hermès,
Giorgio Armani, Hugo Boss,
Mont Blanc, Rolex and Chanel.
QNB employees gain high-level ﬁnancial skills
A
group of QNB employees have graduated from
Foundation & Core Credit
Skills Development Programmes.
Employees beneﬁted by way
of important skills and qualiﬁcations within the ﬁnancial ﬁeld.
The programmes provided them
with high-level skills in credit
relationship management and a
step-by-step reorganisation of
the lending process.
The programmes delivered
in co-operation with Omega
Performance Corporation, was
composed of 18 modules, which
focused on three key areas: ﬁnancial accounting for lenders, commercial loans to businesses, and
credit relationship management.
In addition to the study modules, the programmes required
its participants to successfully
pass 15 on-line assessments with
a passing score of over 80%.
“QNB Group is always keen
on developing its employees’
skills and qualiﬁcations to help
them in their careers and provide the Qatari and international markets with skilled professionals to enrich the global
workforce across its network of
operations,” the bank said in a
statement.
QNB Group currently operates
in more than 26 Countries and
across three continents. It has
about14,500 employees in 615
office locations.
The QNB employees who graduated from the programmes are seen with officials.
RIGHTS ISSUE | Page 2
EURO TRADES | Page 3
QSE to adopt
new selling and
pricing system
ECB, BoE in
accord on
UK clearers
Monday, March 30, 2015
Jumada II 10, 1436 AH
ANOTHER EXCEPTIONAL YEAR: Page 16
GULF TIMES
BUSINESS
Abdullah Abdulghani
& Brothers receives top
awards from Toyota
Motor Corporation
Ooredoo 4G+ network
to be available across
Qatar by end of year
By Santhosh V Perumal
Business Reporter
O
oredoo yesterday said its high
speed 4G+ network will be
available across Qatar by the
end of this year and that its return on
investments from overseas operations
is set to be “substantial”.
“By the end of this year, whole of
Qatar will be 4G+,” Ooredoo chief operating officer Waleed al-Sayed told
the media after the annual general
assembly (AGM) where shareholders
approved 40% cash dividend.
With 4G+, at present available in
greater Doha, customers are able to
reach up to 225 Mbps, nearly double
the average 4G speed in areas of Doha.
The current available Ooredoo 4G
speed is up to 150 Mbps.
Using a 4G+ enabled device that
supports Ooredoo Qatar’s 4G frequencies, customers will be able to
access the superfast 4G+ network
for free, taking advantage of the extra
speeds and smooth browsing experience to stay in touch, check e-mails,
video call and more.
Areas with access to 4G+ speeds
are the Corniche, West Bay lagoon,
Katara, Souq Waqif, Al Rayyan, Shahaniya and Sealine.
Ooredoo’s focus on data delivered
positive returns in 2014, with data
Sheikh Abdullah bin Mohamed bin Saud al-Thani: To continue as chairman.
revenue now representing 25% of total group revenue, which positions the
company well for future growth.
On 5G, he said in the GSMA world,
Ooredoo has already been in discussion with 5G manufacturers but the
technology itself is now under standardisation and “there is no clue regarding when standardisation is going
to ﬁnish”.
Ooredoo also said it has intention
to enter into research and develop-
ment in 5G so as to be prepared for its
launch whenever it is ready and the
estimation time is between 2018 and
2020, according to al-Sayed.
Asked about its expansion plans,
he said Ooredoo has plans to grow in
new markets like Myanmar where it is
building big customer base.
Ooredoo
had
commercially
launched services in Myanmar in the
summer of 2014, adding a new market
to its global portfolio and offering 3G
services to a population that had previously had very limited access to the
Internet.
He said Ooredoo has been investing and will continue to do so in its
overseas operations from which “we
believe that return on investments is
going to be signiﬁcant in the future.”
Ooredoo has taken a leadership role
in data services across its footprint,
because the company believes that
all its customers will beneﬁt from the
new opportunities of the digital era,
according to Sheikh Abdullah.
In the home market, Ooredoo’s
revenue grew 8% year-on-year to
QR7.15bn in 2015, manly driven by
mobile services, broadband, megaprojects and device sales.
The AGM also elected new board
members with Sheikh Abdullah bin
Mohamed bin Saud al-Thani continuing to be chairman; while other
members are Ali Shareef al-Emadi,
Mohamed bin Issa al-Mohannadi,
Omer Abdulaziz al-Hamed al-Marwani, Aziz Aluthman Fakhroo, General Retirement and Social Insurance
Authority, Nasser Rashid al Humaidi,
Ibrahim Abdulla al-Mahmoud, Khalifa Matar al-Mheiri and Mohamed
Ahmed al-Qamzi.
In an extraordinary meeting that
followed the AGM, the assembly approved an amendment of Article 25 of
the company’s articles of association.
HE Sheikh Faisal bin Qassim after signing the agreement with Amruda Nair.
Sheikh Faisal signs JV agreement
with Indian hotelier to set up
global management company
HE Sheikh Faisal bin Qassim al-Thani,
chairman, Al Sawari Holding and
Qatari Business Association, and
Amruda Nair, joint managing director
and chief executive officer, Aiana
Hotels & Resorts, have signed a joint
venture agreement to create Aiana
Hotels & Resorts, a global hotel
management company with the
“fabled Indian service ethos” at its
heart.
Both partners share the common
vision of creating a brand that will
appeal to young professionals and
global travellers and provide its
guests with unique, and enriching
experiences, as well as bringing the
first Asian-inspired hotel to Qatar.
The new joint venture company,
Aiana Hotels & Resorts, will embody
a hospitality brand of upper upscale
hotels and leading operator of hotels,
resorts and serviced apartments in
the Middle East, the Sub-Continent
and South East Asia.
To mark the launch, Aiana Hotels &
Resorts unveiled the visual identity
of the brand. Aiana, meaning “eternal
blossom” in Sanskrit, also means
a place of refuge or retreat. These
two powerful and evocative images
represented as the universal symbol
of the “mandala” in the brand
logo, come together to represent
the unique experience that Aiana
promises its guests.
“The joint venture combines
the resources and visionary
entrepreneurial skills of HE Sheikh
Faisal bin Qassim al-Thani, chairman,
Al Sawari Holding with the hospitality
expertise and passion of Amruda
Nair, herself a third generation
hotelier, driven by a desire to redefine
hospitality today,” Al Sawari Holding
said in a release.
Aiana Hotels & Resorts reflects the
strengths of its principals – business
excellence and Indian hospitality
to cater to the growing demand for
value added offerings in the upper
upscale hospitality segment and
offers hotel owners an effective
management solution from an
experienced team of hospitality
specialists.
The joint venture, with both partners
having an equal share, will be based
in Doha and operate under the name
Aiana Hotels & Resorts.
HE the Minister of Economy and
Commerce Sheikh Ahmed bin Jassim
bin mohamed al-Thani stated at
the signing ceremony that “Qatar
is taking an unprecedented leap in
development due to the economic
boom the country is experiencing
at all levels, clearly illustrated by
the projects we are set to carry out
over the next few years, especially in
infrastructure.
“I am delighted to witness the
signing of the memorandum of
understanding between Al Sawari
Holding and Amruda Nair, scion of
famous Leela hotel group family in
India, with the aim of introducing a
new brand to the Qatari hospitality
market that is already home to
several internationally renowned
names. The new brand will
definitely make a valuable addition
to the local tourism sector,” Sheikh
Ahmed said.
Sheikh Faisal said, “Given the long
standing relationship between Qatar
and India, there is great synergy in
the similar way that we travel. This
is why we want to bring Aiana as
a new lifestyle hotel brand to the
Middle East and will continue to
support Aiana through our ambitious
expansion plans for acquisitions in
key destinations starting with the
property in Doha with many more to
follow in Western Europe (London)
and the US.”
Nair said, “With the launch of Aiana
Hotels and Resorts, I am delighted to
be introducing a brand I am confident
will become the preferred choice
of travellers seeking authentic and
immersive experiences that will
stay with them long after they have
checked out. I was fortunate to meet
HE Sheikh Faisal bin Qassim al-Thani
who shared my passion for hospitality
and supported my dreams and
ambitions of creating an Indian brand
with a global presence. Our service,
design, and operating philosophy are
geared to exceed the expectations of
a new generation of savvy travellers.
We call it Hospitality 2.0”.
The Ooredoo board members at the company’s AGM in Doha yesterday.
Qatar National Bank to open its ﬁrst branch in Vietnam
By Arno Maierbrugger
Gulf Times Correspondent
Bangkok
Q
atar National Bank (QNB) will
open a representative office in
Vietnam’s economic hub of Ho
Chi Minh City on March 30, it was revealed by Qatar’s new ambassador to
Vietnam Abdullah Sultan al-Hamar
at his inauguration visit to Vietnam’s
Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung on
Wednesday.
The branch will be followed by another one in the capital Hanoi “in the
future”, the ambassador said.
The opening of the ﬁrst QNB ofﬁce in Vietnam comes after the bank
received a licence from the State Bank
of Vietnam in September 2014. The
representative offices will function as
a “liaison entity to make market research and promotion of investment
projects of QNB in Vietnam”, the state
bank announced. It will also “promote
and monitor the implementation of the
contracts and agreements signed between the QNB and credit institutions
and businesses, and QNB-ﬁnanced
projects in Vietnam,” the announcement read.
Al-Hamar also said that he has been
tasked with further developing bilateral
ties between Qatar and Vietnam, which
includes seeking more large-scale
project beyond the $1bn-plus capital
investment made by Qatari investors in
Gulf Times
Exclusive
Vietnam so far, an amount with which
they were “not satisﬁed.” The ambassador emphasised that Qatar is supporting Vietnam’s economic reform
efforts and its bid for seats in United
Nations agencies.
In turn, the Vietnamese prime minister invited Qatar investors to buy
stakes in equitised ﬁrms, become strategic stakeholders in major commercial banks, and vie for bids to operate
airport, seaport and highway facilities
in the country. Vietnam is currently
undergoing a major privatisation programme that includes hundreds of
state-owned companies which are to
be transformed into stock companies
and will partly be listed at the stock
exchange. These companies include
ﬁnancial institutions, infrastructure
companies, telecom and shipping operators, mining ﬁrms and others. For
example, Vietnam will open 41 marine
infrastructure projects to private investors, including 19 seaports, which are
together expected to need $1.98bn in
private funding.
Furthermore, national ﬂag carrier
Vietnam Airlines is seeking strategic
partners to sell 20% of the company
and the government will reduce its
stake to 75% from 95%. The airline will
operate as a joint stock company starting April 1.
However, the road to privatisation
has been bumpy so far in Vietnam, with
few investors picking up shares and
some companies being equitised, but
not listed. But analysts believe that after ﬂagship companies such as Vietnam
Airlines succeed in the process, it will
gain traction.
The prime minister also suggested
that Qatar should “create conditions
to facilitate the exports of Vietnamese
goods,” and the two countries should
soon organise an inter-government
meeting to further foster trade and
cooperation ties. He also asked Qatar
to offer additional official development assistance to impoverished areas
in Vietnam as well as strengthen collaboration across labour, ﬁnance and
banking.
Investments of Qatar ﬁrms in Vietnam include a number of real estate
development projects by Qatari Diar
including multi-purpose facilities,
residential and commercial projects
and some hotels in Vietnam. Qatar is
also investing in the oil and gas sector
through Vietnam’s Long Son Petrochemical Complex where Qatar Petroleum holds a stake of 25%. The two
countries last year also held the ﬁrst
meeting of the Qatari-Vietnamese joint
committee for economic, trade and
technical co-operation.
2
Gulf Times
Monday, March 30, 2015
BUSINESS
Prospects of strengthening
crude lifts sentiments on QSE
By Santhosh V Perumal
Business Reporter
P
rospects of strengthening
crude, amid Yemen issue,
appear to have lifted the
sentiments on the Qatar Stock
Exchange, which yesterday
inched near the 11,500 mark.
The Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) retail and institutions
as well as foreign individual investors were seen bullish as the
20-stock Qatar Index gained
0.68% to 11,488.41 points amid
fall in trade volumes.
Buying interests were seen
strong within realty, insurance
and industrials counters in the
market, which is however down
6.49% year-to-date.
The index that tracks Shariahprincipled stocks was seen gaining slower than the other indices
in the bourse, where banking and
real estate stocks accounted for
about 69% of the total trading
volume.
Market capitalisation rose
0.52% or more than QR3bn to
QR620.66bn with small, micro,
mid and large cap stocks gaining
0.99%, 0.64%, 0.34% and 0.2%
respectively.
The Total Return Index gained
0.68% to 17,775.1 points, All
Share Index by 0.59% to 3,065.82
points and Al Rayan Islamic Index by 0.49% to 4,188.96 points.
Realty stocks appreciated
1.99%, insurance (1.18%), industrials (0.74%), banks and ﬁnancial services (0.26%) and telecom
(0.08%); while transport and
consumer goods fell 0.65% and
0.17% respectively.
About 68% of the stocks extended gains with major movers
being Ezdan, Mazaya Qatar, International Islamic, Dlala, Gulf
International Services, Mesaieed
New selling and pricing mechanism
for rights issues to be implemented
The Qatar Stock Exchange (QSE) is all set to
see new selling and pricing mechanism of the
rights issue as part of modernising the financial
framework to offer flexibility and protection to
shareholders.
The rights-holder will have the option either
to exercise the rights by subscribing in the
company’s capital increase, or sell the rights, fully
or partially, in the market under the conditions and
within the period specified in the Qatar Financial
Market Authority (QFMA) regulations as well as
in the market notice, a QSE spokesman said in a
communiqué.
The bourse is working closely with the QFMA and
Qatar Central Securities Depository Company to
put in place the selling and pricing mechanism of
the rights issue as a new financial instrument in
the market, in light of the QFMA regulations in this
regard and the trading rules of the exchange.
Consultations are on-going between the
three parties to define the mechanisms in
implementation of Article (7a) of the QFMA’s
regulations with the aim of providing protection
and flexibility to those shareholders who receive
the rights to subscribe in the listed company’s
capital increase.
Rights issues are securities that entitle their holder
the right to subscribe in the capital increase issued
by the company and dedicated to its existing
shareholders.
According to the new QFMA’s regulations, rights
issues can be listed and sold at the stock exchange.
The number of rights issues will be equal to the
number of shares in the capital increase to be
issued by the company to its existing shareholders
through the subscription process.
Additionally, the QSE said the computation of the
Petrochemical Holding, Widam
Food, Vodafone Qatar and Nakilat.
However, QNB, Qatar Islamic
Bank, Commercial Bank, Al Khaliji, Aamal Company and United
Development Company bucked
The rights-holder will have the option either
to exercise the rights by subscribing in the
company’s capital increase, or sell the rights, fully
or partially, in the market.
right’s theoretical price depends on the underlying
share’s price, and it has an expiry date after which
the rights lapse and become with no value, unless
they are used in the subscription of the company’s
capital increase.
The QSE, which is keen to raise awareness among
investors, will launch a campaign to introduce this
new investment tool and provide investors with
all supporting information needed to enable them
making the decision.
Through adding the rights to the investment
portfolios of the eligible shareholders, the
right issues selling rules and mechanism aim
at compensating the eligible shareholders for
the decline in the value of their investment
portfolios resulting from the decline in the price
of the share when traded on the X-right date
(the day following the deadline specified by the
company’s extraordinary general assembly for
holding the share to be eligible to participate in the
subscription of the company’s capital increase).
the trend. The GCC institutions
turned net buyers to the tune of
QR13.44mn against net sellers
of QR30.5mn the previous trading day.
Non-Qatari retail investors
were also net buyers to the extent
of QR7.4mn compared with net
sellers of QR18.17mn last Thursday.
Non-Qatari institutions were
marginally net buyers to the tune
of QR0.79mn against net sellers
of QR17.02mn on March 26. The
GCC individual investors’ net
buying fell to QR17.79mn compared to QR29.14mn the previous
trading day.
Domestic institutions’ net
buying sunk to QR0.44mn against
QR93.68mn last Thursday.
Local retail investors’ net
proﬁt
booking
weakened
to QR39.9mn compared to
QR57.12mn on March 26. Total trade volume fell 38% to
7.42mn shares, value by 42% to
QR317.7mn and transactions by
53% to 3,571.
The insurance sector’s trade
volume plummeted 71% to
0.05mn stocks, value by 73% to
QR3.19mn and deals by 55% to 42.
The real estate sector saw its
trade volume plunge 65% to
1.33mn equities, value by 76% to
QR22.7mn and transactions by
67% to 491.
The market witnessed 59%
shrinkage in the industrials sector’s trade volume to 0.8mn shares,
62% in value to QR50.81mn and
53% in deals to 765.
The telecom sector’s trade
volume tanked 56% to 0.88mn
stocks, value by 73% to
QR15.37mn and transactions by
86% to 238.
The consumer goods sector
witnessed 48% fall in trade volume to 0.33mn equities, while
value rose 23% to QR36.08mn.
Deals were down 13% to 535.
The transport sector saw its
trade volume decline 47% to
0.24mn shares, value by 52% to
QR9.6mn and transactions by
54% to 91. However, the banks
and ﬁnancial services sector reported 26% expansion in trade
volume to 3.78mn stocks; even
as value fell 11% to QR179.95mn
and deals by 27% to 1,409.
In the debt market, there was
no trading of treasury bills and
government bonds.
Thomson Reuters releases ’14
Mena financial crime report
Thomson Reuters has released
the findings of a financial crime
report covering the Middle East
and North Africa (Mena) region
in 2014. The report, conducted
in collaboration with Deloitte, is
the first of its kind in the Mena
region. According to the survey,
compliance departments are
juggling competing priorities.
Findings show that reputation
is still critical for compliance
divisions and confirm that
compliance officers are
investing in technology rather
than skills to help them meet
their compliance challenge.
Furthermore, practitioners
cited the low levels of
confidence in existing
compliance programs across
Mena markets and highlighted
the increasing demands on
budget and resources in the
compliance field.
Around 85% of respondents
have seen anti-crime and
compliance activities increase
in the last two years, while
less than 6% of respondents
believe that their compliance
policy will stay the same over
the short term. More than
75% of participants surveyed
expect that compliancerelated costs will continue to
increase in the short term with
technology (26%) and process
improvement (22%) standing
out as key tools organisations
are investing in to manage
compliance risks.
Almost half of those surveyed
highlighted a lack of
confidence in the effectiveness
of their existing financial crime
programs when compared
with both domestic and
international regulatory
requirements. Similarly, 57%
of respondents questioned
the ability of their compliance
policy to prevent illicit activity.
Nadim Najjar, managing director,
(Mena), Thomson Reuters, said:
“It is increasingly evident that
compliance needs to become
central to operations, not
merely a back office function,
and continuing communication
between the compliance
function and both internal and
external stakeholders is crucial
in this respect.” He added:
“While the future of financial
crime management appears
to be in the use of technology,
businesses in the Mena region
need to ensure they are not
overly reliant on it. The low levels
of confidence are noteworthy
particularly given the majority of
the respondents are responsible
for setting and guiding corporate
compliance policy.
“In 2015, compliance officers
will have to think about how
to do more for less. More will
be expected of them, yet it will
become increasingly difficult
to stay abreast of the changing
demands of the regulatory
environment. We look forward
to tracking the progress of
financial crime management by
organisations across the Mena
region in next year’s survey,”
Najjar noted.
Humphry Hatton, Deloitte
Corporate Finance CEO, said:
“This year is perhaps of greater
importance than ever given
the international and regional
regulatory developments
that increasingly dominate
the headlines of the business
world. Since last year, we have
seen an increased regulatory
focus on financial crime issues,
and in areas such as sanctions,
record fines on institutions as
well as both the emergence of
new sanctions regimes and the
prospect of the lifting of existing
ones.” Hala Bou Alwan, head
(Advisory and Education
Services) at Thomson Reuters,
said: “MENA companies are
not investing in a sustainable
manner. It’s one thing to have
a cutting edge technology and
the most up-to-date processes
that mimic corporate policies
in more developed economies,
but if you do not have the skills
that can properly manage those
processes and confidently
make critical decisions, you will
undoubtedly lack confidence in
your compliance policy.”
Qatar sees double-digit decline
y-o-y in trade surplus in Feb
By Santhosh V Perumal
Business Reporter
Q
atar has witnessed double-digit decline year-on-year (y-o-y)
in trade surplus in February
2015 as exports, especially crude and
natural gas, fell considerably; while
imports were on the rise, according to
official ﬁgures.
The precipitous fall in the country’s trade surplus is rather reﬂective
of the considerable drop in the energy
prices, which is at least 40% lower
than the 2014 levels, owing to lower
demand and increase in the supply
from the US and other non-Opec producers.
The trade surplus of energy-major
Qatar, whose non-hydrocarbon segments is ﬁring from all cylinders as
part of diversiﬁcation to keep the
economy grow well above the peers,
plummeted 47.5% y-o-y to QR18.21bn
in February on lower exports of crude,
non-crude and natural gas, the Ministry of Development Planning and Statistics (MDPS) said.
However, merchandise trade surplus
was up mere 0.3% compared to that in
January 2015 as there was substantial
jump in the exports of crude and noncrude.
The country’s total exports (valued
free-on-board) plunged 36% y-o-y to
QR27.5bn as shipments to top destinations were on the decline. The exports
fell 1.3% month-on-month.
The MDPS, in its latest Qatar Eco-
nomic Outlook 2014-16 Update, had
cautioned that a prolonged weakening
of oil prices could pose a key downside
risk to the economic outlook.
Japan continued to be the top destination of Qatar’s exports in February
2015; followed by South Korea, India,
China and Singapore.
The country’s total exports of
domestic products sunk 36.9% to
QR26.87bn in February this year and
were down 0.1% against January this
year.
Qatar’s exports of petroleum gases and other gaseous hydrocarbons
plummeted 41.5% to QR17.62bn, noncrude by 34.6% to QR1.19bn, crude by
31.9% to QR4.4bn and other commodities by 12.5% to QR3.65bn.
Against January 2015 levels, there
was 48.1% expansion in exports of
crude, 31.6% in non-crude and 9.3%
in petroleum gases and other gaseous
hydrocarbons.
Petroleum gases and other gaseous hydrocarbons constituted 65.57%
of total exports of domestic products
in February 2015 compared to 72.26%
a year-ago period; crude petroleum
oils 16.38% (11.04%), non-crude petroleum oils and bituminous minerals
4.43% (3.38%) and other commodities
13.58% (13.31%).
On export destinations, Japan accounted for 28% of total exports in
February, South Korea 16%, India 10%,
China 8% and Singapore 4%.
Qatar’s exports to South Korea
tanked 58.66% to QR4.32bn, India
by 50.75% to QR2.64bn, China by
42.82% to QR2.11bn, Japan by 39.26%
to QR7.69bn and Singapore by 24.69%
to QR1.22bn.
The country’s re-exports had
reported 67.6% growth y-o-y to
QR0.63bn in February 2015.
Total imports (valued at cost insurance and freight) had risen 12.2% to
QR9.28bn in February mainly on faster
growth in shipments from Japan, the
UAE and China. Imports, however, fell
4.3% compared to those in January this
year.
China, the US, the UAE, Japan and
Germany were among the top ﬁve destinations from where Qatar imported
merchandise goods.
China accounted for 12% of Qatar’s
imports in February, the US (11%), the
UAE (9%), Japan (7%) and Germany
(6%).
Qatar’s imports from Japan surged
24.34% to QR0.61bn, the UAE by
24.12% to QR0.81bn, China by 23.6%
to QR1.1bn and the US by 8.98% to
QR1bn; whereas those from Germany
fell 14.26% to QR0.52bn.
Motor cars and vehicles, aircraft and
helicopter spare parts, electrical apparatus and other group commodities
were mainly imported by Qatar in February 2015.
The imports of motor cars and other motor vehicles for transportation
swelled 33.6% y-o-y to QR0.81bn,
electrical apparatus for telephony by
29% to QR0.27bn and other group
commodities by 12.7% to QR7.82bn;
even as those of parts of aircraft and
helicopter fell 25.7% to QR0.39bn.
Hitachi Data Systems Corporation, Consolidated
Gulf Company announce partnership
Hitachi Data Systems Corporation (HDS), a wholly owned
subsidiary of Hitachi, hosted an event with Consolidated
Gulf Company (CGC) Qatar at the Crowne Plaza here
recently.
At the end user focused event, the partnership between
Hitachi Data Systems and Consolidated Gulf Company was
announced.
The event had a key message to teach representatives to
shift to a business-defined IT model to lay a foundation
for the future; attended by over 100 representatives.
The educational itinerary consisted of topics including
“Innovating with information”, “Maximising your IT”,
the focus of data centres and an overview of converged
infrastructures.
Attendees were given the opportunity to hear technology
leaders and analysts share the latest IT and storage
innovations and network.
Hitachi Data Systems teamed up with CGC to teach
representatives how to support the new breed of futureready, IT-accelerated business and to reduce complexities
and costs while delivering performance and ensuring SLAs
are met.
The partnership event also addressed future needs by
sharing tactics in adapting easily to changing business
needs and resources to accelerate IT response.
Tony Reid, chief operating officer, Hitachi Data Systems
EMEA was the main speaker for the event and comments
on the partnership said, “We are delighted to announce
our newfound partnership with CGC; as it will aide our
expansion plans in Qatar and introduce us to the open
market in this country. As one of the first technology
companies in Qatar, they bring numerous years of
experience as an industry leader in this field and future
plans through innovation alongside HDS.”
Gulf Times
Monday, March 30, 2015
3
BUSINESS
Spain urges EU
to clear away
barriers to retail
banking mergers
Bloomberg
Madrid
S
The new agreement follows a court ruling, which has led the ECB to shelve a policy requiring clearing houses that handle euro-denominated securities to be located in the eurozone.
ECB, BoE reach accord
on clearers in the UK
handling euro trades
Reuters
London/Frankfurt
The European Central Bank and the
Bank of England have reached a deal
that strengthens the ﬁnancial backing of British clearing houses in their
handling of euro-denominated securities, ending a long-running legal
battle.
The agreement follows a court ruling, which has led the ECB to shelve a
policy requiring clearing houses that
handle euro-denominated securities
to be located in the eurozone.
Britain had challenged the policy
in the European Union’s secondhighest court, fearing it would damage London’s role as a ﬁnancial centre
and fragment the European Union’s
single market. The court ruled earlier
this month against the ECB.
The ECB was concerned that if a
London-based clearing house ran
into trouble, it would not be eligible
for direct support from the bank and
the euros it could provide.
Clearing houses stand between the
two sides of securities transactions to
ensure they are completed even if one
side goes bust. Their business is set to
grow sharply due to reforms to make
derivatives such as interest rate swaps
more transparent. The ECB and the
BoE announced in a joint statement
on Sunday that they had agreed to
extend a deal under which the ECB
could provide the British central bank
with euros.
The BoE also will provide the ECB
with information on Britain-based
clearing houses with signiﬁcant euro-denominated business. The ECB
and the UK government also agreed
to end all legal action connected to
the lawsuits that Britain had ﬁled in
the matter, the central banks said.
The French central bank had led a
drive to locate clearing houses in the
euro zone, because France is home to
one of the region’s biggest clearing
houses, Clearnet, whose London arm
LCH Clearnet, clears large amounts
of euro-denominated securities.
British ﬁnance minister George
Osborne said Sunday’s deal secures
a principle of non-discrimination of
countries outside the euro zone, including Britain.
“This is vital to our relationship
with the euro zone and is another step
forward in terms of a reformed EU,”
Osborne said.
Nicolas Veron, an EU ﬁnancial
services expert at think-tank Bruegel,
said the agreement does not necessarily resolve the underlying issue of
how to deal with the expected growth
and risks from clearing houses that
straddle borders.
BoE Governor Mark Carney has
cautioned they must not become a
new breed of ﬁnancial institutions
that are “too big to fail”.
“This share of supervisory information might work. Will it work in a
crisis? Nobody knows,” Veron said.
Cross-border clearers such as
LCH Clearnet are also major players
in the US. “The underlying challenge
is even more so on a trans-Atlantic
basis. Will this now become a template between the BoE and the Fed?”
Veron said.
pain, home of the euro area’s largest bank, is pushing the European
Union to remove obstacles to crossborder mergers of retail lenders.
The European Commission should
stop national regulators using discretionary powers to hamper tie-ups that
strengthen the ﬁnancial links between
euro member states, Alvaro Nadal, chief
economic adviser to Prime Minister
Mariano Rajoy, said in an interview this
week.
“One of the problems with monetary
union is the lack of risk sharing across the
system,” Nadal said. “Imagine if half of
Spanish mortgages had been provided by
German banks, the crisis would have been
very different.”
Europe’s retail banking industry should
follow the path of the telecommunications industry which has seen a wave of
consolidation since EU action facilitated
deals, Nadal said. That would make the
currency bloc’s ﬁnancial system more resilient to shocks like the real-estate collapse that forced Spain to seek a bankingsystem bailout in 2012.
Nadal said he wants to see measures
to promote cross-border bank mergers
included in the plans to strengthen the
euro ﬁnancial system being drawn up by
the so-called four presidents — the heads
of the EU, the commission, the European
Central Bank and the ﬁnance ministers’
group.
Spain still has to sell its majority stake
in Bankia SA, a lender with more than
€230bn ($253bn) of assets, which was
bailed out with European funds in 2012.
Bankia has cleaned up its books selling non-performing real estate assets to
Spain’s bad bank and received more than
€22bn of state aid.
While European banking rules are already harmonized in general terms, national regulators still have discretion in
how they apply those rules, said Ricardo
Wehrhahn, a Madrid-based managing
partner at Intral Strategy Execution, a
banking and business consultant.
“Within the margins of the law a regulator can make your life harder,” said Wehrhahn, who has analysed possible targets in Spain for German lenders. “The
French, German and Italian banking
markets are particularly difficult to penetrate.”
Banco Santander SA, the euro region’s largest bank by market value, has
submitted one of seven non-binding
offers for Portugal’s state-owned Novo
Banco.
The European Central Bank took over
supervision of the euro area’s 120 biggest lenders in November, in the biggest
expansion of its remit since the creation
of the euro. Also the Single Resolution
Fund plans to hire 120 staff this year as it’s
readying to lead liquidation and restructuring processes of failed lenders in the
region,
“A lot of effort has been made to restructure the banking system and we are
also seeing improvements in the European debt markets,” Nadal said. “Now
we should be thinking about the need for
more integration in retail banking.”
Espirito Santo probe turns Mariana Mortagua into Portuguese star
Bloomberg
Lisbon
F
our months ago, few in Portugal
had heard of Mariana Mortagua.
The 28-year-old member of
the Left Bloc, Portugal’s equivalent to
Greece’s anti-austerity Syriza party,
has been catapulted into the limelight
with her single-minded pursuit of
those responsible for the country’s biggest corporate collapse in a generation.
Her pithy and direct questioning in a
parliamentary inquiry into the failure
of Banco Espirito Santo and a group
of associated family-controlled businesses has made her something of a local hero.
“She’s managed to express the frustration people feel towards a small elite
that used to run the country’s ﬁnancial
system for decades,” said Antonio Costa Pinto, a professor of political science
at the University of Lisbon. “It has to
do with her style of asking short, tough
questions in a country where people are
usually more subtle.”
In her quest, Mortagua is targeting the country’s rich and powerful
— former Banco Espirito Santo chief
executive officer Ricardo Salgado and
other members of the Espirito Santo
family and executives who ran the
bank, Bank of Portugal Governor Carlos Costa and Henrique Granadeiro, the
former chief executive officer of Portugal Telecom SGPS SA, which failed
to recover almost €900mn ($989mn)
invested in Grupo Espirito Santo debt.
“For the ﬁrst time we are able to confront a group of people who were al-
most untouchable and ask them tough
questions at these hearings,” Mortagua said in an interview on March 12.
“I think people have been shocked by
what they’ve seen.”
