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Friday 26 October 2012
10 Dhul-Hijja 1433 - Volume 17
Number 5499 Price: QR2
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HMC gears up
for huge rush
during holidays
Emir greets
Arab, Islamic
leaders on
Eid Al Adha
1,200 stomach upset cases yesterday
DOHA: The emergency unit
of Hamad Medical Corporation
(HMC) is gearing up to handle
an increasing number of cases
during Eid Al Adha holidays.
The unit had a taste of what
lies ahead in terms of patient
turnout during the holidays
as some 1,200 cases, mostly of
stomach upsets, were reported
yesterday alone.
From 6 in the morning until
6 in the evening, HMC’s emergency department had to attend
to 85 heart attack cases that also
included complaints regarding
chest pain.
At least a dozen accident
cases were reported aside from
two deaths that occurred due to
stomach-related ailments.
Dr Saad Al Nuaimi, consultant at the unit, said that some
20 to 25 doctors, including consultants and specialists, are
being deployed on duty at the
emergency unit during the Eid
holidays.
These doctors will be actively
supported by a well-trained nursing staff, he said. The shift of the
doctors and nurses will be changing every eight hours.
This means that 20 to 25
doctors will be present at the
emergency unit round-the-clock
during the Eid holidays.
“And, if we need the services
of a particular specialist who is
not on duty at the time we need
him, we would be immediately
calling him,” said Al Nuaimi.
According to him, more accident and stomach upset cases are
reported for emergency medical
care during the Eid holidays.
“That is the reason why we are
increasing the number of doctors
at the emergency department,”
he said.
Yesterday, in fact the maximum number of cases that were
reported to the emergency unit
related to stomach upsets, with
Al Nuaimi cautioning people to
avoid overeating and against
large intake of sweet and fatty
food.
A lot of people indulge in
overeating during the Eid holidays and develop several complications like high blood pressure
and severe stomach upsets.
Then, there are diabetics who
indulge in overeating and come
complaining of problems to the
emergency section of HMC.
Muslim kept fast yesterday
and despite that the turnout of
people with complaints at the
emergency section was quite
large the whole day.
Community sources said
that some families begin feasting at least a week before Eid
Al Adha and since they eat a
lot of meat and fatty food and
sweets, they develop complications like stomach upsets and
are rushed for emergency medical attention.
THE PENINSULA
Pilgrims climb Mount Mercy on the plains of Arafat near the holy city of Makkah yesterday.
Haj pilgrims prepare for final ritual
MUZDALIFAH:
Massive
throngs of pilgrims yesterday headed for the town of
Muzdalifah to collect stones for
the final ritual of the Haj which
marks the first day of Eid Al
Adha, the feast of sacrifice.
Men, women and children from
189 countries flooded roads linking Mount Arafat, where they had
spent the peak Haj day in prayer
and reflection, to Muzdalifah.
There, the symbolic “stoning
of the devil” which begins early
today is followed by the ritual sacrifice of an animal, usually a lamb.
While many came by bus or
used the Mashair Railway track
linking the three holy sites of
Arafat, Muzdalifah, and Mina,
hundreds of thousands were on
foot. Some carried small children on their shoulders while
others pushed elderly pilgrims
on wheelchairs.
Cars, buses and the avalanche of
humans — men in white “Ihram”
shrouds and women covered from
head to foot except for their hands
and faces — all moved together
as police and ambulance sirens
sounded into the early evening.
At noon prayers in Namira
mosque at Arafat yesterday,
Saudi Arabia’s Grand Mufti
Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah
Al Sheikh warned pilgrims
against using any “national or
extreme slogans” during their
stay in the kingdom.
He also criticised those
who “nowadays call for a civil
democratic state not linked to
Islamic law and which acknowledges many forbidden acts...
This contradicts the teachings
of Islam as well as the Quran,
Sunnah and Shariah” law. “Our
Muslim world is facing tragedies and bloodshed,” he said,
calling on people and leaders to
“work on dialogue... end bloodshed, not resort to the use of
arms,” and not to implement
“foreign” agendas.