Portugal completed a three-year international rescue programme last year,
only to ﬁnd itself bailing out Banco Espirito Santo to the tune of €4.9bn three
months later. Many Espirito Santo
family holding companies that relied
on the bank to borrow money have now
gone bankrupt.
With the questioning of Portuguese
Finance Minister Maria Luis Albuquerque — whose government lent
money for the bailout of what was once
Portugal’s largest listed bank — for the
second time on Wednesday, the inquiry
has entered its 18th week.
Mortagua, who holds a degree in
economics from a university in Lisbon,
has for months been sifting through
the wreckage of Banco Espirito Santo
and a complex web of assets linked to
the prominent Espirito Santo family,
ranging from a hotel chain in Portugal,
a diamond mine in Angola and a farm in
Paraguay.
“I used to stay awake until 3am or
4am trying to put all the pieces together,” said Mortagua, who is often seen
walking around Portugal’s Parliament
building in a dark outﬁt and Converse
All-Star sneakers.
Her homework has paid off. The average daily viewership of Portugal’s
Parliament Channel, which broadcasts
the hearings, rose 45% in the ﬁrst two
months of this year compared to the
same period in 2014, according to market research company Mediamonitor
and GFK. A YouTube video featuring
Mortagua during the inquiry received
more than 200,000 hits. Her Facebook
page won’t allow any new friend requests after reaching the 5,000 limit.
“I’m starting to get worried,” said
Mortagua. The interview with Bloomberg, which took place in Lisbon’s parliament building, was delayed by 30
minutes because she said her agenda
was “overbooked.”
Mortagua has come a long way since
her childhood in Alvito, a town in Portugal’s southern Alentejo region, one of
the poorest areas in Western Europe,
according to Eurostat, the European
Union’s statistics office.
While Mortagua only became a lawmaker for the Left Bloc in 2013, politics
is in her blood. She is the daughter of
Camilo Mortagua, who along with a
handful of other political activists in
1961 forced the pilot of a TAP ﬂight
from Casablanca to Lisbon to ﬂy in circles over the Portuguese capital as they
dropped thousands of leaﬂets calling
for an end to the right-wing dictatorship of Antonio Salazar.
Her twin sister, Joana Mortagua, is
also a member of the Left Bloc party.
While Mortagua has seen her popularity rise since the Espirito Santo inquiry began in November, her Left Bloc
party has failed to mirror gains by other
anti-austerity groups in Europe. The
Left Bloc, which wants Portugal to restructure its debt and end austerity,
had 4.4% backing from voters in a survey published by newspaper Expresso
on March 13.
In Greece, Alexis Tsipras’s Syriza
won general elections in January on a
Mortagua: In limelight.
platform of rejecting more spending
cuts. Spain’s anti-austerity Podemos
party is leading opinion polls before an
election due by the end of the year. Portugal is also scheduled to hold elections
in September or October.
“It’s hard to explain,” Mortagua said.
Portugal, as opposed to Greece, which
was occupied by the Germans, was a
colonizer and so “we don’t have those
antibodies,” she said.
For now, Mortagua says she’s ﬁghting for ordinary people who became
victims of the excesses of the Espirito
Santo group.
On the day of the interview, protesters occupied a branch of Novo Banco
SA in northern Portugal, demanding
repayment of Grupo Espirito Santo
commercial paper sold by branches of
the former Banco Espirito Santo. The
Bank of Portugal in August placed the
rescued lender’s deposits and most of
its assets into the newly-created Novo
Banco, now for sale.
“I get lots of e-mails from people
who lost all their money. Justice has to
be served,” said Mortagua.
Mortagua’s work has managed to
expose some of the things that were
wrong in Portuguese business, said
Pedro Pintassilgo, a fund manager at
F&C Management Ltd.
“She has studied the subject very
well and has shown herself to be a good
representative of Portuguese citizens,”
said Pintassilgo, who manages about
€38mn invested in Portuguese stocks
through F&C in Lisbon. “While I don’t
share her political views, I admire her
professionalism, competence and hard
work.”
When Salgado, once branded the
owner of everything, went before the
parliamentary inquiry on Dec. 9, he
indicated that regulators and the ﬁnancial crisis contributed to the collapse
of Banco Espirito Santo and Grupo Espirito Santo.
Mortagua wasn’t impressed.
“It’s curious that the owner of everything has appeared before us today
as the victim of everything,” she said.
“Mr. Salgado wants to convince us that
his empire crumbled and that the man
in charge of that empire had nothing to
do with it.”
Salgado said in parliament on March
19 that he had always acted in the best
interest of the bank, and while admitting he may have made mistakes said he
was going to ﬁght to defend his honour
and that of his family.
While the inquiry has no legal mandate, what is said during hearings can
be used in court, according to Mortagua. That may help explain why many
former executives at Banco Espirito
Santo and Grupo Espirito Santo have
said they don’t know or can’t recall certain things, she said.
Mortagua, who relies on an assistant
to research the inner workings of Banco Espirito Santo and Grupo Espirito
Santo, says it’s rational for some people
who appear in the hearings to deny any
wrongdoing or claim they have forgotten certain things.
“They are protecting themselves,”
she said. “But it’s very hard not to feel
a little impatient, revolted or even outraged because we share the same feelings as those people watching us at
home.”
4
Gulf Times
Monday, March 30, 2015
BUSINESS
Heinz deal for Kraft expands food larder for Buffett, 3G
Kraft brands have opportunity
to expand overseas; Kraft
shareholders to hold 49% of Kraft
Heinz Co; Buffett’s Berkshire
Hathaway to own over 320mn
shares; deal unlikely to face
regulatory hurdles
Reuters
New York
K
etchup maker H.J. Heinz Co,
backed by Warren Buffett’s
Berkshire Hathaway Inc and
Brazilian private equity ﬁrm 3G Capital,
will combine with Kraft Foods Group
Inc in a $46bn deal to create the thirdlargest North American food company,
executives said.
The deal gives Buffett more leading
US food brands, as well as that of 3G
founder Jorge Paulo Lemann, Brazil’s
richest man. The two teamed up to buy
control of Heinz in 2013 and collaborated on the 2014 merger of fast-food
chain Burger King and Tim Hortons
Inc, which runs coffee and doughnut
shops.
Food industry experts see Kraft beneﬁting from Heinz’s international presence, which generates more than 60%
of its sales. Kraft brands are in 98% of
North American households, the companies said, but would have a greater
opportunity to expand overseas.
The combined company, which will
be publicly traded under the name
Kraft Heinz Co, expects to save about
$1.5bn in annual costs by the end of
2017. 3G has a reputation for introducing aggressive cost cuts and improving
efficiencies at other companies it has
invested in, including Heinz and Anheuser-Busch InBev.
“Mature businesses look for cost
cutting. 3G takes cost cutting to a different level,” said Bob Goldin, executive
vice president at food industry consultant Technomic. Goldin noted that
neither Kraft nor Heinz are major players in the sector’s growth segments,
from organic to fresh foods.
The deal calls for the exchange of
each Kraft share for one share in the
combined Kraft Heinz Co, plus a special cash dividend of $16.50 per share
to existing Kraft shareholders. The
$10bn behind the special dividend will
be funded by an equity investment by
Berkshire Hathaway and 3G.
Heinz shareholders will own 51%
of the combined company and Kraft
shareholders the rest. The transaction
is worth about $46bn for Kraft shareholders, based on Kraft’s market capitalisation of $36bn on Tuesday before
news of the deal emerged plus the special dividend.
Packaged-food makers from Kraft to
General Mills and Kellogg are battling
sluggish demand as consumers shift to
brands that are perceived as healthier,
including foods that are organic or less
processed.
Kraft’s efforts to revamp its own
products, such as combining its higher-protein snacks like meat and nuts
into one container called the P3 pack,
have not shifted the tide enough.
In December, Kraft named John Cahill as chief executive, who acknowledged the company has not changed
enough in the face of shifting consumer
tastes. Cahill overhauled his leadership
team last month, announcing the exit
of three senior executives. Cahill said
on a call with analysts that 3G Managing Director Alex Behring approached
him at the end of January about a possible deal. The discussions picked up in
the second half of February.
While Kraft had been developing its
own plan for change, the board saw the
3G opportunity as more compelling,
said Cahill, who will be vice chairman
of the combined company. Behring will
serve as chairman of Kraft Heinz Co and
Bernardo Hees, CEO of Heinz, will become CEO of the combined company.
Kraft Heinz Co will retain headquarters both in the Chicago area and in
Pittsburgh. It will have combined revenue of about $28bn, about half that of
market leader PepsiCo in 2014.
Berkshire Hathaway will own more
than 320mn of the approximately
1.22bn Kraft Heinz shares outstanding,
Buffett told CNBC, adding “We will be
in the stock forever.”
“Heinz goes back to 1859,” he said. “I
think those tastes are pretty enduring.
There will be plenty of people that want
to eat other things, but there are many
people who want to eat the products
that Kraft/Heinz turnout” The deal is
Saipem close to Nigeria JV
deal after China success
Reuters
Milan
Italy’s Saipem is close to
signing a joint venture
with a big local partner
in Nigeria just days after
clinching a similar deal in
China with PetroChina as
the oil contractor seeks
access to new markets.
Saipem, 43% owned by
Italian oil major Eni, has
seen some €10bn ($11bn)
wiped off its market value
over the past two years
after two profit warnings,
a corruption investigation
in Algeria and a worsening
outlook.
“The group is finalising the
creation of a joint venture
with a very important
Nigerian partner to help it
develop its business in the
country,” a source close to
the matter said.
Tumbling oil prices
and rising costs have
prompted oil majors
worldwide to cut
spending, prompting
contract cancellations that
have hurt contractors.
“The company is
seeking to leverage
its E&C (Engineering
& Construction)
competences and its
vessel fleet to enter into
new markets or grow
its presence in existing
markets with leading local
operators,” the source
said.
Saipem, which has been
fined in a case relating
to alleged corruption in
Nigeria, already has a
presence in the country,
including the subsea
development of the Egina
Field with France’s Total
The source said the
Nigeria deal follows hard
on the heels of a landmark
joint venture signed with
the PetroChina group last
week.
The deal will create a new
company well placed to
build a strong position
in the growing Chinese
oil service sector, with
a specific focus on turnkey projects likes LNG
terminals, pipelines, and
storage units.
“In a few months the joint
venture will have the
license to operate,” the
source said.
People’s Bank of China
owns around 2% of
Saipem.
Vivendi trades barbs
with activist investor
seeking bigger payout
Reuters
Paris
V
ivendi has traded
blows with activist
investor PSAM over
the fund’s bid for a larger
payout from the French
media group, with Vivendi
warning the fund could be
in breach of the law and the
fund accusing it of attempting to intimidate it.
PSAM, or P Schoenfeld
Asset Management, which
says it owns 0.8% of Vivendi, has called on other
minority shareholders to
join its campaign for a €9bn
($9.8bn) payout, while also
urging the company to consider spinning off its Universal Music Group (UMG)
unit.
But Vivendi says if it joins
forces with others, PSAM
could be in breach of French
law, which it says bans foreign ownership of more
than 20%, a limit which if
reached would put it at risk
of losing its licence for Canal+ television.
A spokesman for Vivendi
said on Saturday the company would decide at the
beginning of next week on
whether to take any further action after looking at
PSAM’s response in detail.
“Insofar as it would appear that your direct or
indirect share ownership,
together with that of third
parties with whom you
might join forces, could
surpass the 20% threshold, this could be seriously
prejudicial to the company,”
Vivendi said in a letter on
Friday.
“We would be forced to
promptly bring legal action
against you,” it added, saying a ﬁrst estimate showed
it could seek damages of between €5bn and €9bn.
In response, PSAM said:
“Now, as a result of our decision to propose two resolutions to shareholders, we
have received a letter whose
purpose seems to be to intimidate us. We consider
this behaviour totally unacceptable.”
Vivendi has said it plans
to return €5.7bn to shareholders by 2017, while keeping back cash to invest in
growth and acquisitions.
But PSAM’s resolutions
would require Vivendi to
make a larger payout from
a cash pile amassed via disposals.
Vivendi conﬁrmed it had
received the proposed resolutions and recommended
shareholders reject them at
its April 17 meeting.
PSAM also said Vivendi should publish details
of foreign ownership and
asked if it had sent the same
letter to other shareholders. The Vivendi spokesman
said it had sent its letter to
all US shareholders and details of its main shareholders was public.
He said it had sent the
letter to PSAM to point out
it was “in danger of bringing around some sort of
dangerous coalition ... The
management’s board job is
to make sure everybody understands the law.”
unlikely to face regulatory hurdles as
there is little overlap in products, antitrust experts said. Areas that could
draw regulatory scrutiny include steak
sauces — Kraft makes A1 and Heinz
makes Lea & Perrins.
“Whatever divestitures there are will
be easy, and they will be kind of minor,”
said Fiona Scott Morton, who teaches economics at the Yale University
School of Management.
Industry watchers had speculated
for months that 3G would buy another
food company after the Heinz acquisition. Kraft’s appeal, according to some,
is that its brands occupy shelf space
in the centre of many stores, just like
Heinz. That could lead to cost savings
in merchandising and sales.
Kraft is 3G Capital’s ﬁfth major deal
in the food and beverage industry since
2008, when it engineered the takeover
of Anheuser-Busch by brewer InBev.
3G Capital also controls Restaurant
Brands International Inc, formed when
Burger King business bought Canada’s
Tim Hortons. 3G Capital and Berkshire
Hathaway acquired Heinz for $23.2bn
in 2013. Kraft split into two companies
Buffett: We will be in the stock forever.
in 2012, with Kraft Foods focusing on
grocery products in North America and
Mondelez International Inc on snack
products. Lazard was Heinz’s ﬁnancial adviser, while Cravath, Swaine &
Moore and Kirkland and Ellis were its
legal advisers.
Centerview Partners LLC was
Kraft’s ﬁnancial adviser and Sullivan &
Cromwell its legal adviser.
Gulf Times
Monday, March 30, 2015
5
BUSINESS
PBoC chief warns on
growth slowdown
Bloomberg
Beijing
C
hina’s central bank chief said that
the nation’s growth rate has tumbled “a bit” too much and that
policy makers have scope to respond,
underscoring forecasts for further monetary easing in the world’s second-largest
economy.
“China’s inﬂation is also declining, so
we need to be vigilant to see if the disinﬂation trend will continue, and if deﬂation will happen or not,” People’s Bank of
China (PBoC) Governor Zhou Xiaochuan,
67, said in remarks at the Boao Forum for
Asia, an annual conference on the southern Chinese island of Hainan. “China can
have room to act,” both with interest rates
and “quantitative” measures, he said.
Zhou’s remarks followed fresh signs
that China slowed further in the ﬁrst
quarter, after recording its weakest expansion since 1990 last year. A gauge of
manufacturing slid to an 11-month low in
March, a private report showed last week.
Economists surveyed by Bloomberg News
expect the PBoC will lower both benchmark lending rates and banks’ required
reserve ratios, adding to cuts made in recent months.
China’s leadership is trying to wean
the economy off debt- fuelled property
investment and old-line polluting industries, shifting toward services and domestic-consumption led growth. While
President Xi Jinping has repeatedly said
his nation is comfortable with a “new
normal” of less-rapid expansion, officials
are also wary of the slowdown weakening
too much.
Premier Li Keqiang earlier this month
set a growth target of about 7% for this
year, while pledging action if it slows toward the lower limit of the range and cuts
into jobs and income. Zhou said at Boao
yesterday that the economy had slowed
Zhou: Ready to initiate ‘quantitative’ measures.
“a bit too sharply,” while adding that patience was needed to see the effect of steps
already taken.
Even with a more moderate pace than in
the past, Xi told Boao attendees Saturday
that his nation “will continue to provide
countries including Asian nations more
markets, growth, investment and cooperation opportunities.”
China is building its inﬂuence even
amid the slowdown, championing new
lending institutions, including the Asian
Infrastructure Investment Bank, which
saw additional nations signing up in recent days. US allies including the UK,
Australia and South Korea are among the
supporters of the AIIB, after they set aside
American opposition.
Zhou at Boao yesterday highlighted
how China is working on reform of its currency, the yuan, which has been subject
to limits on capital ﬂows and restricted
movements against counterparts. China
will revamp foreign-exchange regulation
“relatively radically” this year, the PBoC
chief said. Earlier this month, he pressed
the head of the International Monetary
Fund to consider the yuan for inclusion as
an official reserve currency - by adding it
to the fund’s special drawing rights unit.
In addressing the risk of deﬂation,
Zhou’s concerns reﬂect those of many
counterparts around the world. Japan saw
its benchmark gauge of inﬂation stagnate
in February, according to a report released
on Friday. European monetary policy
makers have stepped up easing to combat the danger of falling consumer prices,
which can inﬂate the real burden of loans.
“Further policy easing is on the way,
there’s no doubt about that,” said Guan
Qingyou, chief macro-economic researcher with Minsheng Securities Co in
Beijing. “The central bank seems to realize that it’s better to act sooner than later
given consideration to China’s deepening
slowdown and deﬂationary pressure.”
The major economy with perhaps the
least concern on that score is the US,
which has enjoyed a strengthening job
market in recent months. As a consequence, the Federal Reserve has been preparing the ground for its ﬁrst interest-rate
increase in years, a shift that has seen the
dollar climb since the middle of last year.
Zhou told an audience that included
central bankers from Japan and Germany
that by many nations easing policy, the
dollar could become too high. Officials
will need to be cautious about capital
ﬂows, he said.
The governor said that patience is
needed to observe the impact of monetary
measures. The PBoC announced its ﬁrst
interest-rate cut in two years in November and followed with another reduction
February 28. It also lowered banks’ reserve
ratio requirements last month.
China’s disinﬂation eased in February
after the central bank stepped up easing
and the Lunar New Year holiday pushed
up food and transport costs. The consumer-price index rose 1.4% from a year earlier, compared with January’s 0.8%, data
from the statistics bureau show.
The government set a 2015 consumer
inﬂation target of 3% in its annual work
report earlier this month.
The room the country has to move on
monetary policy “is not necessarily for
quantitative easing,” Zhou said. There
is scope “on both the price side and the
quantitative side,” he said.
Chen Yulu, an academic member with
the central bank’s monetary policy committee, an advisory body, was quoted by
Chinese journal Caixin as saying yesterday that the “non- conventional” policy
in China means “continuous policy relaxation.”
“In the monetary policy committee, the
discussion is always about looking for new
structural tools to use, including targeted
easing,” Chen was quoted as saying.
Xi pledges to protect
interests of foreign
companies in China
Reuters
Beijing
C
hina’s President Xi Jinping said he hoped its annual trade with the countries involved in Beijing’s plan to
create a modern Silk Road would
surpass $2.5tn in a decade.
Xi also pledged to protect the
interests of foreign companies
in China amid investors’ rising
concerns that Beijing is enacting policies that could hurt their
businesses.
Under the so-called “One
Belt, One Road” initiative, China aims to create a modern Silk
Road Economic Belt and a 21st
Century Maritime Silk Road to
boost trade and extend its global
inﬂuence. Commerce Minister
Gao Hucheng said previously
that more than 50 countries had
shown interest in the initiative.
Projects under the plan include a network of railways,
highways, oil and gas pipelines,
power grids, Internet networks,
maritime and other infrastructure links across Central, West
and South Asia to as far as
Greece, Russia and Oman, increasing China’s connections to
Europe and Africa.
Speaking at the sidelines of a
high-level event in the southern city of Boao on Sunday, Xi
said the scheme would stimulate
trade and investment between
China and countries along the
route, according to a statement
on the foreign ministry’s website.
“We hope that the annual
trade volume between China and
these countries surpasses $2.5tn
in a decade or so,” Xi told 40
company representatives from
China and overseas.
By way of comparison, China’s
trade with the European Union
Xi: Allaying fears of foreign
businesses.
in 2013 amounted to €428.1bn
($466.1bn). Chinese industries
expected to beneﬁt from the plan
include agriculture and mining
as the route encourages exploration for minerals.
In addition to trade efforts,
China is seeking to boost its
global inﬂuence by signing up
countries to its Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.
Xi, meanwhile, sought to address concerns from foreign
businesses, which have complained of an increasingly tough
business climate in the world’s
second-largest economy.
“China will be more open.
China’s policies that encourage the use of foreign investment will not change, and
the protection of legitimate
rights and interests of foreigninvested businesses will not
change,” Xi said.
The US is concerned about
China’s restrictions on the use
of foreign information technology equipment by the banking
sector, according to a ﬁling published by the World Trade Organization on Thursday.
New cyber-security regulations would force technology vendors to Chinese banks to
hand over secret source code and
adopt Chinese encryption algorithms.
6
Gulf Times
Monday, March 30, 2015
BUSINESS
SAUDI ARABIA
Company Name
QATAR
Company Name
Zad Holding Co
Widam Food Co
Vodafone Qatar
United Development Co
Salam International Investme
Qatar & Oman Investment Co
Qatar Navigation
Qatar National Cement Co
Qatar National Bank
Qatar Islamic Insurance
Qatar Industrial Manufactur
Qatar International Islamic
Qatari Investors Group
Qatar Islamic Bank
Qatar Gas Transport(Nakilat)
Qatar General Insurance & Re
Qatar German Co For Medical
Qatar Fuel Co
Qatar Electricity & Water Co
Qatar Cinema & Film Distrib
Qatar Insurance Co
Ooredoo Qsc
National Leasing
Mazaya Qatar Real Estate Dev
Mesaieed Petrochemical Holdi
Al Meera Consumer Goods Co
Medicare Group
Mannai Corporation Qsc
Masraf Al Rayan
Al Khalij Commercial Bank
Industries Qatar
Islamic Holding Group
Gulf Warehousing Company
Gulf International Services
Ezdan Holding Group
Doha Insurance Co
Doha Bank Qsc
Dlala Holding
Commercial Bank Of Qatar Qsc
Barwa Real Estate Co
Al Khaleej Takaful Group
Aamal Co
Lt Price
96.00
58.50
17.39
20.97
13.00
14.16
98.50
120.00
187.00
77.30
45.00
77.80
38.10
98.10
22.30
57.00
10.54
176.20
187.50
49.00
78.50
103.00
20.90
17.75
26.05
216.50
142.50
104.40
46.70
20.30
132.60
116.90
56.00
89.50
15.38
26.90
49.80
36.50
56.60
45.40
43.00
14.82
% Chg
2.89
4.46
0.29
-0.71
1.96
2.91
-1.20
2.74
-0.05
0.39
0.00
1.57
-0.78
-1.41
0.45
3.26
3.84
-1.29
0.81
0.00
0.77
0.00
0.97
1.60
1.17
0.28
0.00
0.97
1.85
-2.40
0.30
0.78
-3.45
2.64
3.57
0.94
0.30
3.55
-0.35
0.00
-0.23
-1.07
Volume
23,795
22,794
877,643
343,236
49,854
114,530
54,525
593
227,362
733
21,929
201,653
22,555
103,406
185,645
180
69,761
92,461
13,229
23,360
1,379,901
199,725
245,202
61,147
11,263
9,948
984,919
183,324
86,683
17,915
314
288,877
786,384
10,718
152,471
64,594
249,577
23,507
108,038
SAUDI ARABIA
Company Name
Saudi Hollandi Bank
Al-Ahsa Development Co.
Al-Baha Development & Invest
Ace Arabia Cooperative Insur
Allied Cooperative Insurance
Arriyadh Development Company
Fitaihi Holding Group
Arabia Insurance Cooperative
Alabdullatif Industrial Inv
Al-Ahlia Cooperative Insuran
Al Alamiya Cooperative Insur
Dar Al Arkan Real Estate Dev
Al Babtain Power & Telecommu
Bank Albilad
Alujain Corporation (Alco)
Aldrees Petroleum And Transp
Fawaz Abdulaziz Alhokair & C
Alinma Bank
Alinma Tokio Marine
Al Khaleej Training And Educ
Abdullah A.M. Al-Khodari Son
Allianz Saudi Fransi Coopera
Almarai Co
Saudi Integrated Telecom Co
Alsorayai Group
Al Tayyar Travel Group
Amana Cooperative Insurance
Anaam International Holding
Abdullah Al Othaim Markets
Arabian Pipes Co
Advanced Petrochemicals Co
Al Rajhi Co For Co-Operative
Arabian Cement
Arab National Bank
Ash-Sharqiyah Development Co
United Wire Factories Compan
Astra Industrial Group
Alahli Takaful Co
Aseer Trading Tourism & Manu
Axa Cooperative Insurance
Basic Chemical Industries
Bishah Agriculture
Bank Al-Jazira
Banque Saudi Fransi
United International Transpo
Bupa Arabia For Cooperative
Buruj Cooperative Insurance
Saudi Airlines Catering Co
Methanol Chemicals Co
City Cement Co
Eastern Province Cement Co
Etihad Atheeb Telecommunicat
Etihad Etisalat Co
Emaar Economic City
Saudi Enaya Cooperative Insu
United Electronics Co
Falcom Saudi Equity Etf
Filing & Packing Materials M
Wafrah For Industry And Deve
Falcom Petrochemical Etf
Gulf General Cooperative Ins
Jazan Development Co
Gulf Union Cooperative Insur
Halwani Bros Co
Hail Cement
Herfy Food Services Co
Al Jouf Agriculture Developm
Jarir Marketing Co
Jabal Omar Development Co
Al Jouf Cement
Saudi Kayan Petrochemical Co
Knowledge Economic City
Kingdom Holding Co
Saudi Arabian Mining Co
Malath Cooperative & Reinsur
Makkah Construction & Devepl
Mediterranean & Gulf Insuran
Middle East Specialized Cabl
Mohammad Al Mojil Group Co
Mouwasat Medical Services Co
The National Agriculture Dev
Najran Cement Co
Nama Chemicals Co
National Gypsum
National Gas & Industrializa
National Industrialization C
Maadaniyah
National Shipping Co Of/The
National Petrochemical Co
Rabigh Refining And Petroche
Al Qassim Agricultural Co
Qassim Cement/The
Red Sea Housing Services Co
Saudi Research And Marketing
Riyad Bank
Al Rajhi Bank
Saudi Arabian Amiantit Co
Lt Price
43.00
15.27
13.50
72.10
27.51
21.66
24.13
17.21
39.07
14.07
61.35
8.87
41.63
48.20
20.96
62.71
101.66
22.92
56.50
63.00
30.33
55.65
88.66
24.30
19.53
104.02
12.45
29.03
106.95
20.08
43.52
27.14
75.40
34.84
76.05
34.03
33.12
66.67
27.41
19.42
37.10
69.75
29.10
34.64
71.70
187.42
48.30
172.50
14.58
22.60
55.55
6.65
39.03
13.82
29.37
95.69
31.50
49.14
36.69
26.20
30.87
14.67
17.80
80.60
23.58
111.95
42.97
218.01
79.93
14.64
11.24
24.43
21.10
39.99
30.90
105.47
58.10
14.98
12.55
135.15
36.84
26.92
11.31
28.30
31.86
23.79
33.04
40.84
22.98
22.31
14.52
92.00
41.66
16.92
17.09
59.58
12.85
% Chg
4.88
4.23
0.00
2.53
1.51
3.04
2.86
4.30
3.33
5.24
4.14
2.90
0.68
1.82
3.56
3.52
-0.33
1.46
9.09
2.41
1.95
1.44
0.86
0.00
5.68
1.34
9.98
3.13
0.90
0.30
0.05
5.69
0.86
0.20
3.33
3.69
2.63
8.80
4.38
4.24
3.00
0.00
2.46
0.41
1.19
1.69
6.48
2.34
9.54
1.62
1.76
6.23
1.56
1.62
5.46
1.29
2.94
3.30
3.41
0.00
4.54
3.75
3.31
2.35
2.66
1.73
1.87
3.54
5.67
3.17
2.55
3.60
0.52
1.55
5.35
6.76
3.55
2.74
0.00
2.26
1.94
1.97
3.48
0.18
1.08
3.71
2.93
1.97
2.04
2.11
3.79
0.62
1.58
3.11
0.18
1.31
4.81
Volume
354,060
2,328,201
300,244
1,399,860
2,482,046
158,392
426,609
103,738
1,100,813
263,546
45,265,750
215,533
1,338,576
633,784
625,566
290,897
29,386,456
532,992
241,355
808,425
1,365,816
230,965
603,348
715,187
479,351
127,991
97,549
1,054,724
744,223
449,534
651,720
17,068
286,747
320,126
683,477
591,901
666,273
1,080,774
327,738
1,916,896
158,264
87,387
139,721
386,491
57,326
3,982,483
796,767
173,104
5,856,281
9,898,362
15,830,919
1,158,552
33,392
145,839
441,361
443,812
100
885,539
575,538
1,959,038
20,385
216,429
20,814
151,368
58,530
3,329,541
2,365,852
12,600,518
8,955,399
384,739
11,071,422
3,096,052
329,742
1,147,886
4,195,327
20,600
444,658
677,481
1,716,343
580,132
107,983
2,284,091
677,813
1,615,040
241,952
2,278,795
1,811,106
34,548
673,162
195,891
1,801,948
2,632,166
2,667,766
Saudi British Bank
Sabb Takaful
Saudi Basic Industries Corp
Saudi Cement
Sasco
Saudia Dairy & Foodstuff Co
Saudi Arabian Fertilizer Co
Al Sagr Co-Operative Insuran
Saudi Advanced Industries
Saudi Arabian Coop Ins Co
Salama Cooperative Insurance
Samba Financial Group
Sanad Cooperative Insurance
Saudi Public Transport Co
Saudi Arabia Refineries Co
Hsbc Amanah Saudi 20 Etf
Saudi Re For Cooperative Rei
Savola
Saudi Cable Co
Saudi Chemical Company
Saudi Ceramic Co
Saudi Electricity Co
Saudi Fisheries
Al-Hassan G.I. Shaker Co
Dur Hospitality Co
Arabian Shield Cooperative
Saudi Investment Bank/The
Saudi Industrial Development
Saudi Industrial Export Co
KUWAIT
Lt Price
33.96
34.83
83.58
91.24
29.45
126.39
151.05
31.11
21.73
49.68
25.79
26.95
15.23
29.12
58.07
30.00
11.39
72.20
10.10
70.91
108.56
17.18
27.88
72.83
33.94
38.00
25.17
19.35
51.92
% Chg
1.98
3.75
0.49
0.61
4.62
3.60
0.21
4.85
4.37
7.46
4.03
2.47
0.00
4.15
2.63
1.01
0.44
1.22
0.00
1.74
1.77
1.42
3.57
4.28
2.85
2.93
1.29
1.36
2.37
Volume
427,575
558,937
3,871,845
62,432
482,805
8,830
65,896
771,290
857,260
799,123
429,505
2,494,069
5,774,274
143,531
6,542
2,564,889
613,459
215,133
158,791
2,224,400
540,154
138,041
190,553
573,722
206,491
977,552
469,355
KUWAIT
Company Name
Securities Group Co
Viva Kuwait Telecom Co
Sultan Center Food Products
Kuwait Foundry Co Sak
Kuwait Financial Centre Sak
Ajial Real Estate Entmt
Gulf Glass Manuf Co -Kscc
Kuwait Finance & Investment
National Industries Co Ksc
Kuwait Real Estate Holding C
Securities House/The
Boubyan Petrochemicals Co
Al Ahli Bank Of Kuwait
Ahli United Bank (Almutahed)
National Bank Of Kuwait
Commercial Bank Of Kuwait
Kuwait International Bank
Gulf Bank
Al-Massaleh Real Estate Co
Al Arabiya Real Estate Co
Kuwait Remal Real Estate Co
Alkout Industrial Projects C
A’ayan Real Estate Co
Investors Holding Group Co.K
Markaz Real Estate Fund
Al-Mazaya Holding Co
Al-Madar Finance & Invt Co
Gulf Petroleum Investment
Mabanee Co Sakc
City Group
Inovest Co Bsc
Kuwait Gypsum Manufacturing
Al-Deera Holding Co
Alshamel International Hold
Mena Real Estate Co
National Slaughter House
Amar Finance & Leasing Co
United Projects Group Kscc
National Consumer Holding Co
Amwal International Investme
Jeeran Holdings
Equipment Holding Co K.S.C.C
Nafais Holding
Safwan Trading & Contracting
Arkan Al Kuwait Real Estate
Gulf Finance House Ec
Energy House Holding Co Kscc
Kuwait Slaughter House Co
Kuwait Co For Process Plant
Al Maidan Dental Clinic Co K
National Ranges Company
Kuwait Pipes Indus & Oil Ser
Al-Themar Real International
Al Ahleia Insurance Co Sak
Wethaq Takaful Insurance Co
Salbookh Trading Co K.S.C.C
Aqar Real Estate Investments
Hayat Communications
Kuwait Packing Materials Mfg
Soor Fuel Marketing Co Ksc
Alargan International Real
Burgan Co For Well Drilling
Kuwait Resorts Co Kscc
Oula Fuel Marketing Co
Palms Agro Production Co
Ikarus Petroleum Industries
Mubarrad Transport Co
Al Mowasat Health Care Co
Shuaiba Industrial Co
Kuwait Invest Co Holding
Hits Telecom Holding
First Takaful Insurance Co
Kuwaiti Syrian Holding Co
National Cleaning Company
Eyas For High & Technical Ed
United Real Estate Company
Agility
Kuwait & Middle East Fin Inv
Fujairah Cement Industries
Livestock Transport & Tradng
International Resorts Co
National Industries Grp Hold
Marine Services Co
Warba Insurance Co
Kuwait United Poultry Co
First Dubai Real Estate Deve
Al Arabi Group Holding Co
Kuwait Hotels Co
Mobile Telecommunications Co
Al Safat Real Estate Co
Tamdeen Real Estate Co Ksc
Al Mudon Intl Real Estate Co
Kuwait Cement Co Ksc
Sharjah Cement & Indus Devel
Kuwait Portland Cement Co
Educational Holding Group
Bahrain Kuwait Insurance
Kuwait China Investment Co
Kuwait Investment Co
Burgan Bank
Kuwait Projects Co Holdings
Al Madina For Finance And In
Kuwait Insurance Co
Al Masaken Intl Real Estate
Intl Financial Advisors
First Investment Co Kscc
Al Mal Investment Company
Bayan Investment Co Kscc
Egypt Kuwait Holding Co Sae
Coast Investment Development
Privatization Holding Compan
Kuwait Medical Services Co
Injazzat Real State Company
Kuwait Cable Vision Sak
Sanam Real Estate Co Kscc
Ithmaar Bank Bsc
Aviation Lease And Finance C
Arzan Financial Group For Fi
Ajwan Gulf Real Estate Co
Manafae Investment Co
Kuwait Business Town Real Es
Future Kid Entertainment And
Specialities Group Holding C
Abyaar Real Eastate Developm
Dar Al Thuraya Real Estate C
Lt Price
112.00
840.00
93.00
280.00
114.00
204.00
550.00
57.00
218.00
26.50
67.00
580.00
370.00
640.00
830.00
610.00
246.00
280.00
78.00
41.50
58.00
0.00
98.00
28.50
1.54
114.00
19.00
78.00
990.00
445.00
65.00
150.00
9.00
0.00
30.50
152.00
50.00
740.00
128.00
34.00
50.00
87.00
87.00
440.00
116.00
17.00
87.00
230.00
260.00
0.00
28.50
0.00
90.00
480.00
48.50
124.00
80.00
66.00
405.00
134.00
166.00
152.00
99.00
136.00
106.00
140.00
89.00
0.00
285.00
0.00
29.00
0.00
28.50
61.00
270.00
98.00
790.00
42.50
71.00
110.00
35.00
182.00
112.00
116.00
200.00
66.00
140.00
0.00
475.00
22.00
465.00
56.00
380.00
93.00
1,400.00
170.00
0.00
58.00
132.00
460.00
640.00
34.50
275.00
70.00
35.00
85.00
31.00
54.00
198.00
53.00
61.00
80.00
71.00
26.50
56.00
43.00
220.00
49.50
33.00
64.00
34.00
98.00
126.00
32.00
0.00
% Chg
-1.75
0.00
-2.11
-3.45
1.79
0.00
0.00
1.79
0.00
10.42
6.35
0.00
2.78
3.23
3.75
1.67
-1.60
1.82
0.00
0.00
3.57
0.00
2.08
9.62
0.00
1.79
-2.56
2.63
4.21
-1.11
4.84
0.00
0.00
0.00
-4.69
0.00
-3.85
2.78
0.00
3.03
-1.96
2.35
0.00
0.00
0.00
6.25
-5.43
0.00
4.84
0.00
7.55
0.00
0.00
0.00
5.43
6.90
0.00
1.54
6.58
-4.29
-3.49
0.00
2.06
-1.45
0.00
1.45
2.30
0.00
0.00
0.00
7.41
0.00
3.64
1.67
-8.55
0.00
1.28
6.25
1.43
0.00
2.94
2.25
5.66
0.00
5.26
3.13
-1.41
0.00
3.26
-2.22
-1.06
3.70
0.00
0.00
0.00
1.19
0.00
7.41
3.13
2.22
0.00
4.55
0.00
1.45
2.94
3.66
5.08
5.88
0.00
3.92
3.39
0.00
-2.74
0.00
0.00
2.38
0.00
4.21
8.20
8.47
6.25
0.00
0.00
6.67
0.00
Volume
10,000
1,369,497
121,000
10
65,765
40,000
27,800
50,900
48,435
2,500
257,510
15,386
12,500
151,820
2,500,004
2,252
190,000
201,428
11
1,104,000
1,092,156
518,948
7,131,351
1,210,000
71,302
118,000
54,017
10
200
96
5,729,600
30,000
4
540,000
6,770
100
40,510
1,000
554,650
9,000
18,562
10,199
24,729,816
303,300
20,010
50
18,593,515
2,500
149,006
10
587,177
3,477
347,112
1
33,143
170,000
1,100
481,610
13,284
4,890
10,000
729,164
461,061
3,763,150
2,219,837
658,500
5,000
12,446
320,188
6
60,000
200
235
906,672
35,514
50,000
1,211,564
610,535
30,002
1,227,525
9,660,567
15,718
3,603,018
65,000
259,752
9,977
1,700,000
1,959,783
219,750
1,353,759
1,171,359
3,633,733
900
78,473
1,425,920
1,982,217
1,350,884
2,959,706
5,000
3,974,999
1,229,194
20,000
300,000
10,479
65,100
2,555,714
309
168,200
1,146,225
50
895,646
20,000
1,000
5,681,278
-
Company Name
Al-Dar National Real Estate
Kgl Logistics Company Kscc
Combined Group Contracting
Zima Holding Co Ksc
Qurain Holding Co
Boubyan Intl Industries Hold
Gulf Investment House
Boubyan Bank K.S.C
Ahli United Bank B.S.C
Al-Safat Tec Holding Co
Al-Eid Food Co
Qurain Petrochemical Industr
Advanced Technology Co
Ekttitab Holding Co S.A.K.C
Kout Food Group Ksc
Real Estate Trade Centers Co
Acico Industries Co Kscc
Kipco Asset Management Co
National Petroleum Services
Alimtiaz Investment Co Kscc
Ras Al Khaimah White Cement
Kuwait Reinsurance Co Ksc
Kuwait & Gulf Link Transport
Human Soft Holding Co Ksc
Automated Systems Co
Metal & Recycling Co
Gulf Franchising Holding Co
Al-Enma’a Real Estate Co
National Mobile Telecommuni
Al Bareeq Holding Co Kscc
Housing Finance Co Sak
Al Salam Group Holding Co
United Foodstuff Industries
Al Aman Investment Company
Mashaer Holdings Co Ksc
Manazel Holding
Mushrif Trading & Contractin
Tijara And Real Estate Inves
Kuwait Building Materials
Jazeera Airways Co Ksc
Commercial Real Estate Co
Future Communications Co
National International Co
Taameer Real Estate Invest C
Gulf Cement Co
Heavy Engineering And Ship B
Refrigeration Industries & S
National Real Estate Co
Al Safat Energy Holding Comp
Kuwait National Cinema Co
Danah Alsafat Foodstuff Co
Independent Petroleum Group
Kuwait Real Estate Co Ksc
Salhia Real Estate Co Ksc
Gulf Cable & Electrical Ind
Al Nawadi Holding Co Ksc
Kuwait Finance House
Gulf North Africa Holding Co
Hilal Cement Co
OMAN
Lt Price
23.50
92.00
890.00
95.00
13.50
55.00
53.00
415.00
240.00
48.50
0.00
198.00
0.00
39.00
870.00
29.00
335.00
118.00
600.00
80.00
110.00
194.00
50.00
650.00
440.00
87.00
51.00
70.00
1,440.00
0.00
0.00
57.00
0.00
71.00
132.00
39.00
59.00
55.00
390.00
520.00
97.00
126.00
61.00
32.50
87.00
126.00
325.00
132.00
20.50
1,020.00
78.00
410.00
73.00
365.00
620.00
104.00
700.00
34.50
172.00
% Chg
6.82
5.75
0.00
0.00
3.85
7.84
3.92
1.22
1.69
0.00
0.00
1.02
0.00
5.41
0.00
0.00
1.52
1.72
1.69
0.00
0.00
0.00
2.04
0.00
6.02
4.82
4.08
1.45
0.00
0.00
0.00
5.56
0.00
1.43
0.00
6.85
-1.67
5.77
0.00
1.96
0.00
-3.08
0.00
8.33
1.16
0.00
0.00
4.76
2.50
0.00
4.00
0.00
4.29
0.00
8.77
1.96
4.48
4.55
0.00
Volume
25,525,602
232,210
23,000
6,831
5,540,814
1,964,893
1,549,155
486,123
1,198,617
896,046
231,697
76,832
110,455
2,048
7,000
10
24,000
2,150,300
20
5,000
1,285,000
1,110
53,100
3,100
111,055
100,000
1,043
4,763,978
1,514,200
10,067
3,723,332
151,550
2,000
1,009
196,806
7,532,838
15,000
685,730
26,100
872,215
22,400
157,657
115,975
2,718,665
1,450
1,528,542
2,705
1,233,601
10,000
202,458
7,500
1,892,052
1,170,108
3,732
OMAN
Company Name
Voltamp Energy Saog
United Finance Co
United Power Co
United Power/Energy Co- Pref
Al Madina Investment Co
Taageer Finance
Salalah Port Services
A’saffa Foods Saog
Sohar Poultry
Shell Oman Marketing
Shell Oman Marketing - Pref
Smn Power Holding Saog
Al Shurooq Inv Ser
Al Sharqiya Invest Holding
Sohar Power Co
Salalah Beach Resort Saog
Salalah Mills Co
Sahara Hospitality
Renaissance Services Saog
Raysut Cement Co
Port Service Corporation
Packaging Co Ltd
Oman United Insurance Co
Oman Textile Holding Co Saog
Oman Telecommunications Co
Sweets Of Oman
Oman Orix Leasing Co.
Oman Refreshment Co
Oman Packaging
Oman Oil Marketing Company
0Man Oil Marketing Co-Pref
Oman National Investment Co
Oman National Engineering An
Oman National Dairy Products
Ominvest
Oman Medical Projects
Oman Ceramic Com
Oman Intl Marketing
Oman Investment & Finance
Hsbc Bank Oman
Oman Hotels & Tourism Co
Oman Holding International
Oman Fiber Optics
Oman Flour Mills
Oman Filters Industry
Oman Fisheries Co
Oman Education & Training In
Oman & Emirates Inv(Om)50%
Oman & Emirates Inv(Emir)50%
Oman Europe Foods Industries
Oman Cement Co
Oman Chlorine
Oman Chromite
Oman Cables Industry
Oman Agricultural Dev
Omani Qatari Telecommunicati
National Securities
Oman Foods International Soa
National Pharmaceutical-Rts
National Pharmaceutical
National Packaging Fac
National Mineral Water
National Hospitality Institu
National Gas Co
National Finance Co
National Detergents/The
National Carpet Factory
National Bank Of Oman Saog
National Biscuit Industries
National Real Estate Develop
Natl Aluminium Products
Muscat Thread Mills Co
Muscat Insurance Company
Modern Poultry Farms
Muscat National Holding
Musandam Marketing & Invest
Al Maha Petroleum Products M
Muscat Gases Company Saog
Majan Glass Company
Muscat Finance
Al Kamil Power Co
Interior Hotels
Hotels Management Co Interna
Al-Hassan Engineering Co
Gulf Stone
Gulf Mushroom Company
Gulf Invest. Serv. Pref-Shar
Gulf Investments Services
Gulf International Chemicals
Gulf Hotels (Oman) Co Ltd
Global Fin Investment
Galfar Engineering&Contract
Galfar Engineering -Prefer
Financial Services Co.
Flexible Ind Packages
Lt Price
0.40
0.12
1.96
1.00
0.00
0.15
0.65
0.86
0.21
2.00
1.05
0.66
1.04
0.15
0.38
1.38
1.50
2.45
0.37
1.74
0.27
0.48
0.31
0.27
1.70
1.35
0.14
2.45
0.26
2.23
0.25
0.40
0.28
0.00
0.47
0.00
0.45
0.52
0.21
0.00
0.24
0.00
5.25
0.51
0.00
0.06
0.14
0.12
0.00
1.00
0.48
0.53
3.64
1.88
1.45
0.00
0.17
0.48
0.00
0.10
0.00
0.06
2.05
0.41
0.15
0.70
0.00
0.29
3.75
0.00
0.32
0.12
0.00
0.00
1.86
0.00
2.12
0.83
0.24
0.14
0.31
0.00
1.25
0.12
0.11
0.39
0.15
0.14
0.25
10.50
0.11
0.12
0.43
0.17
0.00
% Chg
1.02
-0.84
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
-7.45
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.58
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
2.73
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
1.46
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.85
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
2.50
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
-1.84
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
1.46
2.02
0.00
3.77
4.24
0.00
0.00
0.00
Volume
980,479
31,307
168,470
100
15,200
16,440
102,350
181,213
2,755
172,345
9,997
400,000
209,500
379,547
1,000
4,000
83,700
100,000
2,940
1,261,069
381,200
5,178,931
352,481
-
Company Name
Financial Corp/The
Dhofar Tourism
Dhofar Poultry
Aloula Co
Dhofar Intl Development
Dhofar Insurance
Dhofar University
Dhofar Power Co
Dhofar Power Co-Pfd
Dhofar Fisheries & Food Indu
Dhofar Cattlefeed
Al Batinah Dev & Inv
Dhofar Beverages Co
Computer Stationery Inds
Construction Materials Ind
Cement & Gypsum Pro
Marine Bander Al-Rowdha
Bank Sohar
Bankmuscat Saog
Bank Dhofar Saog
Al Batinah Hotels
Majan College
Areej Vegetable Oils
Al Jazeera Steel Products Co
Al Sallan Food Industry
Acwa Power Barka Saog
Al-Omaniya Financial Service
Taghleef Industries Saog
Gulf Plastic Industries Co
Al Jazeera Services
Al Jazerah Services -Pfd
Al-Fajar Al-Alamia Co
Ahli Bank
Abrasives Manufacturing Co S
Al-Batinah Intl Saog
Lt Price
0.13
0.49
0.18
0.53
0.55
0.23
1.47
0.00
0.00
1.28
0.18
0.14
0.26
0.28
0.04
0.00
0.00
0.19
0.53
0.34
1.13
0.50
5.51
0.30
0.00
0.84
0.32
0.00
0.39
0.34
0.55
0.75
0.19
0.05
0.00
% Chg
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
-4.20
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
1.58
2.73
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
6.70
0.00
0.00
Volume
280
317,309
2,893,463
106,248
299,323
1,032,400
-
UAE
Company Name
National Takaful Company
Waha Capital Pjsc
Union Insurance Co
Union National Bank/Abu Dhab
United Insurance Company
Union Cement Co
United Arab Bank Pjsc
Abu Dhabi National Takaful C
Abu Dhabi National Energy Co
#N/A Invalid Security
Sorouh Real Estate Company
Sharjah Insurance Company
Sharjah Cement & Indus Devel
Ras Al Khaima Poultry
Ras Al Khaimah White Cement
Rak Properties
Ras Al-Khaimah National Insu
Ras Al Khaimah Ceramics
Ras Al Khaimah Cement Co
National Bank Of Ras Al-Khai
Ooredoo Qsc
Umm Al Qaiwain Cement Indust
Oman & Emirates Inv(Emir)50%
National Marine Dredging Co
National Corp Tourism & Hote
Sharjah Islamic Bank
National Bank Of Umm Al Qaiw
National Bank Of Fujairah
National Bank Of Abu Dhabi
Methaq Takaful Insurance
#N/A Invalid Security
Gulf Pharmaceutical Industri
Invest Bank
Insurance House
Gulf Medical Projects
Gulf Livestock Co
Green Crescent Insurance Co
Gulf Cement Co
Foodco Holding
Finance House
First Gulf Bank
Fujairah Cement Industries
Fujairah Building Industries
Emirates Telecom Corporation
Eshraq Properties Co Pjsc
Emirates Insurance Co. (Psc)
Emirates Driving Company
Al Dhafra Insurance Co. P.S.
Dana Gas
Commercial Bank Internationa
Bank Of Sharjah
Abu Dhabi Natl Co For Buildi
Al Wathba National Insurance
Intl Fish Farming Co Pjsc
Arkan Building Materials Co
Aldar Properties Pjsc
Al Ain Ahlia Ins. Co.
Al Khazna Insurance Co
Agthia Group Pjsc
Al Fujairah National Insuran
Abu Dhabi Ship Building Co
Abu Dhabi National Insurance
Abu Dhabi National Hotels
Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank
Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank
Abu Dhabi Aviation
Lt Price
0.75
2.86
1.00
5.40
2.00
1.38
5.83
5.50
0.85
0.00
0.00
3.85
1.14
1.45
1.46
0.64
3.62
3.99
0.85
8.00
110.00
1.20
1.20
6.90
6.00
1.65
2.90
5.01
11.00
0.68
0.00
2.97
2.50
0.81
1.90
3.00
0.64
1.10
4.50
3.15
14.15
1.35
1.45
12.45
0.68
7.50
4.90
5.27
0.40
1.66
1.75
0.62
5.35
5.00
1.18
2.34
60.00
0.45
7.15
300.00
1.40
5.85
2.57
5.00
6.24
2.90
% Chg
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
-6.30
13.33
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
-1.54
0.00
1.01
0.00
-0.12
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.61
0.00
0.00
-1.79
6.25
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
-2.08
0.00
0.00
1.22
3.03
0.00
0.00
0.00
5.26
0.00
-2.78
3.33
0.00
0.00
0.00
1.74
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
2.19
0.00
0.00
2.04
3.14
0.00
Volume
6,877,497
90
926,993
13,250
7,235,615
691,955
38,200
249,140
148,039
230,430
2,111,046
2,708,782
27,315,906
3,430,987
91,704
415,000
15,100,924
15,000
388,130
2,110,206
10,000
BAHRAIN
Company Name
United Paper Industries Bsc
United Gulf Investment Corp
United Gulf Bank
United Finance Co
Trafco Group Bsc
Takaful International Co
Taib Bank -$Us
Securities & Investment Co
Seef Properties
#N/A Invalid Security
Al-Salam Bank
Delmon Poultry Co
National Hotels Co
National Bank Of Bahrain
Nass Corp Bsc
Khaleeji Commercial Bank
Ithmaar Bank Bsc
Investcorp Bank -$Us
Inovest Co Bsc
Intl Investment Group-Kuwait
Gulf Monetary Group
Global Investment House Kpsc
Gulf Finance House Ec
Bahrain Family Leisure Co
Esterad Investment Co B.S.C.
Bahrain Duty Free Complex
Bahrain Car Park Co
Bahrain Cinema Co
Bahrain Tourism Co
Bahraini Saudi Bank/The
Bahrain National Holding
Bankmuscat Saog
Bmmi Bsc
Bmb Investment Bank
Bahrain Kuwait Insurance
Bahrain Islamic Bank
Gulf Hotel Group B.S.C
Bahrain Flour Mills Co
Bahrain Commercial Facilitie
Bbk Bsc
Bahrain Telecom Co
Bahrain Ship Repair & Engin
Albaraka Banking Group
Banader Hotels Co
Ahli United Bank B.S.C
Lt Price
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.19
0.00
0.11
0.00
0.00
0.81
0.17
0.04
0.14
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.22
0.87
`
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.80
0.00
0.67
0.15
0.90
0.00
0.83
0.43
0.33
2.00
0.83
0.00
0.84
% Chg
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
-2.44
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.93
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
4.38
Volume
75,400
189,524
79,000
34,500
60,000
87,414
13,251
4,500
20,000
10,000
2,742
82,600
6,565
2,000
17,154
47,000
2,000
30,602
520,000
LATEST MARKET CLOSING FIGURES
Gulf Times
Monday, March 30, 2015
13
BUSINESS
Chevron to exit shale gas
exploration in Australia
Bloomberg
Sydney
C
hevron Corp abandoned Australian shale exploration and said it
will sell its 50% stake in that nation’s largest fuel supplier.
Chevron notiﬁed Beach Energy, its
partner in the central Australian shale
project, that “the opportunity does not
align strategically” with the US explorer’s
portfolio, according to a statement Friday from Beach. Selling its half of reﬁner
Caltex Australia is expected to yield about
A$4.7bn ($3.7bn.)
Chevron announced plans earlier this
month to shed $15bn in oil and natural
gas assets by the end of 2017 and reduce
spending on new projects for the next
two years. Chairman and Chief Executive
Officer John Watson is raising cash and
curbing expenditures after the plunge in
global oil prices dented proﬁts and made
some ﬁelds less attractive to drill.
“They are perhaps looking to increase
their margins and get away from businesses that offer lower-end margins,”
said David Lennox, a resource analyst at
Fat Prophets in Sydney. “They are getting
Chevron Corp has abandoned Australian shale exploration and said it will sell its 50%
stake in that nation’s largest fuel supplier.
knocked around a bit,” by oil prices. Chevron entered Australian shale two years
ago when it pledged to invest $349mn in
Beach’s Nappamerri Trough gas project.
Beach said on Friday that it will seek other
partners and continue studies at the site
through June 2016. Icon Energy is also a
partner in the venture.
Chevron has been trimming its reﬁning portfolio for the past decade to focus
on higher-margin investments such as oil
drilling. The company sold about $14bn
in reﬁneries, ﬁlling stations and related
assets between 2004 and the end of last
year.
Chevron is selling its shares in Caltex
Australia at A$35 apiece, a 7.6% discount
to Friday’s close, people with knowledge
of the matter said. The deal underwritten by Goldman Sachs Group is the largest block trade ever in Australia, exceeding Royal Dutch Shell’s sale of Woodside
Petroleum Ltd shares in 2010 for about
A$3.3bn, according to data compiled by
Bloomberg. So-called cornerstone investors agreed to buy about A$2bn of the
Caltex stock before the offering started,
the people said, asking not to be identiﬁed
discussing private information.
Caltex, the Australian-based reﬁner,
has risen 74% in Sydney in the past 12
months. It closed Friday at A$37.88.
Chevron expects to sell the shares in
Caltex to a broad range of Australian and
global institutional investors, the San Ramon, California-based company said Friday in a statement.
In the Asia-Paciﬁc region that includes
Australia, Chevron’s net cash reﬁning
margins were less than $1 a barrel during
the last four years, compared with more
than $6 at its North American plants.
The moves will have no impact on
Chevron’s Gorgon and Wheatstone gasexport projects in the country, the company said.
ChemChina chairman
hopes to re-list Pirelli
on Italian bourse
Reuters
Beijing
T
he chairman of China
National
Chemical
Corp (ChemChina) said
yesterday he hopes to re-list
Italy’s Pirelli on the Italian
stock exchange after his ﬁrm
agreed earlier this month to
acquire the world’s ﬁfth-largest tyre maker.
Ren Jianxin also warned that
a counterbid for Pirelli would
hurt the Italian ﬁrm’s investors and long-term strategy.
ChemChina has agreed to become majority owner of Pirelli
as part of a multi-layered
€7.3bn ($8bn) deal, putting one
of Italy’s storied manufacturing names in Chinese hands.
“We were worried that due
to cheap liquidity, there might
be blind competition,” Ren
told reporters. “But a counterbid will hurt Pirelli investors
and also its long-term strategy.” On Thursday, Pirelli CEO
Marco Tronchetti Provera told
Reuters his ﬁrm is not talking to others about a possible
counterbid. Ren is betting the
Pirelli acquisition will accelerate the transformation of stateowned ChemChina’s tyre and
rubber business. The deal will
give the Beijing-based conglomerate access to technology
to make premium tyres which
can be sold at higher margins,
and give the Italian ﬁrm a boost
in China, the world’s biggest
autos market.
Pirelli’s industrial tyre operations will be merged with
ChemChina’s Aeolus Tyre Co
unit, making the combined
ﬁrm the world’s fourth or ﬁfth
biggest industrial tyre maker,
Ren said.
The deal also will allow the
combined ﬁrm to expand its
presence in China and Asia.
Ren characterised the acquisition as “revolutionary” for
his company’s rubber and tyre
business.
He described his partnership with Tronchetti as a
“very beautiful marriage” and
said the Italian will be CEO for
the next ﬁve years, after which
Tronchetti would pick his
successor.
14
Gulf Times
Monday, March 30, 2015
BUSINESS
Fed weighs insurers’ proposal
for costly capital framework
Reuters
Washington
Reuters
Brussels
T
he US Federal Reserve is considering a proposal from life insurers that could delay the implementation of a costly nationwide
capital framework for the $1tn industry, according to records of a recent
meeting between the two sides seen by
Reuters and people familiar with the
matter.
More than a dozen senior insurance executives met Fed Governor Dan
Tarullo on February 6 to pitch a twostep process for launching nationwide
insurance rules, according to records of
the meeting by Dirk Kempthorne, who
heads the American Council of Life Insurers, an industry group.
The group presented the plan under
which the Fed would use the current
system of state-based regulation for a
period of time before writing a national
framework that would likely require
ﬁrms to boost capital buffers, according to the meeting records and people
briefed on the matter.
Tarullo, the Fed’s top Wall Street
regulator, did not indicate whether he
was open to adopting the insurers’ proposal, the people said. But he did ask
the companies to form a team to work
with his staff in developing ﬁnal details for such a scenario, the meeting
records show.
The Fed has not committed to executing any plans submitted by the industry, a person briefed on the matter
said.
A delay could give some relief to insurers from a new capital regime that
analysts and investors fear would ramp
up costs and stiﬂe proﬁts.
While precise estimates are lacking
because the rules are still unknown,
Bank of America has estimated that
Prudential and MetLife could see their
capital levels drop by 50% in a worstcase scenario under the new rules.
A two-step process could also buy
more time for the Fed, which has been
slow in building insurance expertise,
and only last year hired a former Connecticut state regulator to head the effort.
Insurance ﬁrms have lobbied Congress about how their industry will be
regulated after the crisis, and politicians have often raised the issue with
regulators on Capitol Hill.
Asked for a comment, the Fed said
P
The US Federal Reserve building in Washington, DC. The Fed is considering a proposal from life insurers that could delay the implementation of a costly nationwide
capital framework for the $1tn industry.
Tarullo has encouraged various industry representatives and state commissioners to offer suggestions on how it
should set capital requirements for the
industry.
“The Federal Reserve welcomes
these views as it prepares to formulate
consolidated capital requirements applicable to holding companies with insurance activities,” a spokesman said.
One of the people briefed on the
matter said the Fed has noted in subsequent staff-level meetings that the
2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform
law does not prohibit it from adopting
a two-step process.
“Tarullo was intrigued by these ideas
and their potential as standards that
could apply to both life and propertycasualty companies,” Kempthorne said
in a March 10 e-mail sent to members
of the American Council of Life Insurers.
Other attendees in the meeting, including Roger Ferguson, the chief executive of TIAA-CREF, MetLife President
of the Americas Bill Wheeler, and Mark
Grier, a member of Prudential’s board
of directors, declined to comment or
did not immediately return a request
for comment.
The ACLI conﬁrmed it had met with
Tarullo to discuss capital standards.
The Dodd-Frank law mandated the
Fed to write nationwide capital standards for the ﬁrst time to help avoid an-
other insurer failure such as the near
collapse that prompted the $182bn
bailout of AIG at the height of the ﬁnancial crisis in 2008.
That is a marked shift for the industry, which has so far been overseen by
state commissioners whose main goal
is to protect policyholders rather than
the wider ﬁnancial system.
The industry has long expressed
scepticism that the Fed does not have
enough expertise or resources to regulate the sector.
The central bank only has several dozen insurance experts spread
throughout its organisation, versus
more than 400 banking experts in its
Washington headquarters alone.
Tarullo told the insurance executives
at the meeting that the Fed is looking
to bring on more insurance experts,
Kempthorne wrote in the e-mail, but
that he would not establish a separate
insurance division.
Since the ﬁnancial crisis, the Fed was
put in charge of overseeing insurance
holding companies that own thrifts, a
type of bank that focuses on building
up deposits and doling out mortgage
loans, as well as insurance holding
companies whose demise could jeopardise the wider ﬁnancial system.
Insurers fear they could be treated
too much like the heavily-regulated
Wall Street banks, given the Fed’s history as a bank watchdog.
Shaky markets slow IPO momentum in US
Zero rate ﬂoor
now a question
dogging Danish T
mortgage banks
Reuters
New York
Bloomberg
Copenhagen
N
egative money market
rates are forcing Denmark’s mortgage banks
to choose between investors and
borrowers.
Rates dipped below zero as the
central bank cut its deposit rate
four times this year to defend
the krone’s peg to the euro. It’s
a situation the $550bn covered
bond market didn’t foresee, and
now banks must decide whether in the future to set a ﬂoor
at zero for bonds with ﬂoating
rates, shielding investors while
denying borrowers negative
rates. Either way, lenders will be
criticised, according to Anders
Aalund, chief analyst at Nordea
Bank in Copenhagen.
“It’s a very complex subject
and no matter what they do,
it’s going to come back and hit
them,” Aalund said by phone.
“Someone will be a loser.”
The controversy comes as the
industry has been pushing the
loans as an alternative to mortgages that were funded by rolling
over one-year securities, which
regulators and rating companies
warned pose reﬁnancing risks to
the system. There are now about
366bn kroner ($54bn) of outstanding ﬂoating-rate notes, according to Danske Bank.
This month, rates on about
137bn kroner of the securities
need to be reset, Danske said.
Danske, Denmark’s largest lender, and Nykredit Realkredit, its
largest mortgage lender, say the
Portugal
pushes for
closer
eurozone
integration
terms set for the existing ﬂoating-rate notes don’t allow them
to pass on the negative rates to
borrowers and investors.
“Investors will obviously want
the bonds to be ﬂoored,” Aalund
said. “For bank treasuries, it’s
a good deal, much better than
placing excess liquidity with the
central bank at a minus 0.75%.”
The central bank cut its deposit rate to minus 0.75% after
Switzerland’s decision to drop
a cap tying the franc to the euro
trigged massive speculation that
Denmark would follow. The bank
warned last week that future
“turbulence” in the foreign exchange markets would likely lead
to an appreciation in the krone.
“It’s an unusual situation,”
Aalund said. “If you look at the
textbooks, they say rates can’t
be negative. Otherwise, people
would take their money out of
the bank and put it under their
mattresses. But that’s clearly not
the case.”
The six-month Copenhagen
interbank offered rate fell below
zero last month, hitting a record
low of minus 0.3667% February
12. The rate was set at 0.015%
last week.