In the crowds, Syrian worshippers were seen carrying a large
rebel flag. Libyan Ruqaya Al
Fayturi, 58, said she was praying
for “security and stability in Libya
and all other Arab and Muslim
countries”. For Mai, a 34-year-old
Egyptian, Haj is a “gift” from God
that she will use to pray for “victory and peace in Egypt and all
Muslim countries,” she said. Jalal,
a Yemeni, said he was “praying
for the return of peace to Yemen”.
AFP
Syrian army declares conditional Eid ceasefire
BEIRUT/GENEVA:
Syria’s
army command announced a
ceasefire yesterday to mark
Eid Al Adha holiday but said it
reserved the right to respond
to any rebel attack or moves to
reinforce President Bashar Al
Assad’s armed foes.
A Free Syrian Army commander gave qualified backing to
the truce, proposed by UN-Arab
League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi,
but demanded Assad free detainees. An Islamist group said it
was not committed to the truce
but may halt operations if the
army did. Brahimi proposed the
temporary truce to stem, however
briefly, the bloodshed in a conflict
which erupted as popular protests in March last year and has
escalated into a civil war which
activists say has killed more than
32,000 people.
“On the occasion of the blessed
Eid Al Adha, the general command of the army and armed
forces announces a halt to military operations on the territory
Syrian people crowd outside a bakery in the Salaheddin district of the
northern city of Aleppo yesterday.
of the Syrian Arab Republic, from
Friday morning ... until Monday,”
an army statement read on state
television said.
It reserved the right to
respond if “the armed terrorist
groups open fire on civilians and
government forces, attack public
and private properties, or use car
bombs and explosives”. It would
also respond to any reinforcement
or re-supplying of rebel units, or
smuggling of fighters from neighbouring countries “in violation of
their international commitments
to combat terrorism”.
Qassem Saadeddine, head of the
military council in Homs province
and spokesman for the FSA joint
command, said his fighters were
committed to the truce. “But we
not allow the regime to reinforce
its posts. We demand the release
of the detainees, the regime
should release them by tomorrow
morning,” he said.
Abu Moaz, spokesman for
Ansar Al Islam, said the Islamist
group doubted Assad’s forces
would observe the truce, though
it might suspend operations if
they did. “We do not care about
this truce. We are cautious. If
the tanks are still there and the
checkpoints are still there then
what is the truce?” he said of the
organisation, which includes several brigades fighting in the capital and Damascus province.
Brahimi’s predecessor, former
UN chief Kofi Annan, declared
a ceasefire in Syria on April 12,
but it soon became a dead letter.
Violence has intensified since
then, with daily death tolls often
exceeding 200.
UN aid agencies have geared up
to take advantage of any window of
opportunity provided by a ceasefire
to go to areas that have been difficult to reach due to fighting, a UN
official in Geneva said.
The UN refugee agency
UNHCR said that it had prepared
emergency kits for distribution
for up to 13,000 families - an estimated 65,000 people - in previously inaccessible areas including
Homs and the northeastern city
of Hassaka. The UN World Food
Programme has identified 90,000
people in 21 hotspots from Aleppo
to Homs and Latakia in need food
parcels and will try to reach them
through local agencies.
Earlier, rebels seized two northern districts in Syria’s largest city,
Aleppo, activists said. “We have just
liberated Ashrafiyeh and the Syriac
quarter,” a rebel fighter said.
REUTERS
See also page 8
DOHA: The Emir H H Sheikh
Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani
yesterday exchanged cables of
congratulations and felicitations
on the advent of Eid Al Adha
with the leaders of the sisterly
Arab and Islamic countries.