Nykredit says the industry
should work on a plan that will
allow it to pass on negative rates,
arguing that adjustable loans act
as a cushion during an economic
downturn and serve as channel
for monetary easing.
“It would be best if we could
have negative interest rates on
all types of loans going forward,”
Soeren Holm, Nykredit’s chief
ﬁnancial officer, said last week.
he number of US initial public offerings fell sharply in the ﬁrst quarter as shaky equities and commodities markets took their toll, after a record
number of companies went public last
year.
US IPOs raised $4.7bn from 26 offerings in the ﬁrst quarter, nearly half of the
$8.6bn from 46 offerings in the same period last year, according to Thomson Reuters data. Overall, 277 companies listed
last year.
A sudden spike in volatility in October pushed the VIX volatility index to
its highest in almost three years, forcing
some companies to wrap up their IPOs be-
fore the year ended, analysts said. “Quite
simply, the pipeline ran dry in ﬁrst quarter 2015,” said Jacqueline Kelley, Americas
IPO leader at EY.
“What most companies did was really
just try to exit and complete their offerings
as quickly as possible,” Kelley said.
A contracting energy industry due to a
fall in oil prices resulted in just one oil and
gas company - Columbia Pipeline Partners LP – going public compared with four
last year.
Technology ﬁrms also largely stayed
away, taking cues from the weak share
performance of some of the companies
that went public last year.
Six months after Chinese e-commerce
giant Alibaba Group Holding’s IPO, its
shares are down about 30% from their
high of $120 in November. Shares of tech-
nology companies such as peer-to-peer
lender LendingClub Corp and online storage company Box are also trading about
30% below their record highs.
Alibaba shares jumped 38% on their ﬁrst
day after the company’s offering raised
$21.8bn in one of the biggest IPOs ever.
The company’s disappointing performance in recent months “takes the wind out
of China IPO deal ﬂow as well,” said Josef
Schuster, founder of IPO research ﬁrm
Ipox Schuster.
The number of healthcare IPOs, which
formed the bulk of 2014 listings, dropped
to 10 during the quarter from 25 in the
same period last year.
However, analysts expect technology
and healthcare offerings to drive IPOs in
the coming quarters, led by web-hosting
company GoDaddy.
ortugal has presented proposals for closer economic
co-ordination
between
the countries of the eurozone as
the bloc tries to put crises over
Greece and other big debtor
states behind it.
EU ministers will study the
Portuguese discussion paper,
entitled “The Missing Piece in
the Economic and Monetary Union Puzzle: Economic Policy Coordination”, ahead of a summit
of leaders in June at which they
are expected to outline plans to
strengthen the single currency
area over coming years.
The paper carries weight not
least because Portugal has been
among those euro zone states
obliged to adjust policy in return
for an international bailout following the 2008 global crisis.
Lisbon is now among the toughest critics of the new Greek government’s drive to ease the terms
of its own bailout.
Among the Portuguese proposals is a common unemployment beneﬁt scheme for the
zone. That could help balance
out the ﬁscal effects of different economies being bound by
the same monetary policy due to
sharing the single currency.
Geographically isolated, like
Greece, from the core of the currency bloc, Portugal would also
like states to beneﬁt under eurozone budget rules from investments which produce spinoff
gains for others – Lisbon, for example, wants more cross-border
power lines.
“Member States need to recognise that cross-border co-ordination creates positive spillover effects and that in the case
of structural reform ... a valid
constituency exists beyond their
borders,” read the Portuguese
paper, seen by Reuters.
Current eurozone rules oblige
governments to meet targets for
public sector deﬁcits which give
special credit for efforts to make
reforms to the underlying structure of their economies.
“Economic policies and structural reforms with signiﬁcant spillover or coordination ‘dividend’
or, more generally, which promote greater policy convergence,
could beneﬁt from adequate incentives from ﬁscal guidance at
the EU level,” Portugal said.
The paper proposes that such
reform efforts be measured
against the aggregate budget
stance of the bloc rather than of
one state. It also said efforts to
create a single market in digital
services should be recognised in
monetary union rules.
It gave little detail on its suggested unemployment insurance
scheme. Several proposals made
by other countries last year included a shared budget for funds
that could help countries in a
downturn with the costs of unemployment beneﬁt in exchange
for contributions when they
were doing well.
Nomura, RBS ‘crap’ e-mails come into
play in $1bn mortgage bond trial
Reuters
New York
In 2007, a Royal Bank of Scotland Group
employee e-mailed his boss with his view
of a sample of mortgages underlying a
bond that the bank was underwriting:
“This one is crap.”
Asked about it this week in Manhattan
federal court, Brian Farrell, the employee,
said he did not recall the deal. But a US
regulator cited the e-mail as evidence
that Nomura Holdings Inc and RBS
made false statements about mortgage
securities they sold to Fannie Mae and
Freddie Mac.
The e-mail and others like it are part of
a $1.1bn lawsuit by the Federal Housing
Finance Agency against Nomura and
RBS that went to trial this month. The
messages add to a litany of arguably
embarrassing electronic musings by
bank employees that have resurfaced in
litigation over the 2008 financial crisis.
Private plaintiffs and US regulators alike
have seized upon internal e-mails from
the likes of JPMorgan Chase & Co and
Deutsche Bank calling the mortgage
products they sold investors “lemons,”
“junk,” and “pigs.”
The FHFA’s case is the first to reach trial
out of 18 lawsuits the regulator filed in
2011 over some $200bn in mortgagebacked securities that various banks sold
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
The FHFA, which became the
conservator for Fannie and Freddie in
2008 amid the financial crisis, previously
obtained nearly $17.9bn in settlements
with banks including Bank of America
Corp, JPMorgan Chase and Deutsche
Bank.
Those deals followed a series of adverse
rulings by US District Judge Denise Cote,
who is overseeing the non-jury trial.
The FHFA says of the loans underlying
the $2bn in securities Fannie and
Freddie bought from Nomura, 68.6%
had underwriting defects. Nearly a third
had false loan-to-value ratios, while 13.1%
were underwater from the start, the
FHFA says.
Nomura, the deals’ sponsor, and RBS,
which underwrote three of the seven,
deny wrongdoing, and argue any losses
were due to an unforeseeable decline in
the housing market.
Data has been a prime focus of the trial,
with expert witnesses making up a large
number of the individuals testifying.
But the FHFA is also relying in part on the
banks’ employees’ own words at the time
as captured in e-mails. Many have been
previewed during the FHFA’s opening
statements and outlined in court filings.
In one, an RBS trader in 2006 referred
to originator Fremont Investment &
Loan as “FraudMont.” In another, a
Nomura employee said lender People’s
Choice Home Loan Inc had “obviously
an inherent flaw” in its loan origination
process.
RBS’ Farrell was not the only bank
employee in the case to call mortgages in
the securities “crap”: The same term was
used by a Nomura employee during a
review of mortgages issued by subprime
lender Ownit Mortgage Solutions.
Donald Hawthorne, a lawyer at Axinn,
Veltrop & Harkrider who has pursued
similar cases against banks, said such
e-mails can be “helpful for atmospherics”
and could suggest a reckless disregard
about the mortgages if coupled with
evidence about how mortgages failed to
comply with underwriting guidelines.
However, since the case is being tried
before a judge rather than a jury, plays
to emotion could be less significant,
Hawthorne said.
The “crap” e-mail by Farrell, a former
vice president in RBS’ credit risk
department, was introduced Tuesday
during questioning about a 2007 deal he
worked on.
Richard Schirtzer, a lawyer for the FHFA,
showed Farrell the e-mail, in which he
said he had reviewed a sample of 250
loans underlying the deal.
“Sir, ‘crap’ is never used in a positive
sense, is it?” Schirtzer asked.
“Nothing comes to mind,” Farrell
responded.
The case is Federal Housing Finance
Agency v Nomura Holding America Inc,
US District Court, Southern District of
New York, No. 11-06201.
Gulf Times
Monday, March 30, 2015
15
BUSINESS
Once-bullish fund managers start to capitulate on oil prices
Reuters
New York
L
ast fall, when the price of oil
started dropping, fund manager Craig Hodges ﬁgured crude
would rebound in 2015 and began buying shares of companies he thought
would be unfairly hit, including construction company Primoris Services
Corp and Eagle Materials, which produces sand used in fracked wells.
Hodges, who runs the $2.1bn Hodges
Small Cap fund, is now starting to concede that oil prices will stay low for as
long as a year or more because of a global glut. Even the air strikes Thursday
in Yemen by Saudi Arabia and its Gulf
Arab allies, which prompted a one-day
5% boost to the price of oil, presented
“a traders move” and doesn’t signal a
sustained move up, Hodges said. Oil
fell 6% to about $48 a barrel.
Instead of looking for a bounce back
this year, Hodges is now on the hunt
for companies that can take advantage
of low prices and are strong enough to
withstand a year or more of waiting for
oil to be more proﬁtable for producers.
It could be two or three years before oil
goes back above $70 a barrel, he said.
While his fund is top-loaded with
companies like American Airlines
Group and affordable footwear retailer
Shoe Carnival that are beneﬁting from
cheap gas prices, he is also buying
stakes in companies such as Matador
Resources Co – an energy company
that has been using the slow market to
negotiate lower-priced contracts with
its suppliers to lower costs. Matador
shares are down 16% over the last six
months, but are up 5.8% for the year
through Thursday.
Primoris Services is down 24% this
year, while Eagle Materials is up about
8%. Hodges’ fund as a whole is up 2.7%
this year, better than 62% of its peers.
The benchmark Standard & Poor’s 500
Index is little changed since the beginning of the year. “Oil could stay down
longer than anyone is anticipating,”
Hodges said.
He began buying exploration and
production company Comstock Resources Inc after it fell from about $28
a share in July to $4 in early March. The
company changed plans and stopped
drilling in its most expensive ﬁelds to
focus on lower-cost acreage and on
natural gas, Hodges said. Its recent
$700mn bond issue also gives it a ﬁnancial backstop through at least 2019,
he said.
Increasingly, mutual fund managers don’t see the oil glut going away
any time soon. Lord Abbett’s Thomas
O’Halloran, for example, last year was
calling fracking stocks one of the pillars of his $3.6bn Developing Growth
fund, among the top-performing small
cap funds over the last decade. He is
now shifting more money into solar
companies.
“We think that there’s another leg
down” to oil prices, O’Halloran said.
His fund is up 4.1% this year, better
than 60% of its peers. At Londonbased Guinness Atkinson fund managers have been adding more natural gas
exposure to their portfolios, out of the
theory that a slump in oil production
following price declines will over time
boost natural gas commodity prices.
The ﬁrm is keeping some oil exposure
in light of political factors such as the
Yemen airstrike, but it doesn’t expect a
recovery based on fundamentals until
at least the end of the year.
“It may take even longer than that,”
said Will Riley, one of the portfolio
managers of the Guinness Atkinson
Global Energy fund. The fund is down
2.1% this year, better than 48% of its
peers.
Riley, has been buying natural gas
companies such as Southwestern Energy Co, thinking the price of natural gas should rise as the amount of
so-called associated natural gas, the
by-product of crude oil wells, falls
as ﬁrms cut back on drilling, he said.
“The oversupply in the US natural gas
market should moderate a bit later this
year,” he said.
The capitulation of fund managers
comes at a time when retail and professional investors are diverging when
it comes to predicting the price of oil.
Retail investors have been pouring billions into exchanged traded funds that
track the price of oil in an attempt to
call the bottom, even as the pros have
suggested that bottom isn’t here yet,
and may last for some time..
The US Oil Fund, the best-known
of several exchange traded funds that
have a long position in oil prices, has
netted $2.1bn in new investor dollars
Investment banks eye
potential trading boost
from ECB stimulus
Reuters
London
I
nvestment banks feeling the pinch
from increased regulation since the
ﬁnancial crisis could reap an earnings
reward from a boost in trading activity
under the European Central Bank’s (ECB)
€1tn quantitative easing (QE) programme.
The ﬂood of money into markets from
the ECB’s bond-buying has brought an
increase in the volatility that traders crave
as investors stake bets on the impact the
scheme will have on inﬂation and longterm interest rates.
“QE is likely to underpin a sustained
period of strength in euro capital markets,” Citigroup said in a research note
on Friday. “There has been a sharp spike
in rates and foreign exchange volatility,
which also points to a strong quarter for
wholesale banks’ macro revenues.”
Revenue from ﬁxed income, currencies
and commodities trading, the so-called
FICC universe, have historically been a
rich source of proﬁt for banks, but new
capital rules and moves towards electronic trading have squeezed the sector in
recent years.
The 10 biggest investment banks’ revenue from FICC fell 7% in 2014, industry
analytics ﬁrm Coalition calculates.
What’s more, the investment bank balance sheets that support trading markets
have declined by 20% since 2010 and by
40% in risk-weighted asset terms, Morgan Stanley analysts estimate. The analysts said that a further 10-15% reduction
is likely over the next two years.
The trading environment in Europe,
however, could be about to take a turn for
the better.
“ECB moving to QE could provide a real
ﬁllip to earnings,” Morgan Stanley analyst Huw van Steenis said. “Fixed income
trading may buck the trend of ﬁve years of
shrinkage.”
Anshu Jain, the co-chief executive of
Deutsche Bank, one of continent’s largest trading banks, said in January that the
ECB’s bond-buying programme would
be of “profound importance” for Europe
and its banks. “You may see a progression
which hurts net interest margins but ben-
The best-placed banks would be those with significant euro-denominated franchises including BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank, HSBC
and Societe Generale, according to analysts.
eﬁts sales and trading revenue,” Jain said
on an earnings call with analysts.
Citigroup said that the best-placed
banks would be those with signiﬁcant
euro-denominated franchises, including
BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank, HSBC and
Societe Generale. JPMorgan is the biggest
bank by revenue in the FICC space.
While it’s too early to tell the exact
impact of the QE programme, which is
expected to last until at least September
2016, the fees earned from the central
bank’s buying alone could be signiﬁcant.
Economists at the US Federal Reserve
estimate that Wall Street ﬁrms could have
made as much as $653mn in fees selling bonds to the Fed during its monetary
stimulus programme.
When the ECB launched its LTRO
(longer-term reﬁnancing operations)
scheme in late 2011, revenues in the rates
business of global investment banks improved the following year, increasing to
$29bn in 2012 from $27.4bn the previous year, data from Coalition shows. But
traders and analysts question how much
is really down to the ﬁrst-order effects of
ECB action or second-order effects such
as volatility.
Price ﬂuctuation has certainly picked
up this year after months in the doldrums.
Banks beneﬁt because such volatility
allows them to charge higher margins on
trades because of the greater risk around
execution. It also helps them sell hedging
instruments to investors.
But QE also presents risks. One of the
biggest fears for traders is that ECB buying and the reluctance of some investors
to sell because of regulation or client obligations could reduce the amount of debt
actively traded in the longer term.
Signs of that squeeze are already showing in the soaring cost of borrowing in secured lending markets.
“Volatility and volumes are good for
traders. Volatility but no volumes ... are
awful for traders,” one eurozone government bond trader said on condition
of anonymity. A survey of dealers this
month showed concern that the Japanese
government bond was not functioning
well under lingering concerns that its QE
programme, launched in 2013, is reducing
bond market liquidity.
However, data shows there has been no
dramatic change in trading volumes over
that period.
Even if ultra-low yields in government
bonds put off some investors, bankers say
they will be able to capitalise on those that
rush to put their cash into assets with better returns.
“You trade ﬂows,” one investment
banker said. “The trend is only just starting.” Data shows that cash is already ﬂowing out of government bonds and money
markets towards junk bonds and emerging markets.
But the real rewards will come if the
ECB’s stimulus serves to hoist inﬂation
and bond yields with it. “If QE is successful, long-term rates will go up and generally higher rates will lead to more activity
and hedging opportunities.
this year, according to Lipper data,
more than all but seven other funds.
Most of that money appears to come
from retail investors and speculators
in an attempt to call the bottom for oil
prices, analysts said. The fund is down
15.8% this year.
Dwindling storage capacity in the
US, along with the possibility that
sanctions are lifted that brings more
oil from Iran or Russia onto the market,
could lead to an even greater glut on
the market, several analysts said.
“The people who think that this
is a great chance to get into the energy patch are a little premature,” said
Charles Smith, portfolio manager of
the Fort Pitt Capital Total Return fund.
He has only has one energy company,
pipeline company Kinder Morgan, in
his portfolio, and isn’t tempted to add
more – he is waiting until oil prices slip
to the high $20s before he would buy
into the sector, he told Reuters.
Greek PM says
he seeks no rift
with Europe
Reuters
Athens
G
reek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said
that he sought no rift
with Europe after his cashstrapped country submitted a
list of reforms to its lenders in
a bid to secure much-needed
funds.
Tsipras’s
government
agreed an extension to its
€240mn bailout funding in
February, albeit with aid frozen, and now must agree on a
set of reforms which it sent to
its EU-IMF creditors on Friday in order to stave off bankruptcy.
The austerity-weary nation
will run out of money by April
20, a source familiar with the
matter said on Tuesday, if it
does not unlock much-needed
funding.
“The liquidity problem is
naturally hampering the situation but I believe that will be
tackled immediately once we
reach an agreement over reforms,” Tsipras said in an interview with Real News newspaper.
After answering a question regarding government
attempts to deal with corruption, Tsipras was asked
whether he wanted a rift or a
solution with Greece’s European partners.
“My view has always been
the same: a break from corruption, a solution with Europe,” he replied.
Earlier Energy Minister
Panagiotis Lafazanis, one
of Tsipras’s most left-wing
ministers, hit out at a “Germanised European Union ...
for tightening week-by-week
the noose around the Greek
economy.”
Athens says its reforms will
boost state revenues by €3bn
($3.3bn) in 2015, partly by
tackling tax evasion, but that
it will oppose any new “recessionary measures” such as
further wage or pension cuts.
Discussions with EU and
IMF lenders, known as the
Brussels Group, will continue throughout the weekend
with “much work to be done,”
sources told the semi-official
Athens News Agency.
As talks unfold, Finance
Minister Varoufakis told Vima
newspaper yesterday that the
reforms would not include a
rise in VAT, which had been
a concern on Greece’s islands where rates are lower,
but changes to tax collection
would be made.
Varoufakis was the centre
of speculation on Friday following a report in the German
newspaper Bild that a Greek
government source had said it
was only a matter of time before he resigned. But Tsipras
said Varoufakis was “one of
the key members of the government”.
As Greece races to agree
to raise funds, Deputy Prime
Minister Yannis Dragasakis
told China’s official Xinhua
news agency that Athens will
sell its majority stake in the
port of Piraeus within weeks,
a ﬂip-ﬂop from its previous
position.
Speaking during a visit by
Greek officials to China, Dragasakis hinted that Chinese
ﬁrm Costco Group – shortlisted in a process launched by
the previous centre-right government – was a front runner
for the state’s 67% stake.
And as Greece seeks to ﬁll its
state coffers, the Russian ambassador to Athens told Kathimerini newspaper that Moscow would examine any loan
request from Greece, were it to
be made.
Tsipras is due to visit Moscow on April 8 for talks with
Russian President Vladimir
Putin but the Greek government has stressed it is not
seeking funding from the
Kremlin.
On Saturday, Greece’s energy ministry said Lafazanis
will meet Russian Energy
Minister Alexander Novak
and Gazprom Chief Executive Alexei Miller today in the
capital, a week before Tsipras
is due to arrive.
Russia’s rich forego some luxuries but still back Putin
Reuters
Moscow
Russian model Alisa Krylova cancelled her
order for the latest Mercedes, spent New
Year in Moscow rather than skiing in the
Alps and now employs Russian staff rather
than foreigners.
The former Mrs Russia and Mrs Globe
beauty pageant winner is among Russia’s
super rich but even she and many of her
wealthy friends are feeling the pinch from
the economic crisis.
Driven into “a kind of hibernation”, they
are steering clear of celebrity parties and
trimming spending to make up some of
the millions lost to a weak rouble and a
falling stock market.
But the enforced modesty has not yet
driven the super wealthy out of Russia or
against President Vladimir Putin, who has
fanned patriotism during the Ukraine crisis and appealed to businessmen to bring
their money home to bolster Russia’s position in the worst standoff with the West
since the Cold War. Perched on a golden
sofa in the living room of her newly built
apartment in Moscow, Krylova, 32, recoils
at her compatriots who flocked to buy
televisions, refrigerators and buckwheat –
a popular staple when the rouble plunged
in December and shops had yet to change
their prices to catch up.
“And what about me? I am calm in dealing with the crisis, nothing really terrible
has happened. Yes, of course, we didn’t fly
away on holiday this year because I did
not see the point in paying three times
over the odds,” said Krylova, whose flawless beauty has put her on the covers of
numerous fashion magazines.
“So we decided to holiday in Moscow
and St Petersburg and went to museums, theatres, everywhere, and we had
a wonderful time. It was great to go to
Red Square to see the Christmas tree
and I think it was just as good as skiing in
Austria or France.”
It’s an attitude Putin is counting on.
Since coming to power in 2000, the
former KGB spy has tamed the country’s
The former Mrs Globe Alisa Krylova at her home in Moscow. Krylova is among
Russia’s super rich who are feeling the pinch from the economic crisis.
powerful businessmen, or oligarchs, who
in the 1990s used their control over the
Russian economy to influence politics and
his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin. After bringing some of what he calls Russia’s ‘national
champions’ in the energy sector back
under state control, Putin made a deal
with private owners of big business - be
loyal and stay out of politics and you can
keep your assets. It is a bargain which has
largely held, even with the rouble down
40% against the US dollar since last summer, and the economy weakened by a fall
in global oil prices and Western economic
sanctions over Ukraine.
Konstantin Kostin, a former aide to
Putin who now heads the Civil Society
Development Foundation, said some in
Russia’s business elite were without doubt
suffering from the downturn.
“Someone may be discontented, but I
don’t think that it’s that widespread,” he
said. “I think that if we are talking about
their political affiliations, then they are
loyal.”
Earlier this month, Putin appealed
again to leading businessmen to bring
their money from offshore accounts back
to Russia before, he suggested, the West
closed off flows in possible further sanctions over Ukraine.
“So he said clearly – you’ve got enough
for a good standard of living so please
bring everything back to Russia so we can
lift up our country,” said Krylova.
She says she is married to a “successful
businessman” while declining to identify
him, and that all of her assets are in Russia,
as are most of her husband’s.
A self-declared patriot who wants to
“pass something on” to the next generation, Krylova still likes to pop over to
France and other west European countries
for long weekends to indulge herself in
French and Italian cheeses, imports of
which have been banned by Russia in
retaliation to the sanctions.
But mostly, Russia’s wealthy are staying
home, while making sure they have a firm
plan B in place.
Luxury magazine director Alexei Koval
said some businessmen had worked out
an “evacuation plan” in case they fell out
of favour. “I think that the majority of
businessmen who in some way may have
something to fear have, a long time ago,
prepared spare airfields and put in place
plans for a quick emigration or, God forbid,
evacuation of their family,” said Koval, operating director at CITYMAGAZINE, which
offers lifestyle and investment tips to “successful people” in Russia’s main cities.
Monday, March 30, 2015
BUSINESS
GULF TIMES
Changing dynamics in property market
By Dr R Seetharaman
New home sales rose 7.8% in the US
in February 2015. Most sales activity
continues to be among existing home
owners who are taking advantage of low
mortgage rates. In the US the existing
home inventory is at a level of 1.85mn for
December 2014, down from 2.08mn in
November 2014 and down from 1.86mn
one year ago. The current economic indicators of the US housing market health
indicate that they are stronger than their
historical levels.
The UK’s house prices rose by 0.1% in
March 2015; however, in some parts of the
country prices are lower than that at the
start of the year. The UK property market
is likely to remain subdued up until the
general election in May 2015.
Singapore’s home prices fell 4% in 2014.
The slump came as Singapore added
more measures to rein in property values
with some of the strictest measures,
including capping total debt repayments
at 60% of a borrower’s income. The Singa-
pore government aims for a soft landing
for the housing market.
The recovery in China’s property
market remains fragile, with new-home
prices rising in only one of 70 cities. Average prices fell 5.1% from a year earlier, the
biggest drop on record. The nation’s first
interest-rate cut since 2012 in November
and the removal of property curbs have
yet to revive an industry that became a
drag on economic expansion last year.
China’s has issued new directives to
curb the overhang in housing supply
across China. Land supplies will be
decreased in cities with excess housing
available.
Low interest rates, low inflation and
drop in oil prices can give room for bubbles in Japan property market.
India property market hopes on rate
cuts to revive its growth.
The UAE market is going through a
period of correction; the fall in oil prices
are to further impact property sales
market in the short- to medium-term in
the UAE, particularly Dubai, as domestic,
regional and international investors
from key oil dependent markets reign in
investment.
Dubai home prices climbed 18% in
2014. The strengthening of the US dollar
and the weakness of the euro also means
that demand from European buyers has
also begun to wane, in turn adding further
downward pressure on residential property prices in Dubai.
In Abu Dhabi house prices would remain stable or fall slightly. Oil prices could
have an impact on corporate sentiment
which could be reflected in the office real
estate prices. On the retail segment too,
there could be some impact if consumption spending is impacted.
On the residential side, weakening
macroeconomic situation could dampen
investor demand. The above developments can also impact economic growth.
In Saudi Arabia, there is encouragement for accelerated new home delivery.
Encouraging real estate activity on
unused land are also under consideration on account of demand from surging
population.
However, concerns of prices due to fall
in oil price also remain. The real estate
loans of Saudi banks to individuals and
corporate amounted to SR148.9bn by
the end of 2014. The loans value rose
by 31% compared with 2013 to reach
SR113.7bn. The individual property loans
grew by 34% to SR94.2bn by the end
of 2014 compared to SR70.3bn in 2013,
whereas corporate loans rose by 26% to
SR54.7bn compared to SR43.4bn. The
gross trade value for a property in Oman
has witnessed a remarkable growth that
stood at OMR2.7bn in 2014, compared
to OMR1.5bn in 2013. GCC nationals are
encouraged to buy real estate properties in Oman due to the government
policies as well as building mega projects
nationwide.
Bahrain’s commercial real estate sector
is witnessing stagnant growth as a dip in
economic output, and an overhanging
supply of commercial space combine to
keep rental rates down.
In Qatar, office developments are
coming up on ‘C’ and ‘D’ Ring Road and in
Al Saad. However, limited leasing activity
are witnessed. Many towers in West Bay
are leased to government organisations.
The organised retail market is currently
dominated by the Villagio and City Centre
malls. Medina Central on the Pearl-Qatar
and Barwa Commercial Avenue have
increased retail space.
There are currently approximately 125
hotel establishments currently under
construction in Qatar. There was a slow-
down in number of hotels built in 2014,
combined with the increase in tourist
numbers, resulting in a jump in occupancy levels. Occupancy levels are likely
to be tested further in the medium term
as the supply of hotel rooms continues
to increase to meet Qatar’s FIFA 2022
obligations. West Bay and Pearl witness
new residential developments, and rentals
have remained stable in 2014.
WTI and Brent settled to $48.87/barrel
and $56.41/barrel by end of last week as
fears about the disruption of Middle East
crude shipments from Yemen’s conflict
eased, and focus turned to the likelihood
of an Iranian nuclear deal which could
increase oil supply.
The recent oil price rallies have been
short-lived. If the low oil price levels persist, it may lead to slowdown in the GCC
property market.
The dynamics have changed in GCC
property market on account of fall in oil
prices.
• Dr R Seetharaman is Group CEO of Doha
Bank. The views expressed are his own.
Barwa set to launch major
expansion projects this year
By Peter Alagos
Business Reporter
B
Osama Abdulla Abdulghani, chairman, AAB, receiving the
Diamond Award from Hisayuki Inoue, senior managing
officer, Toyota Motor Corporation.
Abdulrahman Abduljaleel Abdulghani, vice-chairman,
AAB, receiving the ‘Outstanding customer service
award’ from Inoue.
Dr Nasser Abdulghani al-Abdulghani, managing director,
AAB, receiving the ‘Marketing award for excellence’ from
Inoue.
Abdullah Abdulghani
& Brothers receives
top Toyota awards
A
bdullah Abdulghani &
Brothers (AAB) recently
held a special function
as “proud recipients” of Toyota
Motor Corporation’s coveted
‘Diamond award’.
At the ceremony, AAB was
also conferred with the ‘Outstanding customer service
award’ and the ‘Marketing
award for excellence’.
2014 has proved to be “another exceptional” year, with
the highest ever sales recorded
and an increased market share.
AAB also had the distinction of
achieving high points for Customer Satisfaction.
Hisayuki Inoue, senior managing officer, Toyota Motor Corporation, Japan, presented the
awards.
Dr Nasser Abdulghani alAbdulghani, AAB managing director and acting CEO, thanked
Inoue and Toyota Motor Corporation for all their support and
encouragement, which helped
AAB to achieve the prestigious
awards. Further, he stated, “Our
goal is to become the best automobile distributor in terms of
Customer Satisfaction. This is
why we give high importance to
quality service and we continuously come up with various other initiatives to build and foster
lifetime relationships with our
customers. Customer service is
part of AAB’s DNA. It is embodied in our corporate values and
principle, which is, ‘Customer
ﬁrst’. ”
In the AAB values and principle, ‘First’ is an acronym for
‘fairness, integrity, respect, superior performance and teamwork’.
Strong after-sales support
is an area that contributed to
achieving the Toyota Motor
Corporation’s Customer Service
Awards. The company has eight
quick service centres in various
parts of the country, in addition
to its state-of-the-art work-
shop at the Industrial Area. The
quick service centres are located
in D Ring Road, Abu Hamour, Al
Wakrah, Landmark, Golf Course,
Al Nayef and Al Khor with some
of these QSCs open to customers
24x7.
Today, AAB’s customers can
get a quotation for new vehicles
and make service appointments
through the company website,
Facebook page or via phone.
Further, AAB’s showrooms
are open seven days a week with
extended working hours with no
lunch breaks. The AAB CRM Department also organises customer educational workshops every
month to educate customers on
various Toyota features and to
convey tips on maintenance and
other ‘Dos and Don’ts’.
AAB also invested in information technology when it
launched the Inspire Project
in 2014 to enhance customers’
showroom experience and for
future business requirements
by upgrading the IT Platform to
SAP. It was also the year when
a major step was taken in connecting with customers and
the public at large via the social media – Facebook, Twitter and Instagram – attracting a
200,000-plus fan-following for
Toyota and more than 100,000
for Lexus. Through the social
media AAB engages customers
and fans with information about
the latest offers, tips on maintenance, booking of test drives,
innovations in the automobile
industry, etc.
An exciting highlight of the
year 2014 was AAB’s participation in the Qatar Motor Show
with Toyota’s stunning ‘Wave’
concept show area where the
public was treated to not only
Toyota’s current array of models but also ‘Cut Body’ displays
highlighting future safety features, Toyota Driving Experience
Simulator, T-Connect and an
Instagram booth.
Finally, one of the signiﬁcant
milestones in 2014 was the celebration of 50 years of partnership between AAB and TMC.
AAB has always recognised
the value of fostering happy,
motivated performers and the
fact that keeping up the success
momentum requires the active
participation of its employees.
In line with this principle, the
company continually implements numerous employee engagement programmes to enhance employee morale and to
empower them in their responsibilities.
Abdullah Abdulghani & Bros
Company was established in
1958 as part of Qatar’s infrastructure development. In 1964,
AAB was awarded the Toyota
Dealership.
AAB has grown to be one of
Qatar’s leading automobile companies with operations spanning
heavy equipment, pre-owned
vehicles, rental and leasing.
arwa Real Estate Company expects to start
construction work on its
Barwa Village expansion and
the Alaateda (Barwa Al Doha),
Madinat Al Mowatir, and Manateq projects this year.
This was announced by Barwa
chairman Salah bin Ghanim alAli at the company’s ordinary
annual general meeting at the
Sheraton Doha yesterday.
Al-Ali said Barwa was “progressing with development” of
the two phases of the Barwa Al
Baraha project, a “quality and
high-level” housing for workers.
“Both phases will accommodate 53,000 workers and is considered one of the largest workers accommodations in Qatar
and in the Gulf Co-operation
Council, as the project reﬂects
Barwa’s strategy towards developing innovative solutions and
supporting the Qatar National
Vision 2030,” al-Ali stressed.
He said the construction
work on the Barwa Al Khor residential project, which consists
of 300 apartments and 50 villas
for Qatar Shell staff, “is progressing.”
“Barwa is continuing its strategic analysis of development
opportunities with various
business models with government and private companies
to ensure a promising investment prospects that can deliver
sustainable growth and superior returns to shareholders,” he
said.
Al-Ali said, “The board of
directors and management is
committed to developing the
investment thinking of the
Group to build a base of assets
to generate sustainable returns,
and this can be achieved only
through evaluating the performance of current projects
and formulating an optimum
development strategy for the
new investments to beneﬁt the
shareholders.
“Barwa has sizable land plots,
which are currently being evaluated to determine the highest
and best use, whether selling or
developing, leasing, and selling
Barwa Real Estate Group
chairman Salah bin Ghanim
al-Ali at the company’s AGM in
Doha yesterday.
purposes.” At yesterday’s general meeting, Barwa board of directors approved the proposed
22% cash dividend (QR2.2 per
share) for 2014.
As part of the framework
agreement ﬁnalised with Qatari
Diar for divestment of selected
assets, al-Ali said the company
has completed the sale of shares
of Barwa City and Barwa Commercial Avenue to Labregah.
“We concluded the sale of
two plots of Barwa City-2 in
Mesaimeer, settlement of plot 1
has been completed in 2014 and
the second plot transaction will
be completed in early 2015.
“We signed the agreement to
buy shares in the Arcapita Lusail development company, the
transfer of ownership completed in January 2015. As a part of
the deal, Barwa has got the ownership to develop 3.6mn square
metres of land area, which is a
signiﬁcant addition to Barwa’s
land bank,” al-Ali said.
Al-Ali said Barwa had doubled its net proﬁt to QR2.78bn
in 2014 mainly on the back of
“stronger operating earnings”
from proﬁt on sale of properties, as well as better cost management.
Meanwhile, net rental and ﬁnance lease income grew 9% to
QR1.27bn and net consultancy
income by 11% to QR119.04mn.
Proﬁt on sale of properties
grew to QR2.93bn compared
to QR954,000 in the previous year. Total equity stood at
QR15.92bn on a capital base of
QR3.89bn and earnings-pershare was QR7.14 at the end of
December 31, 2014.
QDB to boost global presence of Qatar SMEs
By Peter Alagos
Business Reporter
Q
atar Development Bank (QDB) aims to
boost the global presence of the country’s SME sector, as it expects to surpass
the more than QR250mn international deals
Qatar companies signed in 2014, QDB CEO Abdulaziz bin Nasser al-Khalifa said.
Through QDB’s export promotion arm,
Tasdeer, al-Khalifa said the bank was able to
support 150 entrepreneurs and small and medium-sized enterprises in signing business
transactions with international partners.
“Our export development programme is contributing signiﬁcantly to the non-hydrocarbon
exports from Qatar,” al-Khalifa told Gulf Times
on the sidelines of a press brieﬁng yesterday to
announce QDB’s Isteshara programme.
He added, “Last year, we took more than 150
non-hydrocarbon-related companies and SMEs
to international markets where they have managed to sign deals worth more than QR250mn,
and we will continue to do that and we will even
From left: QDB’s al-Mannai, al-Khalifa, and al-Kubaisi during a press briefing on the bank’s Isteshara
programme. PICTURE: Thajudheen
do more.” Asked how QDB schemes would help
diversify the economy by assisting the entrepreneurial sector, al-Khalifa noted that the
bank plays a major role in Qatar’s diversiﬁcation
strategy. “Government statistics have showed
that there has been adequate growth in the nonhydrocarbon sector, which has contributed to
GDP growth. Do we claim that we are the only
contributor to this? No. “But are we a major
contributor to Qatar’s diversiﬁcation strategy?
Yes. We are supporting SMEs and helping the
private sector contribute to Qatar’s GDP growth
and our programmes are speaking on our behalf,” al-Khalifa stressed.
This was reiterated by QDB training and development manager Ibrahim Abdul Aziz alMannai, who explained to Gulf Times that the
decision to merge QDB and Enterprise Qatar will
push the bank “to focus more on the diversiﬁcation of the economy.”
“We are looking at the strategies that we have
developed and from 2015 to 2019, we will be a
major player in the diversiﬁcation strategy,” alMannai said.
QDB executive director of Strategy & Business Development Hamad Khamis al-Kubaisi
said the bank’s Isteshara (advisory services)
programme is part of its family of subsidised
professional consultancy services available to
Qatari entrepreneurs and SMEs.
He said four services are under the Isteshara
platform, namely Jadwa, Oqood, Tadqeeq, and
Eyada (SMEs clinic).
“Isteshara supports Qatar’s entreprenuers
and SMEs on their journey to success by validating the commercial feasibility of their business
opportunities and ideas, enhancing operational
efficiency, competitiveness and proﬁtability. For
each service, QDB will pay 70% of the consultancy service cost, while the entrepreneur or
SME pays only 30%,” al-Kubaisi said.
He explained that Isteshara allows QDB to
provide feasibility studies, market studies,
training programmes, and workshops to Qatar
SMEs.
“More than 80,000 people have visited our
dedicated digital SME toolkit and we’ve inked a
number of impactful MoUs and contracts with
private and government entities. By the end
of 2014, 250 Qatari SMEs and entrepreneurs
have beneﬁted from advisory services valuing
QR12.7mn,” al-Kubaisi said.
He added, “Around 190 feasibility studies
worth more than QR10mn have been completed
and 67 of those were forwarded for direct and
indirect funding, through Al Dhameen, while 21
studies did not pass the feasibility tests. A total
of QR135.5mn has been loaned.”
FORMULA 1 | Page 3
FOOTBALL | Page 11
Vettel
powers
Ferrari to
Malaysia win
Reus, Mueller
on target as
Germany ease
past Georgia
Monday, March 30, 2015
Jumada II 10, 1436 AH
GULF TIMES
SPORT
Rossi turns
back the clock
CRICKET
Clarke bows out
of ODIs with all
guns blazing
Page 4
By Mikhil Bhat
Losail
even-time
MotoGP
champion Valentino
Rossi won the Commercial Bank Grand
Prix of Qatar for the first
time since 2010 holding off
the blistering Ducati of Andrea Dovizioso by a little
under two hundredths of a
second at the floodlit Losail
International Circuit yesterday.
The Movistar Yamaha rider started the race in eighth
position, fell to 10th briefly,
before working his way up
to fourth behind the two
Ducatis and teammate Jorge
Lorenzo, and then to a victory over the last two laps.
Dovizioso’s team-mate Andrea Iannone completed the
podium, while Lorenzo was
fourth ahead of Repsol Honda’s defending champion
Marc Marquez.
Marquez, who started
third behind Dovizioso and
teammate Dani Pedrosa,
went wide on the first turn
of the opening lap and never
recovered enough to challenge for a podium finish despite making up 20-odd places. This is the first time since
his 2013 German GP win at
Sachsenring that Marquez is
not on top of the championship standings.
“I have said this before
but for me this is one of the
best wins,” Rossi said after
the race. “We did a great job
in the practice. My bike was
fantastic.”
On his move up through
the top ten, Rossi said, “Step
by step, I made up places.
I tried not to give up. After
getting close to Ducatis and
Jorge it was very difficult
but in some places I was
very strong and very good
in the line. I am so happy for
S
my team Yamaha and all the
guys.”
In parc ferme, the win
evoked a child-like joy in
36-year-old Rossi, who did
everything from licking a
television camera to jumping over the barricades on
his team members.
Dovizioso’s pole position
effort put him in the thick of
things at the top along with
Lorenzo, who moved up
from sixth position on the
grid to fight for the lead even
as the two Hondas fell back
in the opening moments of
the race.
Later, the top four of
Dovizioso, Lorenzo, Rossi
and Iannone traded places at
frantic pace providing some
really amazing racing moments. The winged Desmosedici GP15 was especially
fast on the home straight
giving the Ducati duo fantastic opportunities to overtake
their rivals.
Lorenzo missed out on a
third Qatar MotoGP win, having won the race in 2012 and
2013 but crashing out on the
opening lap last year.
“I am just really happy to
come back and fight for the
victory,” said Dovizioso, who,
along with Iannone, gave
Ducati their first podium finish at the 5.38km Losail circuit
since Casey Stoner’s win in
2009.
“The last lap I pushed really hard but I didn’t have
any more grip. The bike was
on the edge and it was impossible to try and attack
Valentino. Anyway, second
position in the first race is a
good start.”
A drained Iannone, who
made it to the podium for the
first time since moving up to
the MotoGP class in 2013, said,
“I want to thank the Ducati
guys because this weekend
their work was incredible. I
am really really happy.”
RESULTS AND STANDINGS
MOTOGP RESULTS (TOP TEN)
1. Valentino Rossi (Movistar Yamaha)
42'35.717
2. Andrea Dovizioso (Ducati) +0.174
3. Andrea Iannone (Ducati)
+2.250
4. Jorge Lorenzo (Movistar Yamaha)
+2.707
5. Marc Marquez (Repsol Honda)
+7.036
6. Dani Pedrosa (Repsol Honda)
+10.755
7. Cal Crutchlow (CWM LCR Honda)
+12.384
8. Bradley Smith (Monster Yamaha Tech
3) +12.914
9. Pol Espargaro (Monster Yamaha Tech
3) +13.031
10. Yonny Hernandez (Pramac Ducati)
+17.435
MOTOGP STANDINGS (TOP FIVE)
1. Valentino Rossi (Movistar Yamaha) 25
2. Andrea Dovizioso (Ducati) 20
3. Andrea Iannone (Ducati) 16
4. Jorge Lorenzo (Movistar Yamaha)
13
5. Marc Marquez (Repsol Honda)
11
A champ like no other: Valentino Rossi
Pictures: Noushad Thekkayil and Reuters
2
Gulf Times
Monday, March 30, 2015
SPORT
COMMERCIAL BANK GRAND PRIX OF QATAR
BADMINTON
Germany’s Folger
rides his luck to
take Moto2 victory
QMMF’s Anthony West crashes out; Alexis Masbou wins Moto3
By Sahan Bidappa
Losail
J
onas Folger is one lucky
man. Not many would
have tipped the German
to win the Moto2 race in
Doha, but he created a ﬂutter
yesterday when he crossed the
ﬁnish line ﬁrst at the Commercial Bank Grand Prix of Qatar at
the Losail International Circuit
here.
Fortune played a big role in
Folger’s maiden victory as the
AGR Team rider admitted later.
First, pole winner Sam Lowes of
Speed Up Racing crashed midrace and in the ending stages,
second-placed qualiﬁer Ajo Motosport’s Johann Zarco, who was
leading the race, suffered gear
problems which curtailed his
speed signiﬁcantly.
However, credit to Folger, who
made the most of his fortune and
grabbed it with both hands. “I
can’t believe I just won the race.
I’m so happy, I don’t know what
happened to Johann. I could keep
my rhythm and win this brilliant
race,” the delighted 21-year-old
said.
After Lowes retired, Zarco was
a runaway leader and was seemingly cruising along for an easy
victory before misfortune struck
in the closing stages of 20-lap
race. Folger eventually took the
chequered ﬂag, ﬁve seconds clear
of his rival Xavier Simeon of Federal Oil Gresini after pulling away
on his own.
Belgium’s Simeon equalled his
best ever result in second position, while Tom Luthi (Deendinger Racing Interwetten) took
third spot, completing an allKalex podium for the manufacturer.
Home team OMMF Racing
Team had a mixed day, with debutant Julian Simon ﬁnishing 13th
to take three points. But Anthony
West had a night to forget after
he crashed out in the 11th lap.
Rookie and current Moto3
champion Alex Marquez, brother of reigning MotoGP champion
Marc Marquez, came home 11th
in his debut Moto2 race.
Earlier in the night’s opening
race, the Moto3, Alexis Masbou
of Saxoprint RPG Honda won
only the second Grand Prix of
his career. The Frenchman has
not had much success despite his
experience and at 27 was the second oldest in the 26-rider ﬁeld.
Winner Jonas Folger of Germany (C) celebrates on the podium with runner-up Belgian Xavier Simeon
and third-placed Swiss Thomas Luthi after the Moto2 race. PICTURE: Noushad Thekkayil
Moto3 winner Alexis Masbou celebrates with his trophy.
However yesterday, Masbou
was well-placed to win in Doha,
after he had qualiﬁed on pole for
the ﬁrst time in his 141st Grand
Prix appearance. It wasn’t a
smooth ride though for Masbou
in a race, where leads changed
many times.
In the end, it boiled down to
ﬁnal corner and Masbou just
about edged out Ena Bastianini
of Gresini Racing by mere 0.027
seconds to ghost through the
pack for a famous win. Leopard
Racing Honda’s Danny Kent, one
of the contenders for overall title,
ﬁnished third.
“I was afraid on the last lap. I
knew the potential to win was
here and in Turn 3 and 4 I was
fast. I knew I could pass everybody. When I saw I was behind
Efren (Vazquez) and Bastianini
I knew I could win the race. I
passed on the straight and I’m
happy,” said Masbou, who gained
25 points for the victory.
Bastianini, too, was a happy
man. The Italian was riding in a
new bike and started 21st from
the grid. “I’m happy because this
week was very difficult. Today
was difficult too, the ﬁnal corner
was hard. I did not go fast but still
a win was possible. But after this
result, I am conﬁdent I can do
well this season,” Bastianini said.
Highly-rated Estrella Galicia
0,0 rider Fabio Quartararo, the
youngest in the grid at 15 years
and 343 days, ﬁnished a creditable seventh in his Grand Prix
debut. The Frenchman, who is
tipped for great things and had
impressed with his pace in the
pre-season testing, was in contention for a podium ﬁnish at
least. But with 2 laps to go he
made a mid-lap mistake, which
cost him a dream debut. Quartararo, however, was just within
a second of the winner and is one
to watch out for this season.
Results (Top 5):
Moto2
1. Jonas Fogler (Germany / AGR
Team Kalex) 40:18.532 seconds
2. Xavier Simeon (Belgium / Federal Oil Gresini Kalex) 40:23.583
3. Thomas Luthi (Switzerland /
Derendinger Racing Interwetten
Kalex) 40:30.655
4. Alex Rins (Spain / Paginas Amarillas HP 40 Kalex) 40:30.734
5. Franco Morbidelli (Italy /
Italtrans Racing Team Kalex)
40:32.917
Moto3
1. Alexis Masbou (France /
Saxoprint RPG Honda) 38:25.424
seconds
2. Enea Bastianini (Italy / Gresini
Racing Team Honda) 38:25.451
3. Danny Kent (Great Britain
/ Leopard Racing Honda)
38:25.566
4. Efren Vazquez (Spain / Leopard Racing Honda) 38:25.712
5. John McPhee (Great Britain /
Saxoprint RPG Honda) 38:26.117
SPOTLIGHT
Indonesia’s Izdihar excels in Asia Talent Cup
By Sports Reporter
Losail
A
ndy Izdihar won the second race of the Shell Advance Asia Talent Cup, which formed part of the
Commercial Bank Grand Prix of Qatar.
The Indonesian rider from Bulukumba who
is just 17 years old, managed to pass Sasaki and Chantra in
the drag to the ﬁnish line with the top two separated by just
0.029s. The race was essentially a carbon copy of the ﬁrst
one, which took place on Saturday. With 20 riders on track
(Taylor and Paz having withdrawn), a leading group composed of 11 riders, led the race for the majority of the 14 laps
around the 5.4km circuit. Battling at the front of this group
were Sasaki, Izdihar and Atiratphuvapat, with Masaki also
getting involved.
The winner of yesterday’s race, Kunimine, decided to
stay in the middle of the pack and let his rivals take the responsibility of leading from the front, with the pace being
slight faster than yesterday, as once again lap records were
re-written.
The 11 riders were separated by just 1.5 seconds,
meaning the action at the end of the home straight in
the braking zone was spectacular to say the least, although it did lead to some hair-raising moments as
there were so many riders aiming for the racing line.
With 5 laps remaining this led to Atiratphuvapat and
Kunimine touching slightly under heavy braking, with the
Japanese rider unfortunately crashing out. This incident
would prove to be decisive in the outcome of the race.
With the leading ten riders split by just a second as they
started the ﬁnal lap, the action became even more frenetic
as riders tried to get themselves into the best position to allow them to take advantage of the slipstreams on offer on
the long straight, in the race to the line. Atiratphuvapat was
the ﬁrst out of the last corner, but it was Izdihar, who managed to gain the biggest advantage from the leaders breaking the air in front of him, taking the race win by just 0.029s
from Sasaki in 2nd.
After the race, Race Direction reviewed the incident between Atiratphuvapat and Kunimine, and decided to give
the Thai rider a one-minute penalty, which relegated him
down to 18th, and promoted Chantra onto the podium in
3rd.
Saina first Indian
woman to become
world number one
Saina Nehwal of India displays her gold medal after winning the
women’s singles final against Ratchanok Intanon of Thailand at the
Yonex-Sunrise India Open in New Delhi yesterday.
AFP
New Delhi
S
aina Nehwal, badminton’s new world number
one, trounced Thai
challenger Ratchanok
Intanon yersterday to win the
India Open women’s singles on
home turf.
Nehwal defeated Ratchanok
21-16, 21-14 in less than an hour
in the final of the Super Series
tournament in front of an adoring crowd packed into the Siri
Fort stadium in New Delhi.
The 25-year-old Nehwal
has already had a dream run
this year after reaching the final of the prestigious All England Championship earlier this
month where she lost to Spain’s
Carolina Marin.
Nehwal became the world
number one—the first Indian
to do so—after she reached the
semi-finals of the Indian Open
tournament, although rankings
are not formally announced by
the Badminton World Federation until Thursday.
Another Indian shuttler, K
Srikanth, won the men’s sin-
gles final in a keenly contested match against Denmark’s
Viktor Axelsen.
Srikanth defeated Axelsen
18-21, 21-13 and 21-12 in a 55
minute encounter.
He had stormed into the final
with a comfortable 21-16, 21-13
victory over China’s Xue Song
in the semi-final on Saturday.
Earlier on Sunday, the Japanese duo of Misaki Matsutomo
and Ayaka Takahashi defeated
their Chinese challengers Luo
Ying and Luo Yu 21-19 and 2119 to win the women’s doubles
final in a 81-minute encounter.
Two other Chinese pairs had
a better day, routing their opponents in the mixed and men’s
doubles finals.
Chai Biao and Hong Wei
comfortably defeated Denmark’s Conrad Petersen and
Mads Pieler Kolding 21-18 and
21-14 to take the men’s doubles
title in 45 minutes.
China’s Liu Cheng and Bao
Yixin
downed
Denmark’s
Christinna
Pedersen
and
Joachim Fischer Nielsen in the
mixed doubles final, with a
score of 21-19, 21-19 in 52 minutes.
CYCLING
Italian veteran
Paolini wins
Gent-Wevelgem
AFP
Wevelgem, Belgium
I
talian veteran Luca Paolini
timed his attack to perfection
to take victory at the one-day
cobbled classic race GentWevelgem in Belgium yesterday.
Last year’s Paris-Roubaix winner Niki Terpstra took second
at the end of the 240km race in
dreadful conditions with blustery
winds and driving rain as Friday’s
E3 Harelbeke winner Geraint
Thomas came third.
With winds of up to 90kph
(56mph) the race became an interminable slog and a battle of wills
but it was Paolini’s opportunistic
attack just under 6km from home
to distance his ﬁve breakaway
companions that proved decisive.
“It was an incredible race, one
for the courageous,” said Paolini,
who crashed twice and had to
change his bike during the day.
“Halfway through I was asking
myself if it was reasonable to continue. But I resisted (the temptation to quit) and I’ve earned the
best win of my career.”
After winning in 6hr 20min
55sec, Paolini added: “This victory is one for heart, courage but
also intelligence.
“I possibly wasn’t the strong-
est at the ﬁnish. Niki Terpstra and
Geraint Thomas still had strong
legs, but they were worried about
each other and I took my chance.”
The 38-year-old Katusha rider
had fought gamely to join the
other ﬁve following the ﬁnal climb
of the race around 30km from the
ﬁnish of the second of four cobbled classics.
Dutchman Terpstra, Briton Thomas and Belgians Stijn
Vandenbergh, Sep Vanmarcke and
Jens Debusschere were chasing
down a sole leader at that time,
Jurgen Roelandts.
Paolini managed to bridge the
gap but compatriot Daniel Oss
failed to do so as a six-man chase
group formed.
Debusschere sat at the back as
Belgian Roelandts rides for the
same Lotto Soudal team.
However, he was caught 17km
from the end, after which Terpstra
and Paolini struck out for home.
Thomas reeled them in and as
the three started playing a game
of cat-and-mouse, ﬁrst Vandenbergh and then both Vanmarcke
and Debusschere managed to
make contact once again—Roelandts, who later claimed it had
been difficult at times to stay on
the bike, by now had blown a gasket after a solo break of almost
60km.
TENNIS
ITF Qatar Futures
begins today
T
QMMF president and FIM deputy president Nasser Khalifa al-Attiyah, FIM president Vipo Ippolito, FIM chief executive Ignacio Verneda and others pose as part of the “FIM GO
Green” initiative at the Losail International Circuit yesterday.
he Qatar Tennis Federation is hosting the Qatar
ITF Futures tournament
from today at the Khalifa
International Tennis and Squash
Complex.
This event is the ﬁrst of a
three-week ITF Men’s Circuit
series.
The tournament attracts a
large number of players who are
seeking to gain more points on
the ITF and ATP Tours.
The Qatar Tennis Federation has given four wild cards to
national team players Moussa
Shanan, Abdallah Shanan, Jassim
Zeyara and Abdul Reda.
Saad al-Mohannadi, QTF Executive Director and the Tournament Director, said, “QTF is
proud of the continued organisation for the Futures events and we
expect high level competitions
with the high-ranked players
who came to play in Doha from all
over the world and we wish our
National Team Players can take
this chance to achieve successful
results during this event.”
Gulf Times
Monday, March 30, 2015
3
FORMULA ONE
Mercedes
vow to keep
calm and
carry on
SEPANG: Mercedes boss
Toto Wolff told his team
not to panic but accepted
that Ferrari had launched
a new era in Formula One
with their stunning win
at yesterday’s Malaysian
Grand Prix.
Wolff said the Silver Arrows now face a capable
new challenger after
Sebastian Vettel held off
Lewis Hamilton and Nico
Rosberg at a sun-baked
Sepang circuit.
Mercedes dominated 2014
and they cruised to a onetwo ﬁnish at the seasonopener in Australia, but
Wolff admitted they were
caught on the hop by Ferrari’s raw pace on Sunday.
“It’s not the end of an era.
It’s maybe the start of a new
era of a good battle, a challenge we want to take on,”
Wolff said.
“It’s about staying calm and
assessing and trying to get
back with the speed we’ve
had in the last couple of
races.”
He added: “There’s no
reason to panic. Probably
we’re back into a more
normal racing season where
you have more than just
one contender and more
than just one-twos every
weekend. Back to normal
business.”
He said Mercedes would
pick over their performance after a troubled outing
marked by garbled radio
communications, which
drew complaints from both
drivers.
Strategy was also a major issue with three pitstops and
a questionable use of tyres
putting them at a disadvantage compared to Vettel,
who only stopped twice.
It brought a halt to a run
of eight straight Mercedes
victories, stretching back to
Daniel Ricciardo’s triumph
for Red Bull in Belgium last
August.
“Today things didn’t pan
out the way we expected
them to pan out,” Wolff said.
“This is one of the topics.
We need to sit down and
say, Okay, what did we do
wrong? And it’s not one
particular thing, it’s a couple of things where we can
improve.”
“It was clear that the winning streak was not going
to go on forever, anyway. And today, we were
beaten fair and square.
We weren’t the fastest car
today.”
The Mercedes drivers will
certainly not back away
from the Ferrari challenge,
starting with the Chinese
Grand Prix in Shanghai in
two weeks’ time.
“All I can say now, on behalf
of our team, is: game on,
Ferrari!” said Rosberg.
MALAYSIAN GRAND PRIX
Ferrari end win drought
with Sepang success
Vettel chalks up 40th career victory in F1; Hamilton leads driver’s standings, Vettel second
Reuters
Sepang, Malaysia
S
ebastian Vettel showed
again that form is temporary and class permanent when the fourtimes world champion put in a
faultless display to record his
ﬁrst victory for Ferrari at the
Malaysian Grand Prix yesterday.
The triumph ended a long
drought for Formula One’s most
successful team, whose last win
was at the Spanish Grand Prix
in 2013, and was the 40th of the
German’s career.
Starting from second place
on the grid behind Lewis Hamilton’s seemingly unbeatable
Mercedes, Vettel and Ferrari
produced a tactical masterclass
to overhaul the Briton and cross
the line 8.5 seconds ahead of the
double world champion.
“Numero uno is back, Ferrari
is back,” Vettel was told over the
team radio as he took the chequered ﬂag.
“Grazie, grazie. Forza Ferrari”
he shouted in reply as he celebrated his fourth win at Sepang,
a circuit that has favoured the
Italian team over the years with
seven victories in 17 editions
since 1999.
Hamilton’s teammate Nico
Rosberg ﬁnished a distant third
while 17-year-old Max Verstappen claimed seventh place
for Toro Rosso to become the
youngest ever points scorer in
Formula One.
Mercedes dominated last season and when Hamilton led a
one-two in Australia two weeks
ago the rest of the ﬁeld looked
even further behind in the second
year of the V6 hybrid engines.
Vettel had cut a forlorn ﬁgure
in his last season at Red Bull in
2014, unable to record a victory
and way off the pace of the front
runners.
(Left to right) Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari Chief Mechanic Diego Ioverno, Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel and Mercedes’ Nico Rosberg (R) celebrate on the podium after the
presentation ceremony of the Malaysian Grand Prix 2015 at the Sepang International Circuit, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia yesterday.
He agreed to join a stuttering Ferrari last year, replacing
Spain’s double world champion
Fernando Alonso, and the union
appears to have revitalised them
both.
RESULTS
1. Sebastian Vettel (Germany) Ferrari 1:41:05.793 2. Lewis Hamilton (Britain)
Mercedes +00:08.569 3. Nico Rosberg (Germany) Mercedes 00:12.310 4. Kimi
Raikkonen (Finland) Ferrari 00:53.822 5. Valtteri Bottas (Finland) WilliamsMercedes 01:10.409 6. Felipe Massa (Brazil) Williams-Mercedes 01:13.586 7.
Max Verstappen (Netherlands) Toro Rosso - Renault 01:37.762 8. Carlos Sainz
Jr (Spain) Toro Rosso - Renault 1 lap 9. Daniil Kvyat (Russia) RedBull - Renault 1
lap 10. Daniel Ricciardo (Australia) RedBull - Renault 1 lap 11. Romain Grosjean
(France) Lotus - Mercedes 1 lap 12. Felipe Nasr (Brazil) Sauber - Ferrari 1 lap 13.
Sergio Perez (Mexico) Force India - Mercedes 1 lap 14. Nico Huelkenberg (Germany) Force India - Mercedes 1 lap 15. Roberto Merhi (Spain) Marussia - Ferrari
3 laps r. Pastor Maldonado (Venezuela) Lotus - Mercedes 9 laps r. Jenson
Button (Britain) McLaren 15 laps r. Fernando Alonso (Spain) McLaren 35 laps
r. Marcus Ericsson (Sweden) Sauber - Ferrari 53 laps (rank: r = retired, nc = not
classified) Fastest Lap: Nico Rosberg,1:42.062, lap 43.
Third in Australia, though
some way behind Mercedes,
Vettel and Ferrari showed real
potential in practice and qualifying and were able to carry that
momentum forward into the
race.
When the lights went out at
the start, Hamilton pulled away
from Vettel but the race turned
in Ferrari’s favour when Sauber’s Marcus Ericsson spun off
at the start of lap four to bring
out the safety car.
While Mercedes pulled both
their cars into the pits to put
on hard tyres, Vettel stayed out
on the medium compound and
made the lead stick until the end
of the race as Mercedes scrambled around trying to outsmart
the leader but unable to rein him
in.
“It has been a while since I’ve
been on top step and obviously
the ﬁrst time with Ferrari,” a
beaming Vettel said in a podium
interview.
“I’m speechless. I’m happy
and proud of today. We beat
them fair and square and it is a
special day - that is why I am
emotional.”
His Ferrari teammate Kimi
Raikkonen overcame a tough
qualifying session and an early
puncture to ﬁnish fourth, well
clear of Williams pair Valtteri
Bottas and Felipe Massa.
Vettel, who ﬁnished ﬁfth in
the standings last year after four
successive titles, has now won
races for three separate teams—
Toro Rosso, Red Bull and Ferrari.
Hamilton was magnanimous
in defeat after a frustrating
drive in which he often struggled to understand team strat-
SPOTLIGHT
on a poor day as both Fernando Alonso, back in action after
missing the season-opener following a pre-season crash, and
Jenson Button retired from the
race.
After two races, Hamilton
leads the driver’s standings on
43 points, Vettel sits second
on 40, with Rosberg on 33 and
Massa on 20.
Malaysia signs F1 contract extension to 2018
SEPANG: The Malaysian Grand
Prix will stay on the Formula
One calendar until 2018 after
organisers signed a three-year
contract extension yesterday.
Malaysian Prime Minister
Najib Razak’s office said in a
statement the extension was
announced after Germany’s
Sebastian Vettel won this
year’s race at the Sepang
circuit for Ferrari.
Organisers said state oil giant
Petronas would also continue
as title sponsor of the race,
which has been on the calendar since 1999, for the next
three years.
YOUNGEST POINTS SCORER
Alonso stays positive despite
retirement and Ferrari win
DPA
Sepang, Malaysia
F
ernando Alonso remained positive yesterday despite failing to
ﬁnish in his ﬁrst race for
McLaren and seeing his former
Ferrari team winning again at
the Malaysian Grand Prix.
But it must have been hard
to swallow for the former twotime champion that his successor at Ferrari, Sebastian Vettel,
took the winning honours and a
second podium in as many races
for the Scuderia.
Until Sunday, Alonso had
won the last race for Ferrari, in
May 2013 in his native Spain.
Alonso himself had missed
the season-opener in Australia
in the wake of a concussion
sustained in pre-season testing which had already revealed
that a difficult season lay ahead
of himself and teammate Jenson
Button.
The Briton Button was 11th
and last in Australia, and on
Sunday shared Alonso’s fate of
not ﬁnishing for the former top
egy and orders over the radio.
“Huge congratulations to
Ferrari and Sebastian ... I gave
it everything I could but their
pace was excellent,” the Briton
said.
“We knew that Ferrari had
made a step but didn’t know
how big, they were too quick
today.”
McLaren put a positive spin
McLaren Honda’s driver Fernando Alonso (left) and Scuderia Toro Rosso’s Carlos Sainz Jr (right) arrive
to take part in the driver’s parade ahead of the Formula One Malaysian Grand Prix in Sepang yesterday.
team McLaren.
But both rather looked at the
bright side of the weekend action.
“This whole weekend has
been better than I expected,”
Alonso said. “We were able to
run with other cars - Jenson
and I weren’t simply ﬁghting
with each other. That was the
ﬁrst step we needed to take, and
we’ve taken it already.