The Emir received Eid greetings from Speaker of the Advisory
Council H E Mohamed bin
Mubarak Al Kholeifi. On behalf
of the Advisory Council members,
the Speaker expressed heartfelt
congratulations and felicitations
asking Almighty Allah for the
recurrence of such a sublime
occasion for the best of health
and happiness to the Emir and
more welfare and prosperity to
the faithful people of Qatar under
the wise leadership of the Emir
The Emir sent a reply to the
Advisory Council Speaker in
which the Emir thanked the
Speaker and wished him and the
members the best of health, happiness and success and more welfare, progress and prosperity to
the dear people of Qatar.
The Emir, in telephone calls,
exchanged Eid greetings with a
number of leaders of Arab countries. The Emir exchanged greetings with the Custodian of the Two
Holy Mosques King Abdullah bin
Abdulaziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia,
Emir of Kuwait H H Sheikh Sabah
Al Ahmad Al Jaber Al Sabah, UAE
President H H Sheikh Khalifa bin
Zayed Al Nahyan, H M Sultan
Qaboos bin Said of Oman, H M
King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa
of Bahrain, Sudan President
Omar Hassan Ahmed Al Bashir,
Palestinian President Mahmoud
Abbas, Lebanese President
Michel Suleiman, Iran’s President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, King
Mohammad VI of Morocco, King
Abdullah II of Jordan, Yemen’s
President Abed Rabbo Mansour
Hadi, Algeria’s President Abdelaziz
Bouteflika , Mauritania’s President
Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz and and
President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud
of the Republic of Somalia.
The Heir Apparent H H Sheikh
Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani
exchanged cables of congratulations and felicitations on the advent
of Eid Al Adha with the leaders
and Heirs Apparent of brotherly
Arab and Islamic countries.
The Heir Apparent exchanged
Eid greetings with King Abdullah
II of Jordan, Prince Salman bin
Hamad Al Khalifa, Crown Prince,
Deputy Supreme Commander of
the Kingdom of Bahrain, Kuwait’s
Crown Prince Sheikh Nawaf Al
Ahmad Al Jaber Al Sabah, Crown
Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy
Supreme Commander of the
Armed Forces of the United Arab
Emirates Gen Sheikh Mohammad
bin Zayed Al Nahyan, and Omani
Deputy Premier for Cabinet Affairs
Fahd bin Mahmoud Al Saeed.
The Prime Minister and
Foreign Minister H E Sheikh
Hamad bin Jassem bin Jabor Al
Thani also exchanged cables of
congratulations with the heads of
government of the brotherly Arab
and Islamic countries.
QNA
FRIDAY 26 OCTOBER 2012
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02
HOME
Tenants seek
embassy help to
recover deposits
MoI puts in
place security
measures for
Eid holidays
Mall agent accused of fraud
DOHA: Some Indian tenants
of a newly-opened mall on the
Airport Road have accused a
fellow Indian of collecting huge
deposits from them while allotting shops earlier this year and
refusing to return the cash at
the end of a promised deadline.
The tenants approached
the Indian embassy yesterday
and raised the issue during an
open house, which is a monthly
event where the mission invites
aggrieved Indians to report their
woes for redress.
The open house was presided
over by Indian Ambassador
Sanjiv Arora and present were
P S Sasi Kumar, deputy head
of mission, and Jatin Pathak,
acting head of a community
welfare corpus. Later, during a
press briefing Arora confirmed
in reply to a question that some
fellow Indian tenants of a mall
had indeed come complaining.
“It’s basically a complaint. We
will follow up,” Arora said, while
one of the aggrieved tenants
who gave his name as Murtuza
Parihar told this newspaper after
the open house that the embassy
had asked them to lodge a formal
complaint.
Parihar said he and several
other tenants had paid deposits
running into tens of thousands
of riyals to a fellow Indian who
represented a company that had
taken the mall on rent to sublet
the shops.
Following a row, though,
the tenants were now dealing
directly with the mall owner
Indian fishermen repatriated
to Bahrain after speedy trial
DOHA: A group of 22 Bahrain-based Indian fishermen who
had strayed into Qatari waters in their boats earlier this month
have been sent back to Manama, the Indian embassy here said
yesterday.