“Indeed, our race pace was
surprisingly good; I was running with the pack, and I was
even able to catch the Red Bulls
before the pit-stops. That was a
nice surprise.
“For us, these are the sort
of reliability problems you’d
usually discover in pre-season
testing, but, given our lack of
running over the winter, unfortunately we’re likely to encounter such issues in the ﬁrst few
races of the year.”
The 2009 champion But-
ton said: “I enjoyed it out there
- we’re actually racing people
... Fighting in the pack is the
most positive thing to take away
from this weekend - hopefully,
before too long, we can start to
pick them off on a race-by-race
basis.
“Today has been a useful day;
it’s just a pity that both Fernando and I ended up ﬁnishing
it early.”
McLaren will continue to
work on every aspect of the
car until the next race April 12
in China along with their new
engine partners Honda who
identied power unit problems
as the reason for the drivers’ retirement - an ERS colling issue
with Alonso and a turbo problem with Button.
“Both retirements were a result of the harsh use of the power unit within competitive race
conditions, not the result of the
high-temperature conditions
encountered at this circuit,”
Honda motorsport chief officer
Yasuhisa Arai said.
“We’ll investigate the issues
further and aim to improve
things before Shanghai.”
Verstappen adds
another record with
first F1 points
Reuters
Sepang, Malaysia
M
ax Verstappen’s rush
into the record books
continued yesterday
when the 17-yearold Dutch driver became Formula One’s youngest ever points
scorer with seventh place for
Toro Rosso at the Malaysian
Grand Prix.
The glamour sport’s youngest
racer had already paved the way
by matching the best qualifying position of his father, former
Formula One driver Jos, by starting a dizzying sixth on the grid in
Sepang.
That in itself was the best
qualifying performance by a
teenager since 19-year-old Mexican Ricardo Rodriguez in 1961.
“It was a good day. The ﬁrst
few laps were a bit difficult for
me, I struggled a bit with the
brakes and the tyres,” Verstappen told reporters. “But when we
went on to hard tyres, it worked
much better.
“I found good balance and
good rhythm. From there, the car
felt great.”
The youngster made a poor
start and opted to pit during an
early safety car period, but battled back to end the race just one
spot behind his qualifying position and ahead of Spanish team
mate Carlos Sainz.
The two Red Bulls of Daniil
Kvyat, the previous youngest
points scorer who made his debut as a 19-year-old with Toro
Rosso last year, and Daniel Riciardo were ninth and 10th.
As was the case after qualifying, Jos Verstappen beamed with
pride at his son’s performance
and stressed that the points were
richly deserved.
“I’m very pleased with what
he has done today and I’m most
of all happy for himself that he
ﬁnished the race and the way he
raced. I think he deserved it,”
the older Verstappen told the
BBC.
“You could see he was struggling a bit at the beginning of
the race as he lacked conﬁdence
with his brakes. The team did an
incredible job to call him in when
the safety car was there and you
saw after that he went into the
groove, consistent and he kept
going.”
4
Gulf Times
Monday, March 30, 2015
CRICKET
COMMENT
Forget David, Goliaths are worthy winners
By Vic Marks in Melbourne
The Guardian
S
ometimes Goliath wins are the
most popular outcomes. Most
of those at the MCG, which was
at its most majestic, a waspish
conglomeration of yellow interspersed
by a bit of black here and there, were
very happy. Australia were winning;
the old order was intact and that was
reassuring.
They prevailed with super efficiency,
without doubt the best side on the day
and the best in the tournament.
Beyond Australia, New Zealand had
become everyone’s second favourite
team. However, here on the crowded
side of Tasman, they suddenly seemed
a long, long way from home. The advantage of playing in their own country, which the Kiwis had enjoyed for
eight matches, now seemed something
of a hindrance.
This was certainly not Napier. In fact
it would be possible to ﬁt the entire
population of Napier into the MCG and
more than a third of the seats would
still be empty.
The New Zealanders, however determined they were to stay calm and
clear-headed, had not acclimatised to
a harsher environment. Maybe they
had not completely recovered from
that epic, draining semi-ﬁnal against
South Africa.
Brendon McCullum looked a bit of
a David against Mitchell—“Goliath”—
Starc. Twelve inches separated their
eyes and in McCullum’s case those
eyes could not detect the ball propelled
by Starc in that decisive opening over.
The ﬁrst delivery McCullum received swung a little at around 150kmh
and just missed the off-stump; the
second one passed the leg stump; the
third thudded against the timbers and
those bails lit up again. Each time McCullum had swished at thin air.
And he would be castigated for that.
Yet this is how McCullum has batted
throughout the entire tournament and
he has been praised to the skies. But the
old sling-shot was not working so well
in Melbourne and Starc delivered with
the ruthlessness of an assassin.
Discretion will never be McCullum’s
middle name, which is why we love him.
For a while, Grant Elliott—another
David ﬁgure—suggested that he might
become the seventh man to score a
century in the World Cup ﬁnal; his
name might have seemed a little incongruous alongside the names of
Lloyd, Richards, De Silva, Ponting,
DESERVING WINNER: Indian cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar (left) presents the
Player-of-the-Tournament award to Australian paceman Mitchell Starc. (AFP)
Gilchrist and Jayawardene.
Even so he was the only New Zealander capable of taking the attack to
a bowling unit that has improved and
been reﬁned as the tournament progressed. And they did not look too bad
at the start of the competition.
Australia did lose one game back in
Auckland by one wicket against the
New Zealanders. Maybe even that
outcome had done the Kiwis very few
favours. Michael Clarke has described
how this was “the kick up the backside” that his side required.
The New Zealanders had alerted
them. Back in 1983, India had scored
183 at Lord’s in the ﬁnal against the
West Indies and everyone was stunned
when they won by 43 runs. The West
Indies had underestimated them. The
Australians were never going to fall
into that trap—especially after their
experiences in Auckland.
However the “David” tag does not
sit perfectly with the New Zealanders
as England may discover before too
long in the forthcoming Test series.
The Kiwis will provide some very substantial threats.
Most obviously Trent Boult demonstrated that he could swing the white
ball at pace whichever side of the Tasman he was playing.
SPOTLIGHT
REACTIONS
Captain Clarke bows
out of one-dayers
with all guns blazing
‘I said yesterday that I thought it was the right time. Now I know it’s the right
time. There’s no such things as fairytales in sport but that’s as close as it gets’
Reuters
Melbourne
Australian captain Michael Clarke
acknowledges the applause of the
MCG crowd after top-scoring with
74 in yesterday’s World Cup final
against New Zealand. (AFP)
A
ustralia captain Michael
Clarke had hoped his retirement from one-day international cricket would be a
footnote to Australia’s successful bid
for a ﬁfth World Cup.
But having top-scored for Australia
with a 74 to push his team to victory
over New Zealand, the 33-year-old
bowed out with guns blazing in a fairytale farewell at a packed Melbourne
Cricket Ground yesterday.
James Faulkner won the man-ofthe-match award for his three-wicket
haul that sent New Zealand crashing to 183, but the night belonged to
Clarke who saved his best for last.
“I said yesterday that I thought it
was the right time. Now I know it’s the
right time,” Clarke told reporters after
his 245th ODI match left him with a
total of 7,981 runs at an impressive
average of 44.58. “There’s no such
things as fairytales in sport but that’s
as close as it gets.”
In front of a roaring crowd of
93,000, Clarke had the golden touch
from the start, his ﬁrst left-ﬁeld
bowling change bringing an immediate wicket.
Bringing in Glenn Maxwell in the
12th over, the part-time spinner
bowled New Zealand opener Martin
Guptill for 15, leaving New Zealand
rocking at 33-2.
Clarke would later position himself at slip, and took a sharp catch to
dismiss Luke Ronchi for a duck off the
bowling of player-of-the-tournament Mitchell Starc.
Though Australia were set a modest
chase of 184 for victory, Clarke came
to the crease with his team wobbling
at 63-2. Watchful at ﬁrst, he dominated his partnership with captainin-waiting Steven Smith, crunching
10 fours and a six in a 72-ball knock,
his most ﬂuent of a mostly scratchy
World Cup campaign.
He seemed destined to push Australia to victory, so his dismissal,
bowled by paceman Matt Henry, drew
groans from the crowd then a standing ovation as he left the MCG for the
last time in a gold outﬁt.
At times a polarising ﬁgure in cricket-mad Australia, Clarke ﬁnishes his
one-day career with a second World
Cup win after the 2007 triumph, and
with legacy intact after a tumultuous
few months in which he struggled
with the death of his “little brother”
Phillip Hughes.
In this tournament no Englishman
was anywhere near him. Boult might
also be handy with a red ball in May.
Tim Southee has not been too shabby
either, nor has the novice, Matt Henry.
Yet it was the Australian bowling
combination that dictated how this
match would unfold. They ruined it for
the neutrals, not that there were many
of those at the MCG.
Starc was stunning from the very
ﬁrst ball. He might have been the manof-the-match—if only for deﬂating the
Kiwi bubble by sending McCullum on his
way—but no one could complain when it
was James Faulkner. Starc was deservedly the man-of-the-tournament.
Mitchell Johnson, almost a veteran, has displayed many virtues in
this tournament, including humility.
He has been out-bowled by Starc and
denied the new ball. But this bothered
him not a jot. He improved with every
game, bowling progressively quicker
and straighter.
He will be alongside Starc in England in July for the Ashes series and
there are plenty of contenders to join
them: from this squad Josh Hazlewood
and Pat Cummins; from recent Test
teams Ryan Harris and James Pattinson. Australia suddenly have Goliaths
everywhere.
“It’s been one hell of a ride and
something that we’ll remember
for the rest of our lives. It would
have been great to have got the
silverware but it wasn’t meant to
be, but I think what we were able
to achieve in this tournament will
last for a long time.”
—New Zealand captain Brendon McCullum
“Watching @stevesmith49 hit
#CWC15 winning runs! Congrats @
MClarke23 on brilliant ODI career
& NZ on great tournament.”
—Tony Abbott, Australia Prime Minister
“Unfortunately not the result the
country was hoping for, but the @
BLACKCAPS have still made us all
incredibly proud over the past six
weeks.”
—John Key, New Zealand Prime Minister
“Congratulations @cricketworldcup Farewell Clarkey. What a way
to go out!”
—Actor Hugh Jackman
“It’s nice to see bat dominate ball
every now and again. There’s
been some big scores, but the
whole tournament has been
fantastic. We’ve worked really
hard at our bowling. The whole
bowling unit was awesome.”
—Australian pacer Mitchell Starc
“I thought Ross Taylor and Grant Elliot had an exceptional partnership
considering what happened at the
start, to pull things back for them,
but at the end of the day, to bowl
them out for 183 was fantastic.”
—Australia all-rounder James Faulkner
“Well played Australia you were
the best team by far and your
wins from the quarterfinals onwards were clinical and showed
your superiority!”
—West Indies batting great Brian Lara
“Congrats to my great mate @
MClarke23 & the entire Australian
team, just an outstanding result
To all the Nz team, you won our hearts!”
—Former Australia spinner Shane Warne
“Australia, you #*+#*#+ beauty!!!”
—Former Australia stumper Adam Gilchrist
“Congratulations to @mstarc56
on winning the player of the tournament for @cricketworldcup
Sensational bowling mate very
well deserved #CWC15”
—Former Australia bowler Glenn McGrath
“Congrats @MClarke23 & team
Australia on winning the #WorldCup2015 #FullJoy #CWC15
#63NotOut #Champions-well
done NZ! Great finish pups”
—West Indies batsman Chris Gayle
“Very fitting that Australia are
crowned World Champions ....
#63NotOut #riphughsey”
Clarke’s role in leading the mourning for his teammate, who was killed
by a short ball during a domestic
match in November, endeared him to
the Australian public.
His stirring Test century against
India when battling injury in the tribute match to Hughes in Adelaide will
remain a part of Australian sporting
folklore for decades to come.
Clarke wore an armband throughout the tournament for his team mate
who died at the age of 25, and said
Hughes was the 16th member of Australia’s World Cup squad.
“It makes it more special, there’s no
doubt about it,” Clarke said. “We are
still thinking about him. We are still
talking about him, and we always will.
“I won’t play another game, I cer-
tainly won’t play a Test match without his Test number on my hat, and
I’ll wear this black armband for the
rest of my career.”
But leaving the 50-over format will
give Clarke—whose career has been
blighted by back and hamstring problems—an opportunity to concentrate
on the ﬁve-day game.
“My next task is to try and get Australia back to the number one position
in Tests,” he said.
“We have a busy period ahead with
tours of the West Indies and then on to
England for the Ashes.
“I hope my retirement from oneday cricket will prolong my Test career. I am only 33 and hope I have a few
more years left in the game.”
He added that he had not made
up his mind about playing in various
Twenty20 leagues around the world
due to his Test commitments.
“I have not thought about playing in
the T20 leagues,” he said.
“I just wanted to concentrate on
the World Cup. Now that it is over, I
will get time to think over it. But I am
very excited about Test cricket. I don’t
want to rush to any decisions about
other things.”
Clarke praised his bowling unit after the left-arm pace trio of Mitchell
Starc, James Faulkner and Mitchell
Johnson shared eight wickets to set up
the emphatic victory yesterday.
“Our bowlers won us the World
Cup,” he said. “There is no doubt that
Starc deserved the man-of-the-series
award for his 22 wickets. Starc and the
whole bowling unit have done a great
job. Our bowling in every single game
has been exceptional.
“I think being aggressive and going for wickets was a good strategy. If
there are wickets in hand, the last 15
overs can be very destructive. So it’s
better to take wickets and not just restrict the runs.”
Clarke also complimented New
Zealand, whose unbeaten tournament run of eight consecutive victories ahead of the ﬁnal included a onewicket pool-stage win over Australia
in Auckland, saying they were worthy
ﬁnalists.
“New Zealand deserve credit for the
way they played in the World Cup,” he
said. “I wish them good luck for the
future. But it was to be our day today.”
—Former England captain Michael Vaughan
“4 title wins in last 5 world cups
is a testimony to the Australian cricket culture. Well done
Australia!#ICCCricketWorldCup”
—Former India player Sanjay Manjrekar
“Congrats to Australia. Well deserved
Champions. NZ can be proud their
campaign too. End of a fabulous WC
that has enhanced ODIs reputation”
—Former South Africa all-rounder Jacques Kallis
“Congrats to the @CricketAus on an
outstanding trnmnt.Terrific cricketers, worthy & brilliant co-hosts as @
BLACKCAPS surely u were brilliant.”
—Pakistan all-rounder Shahid Afridi
Gulf Times
Monday, March 30, 2015
CRICKET
Wizards of Oz
Australia cruise to a fifth World Cup triumph with 7-wicket decimation of New Zealand
Australian players celebrate with the World Cup trophy after beating New Zealand by seven wickets in the final in Melbourne yesterday. After bowling out the Kiwis for 183, Aussies took just 33.1 overs to reach the target. (AFP)
Mike Selvey in Melbourne
The Guardian
F
or the fourth time in ﬁve
tournaments, the World
Cup is in Australian hands,
presented to the captain
Michael Clarke on the outﬁeld of
this vast, soaring stadium under
the ﬂoodlight glare and in a shower
of gold glitter, with the Black Caps
beaten by seven wickets.
Magniﬁcent pace bowling ﬁrst
of all stiﬂed the challenge of New
Zealand and then blew them out
of the water as the last seven wickets fell for 33 runs from the start of
the second power play. Only Grant
Elliott, the hero of the Auckland
semi-ﬁnal, who made 83, and Ross
Taylor who sweated blood for 40,
the pair adding 111 for the fourth
wicket, had any answer to the
Mitchells Starc and Johnson.
Along with James Faulkner, they
shared eight of the wickets. Faulkner received the man-of-the-match
award for 3-36, including a spell of
3-15 that changed the course of the
game, and Starc was the man-ofthe-tournament for 22 wickets at
10 runs apiece.
All out for 183, the Black Caps
might have hoped that World Cup ﬁnal history could repeat itself and that
they might repeat India’s feat 32 years
ago of defending that same total.
It was to prove a forlorn hope.
Though the largest crowd ever
recorded officially for a cricket
match—93,013—saw Aaron Finch
fall without scoring, in Trent Boult’s
ﬁrst over, it was a false dawn, for
there were no demons to be found
in this pitch beyond those to be extracted by high pace.
David Warner swished around at
ﬁrst but then clattered 45 at a runa-ball to get things moving, and,
after his dismissal Steve Smith and
Clarke, steady at ﬁrst and accelerating later, put together a third-wicket stand of 112 that took the side to
the brink, before Smith ﬁnished the
game off by pulling Matt Henry to
the square leg ropes. There were 101
balls remaining.
Smith, enjoying an astounding run
in all formats of the game, ended unbeaten and untroubled on 56, a measured effort from 71 balls with only
three fours, while Clarke, who had
stolen some of his team’s thunder
by announcing his retirement from
ODIs on the eve of the game, batted
superbly for 74 from 72 balls with 10
fours and a six hit over long-off from
Daniel Vettori, before he was bowled
by Henry with eight runs required.
Thus a six-week tournament
ends with the favourites taking
a title they were always destined
to claim if they could hold their
nerve. This they did almost unwaveringly, faltering only in the nailbiter against these same opponents
in Auckland and then only by the
most slender of margins.
They really do have a powerful
side, appropriate for the age and
the conditions. But New Zealand
have given the tournament a run
for its money, reigniting a passion
for the game in their homeland, not
just by the manner in which they
play their cricket, but the spirit in
which they did so.
It is something that could serve
as a lesson to some others. They
leave Melbourne without the trophy but can do so with many friends
and their heads held high.
Only when Brendon McCullum
won the toss on a warm blue-bright
autumn morning, and later, when
Elliott and Taylor were attempting
to repair things, did things go right
for New Zealand.
Australia rarely allowed them
breathing space beyond that, and
for once, the force deserted the
talismanic McCullum, who, staying true to himself in pursuit of a
high octane start, threw the bat
at his ﬁrst three balls from Starc,
missed them all and was neckand-cropped by the last.
Starc, Josh Hazlewood and
Johnson hardly put a delivery out
of place in line or length, an exemplary display of new-ball bowling.
By the time the 12th over was done,
Martin Guptill and Kane Williamson had followed the captain and,
one sensed, the game was already
Australia’s to lose.
Under the circumstances, Elliott and Taylor deserve all credit for
the manner in which they shrugged
that aside and rebuilt, taking New
Zealand to within striking distance
of the last 15 overs and the cavalry
charge that can bring, with seven
wickets still in hand.
It was at this point, with the start
of the batting power play and the
shadow of the stands now falling
distractingly across the pitch, that
Faulkner turned the game on its
head, having Taylor caught behind
chasing the ﬁrst ball of a new spell
and then bowling the dangerous
Corey Anderson with his third.
It opened the door for Starc and
Johnson to blast the rest of the innings away. Only Elliott held sway,
hitting 11 fours and a six, before another of those back-of-the-hand
deliveries from Faulkner, deceptive
because the seam is still presented
upright, found him swinging too
early and edging to Brad Haddin.
McCullum’s instinct is to attack
come what may, but he really did
need to ﬁnd some inspiration for his
bowlers if they were to make any impact. Boult duly removed Finch, who
edged on to his pad and was caught
and bowled. But from Smith’s ﬁrst
ball, into which he moved seamlessly
and with time to spare, it just seemed
obvious that he would bat through.
Perhaps a ﬁnal indication that
McCullum’s luck had run out
came as early as the ﬁfth over, after
Warner had pummelled successive
boundaries from Tim Southee.
McCullum’s nature would have
told him to persist with his slip
cordon. Instead, he moved second
slip away and placed him at short
extra cover, on the drive as they
say. Warner edged the next delivery
straight through second slip. Even
he could smile wryly at that.
New Zealand gave it their all but
the game was up, the race was won.
New Zealand
M Guptill b Maxwell .......................................... 15
B McCullum b Starc ........................................... 0
K Williamson c&b Johnson ........................... 12
R Taylor c Haddin b Faulkner....................... 40
G Elliott c Haddin b Faulkner ....................... 83
C Anderson b Faulkner ................................... 0
L Ronchi c Clarke b Starc ............................... 0
D Vettori b Johnson .......................................... 9
T Southee (run out)........................................... 11
M Henry c Starc b Johnson ........................... 0
T Boult (not out).................................................. 0
Extras (lb7, w6) ................................................... 13
Total (all out, 45 overs) ................................... 183
Fall of wickets: 1-1 (McCullum), 2-33
(Guptill), 3-39 (Williamson), 4-150 (Taylor),
5-150 (Anderson), 6-151 (Ronchi), 7-167
(Vettori), 8-171 (Elliott), 9-182 (Henry),
10-183 (Southee)
Bowling: Starc 8-0-20-2 (1w); Hazlewood
8-2-30-0; Johnson 9-0-30-3 (2w); Maxwell
7-0-37-1 (1w); Faulkner 9-1-36-3; Watson
4-0-23-0 (2w)
Australia
D Warner c Elliott b Henry............................. 45
A Finch c&b Boult .............................................. 0
S Smith (not out)................................................. 56
M Clarke b Henry................................................ 74
S Watson (not out) ............................................. 2
Extras (lb3, w6) ................................................... 9
Total (3 wickets, 33.1 overs) .......................... 186
Fall of wickets: 1-2 (Finch), 2-63 (Warner),
3-175 (Clarke)
Bowling: Southee 8-3-65-0 (3w); Boult 100-40-1; Vettori 5-0-25-0; Henry 9.1-0-46-2
(2w); Anderson 1-0-7-0 (1w)
Man-of-the-match: James Faulkner (Aus)
Man-of-the-tournament: Mitchell Starc (Aus)
STARC AWARD DEFIES TREND IN BAT-DOMINATED TOURNAMENT
A
t a World Cup dominated by
batsmen and huge scores,
it was an old-fashioned
fast bowler who ultimately
played the biggest role in Australia’s
success. Mitchell Starc, whose devastating pace and movement troubled
almost every batsmen who faced him,
was named Player-of-the-Tournament
after Australia wrapped up their fifth
title with a seven-wicket over New
Zealand yesterday.
Glenn McGrath (2007) is the only
other specialist bowler to have won
the award but Starc was a popular
choice after terrorising his opponents
for the past six weeks.
“It’s nice to see bat dominate ball
every now and again,” Starc told reporters. “There’s been some fantastic
performances with both. Obviously,
it’s been a couple of big scores, a couple of double tons... but it’s just been
fantastic the whole tournament.”
Although New Zealand opener
Martin Guptill and Chris Gayle scored
double centuries during the World
Cup, Starc was an obvious choice for
the award.
He took 22 wickets, equal best with
New Zealand seamer Trent Boult, but
at a far better average of 10.18.
Perhaps the left-armer’s most telling contribution, however, came in the
first over of the final at the Melbourne
Cricket Ground when he cleaned
bowled New Zealand captain and
most destructive batsman Brendon
McCullum with a yorker.
The Black Caps never recovered
and were bowled out for just 183 in the
45th over.
“He’s been a key player for them
right from the beginning, and he’s
been fantastic for the Kiwis to get
them off to great starts,” Starc said.
“We knew we had to sort of assess
him as he went because he’s very
unpredictable. I think personally it was
a bit of a planning game with (bowling
coach) Craig McDermott about just
bowling in pace and yorker to him
first up. I’m not sure how that first one
missed, but lucky the third one hit.
There’s a lot of luck involved, but just
nice to see that plan come off.”
For Starc, his award was also a
vindication of his rising status in
Australia’s bowling ranks. One of three
left-arm fast bowlers, he has often
been overshadowed by Mitchell Johnson and James Faulkner, who was
named man of the match in the final.
He was also criticised this summer
by Shane Warne for not being aggressive enough but proved all his doubters wrong and now hopes his form in
the one-day game will help him play
more Tests.
“Over the last sort of 12 to 18
months I’ve really felt a part of the
one-day team, really felt at home,” he
said. “I’d like to push into Test cricket
now, but we’ve got a bit of a break
now before any of the Tests, but still
a lot of work to do with white and red
ball. Just going to really enjoy this
moment.”
New Zealand captain Brendon McCullum is
bowled by Mitchell Starc for a duck. (AFP)
5
6
Gulf Times
Monday, March 30, 2015
CRICKET
FOCUS
NZ falter at final hurdle after ride of a lifetime
Reuters
Melbourne
T
he 2015 World Cup was, skipper Brendon McCullum said,
the ride of a lifetime for New
Zealand and even if Australia
brought it to a shuddering halt in yesterday’s ﬁnal, their brilliant campaign
will not quickly fade from the memory.
For six weeks, the Black Caps rode to
the pinnacle of international cricket on
the back of an aggressive brand of the
game which earned them eight successive victories and the admiration of
millions.
There have been good, some might
say great, New Zealand cricket sides
in the past but none have captured
the imagination of a small but proud
sporting nation in the way McCullum’s
band of brothers did.
Had they won yesterday, they might
even have challenged the grip the All
Blacks have on the nation’s affections—at least until the most successful international team in sport defend
their rugby world title later this year.
As it was, New Zealand’s ﬁrst cricket
World Cup ﬁnal ended in anti-climax
with a crushing seven-wicket defeat
at the hands of their neighbours from
across the Tasman Sea.
Stunned by the loss of McCullum to
a third ball duck in the opening over,
New Zealand never really got back on
the front foot and 183 was not the sort
of tally their bowlers were hoping to
defend.
They battled, of course, but standout pacemen Trent Boult and Tim
Southee were unable to ﬁnd the potency with the new ball they had displayed in their previous matches, while
the guile of Daniel Vettori’s spin could
only slow the ﬂow of runs.
After a national record 10 straight
one-day international victories in
front of packed houses at home, they
came a cropper in their ﬁrst match
overseas this year—forcing Australia to
bat for less than 34 overs to claim their
ﬁfth title.
It will be of scant consolation to
McCullum’s men that their brand of
the game has played an integral role
in making the 11th one of the most attractive of World Cups and will probably redeﬁne the tactics of 50-overs
cricket.
They have also transformed the
world’s view of the game as played by
New Zealand, deemed unworthy of
matches against a full Australia side
until as recently as the early 1970s.
Martin Crowe’s batting and innovative tactics took New Zealand to the
brink of a World Cup ﬁnal in 1992 but
neither he nor any other previous captain had led a team to a ﬁnal in six attempts.
“I think there’s an element of
fearlessness about how we play,
which has been an effect on
other teams, as well. I think if
you ask most of the teams in this
tournament what they think of
how we’ve played the game, they
would be very respectful of how
we’ve gone about it..."
McCullum was always aware, however, that rejuvenating the reputation
of New Zealand cricket was a longterm project, win or lose at the MCG
on Sunday.
“We’ve got a great group of guys
from one through 25 on the squad, and
the guys who it’s been a pleasure to
be able to share this experience with,”
McCullum said on the eve of the ﬁnal.
“It won’t stop at the end of the World
Cup. We’ve still got a lot of hard work
to do to achieve what we want in this
game, and where we want to stand in
international cricket, but we’ve made
a good start.”
But the scale of New Zealand’s defeat, including McCullum’s dismissal
for a three-ball duck, led to questions
over whether they should temper their
bold playing style, a suggestion the
skipper ﬂatly rejected.
“No, no, you don’t change your style
of play. Look, for us to develop into the
team that we want to be in international cricket, we have to play like that,” he
told his post-match media conference.
“I think there’s an element of fearlessness about how we play, which has
been an effect on other teams, as well.
“I think if you ask most of the teams
in this tournament what they think
NO REGRETS
of how we’ve played the game, they
would be very respectful of how we’ve
gone about it.
“It’s what gives us our greatest pleasure, as well, and sometimes we’re going
to come undone, but for us to compete
against the big teams on regular occasions and for us to be able to develop
into the team we want to be, we need to
keep playing this brand of cricket.
“We’ll get better at doing it the more
we become accustomed to it, and I
guess a stronger depth of players we
develop in the same sort of mould of
cricket as we have. So yeah, we’re not
going to change.”
While the underarm bowling scandal of 1981 will always remain the deﬁning moment in New Zealand cricket
for some, a younger generation will
never forget the six weeks when the
national sporting mantra was “Attack!
Attack! Attack!”.
SPOTLIGHT
McCullum proud
of his team despite
the final debacle
‘It’s been one hell of a ride for us, right the way through, we played some outstanding
cricket. We ran into an outstanding team in Australia... they deserved to win’
Aussies resume
world domination
Reuters
Melbourne
A
s Steven Smith pulled
the winning boundary to crush a New
Zealand fairytale and
clinch a ﬁfth World Cup for
Australia yesterday, Michael
Clarke’s side celebrated a glorious end to a journey marked
by a period of self-doubt and
grief for a fallen teammate.
Captain Clarke retires from
one-day cricket with his legacy intact but his team will
charge on to the 2019 tournament with renewed belief in
their ability to re-generate,
adapt and rebound from the
stiffest of challenges.
Two years after their annus
horribilis of 2013 and less than
three months after the death of
batsman Phillip Hughes, Australia resumed their dominion
of world cricket with a ruthless
seven-wicket victory at the
Melbourne Cricket Ground.
Brutal in the ultimate back
yard battle against the ‘little
brother’ from across the ‘ditch’,
Australia’s ﬁfth world trophy
may be regarded the sweetest,
having played out in front of a
record home crowd of 93,013.
Australia have won four of
the last ﬁve World Cups, an astonishing record of dominance
unlikely to ever be repeated.
Roared on by canary-yellow
fans in the terraces, Mitchell
Starc bowled New Zealand’s
totemic captain Brendon McCullum for a third-ball duck,
setting the tone for a banner
day for the hosts’ pacemen who
skittled the visitors for 183.
Clarke made the most of his
swan-song, plundering a teamhigh score of 74 runs as Australia emphatically wiped away
the stain of 1992 when they
were knocked out early in their
ﬁrst World Cup on home soil.
Clarke and all-rounder
Shane Watson enjoyed their
second such triumph, having
toasted success in the 2007
World Cup in the Caribbean.
Though boasting an embarrassment of riches in both
bowling and batting, and a
formidable blend of youth and
experience, Australia were just
one of a pack of contenders at
this tournament, unlike the
great sides who swept to three
consecutive World Cups from
1999 to 2007.
A nerve-jangling loss against
New Zealand in the pool phase
followed a rained-out match
against Bangladesh, fanning
premature fears the hosts campaign might be ill-fated.
Those fears were torpedoed
with a crushing quarter-ﬁnal
win over Pakistan and a vengeful thrashing of champions India who ended their title defence in 2011.
Though the players will hail
a golden six weeks, some may
reﬂect on the dark places from
which they emerged.
Two years ago, Australia
battled mediocrity in all formats, lurching from crisis to
crisis in a humbling 2013.
Humiliated in Test series by
India and England, Australia
meekly surrendered their last
one-day title, the Champions Trophy in England, after
opening batsman David Warner punched an England player
in a Birmingham bar.
Coach Mickey Arthur was
sacked and Clarke was plagued
by his perennial back problems. But led by the calm direction of new coach Darren
Lehmann and ﬁred by the renaissance of fast bowler Mitchell Johnson, Australia dragged
themselves off the canvas to
thrash England 5-0 in the
2013-14 Ashes and upset world
number one Test team South
Africa in their own back yard.
Those successes would ﬁlter down to the one-day side,
who ﬁnished 2014 with a 13-5
winning record, but the year
would see Australia thrown
into turmoil again.
On November 25 last year,
batsman Phillip Hughes collapsed at the Sydney Cricket
Ground after being struck by a
short ball in a domestic match.
The youngest player to score
two centuries in a Test, Hughes’ death in hospital at the age
of 25 cast a pall over the World
Cup co-hosts less than three
months before the tournament. Their ability to put their
grief aside and roar to a successful World Cup campaign
underlined Australia’s steely
resolve in the face of adversity
and restored a dynasty that
may prove difficult to break.
New Zealand captain Brendon McCullum (centre) and his team stand after losing the World Cup final against Australia by seven wickets, at the Melbourne Cricket Ground yesterday. (AFP)
Reuters
Melbourne
N
ew Zealand captain
Brendon
McCullum
said he had no regrets
after his team were
beaten by Australia in the World
Cup ﬁnal at the Melbourne
Cricket Ground yesterday.
Despite being bowled for a
duck in the ﬁrst over of the day,
then seeing his team beaten by
seven wickets, a gracious McCullum said he was still proud of
his team.
“It’s been one hell of a ride for
us, right the way through, we
played some outstanding cricket,” he said at the presentation.
“We ran into an outstanding
team in Australia, they continue
to set the standard... they deserved to win.”
New Zealand’s hopes of pulling off an upset suffered a devastating blow when McCullum was
clean bowled by Mitchell Starc in
the ﬁrst over of the day.
They recovered with a brilliant 83 from Grant Elliott and
a dour 40 from Ross Taylor but
lost their last seven wickets for
33 runs to be all out for 183 in 45
overs.
“It probably didn’t unfold as
planned, but we got ourselves
back in the game at 3 for 150,”
McCullum said. “With 180, you
still dare to dream and it could
have ended up differently with a
couple of things going our way.”
For New Zealand, the tournament was still a great success.
They had never played in a World
Cup ﬁnal before, reaching the
semi-ﬁnals six times but losing
on each occasion, and were unbeaten going into the ﬁnal.
“This is what you ask for as a
cricketer,” McCullum said.
“We’ve forged memories and
friendships that will last forever.
We didn’t lift the trophy but we
have no regrets with the brand of
cricket we’ve played .
“It’s the greatest time of our
lives and that’s how we tried to
play the game, with a free spirit
and heart. I think we can be very
proud of our achievements in
this tournament.”
The Black Caps were the form
team of the tournament going
into yesterday's ﬁnal, unbeaten
in eight matches with Australia
and South Africa among their
victims.
“It came down to one game,”
McCullum said. “We gave ourselves that opportunity in this
tournament with so much on
the line, and ultimately Australia
stepped up and they were too
good for us on the night.
“You go out there and try and
play as well as you possibly can,
and if a team is better than you
on the day, then you cop it sweet
and you let them enjoy the celebrations. I think they stepped up
on the day. They were better than
us, and yeah, they’ll be drinking
the winning champagne.”
McCullum said he thought
they were still in with a chance of
a maiden World Cup title when
they were 150-3 in the 35th over.
“Then we saw Australia I
guess really bare its teeth and
put the hammer down on us,”
he said. “That was probably the
pivotal stage.
“I thought if we were able to
get through three or four overs
at a decent strike rate we would
have been able to launch later on
with our bigger hitters coming in
with a bit of freedom.”
Apart from his obvious disappointment, McCullum said his
overwhelming feeling was one
of pride in what his team had
achieved at the tournament.
“I looked in the changing
room today, and the guys that
we’ve had, we’ve been on an incredible journey,” he said.
“We’ve loved every single
minute of it. We’ve had some
support from our country which
we never believed was possible.
We’re incredibly proud of what
we’ve been able to achieve.”
New Zealand have players who
will retire in the coming days but
McCullum said his team had no
intention of grabbing the headlines off the rejoicing Australians
and would do so when “the dust
settles”.
Senior player Daniel Vettori,
at 36, is one Black Cap rumoured
to be quitting, and even 33-yearold McCullum has been mentioned, but the skipper would
not divulge names.
“There are maybe guys within
our group who will retire,” he
said. “We’ll let the dust settle on this one and we certainly
won’t look to grab any headlines
over the next couple of days because they belong to Australia as
they’ve deserve the right.
“We’ll let the dust settle, we’ll
be gracious in defeat and then
we’ll work a plan over the next
couple of days for some of those
guys who may look to retire.
“But it’s the right thing to allow Australia to bask in the glory
of their success.”
McCullum didn’t want to
get into any criticism of verbal
“send-offs” Australian bowlers
gave to dismissed batsmen, notably Grant Elliott, Martin Guptill and Vettori.
“Look, it wasn’t really discussed within the group. A
send-off is a send-off. It’s not
something we are necessarily
concerned about,” he said.
“I think the focus should be
on how well Australia played
and how much they deserve this
victory rather than any of those
sort of minor issues on the way
through. Yeah, I certainly don’t
want to go too deep into that.
“We ran second today, and all
credit to Australia, but we walk
away with our heads held high.”
Steve Smith celebrates
after hitting the winning
runs for Australia. (AFP)
Gulf Times
Monday, March 30, 2015
7
SPORT
GOLF
CYCLING
Walker stretches lead in
hometown Texas Open
‘You definitely want to find a way to extend the lead, but you have to be smart about it’
AFP
Barcelona
AFP
Texas
A
H
ometown hope Jimmy
Walker ﬁred six birdies in a three-underpar 69 on Saturday to
stretch his lead in the US PGA
Tour Texas Open to four strokes.
Walker, who lives just a halfhour’s drive from TPC San Antonio, had a 54-hole total of
nine-under-par 207 and a comfortable cushion over rising US
star Jordan Spieth.
Spieth, the 21-year-old who
also hails from Texas, carded a
one-under 71 for 211.
He was two strokes in front of
last season’s FedEx Cup playoff
champion Billy Horschel, who
birdied the last three holes in a
71 for 213.
Walker, who captured his
fourth PGA Tour title at the
Sony Open in Hawaii this year,
started the day with a one-shot
lead over Charley Hoffman and
Aaron Baddeley.
He closed his round with
back-to-back birdies, chipping
to seven feet at 17 and draining
a 10-footer at the last, and was
pleased with his effort on another tough, windy day.
“It was a tough day today. It
blew really hard again, out of
the south today. So I know it’s
a windy golf course, but it’s still
tough,” Walker said.
“The greens are ﬁrm. You
can see some spots starting to
brown out a bit.”
“You deﬁnitely want to ﬁnd a
way to extend the lead, but you
have to be smart about it.”
Spieth, who started the day
two shots adrift, gained ground
with four birdies in a ﬁve-hole
span on the front nine and was
tied for the lead through 13 holes.
But he played the ﬁnal ﬁve
holes in one over par with a bogey at 14 followed by a birdie
at 15, double bogey at the parthree 16th and birdie at 17 before
he capped his round with a par
at the last.
“I just kind of let some get
away from me there,” Spieth
said.
“I didn’t play the smartest
shots and was being a little too
aggressive for this golf course.”
Scott Pinckney carded a 69 to
vault into a share of fourth place
on 214.
Porte
holds off
Valverde
charge to
win Tour of
Catalonia
Jimmy Walker fired six birdies in a three-under-par 69 on Saturday to stretch his lead in the US PGA Tour Texas Open to four strokes.
He was tied with former
Masters champion Zach Johnson (72), Brendan Steele (72),
Jason Kokrak (71) and Chesson
Hadley (71).
Australia’s Baddeley had a
disastrous day, his seven bogeys
including four in a row on the
front nine on his way to a fourover 76 that left him on 215,
alongside Chris Kirk and Kevin
Na.
Hoffman, who had led after
the first round with a bogey
free round in tough winds,
fared even worse—signing for
a 79 that left him 11 adrift on
218.
South Korea’s Lee Mi-Rim takes slim LPGA lead
South Korean Lee Mi-rim maintained her lead at the Kia Classic for the
third successive day after a six-under-par 66 gave her a one-stroke
edge on Saturday heading into the final round in southern California.
Lee entered the third round tied with Morgan Pressel but blew past
her with a sizzling five birdies on the back nine to push her to 16-under at the Aviara course in Carlsbad.
The 24-year-old won twice in her rookie season on the LPGA circuit
last year, but is looking for her first title in 2015.
“To be honest, I didn’t even know what I shot until I signed my scorecard,” Lee told reporters. “I feel like I’ve had a lot of experience and
played in a lot of tournaments to know that I didn’t want to put too
much pressure on myself.”
American Alison Lee also fired a six-under with birdies on her final
two holes to get to 15-under and outright second.
American Pressel faded after an even-par round that kept her at
10-under, while compatriot Cristie Kerr is one of two contenders at
13-under after a bogey on her final hole dropped her three behind.
A group of four players sit at 12-under including world number one
Lydia Ko and major champions Paula Creamer and Pak Se-ri.
New Zealand’s Ko enjoyed her 27th successive LPGA Tour round
under par, which is two short of Annika Sorenstam’s record set in
2004.
The South Korean-born 17-year-old has victories this year at the
Australian and New Zealand Opens.
On a day of low scoring, five-time major champion Pak owned the
best round of the day with a course record-tying eight-under-par 64.
ustralia’s Richie Porte
sealed victory at the
Tour of Catalonia yesterday despite Spaniard Alejandro Valverde winning
his third stage of the seven-day
race.
Valverde picked up a total of 12
bonus seconds on the day thanks
to the stage win and an earlier
intermediate sprint, but Porte
didn’t lose any more time on
the hilly 126.6 kilometre circuit
around Barcelona to win by four
seconds.
Victory continued 30-yearold Porte’s fantastic early season
form having also won his second
Paris-Nice title just two weeks
ago.
France’s Bryan Coquard was
second in the stage just ahead of
Russian Sergei Chernetski, who
won his ﬁrst World Tour stage on
Saturday.
Italian Domenico Pozzovivo was just a second behind Valverde in third overall
with two-time Tour de France
winner Alberto Contador a
further two seconds adrift in
fourth.
“We wanted to try and get the
overall win and we fought all day
for it, although we knew it was
going to be very, very difficult,”
said Valverde.
“We go away from here with
three victories and second in
the general classiﬁcation, so you
can’t ask for more. It was a very
balanced race.”
An early three-man breakaway group of Marek Rutkiewicz, David Arroyo and Walter Pedraza was kept in check
by Movistar as they looked to
set up Valverde for a push at
winning the general classification.
The 34-year-old then made
his move on the last of eight
laps up the Alt de Montjuic
with five kilometres to go, but
quickly abandoned any hopes
of making a solo run to the line
as Pozzovivo and Porte followed
him.
Irishman Dan Martin attacked two kilometres later, but
he too was caught in the final
few metres as Valverde had just
enough power to get to the line
first in a congested sprint finish.
Fourth National Showjumping Championship
Qatar Racing’s Noble Protector winning the Sunline Stakes In Moonee
Valley, Melbourne on Friday.
HORSE RACING
Qatar Racing’s Noble
Protector wins
Sunline Stakes
Agencies
Melbourne
T
he Qatar Racing owned
Noble Protector won
the Group II Sunline
Stakes in Moonee Valley on Friday. It was her second
Group victory in Australia, two
weeks after winning the Group
III Schweppervescence Trophy..
Noble Protector, who was
drawn in stall one, led from pillar to post to win by two lengths.
The ﬁlly has conﬁrmed her talent in Australian races. This is
the second time she has won
a Group race over a mile, but
looking back on her victory, she
looks capable of winning over
a longer trip. Noble Protector
could make her next appearance
in a Group 1 at Sydney’s Spring
Carnival.
Her trainer Robert Smerdon, said : “If she jumped out
well, she was always going to be
prominent. We just wanted to
take luck out of the equation.
She’s in good shape. We’ve just
got to keep her together and get
her there (to Sydney) as well as
she was tonight and I’m sure
she’ll be very competitive.”
Qatar Equestrian Federation’s Saeed Hamad Saeed receiving the winners trophy
after gaining the top ranking in the first competition of the fourth National
Showjumping Championship at the outdoor arena of the QEF on Saturday.
Fahad Al Eid astride Natal De St Martin jumping to victory in the third competition.
The winners of the second competition pose with their trophies after the presentation
ceremony. Mohammed Jassim al-Ghazali astride Caresse MG won the first place,
clocking 26.98 at the QEF on Saturday.
Khalid al-Eid (Dona Evita) receives the winner’s trophy after clocking the best timing
of 36.55 seconds in the fourth competition. PICTURES: Abdo Garsi
Gulf Times
Monday, March 30, 2015
8
SPORT
NBA
Jazz silence former teammate
Kanter with win over Thunder
‘It was very personal. We try to stay away from those things but we all felt disrespected’
DPA
Los Angeles
Milwaukee Bucks forward Giannis Antetokounmpo
(centre) attempts to get past Golden State Warriors’
Harrison Barnes (left) and Klay Thompson (11) in the
third quarter at BMO Harris Bradley Center.
PICTURE: USA TODAY Sports
T
urkey’s Enes Kanter wasn’t happy during his three-plus seasons in Utah.
His return visit wasn’t so great, either.
Hours after blasting his former team,
Kanter and the Oklahoma City Thunder squandered a 16-point lead and suffered a 94-89 loss
on Saturday to the host Utah Jazz that slowed
their push for a playoff berth.
Trey Burke scored 22 points and France’s
Rudy Gobert - Kanter’s replacement - had 13
points, 15 rebounds and four blocks for the Jazz,
who stopped a four-game losing streak with an
emotional win. “It was very personal,” Burke
said. “We try to stay away from those things but
we all felt disrespected.”
“We had a little extra incentive,” Jazz forward
Gordon Hayward added. “I think he kind of
(ticked) us all off, honestly. He just fuelled the
ﬁre for us.”
The Thunder got their customary huge game
from NBA scoring leader Russell Westbrook,
who had 37 points, eight rebounds and six assists. Kanter chipped in 18 points and 11 rebounds, but Oklahoma City (41-32) dropped its
second straight game and had its lead over New
Orleans for the Western Conference’s ﬁnal playoff spot trimmed to 2 ½ games.
Last month, Kanter was traded by Utah to
Oklahoma City in a three-team deal. He has
ﬂourished with the Thunder, averaging 17.6
points and 10.8 rebounds while compensating
for the absence of injured superstar Kevin Durant. At Saturday’s shootaround, Kanter was
asked by reporters about the differences between Oklahoma City and Salt Lake City.
“The difference is I like playing basketball
there, that’s the most important thing,” Kanter
said. “I never liked playing basketball before in
my NBA career. That’s the ﬁrst time I felt like
playing basketball for my team, for the fans, for
my teammates, for coaches, everybody.”
The Jazz made the 6-11 Kanter the third pick
in the 2011 draft. He came off the bench his ﬁrst
two years before becoming a part-time starter
last season, averaging 12.3 points and 7.5 rebounds. But he was not happy with his situation. “Almost everything was a frustration,” he
said. “It wasn’t just one or two-game frustration, it was a 3 ½-year frustration. ... It wasn’t
just basketball stuff. It was professionalism.
“After seeing OKC, I was like ‘This is how
NBA teams are,’” he added. “It was like you’re in
a dream and you don’t want to open your eyes.
You don’t want to end that dream. Oklahoma
City has been like that for me.”
Booed every time he touched the ball, Kanter got off to a quick start, collecting 12 points
on 5-of-6 shooting in the ﬁrst half, when the
Thunder led by 16 points before the Jazz rallied
within 49-47. Hayward scored eight of his 17
points in the third quarter as Utah grabbed a 7666 lead entering the ﬁnal period.
A jumper by Burke gave the Jazz their largest
lead at 82-69 before Westbrook took over. He
scored 20 points in the fourth quarter, including a three-pointer that cut the deﬁcit to 91-89
with 31 seconds left. Hayward missed a jumper,
but Gobert grabbed the rebound and was fouled
with eight seconds left and sank both free
throws to seal the win.
After the game, Thunder coach Scott Brooks
said, “I didn’t like the way Enes handled the
interviews this afternoon.” “It just pumped
us up,” Gobert said. Trevor Booker started for
the injured Derrick Favors (back) and scored
12 points for the Jazz, who won despite shooting 38 percent (32-of-84). Utah (32-41) is 13-7
since trading Kanter. Anthony Morrow scored 12
points for the Thunder, who shot 43percent (31of-73) but committed 23 turnovers.
STATE WARRIORS 108, MILWAUKEE BUCKS 95
Stephen Curry scored 25 points and Klay
Thompson added 21 as the visiting Warriors
clinched the top seed in the West with their
franchise-record 60th win. The Bucks had a
two-game winning streak stopped.
HORNETS 115, ATLANTA HAWKS 100
Kemba Walker scored 21 points to lead ﬁve players in double ﬁgures for the host Hornets, who
pulled within one game of Boston for the East’s
ﬁnal playoff spot.
Germany’s Dennis Schroder had 17 points
and 11 assists for the Hawks, who rested all ﬁve
starters one night after clinching the East’s best
record.
TRAIL BLAZERS 120, DENVER NUGGETS 114
LaMarcus Aldridge had 32 points and 11 re-
NHL
Predators clinch playoff spot
Reuters
Washington
N
ashville Predators clinched a berth in the
Stanley Cup playoffs for the ﬁrst time
since 2012 and a couple of former Washington Capitals players helped them do it.
Rookie center Filip Forsberg, taken by the Capitals with the 11th pick of the 2012 NHL draft, scored
one goal and assisted on two others, and center
Mike Ribeiro, who played for the Capitals two seasons ago, recorded a goal and an assist in the Saturday’s National Hockey League.
Nashville goaltender Pekka Rinne turned aside
25 shots to improve his record to 41-15-4, while
Washington goalie Braden Holtby was pulled after
allowing three goals on 13 shots.
The Predators also received goals from defenseman Mattias Ekholm and center Mike Fisher in
winning their fourth straight game. The Capitals
collected two goals from right winger Troy Brouwer and one from defenseman Mike Green.
DUCKS 3, ISLANDERS 2
Centers Kyle Palmieri and Andrew Cogliano scored
in the second period and Anaheim clinched a
playoff berth. The Ducks (48-22-7) have won two
straight and six of eight to move into ﬁrst place
overall in the NHL with 103 points.
Right winger Richard Rakell was credited with
a goal in the ﬁrst period for the Ducks while goalie
Frederik Andersen made 29 saves. The Islanders
(44-27-5) continued their freefall by losing for the
ninth time in 12 games this month (3-6-3).
PENGUINS 3, COYOTES 2
Center Sidney Crosby had a goal and two assists,
all in the third period, to boost his league-leading
points total to 78 as Pittsburgh beat Arizona.
Right wingers Daniel Winnik and Steve Downie
also scored for Pittsburgh. Left winger Tye McGinn
and center Tobias Rieder scored for Arizona.
Pittsburgh defenseman Kris Letang, widely considered a candidate for the Norris Trophy, left the
Nashville Predators goalie Pekka Rinne (right) saves a shot from Washington Capitals’ Curtis Glencross
during the first period at the Verizon Center in Washington. (UPI)
game in the second period. After Letang released a
long outlet pass, Arizona right winger Shane Doan
hit him. Letang fell backward into the end boards
and needed assistance as he left the ice.
BRUINS 4, RANGERS 2
Boston took advantage of a rusty Henrik Lundqvist
in his return, scoring three times in the ﬁrst period
on the New York Rangers’ veteran goaltender.
Lundqvist, who missed 25 games because of a
sprained blood vessel in his neck, gave up four goals
in the ﬁrst 26 minutes for New York (47-20-7). He
ﬁnished with 26 saves.
SHARKS 3, FLYERS 2 (SHOOTOUT)
San Jose center Melker Karlsson and defenseman
Brent Burns each scored shootout goals, and goaltender Alex Stalock stopped 16 of 18 shots to beat
Philadelphia. By winning, the Sharks kept themselves in the conversation for the ﬁnal playoff spot
in the Western Conference.
San Jose center Joe Pavelski scored his 36th goal
of the season and defenseman Matt Irwin added his
eighth. Flyers center Claude Giroux scored his 28th
goal of the season, and Flyers left winger Michael
Raffl notched his 20th for Philadelphia.
RED WINGS 4, LIGHTNING 0
Goaltender Petr Mrazek made 23 saves for his second shutout of the season and fourth of his career
to lead Detroit over Tampa Bay.
Right winger Gusav Nyquist had a goal and an
assist and center Joakim Andersson, left winger
Justin Abdelkader and center Luke Glendening also
scored for Detroit. Tampa Bay goalie Ben Bishop
stopped 19 shots.
bounds for the host Trail Blazers, who have
won three in a row following a ﬁve-game slide.
Jameer Nelson scored 22 points for the Nuggets,
losers of ﬁve of seven.
CHICAGO BULLS 111, NEW YORK KNICKS 80
Montenegrin rookie Nikola Mirotic scored 24
points to lead a balanced attack as the host Bulls
won their third in a row. Italy’s Andrea Bargnani
scored 14 points for the league-worst Knicks,
who have dropped seven straight and set a franchise record with their 60th loss.
PAGANO WANTS TO BE COLTS
COACH ‘FOR YEARS TO COME’
New York: Indianapolis Colts coach
CHUCK PAGANO released a statement to downplay talk about his job
security with the team. Pagano is
entering the final season of his original four-year deal, and reportedly the
Colts won’t offer him a contract extension before the 2015 season begins.
“Be where your feet are,” Pagano
wrote. “What do I mean? Cancer
taught me to be thankful for today. All
I’m concentrating on is today. Then
tomorrow.
“My focus right now is on the draft,
bringing in players that can help us
continue to grow, get better, and
continue to ‘Build the Monster.’ I look
forward to coaching the Colts this
season and for many years to come.”
Since taking over the Colts, Pagano
has helped lead the franchise to three
consecutive 11-5 seasons that included
trips to the playoffs. This past season,
the Colts reached the AFC Championship game and lost to the New
England Patriots 45-7.
According to an NFL.com report on
Thursday, the Colts have no plans to
extend Pagano before next season.
Meanwhile, Minnesota Vikings
linebacker Chad Greenway has taken
a pay cut that will give the team more
than $3.2 million in salary cap relief,
according to reports Saturday.
ESPN.com reported that Greenway’s base salary for 2015, the final
year of his deal with Minnesota, has
been reduced from $7 million to $3.4
million. He will receive $1 million in
guaranteed money and can make up
to $600,000 from bonuses.
The 32-year-old Greenway, a twotime Pro Bowler, has played his entire
eight-year career with the Vikings
after being drafted in the first round
in 2006. He recorded a career-low 93
tackles last season despite appearing
in just 12 games.
The New York Jets, Tampa Bay
Buccaneers, San Diego Chargers and
Washington Redskins are among the
teams planning to privately work out
former Oregon quarterback Marcus
Mariota.
The New York Daily News reported
Friday that Jets general manager Mike
Maccagnan, head coach Todd Bowles,
offensive coordinator Chan Gailey and
others in the organization will be in
Eugene, Ore., this weekend to watch
Mariota at the Ducks’ facilities.
The Jets have the No. 6 overall pick
in the 2015 NFL Draft.
NFL Media’s Albert Breer reported
Saturday that the Bucs will work out
Mariota on April 7, the Chargers on
April 15 and the Redskins are setting
up a visit in Ashburn, Va. The Titans,
who have the No. 2 pick, also plan
visits with Mariota.
Gulf Times
Monday, March 30, 2015
9
TENNIS
MIAIMI OPEN
SPOTLIGHT
Djokovic overcomes
wobble, Serena cruises
Williams
sisters
ready to
lead US in
Fed Cup
Sixth seed Eugenie Bouchard upset by German qualifier Tatjana Maria
AFP
Miami
S
erena and Venus Williams plan to play for the
US Fed Cup team in the
World Group playoff tie
next month against Italy, Serena
said on Saturday.
Italy will host the best-ofﬁve match tie on a clay court in
Brindisi April 18-19. The two nations are ﬁghting for a place in
the tournament’s top tier. “We
deserve to be back in,” Serena
Williams said as she opened her
title defence at the Miami Open.
“We have some of the best
players in the world. We should
be in the World Group A and
competing for the title.”
The United States dropped out
of the World Group in 2014. Italy,
meanwhile, are facing relegation
for the ﬁrst time since 2008 after
winning the title in 2009, 2010
and 2013. Led by the Williams
sisters, the USA beat Argentina
4-1 in Buenos Aires last month
to advance to the playoff round
with a chance to return to the
World Group in 2016. The United
States have won the Fed Cup 17
times, but their most recent triumph in the international tournament was in 2000.
Novak Djokovic hits a forehand en route to
his hard-fought win over Martin Klizan at the
Miami Open. PICTURE: USA TODAY Sports
AFP
Miami
D
efending champions Novak
Djokovic and Serena Williams
launched their Miami Open
repeat bids in constrasting
style on Saturday, Djokovic battling
past Martin Klizan as Williams cruised
into the third round.
Djokovic, the top seed who is looking
for a ﬁfth Miami Masters crown, had to
work for his 6-0, 5-7, 6-1 second-round
victory over Slovakia’s Klizan. The
world number one, who beat Roger Federer last weekend for the Indian Wells
crown in California, is hoping to duplicate his North American March hardcourt title double of last year.
In fact, the Serb is bidding to become
the ﬁrst man to complete the sweep
three times. He looked well on his way
to a quick win when he snapped up the
opening set against his 41st-ranked opponent in 23 minutes.
He won the ﬁrst seven games before
Klizan got onto the scoreboard and appeared set to serve out a quick victory
with a 5-3 lead in the second. But he
dropped his serve and Klizan went on to
win the second set before Djokovic reestablished control and earned the victory after one hour, 56 minutes.
“Credit to Martin for battling and
making me play an extra shot,” Djokovic
said. “It was a pretty different game in
the second set than it was in the ﬁrst.
“I obviously felt great in the beginning of the match, and then in the
opening three games of the second set I
made two double faults and kind of got
him got into the match. I did drop the
level at the second set, but in the third I
managed to bounce back and get a win.”
Djokovic next plays Belgian qualiﬁer
Steve Darcis, a 6-4, 6-7 (2/7), 6-3 winner over Gilles Muller. “I hope to have
another great week in Miami,” Djokovic said of his quest for another career
milestone. “I’ve played some of my best
tennis on these courts.”
Women’s world number one Williams
had little trouble in a 6-3, 6-1 victory
over Monica Niculescu. The 33-yearold American, who had a much harder
time getting past the Romanian spinmerchant in her Indian Wells opener,
showed no sign of the knee injury that
forced her to forfeit her quarter-ﬁnal in
California last week.
“It was a little sore in practice, but
it was OK today,” Williams said of her
knee. “I really didn’t feel it today, to
be honest. Once you step out on the
court you have so much adrenaline going. The adrenaline kind of kills it. So I
was surprised. I felt pretty good,” added
Williams, who is seeking an eighth Miami crown. The 33-year-old American
star next faces 15-year-old compatriot
Catherine “CiCi” Bellis. Bellis advanced
with a 6-2, 6-1 win over 29th-seeded
Zarina Diyas on Friday.
In other men’s matches, Japanese
fourth seed Kei Nishikori defeated Russian Mikhail Youzhny 6-2, 6-1. Canadian ﬁfth seed Milos Raonic beat Teimuraz Gabashvili 6-1, 6-4 while Spanish
sixth seed David Ferrer beat Argentine
Federico Delbonis 6-1, 6-1.
French 11th-seeded Jo-Wilfried
Tsonga celebrated his return from a lingering arm injury with a 6-4, 3-6, 6-3
win over American Tim Smyczek.
Tsonga, who hadn’t played since
France’s Davis Cup tie against Switzerland in November, said he was satisﬁed
with his 2015 debut. “I didn’t expect to
play my best tennis today ever, but I’m
happy the way I managed my match,”
said Tsonga. “I played pretty solid, I just
had a little hole in the second set.”
While Williams looked sharp in her
second-round match postponed from
Friday by rain, sixth-seeded Canadian
Eugenie Bouchard fell at the ﬁrst hurdle, beaten 6-0, 7-6 (7/4) by German
qualiﬁer Tatjana Maria. In women’s
third-round play, fourth-seeded Dane
Caroline Wozniacki, Russian eighthseed Ekaterina Makarova and ninthseeded German Andrea Petkovic all
advanced. Venus Williams also booked
a fourth-round berth, with a 6-4, 7-6
(7/3) victory over Australian Samantha
Stosur.
Venus Williams celebrates her
win over Samantha Stosur in
Key Biscayne, Florida. (AFP)
SECOND ROUND RESULTS
Men: Novak Djokovic (SRB) bt Martin
Klizan (SVK) 6-0, 5-7, 6-1 Steve Darcis
(BEL) bt Gilles Muller (LUX x30) 6-4, 6-7
(2/7), 6-3 Thomaz Belluci (BRA) bt Pablo
Cuevas (URU x21) 2-6, 6-2, 7-5 Alexandr
Dolgopolov (UKR) bt Tommy Robredo
(ESP x17) 6-7 (1/7), 6-3, 7-5 Gilles Simon
(FRA x12) bt Mikhail Kukushkin (KAZ)
6-3, 6-7 (5/7), 6-0 Alejandro Falla (COL)
bt Ivo Karlovic (CRO x22) 6-4, 6-2 Lukas
Rosol (CZE x25) bt Alexander Zverev
(GER) 7-6 (7/0), 6-3 David Ferrer (ESP x6)
bt Federico Del Bonis (ARG) 6-1, 6-1 Kei
Nishikori (JPN x4) bt Mikhail Youzhny
(RUS) 6-2, 6-1 Viktor Troicki (SRB x32)
bt Simone Bolelli (ITA) 7-5, 3-6, 6-4
David Goffin (BEL x19) bt Borna Coric
(CRO) 6-0, 6-4 Jerzy Janowicz (POL)
bt Roberto Bautista (ESP x14) 6-4, 1-6,
6-4 Grigor Dimitrov (BUL x9) bt Vasek
Pospisil (CAN) 6-2, 6-2 John Isner (USA
x18) bt Andrey Rublev (RUS) 6-3, 6-4
Jeremy Chardy (FRA x28) bt Jurgen
Melzer (AUT) 6-4, 6-1 Milos Raonic
(CAN x5) bt Teimuraz Gabashvili (RUS)
6-1, 6-4 Adrian Mannarino (FRA x31) bt
Albert Ramos (ESP) 6-4, 3-6, 6-2 Jack
Sock (USA) bt Fabio Fognini (ITA x20)
7-6 (7/4), 6-1 Gael Monfils (FRA x16) bt
Filip Krajinovic (SRB) 3-6, 6-2, 7-6 (7/4)
Jo-Wilfried Tsonga (FRA x11) bt Tim Smyczek (USA) 6-4, 3-6, 6-3 Juan Monaco
(ARG) bt Ernests Gulbis (LAT x13) 6-2, 6-4
Fernando Verdasco (ESP x26) bt James
Duckworth (AUS) 4-6, 6-2, 6-1
Women: 2nd round
Serena Williams (USA x1) bt Monica Niculescu (ROM) 6-3, 6-1 Angelique Kerber
(GER x13) bt Heather Watson (GBR) 7-5,
3-6, 6-4 Sara Errani (ITA x11) bt Anastasia
Pavlyuchenkova (RUS) 6-1, 7-6 (7/5) Tatjana Maria (GER) bt Eugenie Bouchard
(CAN x6) 6-0, 7-6 (7/4)
3rd round: Agnieszka Radwanska (POL
x7) bt Irina Begu (ROM x31) 6-2, 4-6,
6-2 Carla Suarez Navarro (ESP x12) bt
Alize Cornet (FRA x22) 6-0, 6-4 Venus
Williams (USA) bt Samantha Stosur
(AUS) 6-4, 7-6 (7/3); Caroline Wozniacki
(DEN x4) bt Kaia Kanepi (EST) 4-6, 6-1,
6-3 Ekaterina Makarova (RUS x8) bt
Elina Svitolina (UKR x26) 6-0, 6-4 Andrea
Petkovic (GER x9) bt Kristina Mladenovic
(FRA) 6-0, 6-2 Karolína Pliskova (CZE
x14) bt Paula Badosa (ESP) 7-5, 6-1 Daria
Gavrilova (RUS) bt Kurumi Nara (JPN)
6-0, 7-6 (7/5)
BOXING
Russell stops Gonzalez for WBC featherweight title
AFP
Las Vegas
A
merican Gary Russell dominated
Jhonny Gonzalez en route to a fourthround technical knockout on Saturday
to seize the Mexican’s World Boxing
Council featherweight world title. Gonzalez
had no answer for Russell’s speed and power.