A court held a speedy trial of the fishermen and sentenced them
to 15 days in custody and fined them QR5,000 each for committing
the offense. The captain was fined QR7,000.
The Bahraini sponsors of the fishermen were contacted by the
embassy here and they paid the fines on behalf of the convicts,
Indian ambassador, Sanjiv Arora, said.
The hearings took place on October 18 and 22. In the first hearing 10 fishermen stood trial, while in the second the remaining
12 were present.
The fishermen were rounded up by the Qatari coast guard on
October 7 and the court, while issuing its verdict, said that the
duration of their custody was to be counted from the day they
THE PENINSULA
were arrested.
Indian Ambassador Sanjiv Arora (centre) during a press briefing at the embassy premises yesterday. P S Sasi
Kumar, deputy head of the mission at the embassy (left), and Jatin Pathak, acting head of the ICBF, are also seen.
Victims of the mall agent (from left) Murtuza Parihar, Ashok Sen and Pooja Moorjani talking to the media at the
Indian embassy premises after an open house yesterday.
SALIM MATRAMKOT
and had inked fresh tenancy
contracts so the fellow Indian
was out of the picture, claimed
Parihar.
“We want our deposits back
from him,” he added, hinting
that the man had been refusing
to part with cash despite the fact
that it was a refundable deposit.
Attempts by this newspaper
to contact the Indian accused by
his compatriots of not refunding
their deposit amounts failed as
he didn’t pick the phone.
Parihar said they would soon
be filing a formal complaint with
the embassy.
Arora, meanwhile, citing figures said at the briefing that some
194 Indians had died in Qatar so
far this year (from January until
yesterday). Of this, he said 84 died
due to heart attack.
He said worksite accidents had
claimed the lives of eight Indians
so far this year while the number
of compatriots who perished in
road accidents totaled 32.
Some 50 Indians were at
the central prison while those
awaiting repatriation at the
deportation centres totalled 229
until last Wednesday.
Embassy officials had visited
the prison and the detention centres on Wednesday to enquire the
welfare of fellow Indians there,
said the envoy.
Pathak said the Indian
Community Benevolent Forum
will be holding a medical camp in
the Industrial Area next month
and low-income workers from all
nationalities would be welcome to
attend.
THE PENINSULA
DOHA: Different departments
at the Ministry of Interior
(MoI) has set up a plan to maintain security during the Eid
holidays.
There will be special arrangements to maintain smooth traffic
movement and prevent any security breaches.
The Traffic Department
together with Rescue Police (Al
Fazaa) and Internal Security
Force (Lekhwiya) has taken steps
to maintain and control traffic at
prayer venues, roundabouts and
intersections, an Arabic daily
reported yesterday.
Special patrols will be deployed
in crowded areas like the central
market, slaughter houses, Souq
Waqif, Corniche and at malls. Al
Fazaa will also have special teams
at Salwa, Dukhan, Al Shamal, Al
Khor and Mesaieed areas.
The special teams on duty
throughout 24 hours will also be
deployed in remote areas especially to attend to any emergency
situation.
The Capital Police is also set to
deploy special teams in places like
Mesaimer, Al Sadd and Madinath
Khalifa.
The 24 hour patrols will also
monitor places especially to prevent crime and to address any
case of emergency.
THE PENINSULA
An Al Fazaa patrol vehicle on the
Corniche.
04
FRIDAY 26 OCTOBER 2012
www.thepeninsulaqatar.com
HOME
QU college holds White Coat ceremony
BRIEFLY
24 new students take the ‘Oath of a Pharmacist’ at an inspirational ceremony
DOHA:
Qatar
University’s
College of Pharmacy (CPH)
held its 6th annual White
Coat inauguration ceremony
recently. The symbolic event
included the taking of the Oath
of a Pharmacist by 24 new
pharmacy students and donning the pharmacist’s White
Coat in an inspirational ceremony attended by more than
260 people.