Russell knocked down Gonzalez three times
in the ﬁght—once in the third round and twice
in the fourth, with referee Tony Weeks calling a
halt less than a minute into the round.
“This is the kind of performance I expect, but
you can’t get these every time,” said Russell,
who was making his second bid for a world title
after losing last June to Ukraine southpaw Vasyl
Lomachenko in a World Boxing Organization
title bout.
“We put the work in at the gym. We grind
three times a day, hard,” added Russell, who indicated after the ﬁght he wants a rematch with
Lomachenko. “For all the young ﬁghters coming up, never come into a ﬁght questioning or
doubting. Always come into a ﬁght ready.”
Russell knocked Gonzalez down with a big
left-right combination at the end of the third
round, Gonzalez regaining his feet just as the
round ended. Russell opened the fourth by
landing a ﬂurry of blows to Gonzalez’ head
and body, a left to the head sending him down
again.
Gonzalez rose but was clearly hurt when the
action resumed, and another ﬂurry from Russell sent him down again and had Weeks stepping in. Russell, a 2008 Olympian, improved to
26-1 with 15 knockouts while Gonzalez fell to
57-9 with 48 wins inside the distance.
Gonzalez was making his third defense of the
title he won for the second time in 2013, with
a victory over compatriot Abner Mares in Los
Angeles. Gonzalez ﬁrst won the crown in 2011
but lost it in 2012 when an accidental head-butt
brought an eighth-round end and a loss to Daniel Ponce de Leon at Las Vegas.
BROOK BEATS DAN TO RETAIN IBF TITLE
England’s Kell Brook, who returned from an
horriﬁc knife attack last year, on Saturday re-
American Gary Russell (left) knocked down Jhonny Gonzalez three times in the fight, with referee
Tony Weeks calling a halt less than a minute into the round.
tained his IBF world welterweight title.
The unbeaten 28-year-old ﬂoored Romanian
challenger Jo Jo Dan four times in a four-round
stoppage win six months after being stabbed
with a machete in Tenerife.
Brook won the IBF title by beating America’s
Shawn Porter last August, and he defended the
belt against Canada-based Dan at the Motorpoint Arena in his hometown of Sheffield.
Soon after beating Porter, Brook sustained
serious leg injuries in the machete attack while
on holiday on the Spanish island of Tenerife,
but declared last January he was ready to return
to the ring.
He produced a dominant performance as he
ﬂoored Dan twice in the second round. He was
knocked down twice in the fourth and did not
come out for round ﬁve.
Brook has a new record of 34-0 (23KOs).
Southpaw Dan entered the ring a heavy underdog with a record of 34-3 with 18 early wins.
Victory paves the way for a more lucrative ﬁght
this summer, with Brook targeting the likes of
Juan Manuel Marquez, Marcos Maidana and, of
course, fellow Briton Amir Khan.
10
Gulf Times
Monday, March 30, 2015
FOOTBALL
EURO QUALIFIERS
COMMENT
Late goals save day
for Netherlands, Italy
‘We came out in the second half buzzing and showed what a good team we are’
AFP
London
T
he Netherlands and
Italy needed late equalisers to earn draws in
Euro 2016 qualifying
on Saturday, while Gareth Bale
inspired Wales to a ﬁne win in
Israel that left them top of their
group.
The Dutch were heading to
a ﬁrst competitive defeat on
home soil since October 2000
after Burak Yilmaz put Turkey ahead in Amsterdam, but a
92nd-minute shot by captain
Wesley Sneijder deﬂected into
the net off Klaas-Jan Huntelaar
to spare Oranje blushes and secure a 1-1 draw.
A defeat might have made
Dutch coach Guus Hiddink’s
position untenable, and even
the draw leaves last year’s World
Cup semi-ﬁnalists in third
place in qualifying Group A, ﬁve
points behind second-placed
Iceland and two points ahead of
Turkey.
“It wasn’t a bad match, but
not our best either,” said Hiddink. “A defeat would have been
catastrophic but the (equalising) goal keeps us in the running.”
Only the top two in each
group qualify automatically
for next year’s ﬁnals in France,
along with the best third-place
ﬁnisher.
The Czech Republic lead the
section, although they required
a last-minute goal by substitute
Vaclav Pilar just to earn a 1-1
draw with Latvia in Prague after
Aleksejs Visnakovs had given
the away side the lead.
They are a point ahead of
Iceland, who won 3-0 in Kazakhstan with Birkir Bjarnason scoring twice after veteran
forward Eidur Gudjohnsen put
them ahead in Astana.
Debut goal for Eder
Antonio Conte’s Italy are in a
rather more comfortable position than the Netherlands and
remain unbeaten in Group H
after coming back to draw 2-2
with Bulgaria in Soﬁa.
Yordan Minev’s early own
goal gave the Azzurri the lead,
but Ivelin Popov and Ilian Micanski both scored for Bulgaria
to turn the game on its head.
The hosts looked to be heading for a win in Ivaylo Petev’s
ﬁrst game as coach but Brazilian-born debutant Eder, of
Sampdoria, came off the bench
to save a point for Italy with a
ﬁne strike with six minutes left.
“It’s an amazing feeling,”
Eder told Rai Sport. “Conte had
faith in me and I’ve scored a goal
wearing an important jersey. I
hope I’ll go on to be given other
chances.”
Nevertheless, it is Croatia
who top the group by two points
from the Euro 2012 runners-up
after a romping to a 5-1 win at
home to a Norway side featur-
Netherlands’ Wesley Sneijder
(R) fights for the ball with
Turkey’s Ozan Tufan during
their Euro 2016 qualifying
match in Amsterdam. (Reuters)
Wales’ midfielder Gareth Bale celebrates his
goal during the Euro 2016 qualifying match
against Israel at the Sammy Ofer Stadium in
the Israeli coastal city of Haifa. (AFP)
Hiddink insists
Dutch will qualify
despite setback
Reuters
Amsterdam
V
eteran
Netherlands
coach Guus Hiddink
insisted his side would
qualify for next year’s
European Championship as questions over his tenure re-emerged
in the wake of a last-gasp 1-1 home
draw with Turkey on Saturday.
Hiddink’s team needed a goal
from Klaas-Jan Huntelaar two
minutes into stoppage time to
snatch a dramatic draw in the
Group A qualiﬁer at the Amsterdam Arena.
Had Huntelaar not scored, it
would have been their ﬁrst loss
at home in a European Championship qualiﬁer.
“Of course, we will succeed
even if I’m not sure yet how,”
Hiddink said. “We wanted to
beat Turkey but at the end of the
qualifying competition it could
yet prove to be a very important
point.”
Hiddink had already been under pressure after the Dutch lost
two of their opening three Group
A qualiﬁers.
After the 2-0 defeat in Iceland
in October, he had talks with the
Dutch football association over
his role, but was given a vote of
conﬁdence.
Pressure eased after a 6-0
win over Latvia in November
but was ratcheted up again after Saturday’s disappointing
draw.
A leading Dutch soccer website began an online poll on
whether the coach should stay
after Saturday’s performance,
eliciting a luke warm response.
“It was difficult against a team
like Turkey,” said Hiddink.
“They came to play football
with a wall but they are not a
bad team. Their position in the
standings does not reﬂect their
capabilities.
“We gave our all but it was not
a good match from us.”
Turkey, who took a 37th
minute lead through Burak Yilmaz, are still two points behind
the third-placed Dutch in Group
A.
The Netherlands are on seven
points, trailing leaders the Czech
Republic by six points and second placed Iceland by ﬁve.
All have ﬁve more games to
play.
The top two teams in each
group plus the best third placed
ﬁnisher qualify automatically
for the ﬁnals in France with
the other third placed ﬁnishers
then competing in play-offs to
complete an expanded 24-team
tournament.
OPINION
Spain’s former
glories not far away,
says Del Bosque
AFP
Madrid
S
ing 16-year-old Real Madrid
prospect Martin Odegaard.
Marcelo
Brozovic
gave
Croatia the lead with a curling strike on the half hour and
Ivan Perisic, Ivica Olic, Gordon
Schildenfeld and Danijel Pranjic
added further goals in the second half.
The hosts were comfortable
despite having Vedran Corluka sent off in the second half,
with Norway missing a penalty
through Tarik Elyounoussi before Alexander Tettey pulled
one back.
Elsewhere in Group H, Azerbaijan moved off the bottom
by defeating Malta 2-0 in Baku
in former Croatia star Robert
Prosinecki’s ﬁrst game as coach.
Brilliant Bale
Meanwhile, Madrid winger
Bale scored a second-half brace
as Wales cruised to a 3-0 win
in Israel that put them top of
Group B.
Israel came into the game in
Haifa in ﬁrst place having won
their opening three qualiﬁers,
but Bale set up Aaron Ramsey to
give the visitors the lead late in
the ﬁrst half.
Bale doubled their advantage
shortly after the restart from an
exquisite free-kick before forcing the sending-off of Israel
defender Eytan Tibi and then
making it 3-0 on 77 minutes.
Chris Coleman’s side have
won three and drawn two of ﬁve
matches in Group B and lead the
way with 11 points, two ahead of
Israel.
“To come out on top is amazing. The ﬁrst half was very hard.
We did a lot of running, closed
them down well, and luckily
got the goal which gave us a lot
of conﬁdence,” Bale told Sky
Sports.
“We came out in the second
half buzzing and showed what a
good team we are.”
Belgium can go level on
points with Wales if they win
their game in hand in Israel on
Tuesday, after the Red Devils
eased to a 5-0 victory over Cyprus in Brussels.
Manchester United’s Marouane Fellaini scored twice with
Christian Benteke, Eden Hazard
and Michy Batshuayi also on
target.
Bosnia and Herzegovina
claimed a much-needed win in
their ﬁrst match under Mehmed
Bazdarevic as Manchester City’s
Edin Dzeko’s hat-trick secured
a 3-0 success in Andorra.
pain coach Vicente del
Bosque insists his side
are not as far away from
the form that saw them
win three consecutive major
tournaments between 2008 and
2012 as their critics suggest.
The European champions’ 1-0
win over Ukraine on Friday was
met with a lukewarm reaction
by Spanish fans and media for
the lack of control and attacking
intent showed by Del Bosque’s
men. Indeed, the former Real
Madrid boss himself admitted
after the game that Spain’s lacklustre second-half showing had
left him with a “bad taste in his
mouth.”
However, he believes Spain’s
disastrous World Cup showing,
when they were eliminated after just two games last June, has
coloured the views of their current qualiﬁcation campaign for
Euro 2016.
“It is a logical reaction after all
that happened at the World Cup
in Brazil. Before we were blessed
and now people focus on the bad
things rather than the good,” he
said on Saturday.
“Everything seems worse and
it is not like that. We are doing
some things well. Spain aren’t so
far away from what they were.”
The post World Cup hangover
continued with a shock 2-1 defeat to Slovakia in October which
has left Spain trailing the Group
C leaders by three points despite
winning the other four of their
ﬁve qualiﬁers.
Del Bosque, though, is conﬁdent Spain will be amongst
the contenders for the title at
the championships next year in
France.
“The love and interest of the
fans will return with victories
and good performances, but I am
optimistic.
“The ﬁrst objective is to qualify for the European Championships. I hope we can achieve
that. We are the reigning European champions and we want to
be in France to defend our title.
We will get there with a team capable and ready to compete.”
Spain aren’t in competitive
action again until June when
they travel to Belarus, but they
face the Netherlands in a friendly
on Tuesday hoping to avenge the
humiliating 5-1 defeat they suffered at the hands of the Dutch in
the ﬁrst game of the World Cup.
FRIENDLY
‘Chicharito’ goal lifts Mexico 1-0 over Ecuador
AFP
Los Angeles
A
goal by Javier ‘Chicharito’
Hernandez and an impressive performance from goalkeeper Jesus Corona lifted
Mexico to a 1-0 friendly win over Ecuador on Saturday.
In front of 90,000 fans at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum—a venue
where Mexico enjoy strong support—
Hernandez scored the lone goal in the
14th minute, ending his four-month
scoring drought.
The 26-year-old striker’s last goal
for club or country had come in Amsterdam on November 12 in Mexico’s
3-1 win over the Dutch.
Before that, it was in a Real Madrid
shirt on October 29 in the Copa del Rey
against lowly Cornella.
Hernandez, currently on loan from
Manchester United to Real Madrid,
gained possession outside the penalty
area and beat two defenders before
curling the ball past Ecuadoran keeper
Alexander Dominguez and in off the
post.
It was his 39th goal for Mexico, tying him with Cuauhtemoc Blanco for
second on his country’s all-time list—
seven behind all-time scoring leader
Jared Borgetti.
Corona’s
crucial
contribution
included three denials of Miller
Bolanos—including from the penalty
spot in the 73rd minute.
Referee Christopher Reid awarded
the penalty after Diego Reyes collided
in the area with ﬁrst-half substitute
Angel Mena.
Corona dived right for the stop and
preserved Mexico’s lead.
Mexico nearly doubled their advantage nine minutes from full time with
a Raul Jimenez header that was parried by Ecuador goalkeeper Alexander
Dominguez onto the crossbar.
“It was a very important win because we want in each game to try
to show how to respond to the conﬁdence that the manager gives to us
when he calls us up,” Hernandez told
ESPN after the match.
“We’re very happy with this victory. We know they’re friendlies, but
we know it’s better when you prepare
all the process when you win most of
the games.”
The match was part of both teams’
build-up for the Copa America in
Chile. Mexico will play the South
American tournament in June as an
invited guest.
Mexico are also tuning up for the
CONCACAF Gold Cup in July.
Both teams continue their preparations with friendlies in the United
States on Tuesday.
Mexico will take on Paraguay in
Kansas City, Missouri, while Ecuador
face off against Argentina in East Rutherford, New Jersey.
Javier Hernandez of Mexico
celebrates with teammate
Andres Guardado (top) after
scoring during a friendly
match against Ecuador in Los
Angeles. (AFP)
Gulf Times
Monday, March 30, 2015
11
FOOTBALL
EURO QUALIFIERS
SPOTLIGHT
Reus, Mueller on
target as Germany
ease past Georgia
Scotland stay on track; wins for Romania, Northern Ireland
Germany’s forward Thomas Muller heads
the ball with Georgia’s defender Lasha Dvali
during the Euro 2016 qualifying match in
Tbilisi yesterday. (AFP)
Reuters
Tbilisi
W
orld Cup winners Germany
eased past hosts Georgia
2-0 in their Euro 2016 qualiﬁer yesterday with ﬁrst-half
goals from Marco Reus and Thomas Mueller enough to get their Group D campaign back on track.
Reus put the visitors ahead after 39
minutes and Mueller doubled their lead
before the break as the Germans, who
had an erratic start to qualiﬁers last year
and lost in Poland, were never threatened
by their weaker opponents.
The win lifted Germany, who did not
need to hit top form, to 10 points from
ﬁve games, as many as leaders Poland,
who take on Ireland later on Sunday.
Scotland are also on 10.
Georgia have had a tough start in
Group D, recording four defeats and a
win in Gibraltar to stay on three points.
It did not take long for Germany, with
several World Cup winners back in the
squad including captain Bastian Sch-
weinsteiger, to threaten with Reus’ powerful drive palmed on to the crossbar by
keeper Giorgi Loria after ﬁve minutes.
With coach Joachim Loew reverting to
a four-man defence from a three-player
experiment against Australia in a friendly
on Wednesday, the Germans were in and
around their opponents’ box for most of
the ﬁrst half.
Mueller ﬁred at goal directly from a
corner only to see the ball ﬂy just wide of
the post and Mesut Ozil missed another
big chance as the visitors had the hosts
ﬁrmly on the backfoot.
Reus did better in the 39th when Mario
Goetze charged into the box and was
lucky to scramble the ball to the winger,
who drilled home for his second goal
this week, after also scoring in their 2-2
friendly draw against Australia.
Mueller then added another on the
stroke of halftime to ﬁrmly put them in
the driving seat. New Georgia coach Kakhaber Tskhadadze added a forward after
the break but it was Reus who came close
again, rattling the bar for a second time
on the hour with another powerful shot.
Germany group rivals Scotland defeat-
ed Gibraltar 6-1 to stay in the running.
Steven Fletcher scored a hat-trick,
while Shaun Maloney converted twice
from the spot and Steven Naismith was
also on target for Scotland in an expected
easy win over rank outsiders Gibraltar at
Hampden Park.
Gilbraltar could at least celebrate a
ﬁrst competitive goal when Lee Casciaro
scored to equalize in the ﬁrst-half for the
international debutants.
Group F leaders Romania and nearest
challengers Northern Ireland also both
won to stay in the top two places in their
group. Romania moved to 13 points after
beating Faroe Islands 1-0, courtesy of a
21st-minute goal from Claudiu Keseru.
Northern Ireland remained a point behind after overcoming Finland 2-1, both
ﬁrst-half goals coming from Kyle Lafferty before a stoppage-time strike from
Berat Sadik in Belfast.
Albania came from behind to beat Armenia 2-1 in a Group I encounter which
takes Albania level on seven points with
Denmark. Portugal, a point behind, could
go top of the group with a win later over
visiting Serbia.
Firmino fires
Brazil in feisty
friendly
AFP
London
B
razil extended their
winning streak under
new coach Dunga to
eight matches as Roberto Firmino came off the bench
to secure a 1-0 win over Chile in
a feisty friendly at the Emirates
Stadium yesterday.
Hired for a second spell in
charge in the aftermath of their
humiliating 7-1 World Cup
semi-ﬁnal defeat against Germany last year, Dunga is restoring his country’s pride in their
national team and he will earn
more plaudits for the astute substitution that brought on matchwinner Firmino.
The Hoffenheim attacking
midﬁelder’s second-half goal
capped an impressive few days
for Brazil, who won 3-1 against
France in Paris on Thursday and
survived a bruising encounter with South American rivals
Chile in north London to maintain Dunga’s 100 percent record.
Dunga, who captained Brazil
to World Cup glory in 1994, is
overseeing a period of transition ahead of the Copa America
in Chile in June and his team
have now scored 18 goals and
conceded only two under his nononsense leadership.
In contrast, Chile’s third defeat in four matches leaves them
with plenty to work to do before
their Copa challenge.
After Brazil’s penalty shootout victory against Chile in the
last 16 of the World Cup, there
was clearly some lingering illfeeling between the teams.
Chile’s Arsenal forward Alexis
Sanchez was pictured in a relaxed mood playing with his
dogs before a training session
earlier in the week, but there
were no creature comforts in his
adopted home as a crunching
challenge from Souza sent him
crashing to the turf.
Chile’s Miiko Albornoz sought
immediate retribution and his
crude tackle on Neymar left the
Brazil captain crumpled in a
heap.
Referee Martin Atkinson kept
his cards in his pocket after those
two offences, but he was less lenient when Albornoz once again
targeted Barcelona star Neymar
with a cynical foul.
Fractious encounter
Brazil defender Thiago Silva
Scotland’s Steven Fletcher celebrates after
he scores his third goal during the Euro
2016 qualifying match against Gibraltar in
Glasgow. (AFP)
followed Albornoz into the book
for a hack at Chile’s Pablo Hernandez and an already fractious
encounter turned spiteful moments later when Gary Medel
bundled Neymar to the ﬂoor and
then stood on the prone striker’s
right leg.
Atkinson had sent off Liverpool’s Steven Gerrard for stamping on Manchester United’s Ander Herrera last weekend, but
luckily for Medel he missed the
Inter Milan midﬁelder’s ugly
foul.
Neymar shook off the challenge and almost provided the
perfect response to Medel’s brutality when his free-kick was
inches away from being ﬁnished
off by Miranda.
Douglas Costa had an even
better chance just before the
interval when he controlled
Marcelo’s lofted pass on his
chest, but the Shakhtar Donetsk
midﬁelder blazed way over.
A scrappy half ended on a
suitably aggressive note when
Neymar was booked for needlessly chopping down Gonzalo
Jara and there was no sign of a
drop in intensity after the break.
Chile’s Pablo Hernandez appealed in vain for a penalty after
stumbling under pressure from
Fernandinho and his team-mate
Mauricio Isla also saw a spotkick claim rejected following
Marcelo’s challenge.
While shots on target were
proving hard to come by, the
booking count continued to
mount after Miranda bundled
over Sanchez, who had tenaciously harried the defender out
of possession.
When Sanchez sent the resulting free-kick well over, it
summed up a game in which
even the ﬂair players were more
notable for moments of perspiration rather than inspiration.
Dunga made four changes on
the hour, with former Manchester City forward Robinho among
those sent on in a bid to break
free of the Chilean defensive
shackles.
The changes worked a treat as
Firmino made a perfectly timed
run through the heart of Chile’s
defence to meet Danilo’s pass
with a composed touch that took
him around goalkeeper Claudio
Bravo to slot into the empty net
in the 72nd minute.
Chile nearly snatched a late
equaliser, but Matias Fernandez’s free-kick was pushed away
by Jefferson.
Brazil’s Neymar (2nd R) celebrates with Roberto Firmino (R) after
Firmino scores against Chile in London. (AFP)
FOCUS
Man United’s Smalling hails Van Gaal impact
Reuters
London
M
anchester
United
defender
Chris
Smalling
hailed
manager Louis van
Gaal as the reason behind his
upturn in form and believes he is
now playing the best football of
his career.
Smalling has struggled for
consistency since joining United from Fulham in 2010 but the
25-year-old has ﬂourished under Van Gaal this season, making
22 Premier League appearances.
Smalling, part England’s
squad to travel to Turin to play
Italy in a friendly on Tuesday,
gave an assured performance
alongside Phil Jones in United’s
3-0 win over Liverpool last
weekend and is now targeting
a successful end to the season.
“The manager has shown a lot of
faith in me. Especially over the
last couple of months,” Smalling
told a news conference on Sunday ahead of the Italy game.
“The manager has chosen me
and I am enjoying my football. I
think he is very honest. He says
what you are doing very well and
what you can improve. He has
real belief in you.
“We have got another eight
games, so we will look to ﬁnish
as strong as we can.”
Smalling’s contract is set to
expire at the end of next season
and media reports have linked
him with a move away from
United, but the former Fulham
defender hopes his long-term
future is at Old Trafford. “I have
always enjoyed playing for United, especially at the minute,” he
said. “If I can contribute then I
am happy to stay as long as they
want me.”
Fourth-placed United host Aston Villa in the Premier League
on Saturday. Roy Hodgson’s contract runs to the end of Euro 2016
and Smalling would like to see
the England manager stay on beyond that tournament. Hodgson
signed Smalling for Fulham seven
years ago and the defender is a big
fan of the 67-year-old.
‘Ever since I have worked with
Roy, he has shown faith in all the
players, especially the younger
players,’ Smalling said.
‘We have all enjoyed training with him and obviously he is
focusing on until next summer.
I would be very happy to work
with him for a longer period.’
Hodgson maintained his 100
per cent post-World Cup record
on Friday when England beat
Lithuania 4-0 at Wembley.
The Three Lions will make it
eight wins in a row if they beat
Italy in Turin on Tuesday.
Smalling thinks Hodgson has
turned England into a fearsome
team since their World Cup debacle. ‘A lot of teams will be frightened and hopefully on Tuesday
we will show that,’ he said. ‘I think
we are on the verge of something
special. We are winning games.
We are being ruthless and we are
really together.’
CHRIS SMALLING
Monday, March 30, 2015
SPORT
GULF TIMES
QATAR BASKETBALL LEAGUE
FOCUS
Al Rayyan off to a
winning start in finals
‘It is great to be one up after the first game as it gives us a lot of confidence’
Al Rayyan’s Dominic Davon (No 14) spins
away from El Jaish’s Fadi Abilmona (No
6) during their first match of their Qatar
Basketball Leagues’s best-of-three finals
at the Al Gharafa Indoor Hall yesterday.
PICTURES: Othman Iraqi
By Sports Reporter
Doha
A
l Rayyan drew ﬁrst blood
in their quest for the Qatar
Men’s League title when
they beat El Jaish 86-78 in
the ﬁrst match of their best-of-three
ﬁnals at the Al Gharafa Indoor Hall
yesterday.
A 52-31 lead at the end of the second quarter proved instrumental
in their victory as the Qatar giants
fought off a late challenge from El
Jaish. Al Rayyan’s Dominic Davon
shot ﬁve three-throws to emerge the
top-scorer for either side with 28
points, while Armond Bolds had 22
and Mohamed Hassan 14.
Qatar veteran Yaseen Ismail Musa
played almost a full match to score 11
points and lend some inspiration to
his team.
Al Rayyan asserted themselves
early in the match by taking a 12-9
lead at the end of the ﬁrst ﬁve minutes, but by the time the ﬁrst quarter
ended, they had stretched their advantage to 28-18 lead.
In the second quarter, Al Rayyan
scored 24 points as against El Jaish’s
13 and that proved the key to the outcome of the match.
And although El Jaish produced a
much-improved show in the third
quarter by scoring 21 points, it was
too little too late for them. For El
Jaish, Larrell Taggart top-scored
with 21 points, while Yusuf Mohamed
and Harold Boney Watson had 14.
Al Rayyan led for 36 minutes in the
match, while El Jaish had their noses
ahead for only about three minutes.
“It is great to be one up after the
ﬁrst game as it gives us a lot of conﬁdence,” said Al Rayyan coach Koufos
Stergois.
“It was by no means an easy match
but the boys stuck to their task and
ensured victory for the team. Dominic is a ﬁne player and he delivered for
us today as he has often,” the Greek
said.
El Jaish coach Dragoslav Milovanovic said he was disappointed
but not losing hope.
“For sure you get upset when
you lose but there are still two more
matches remaining in the series and
we can still turn the tables on Al
Rayyan,” he said.
Meanwhile, Al Wakrah pipped Al
Shamal 81-77 to take ﬁfth place. In
a neck-and-neck battle, Al Wakrah
edged their rivals after trailing 4839 and 61-59 at the end of the second and third quarters. Adamu Saaka
was the hero in Al Wakrah’s win as he
top-scored with 34 points, nailing
a whopping 15 off them from threepointers.
Mohamed Abdulrehman with 23
and Rashaad Singleton and Mohamed Ouiri with 10 each also excelled for
the winners.
For Al Shamal, Leron Hunter II excelled with 24 points, while Kosar alKader and Samer Rabia contributed
16 and 15 respectively.
Yahya outshines
best to take lead in
Desert Challenge
By Sports Reporter
Abu Dhabi
T
he UAE’s Yahya al-Helei
covered himself in glory
today in the 25th anniversary Abu Dhabi
Desert Challenge Powered by
Nissan, outshining the world’s
best drivers to take the lead as he
extended his remarkable 100%
appearance record in the event.
Partnered by Emirati codriver Khalid al-Kindi in a Nissan Pick-up, al-Helei won the
262km Yas Marina Circuit Special Stage 1 in impressive style to
take a 1mins 54 secs overall lead
from reigning FIA World Cup
champion Vladimir Vasilyev, last
year’s cars winner, in a Mini.
Brazilian Reinaldo Varela in a
Toyota Hilux ﬁnished the leg in
third, with Dakar Rally champion Nasser al-Attiyah, the UAE’s
Sheikh Khalid al-Qassimi and
Dutchman Erik Van Loon completing the top six.
In the battle of the bikes, reigning FIM world champion Marc
Coma of Spain once again looked
in complete control in the desert
of the Western Region which he
has come to know so well, taking
a lead of 1.21 secs from his KTM
teammate, Dubai-based British
rider Sam Sunderland.
But al-Helei, the man who has
previously contested the Desert
Challenge 23 times in a car and
once on a bike, was unquestionably the star of the day, despite a
nervous last section when he was
hindered by gearbox problems.
He reached the end of the
stage to say: “I spent AED1 million to turn my car from T2 to T1
because I want to win this rally.
The other drivers have factory
cars, but I wanted to show that
the most important thing is how
strong is the driver, not the car.
“I had a good day, but for the
last 80kms I had transmission
problems, sometimes losing
fourth gear and third gear. I was
happy to ﬁnish, and tomorrow I
hope for another good day.”
Making it an even better day
for the host country, al-Qassmi
produced a splendid drive on his
Desert Challenge debut to ﬁnish
the day in ﬁfth place, showing
that he has adapted quickly after
making the transition from conventional rallying to cross coun-
try for this event. “It was a great
performance from Yaha, who has
shown again what an accomplished driver he is,” said Mohamed Ben Sulayem, President of
the Automobile and Touring Club
of the UAE, the rally organisers.
“It’s good to see an Emirati
driver performing so well on this
world stage, and it was encouraging as well to see Sheikh Khalid driving so conﬁdently on his
ﬁrst attempt at the Desert Challenge.”
Coma was in commanding
form on his KTM, and with defending champion Paulo Goncalves of Portugal more than
four minutes further adrift in
third, the Spaniard said at the
end of the stage: “The ﬁrst day
has been tricky however everyone is excited and pushing. I am
happy and in a good position.”
Sunderland, who had been
uncomfortable with his sixth
place starting position on the
day, produced another quality
performance to say: “I gave it
my all to gain ground and catch
up with bikers in front. It was
difficult but I pushed myself really hard to get there.”
Goncalves, who produced a
brilliant ﬁnal leg surge to win the
bikes crown last year, said: “Today has been hard as I began fast
so I could chase the leaders. I
then lost time when I stopped to
help a competitor. Tomorrow is
another day and I need to remain
focused.”
Portugal’s Ruben Faria, American Ricky Brabec and Austrian
Matthias Walkner completed the
top six, while top UAE rider Mohamed al-Balooshi again looked
comfortable in the presence of
the world’s top riders, setting
the seventh fastest time.
Balooshi said: “I started the
stage in third and stayed there
almost until the ﬁrst service. I
then stalled and Marc Coma
passed me. It’s day one of four
more long days. Anything can
happen and it’s important to be
smart and take it day by day.”
The 25th Abu Dhabi Desert
Challenge is taking place under
the patronage of Sheikh Hamdan
bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the Ruler’s
Representative in the Western
region. The Nissan Patrol, the
“Hero of All terrain in Life”, is
positioned for the 12th year as
the official vehicle of the event.
Nasser al-Attiyah in his
Mini during the leg 1.
Al Rayyan’s Armond Bolds (No 73) attempts a shot as El Jaish defenders look on.
WARM-UP
SPOTLIGHT
Rivera discusses Rio Games
with Aspetar medicine experts
By Sports Reporter
Doha
V
Qatar football team during a training session on the eve of their friendly match against Slovenia. Qatar will meet Slovenia at Lekhwiya
stadium today at 7.00pm. Qatar defeated Algeria 1-0 in an earlier friendly on March 26.
alero Rivera López, the coach of Qatar’s successful men’s national handball team, paid a
work visit to Aspetar yesterday. Coach Rivera
was welcomed by Ibrahim al-Darwish, Aspetar’s Chief Operating Officer and Prof Nebojsa Popovic,
Acting Chief Medical Officer.
The coach, who is originally from Spain and has
a long history of handball coaching success there,
met with several Aspetar senior staff to discuss the
further collaboration of Qatar Handball Association with Aspetar and the preparation of the Qatar
national teams for both the 2015 IHF Men’s Junior
World Championship in August this year and the
Rio 2016 Olympic Games. Valero thanked Aspetar
for the excellent services provided to Qatar’s men’s
handball national team during the 24th Men’s Handball World Championship.
He highlighted the importance of the medical
services provided by Aspetar for the success of the
Qatar team at the championship. He also congratulated Aspetar to the overall provision of medical
services at the event which were praised by all participating teams.
In return, Prof Popovic, himself an Olympic Gold
medal winner with the Yugoslavian national handball
team in 1972, congratulated the national team coach
for the outstanding work done when leading the Annabi to win the silver medal in the 2015 Championship, the best Arab and Asian achievement in the history of handball.