Assistant Dean for the College
Banan Mukhalalati welcomed
the attendees who included
QU Acting Vice President and
Chief Academic Officer Dr
Mazen Hasna; Primary Health
Care Pharmacy Director Dr
Mahmoud Al Mahmoud; Hamad
Medical Corporation Pharmacy
Consultant Dr Michael Fahey,
Clinical Pharmacy Specialist at
the National Centre for Cancer
Care and Research (NCCCR) Dr
Shireen ElAzzazy, representatives
from HMC, Primary Health Care,
Ebn Sina Medical, Well Care
Group, College of the North
Atlantic Qatar, CPH students
and their families, CPH faculty,
alumni, staff, and well-wishers.
Acting Dean Khalifa explained
how the college is continuing its
dynamic plan to meet the healthcare needs in Qatar, in line with
the National Vision 2030.
He said: “We offer multi-career
paths for our students so they can
influence the future in community pharmacy, primary health
care clinics, hospitals, academia
Mowasalat says
ready to meet
Eid demand
New pharmacy students donning the White Coat after taking their oath at Qatar University’s College of Pharmacy.
and research. Our partners in
these professions participate with
us to celebrate the future leaders
of Qatar as they embark on their
educational and clinical training.”
He added that the programme
for pharmacy development has
been enriched by the 560 weeks
of on-site training provided by its
healthcare partners. This ensures
that QU students are well-positioned to make a difference from
the first day of their careers.
CPH Associate Dean for
Research and Graduate Studies,
Dr Mohamed Izham Mohamed
Ibrahim, said: “We continue to see
very capable students applying to
the College of Pharmacy. This
is another exciting year for the
College as we are not only cloaking our sixth incoming class but
we also have two BSc (Pharm)
and our first Doctor of Pharmacy
graduates now working to deliver
advanced healthcare in Qatar.”
He continued to explain how
this year the Masters programme
in pharmacy (MSc (Pharm)),
which is the first masters program in health sciences in the
country, is expected to graduate its first class to further meet
Qatar’s health science research
needs.
First-year Qatari pharmacy
student Shorouk Abdelkader
said: “I am very pleased to be
part of the pharmacy profession.
Upon wearing the white coat I
am now a member of the healthcare team and I promise to do my
best for society. I take my vows
I recited seriously. I am grateful
to my family for their continuous
encouragement and they are very
proud of my accomplishments.”
THE PENINSULA
QLC holds educational workshop
Dr Emad Sultan, Cultural Affairs Director at Katara, and (RIGHT) British
Ambassador, Michael O’Neill, at the screening of the 23rd installment of
the James Bond series — Skyfall — at Katara on Wednesday.
Katara screens 23rd Bond
film ahead of world release
DOHA: Skyfall, the 23rd James
Bond film, premiered at Katara
on Wednesday, two days ahead
of its release in international
theatres.
The British Embassy hosted
the exclusive premiere of the
British film at the Katara Drama
Theatre, Building 16 in association with Katara, Aston Martin
and Horizon automobiles.
Known for its signature musical theme, Bond’s lavish attire,
fast cars, and his incredible gadgets, the James Bond franchise
marked itself as a cultural symbol
of the United Kingdom. The 23rd
installment of the Bond series,
Skyfall, features Daniel Craig in
his third performance as James
Bond, along with Javier Bardem
as Raoul Silva, the film’s villain,
and the Oscar-winning film director Sam Mendes.
The British Ambassador,
Michael O’Neill, said: “It is a great
pleasure to work with Katara,
Aston Martin, and Horizon
Automobiles to bring the latest
Bond movie to Doha. This event
adds yet another building block to
the UK-Qatar cultural partnership, which we are determined to
strengthen further in 2013 and
beyond.”
The Ambassador read out a
short message sent from London
by the real-life ‘M’ before the
screening. In true James Bond
style, its contents were of course
strictly confidential.
Created in 1953 by writer, Ian
Fleming who penned 12 novels and 2 short story collections
featuring 007, the code name for
James Bond, the fictional British
secret service agent, the film
made it to the big screen in 1962,
starring Sean Connery in Dr
No. Six movie icons have played
the 007 character, capturing the
hearts of millions of Bond fans
over the years.
Dr Emad Sultan, Cultural
Affairs Director, Katara commented, “Crowning 50 years since
the creation of the 007 legend,
we are proud to partner with the
British Embassy to present this
iconic film. Skyfall offers a classic blend of epic action, thrill and
drama which captures the true
essence of classic British culture.
“Katara aims to be the ground
soil for the fusion between eastern and western cultures, and
our partnership with the British
Embassy is, doubtless, the right
step towards this goal. This
performance is a testament of
Katara’s commitment to educating and entertaining whilst
building cultural bridges,” he
concluded.
Neil Slade, General Manager
AMMENA, Aston Martin said,
“We are delighted to celebrate
not only 50 years of James Bond
but also the 100th anniversary
of Aston Martin. It has been a
great honour to collaborate with
Katara, the Cultural Village and
the British Embassy to bring to
Doha this event which marks
another milestone between the
UK and Qatar.”
The hit film is the longest-running film franchise and the second-highest grossing film series
behind Harry Potter, scoring over
$12,360,000,000 worldwide.
THE PENINSULA
DOHA:
Qatar
Leadership
Centre (QLC) yesterday concluded an Executive Education
Workshop entitled Managing a
Multinational Enterprise – The
Leader’s Perspective.
Professor Corey Phelps,
Associate Professor of Strategy
and Business Policy at HEC
Paris and Professor Alain Roux,
Adjunct Faculty member at HEC
Paris delivered a three-day session to the QLC Current and
Future Leaders group.
The workshop was the next
stage in QLC’s programme for
Current and Future Leaders
group, which was set up under the
patronage of the Heir Apparent
H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad
Al Thani, to assist future leaders to reach their full potential
and also support the country’s
drive towards the Qatar National
Vision 2030.
The economic strategy modules
were based on the HEC NegoSim
business simulation exercises,
which deliver module based strategic role-playing. The exercises
enable candidates to research and
analyse real life business scenarios
Sheikh Dr Abdulla bin Ali Al Thani,
Board Member and Executive
Director of QLC.
and then create solutions for cost
control, general management,
financial management and international finance scenarios.
“The NegoSim business simulation is based on HEC’s very
successful courses and as one of
the leading business schools in
Europe, is ideally suited to be part
of QLC ethos of delivering international level leadership solutions
for our candidates,” said Sheikh
Dr Abdulla bin Ali Al Thani,
Board Member and Executive
Director of QLC.
“Market conditions are such
that our future leaders need to
be able to understand and react to
new types of behaviours, develop
competitive strategies and have
internationally accredited measures of performance. Modules
using the NegoSim platform offer
our candidates a real insight into
how we can address future challenges and learn through practical experience.”
Khaled El Gohary, Director of
Strategy and Performance added,
“This program offers our candidates tangible business skills and
through knowledge sharing, best
practice simulation and practical exercises we are creating
that framework for our future
leaders to form clear and robust
strategies.”
THE PENINSULA
DOHA: The executive director of Mowasalat, Ahmed Al
Mansuri, said that the company has set a plan for Eid Al
Adha to increase the number
of taxis and buses, making
the prior technical checkup
of all operating vehicles since
the demand during the holidays, especially in the night
time, is very high.
Al Mansuri added that during the last Eid, the company’s
taxis and buses carried about
two million passengers. The
executive director said that
taxis will be available outside
malls, near markets and in
public areas.
He also said that the number
of complaints about these taxis
has been reduced thanks to the
reviewed distribution plan.
According to this new plan,
there are more taxis in areas
where families live, as well as
hotels and commercial centres.
Nevertheless, he added that
still the demand is increasing
because of the growing population and the building expansion. The company has 1,677
school buses, 250 new buses,
and another 45 new buses prepared for disabled people.
The service of Al Ijara
Holding will start during Eid
with 100 of the total 500 taxis
the company will put in service
later. The cars will have a blue
roof and use the same meter
system as Karwa.
Al Meera opens
branch at Sealine
DOHA: Al Meera Consumer
Goods Company (QSC) seasonal Sealine Resort branch
opened its doors to the public
yesterday.
The temporary branch,
caters for supplying supermarket goods and camping supplies,
and also has a children’s playground and an area rented to
other retailers and restaurants.
The branch will open for five
months until the end of March
2013. “For the third year running, we are happy to be welcoming vacationers to the
south of the country with our
branch,” said Dr Mohammed
Nasser Al Qahtani, Deputy
Chief Executive Officer of Al
Meera. “As our branches inauguration coincides with Eid Al
Adha, I would like to extend a
‘Eid Mubarak’ to everyone in
the country and wish them a
safe and happy holiday.”
THE PENINSULA
Qatar Airways to start flights to Cambodia
DOHA: Qatar Airways today
announced plans to launch
daily scheduled flights to the
Cambodian capital of Phnom
Penh from early next year to
further boost its Asia Pacific
network.
The Doha-based airline will be
the only Middle Eastern carrier
to operate into Cambodia with
services due to start on February
20.
Phnom Penh will be Qatar
Airways’ latest destination in
Asia, which now represents
around 30 per cent of the carrier’s 119-strong network of global
cities.
Its Asian coverage includes
diverse business and leisure cities
such as Hong Kong, Hanoi, Osaka,
Tokyo, Perth, Beijing, Shanghai,
Melbourne, Perth, Delhi, Mumbai,
Karachi and Goa.
Phnom Penh will also be Qatar
Airways’ 11th gateway in the
Association of South East Asian
Nations (ASEAN), following on
from successful operations to
Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Bali,
Ho Chi Minh City, Jakarta, Hanoi,
Singapore, Manila, Phuket and
Yangon.
Cambodia attracts millions of
tourists and business travellers
Qatar Airways will be the first Middle Eastern carrier to fly to Cambodia.
every year visiting historic
attractions such as the majestic
Angkor Wat in Siem Reap and
the premier beach island resort
of Sihanoukville – both within
easy reach of the fabulous city of
Phnom Penh.
Located on the banks of the
Mekong River and bordered by
Thailand, Laos and Vietnam,
Phnom Penh is Cambodia’s largest
city and the country’s economic,
cultural and political centre.
Qatar Airways will operate
to Phnom Penh International
Airport which is currently
undergoing expansion to cater
for increased capacity to handle
five million passengers a year by
2017 – more than double the current amount.
Today’s news is Qatar Airways’
fourth new route announcement
so far for 2013 with Gassim in
Saudi Arabia, Najaf in Iraq and
Chicago, the carrier’s fourth
US gateway, launching between
January and April, with further
start-ups planned during the year.
Qatar Airways Chief Executive
Officer Akbar Al Baker said daily
flights from the airline’s Doha
hub to Phnom Penh will provide
increased travel opportunities
for travellers from Europe, the
Middle East and North America.
“As we continue our aggressive
worldwide expansion programme,
we are delighted to offer our customers a much awaited connection to one of Asia’s most popular
and well-loved destinations,” he
said.
“We very much look forward
to celebrating our arrival in
Cambodia next year and playing
our part to help further boost the
country’s vibrant tourism industry, which is the country’s second
largest income provider.”
Qatar Airways’ Doha – Phnom
Penh route will be operated with
an Airbus A330.
The aircraft features seatback
TV screens providing all passengers in both cabins with the next
generation interactive onboard
entertainment system – a choice
of more than 800 audio and video
on demand options.
THE PENINSULA
FRIDAY 26 OCTOBER 2012
www.thepeninsulaqatar.com
ISLAM
A model for sharing and caring
BY DR WAEL SHIHAB
ID Al Adha has
unique spiritual,
devotional, educ at i o n a l ,
and
social meanings.
It implants in the
Muslim’s heart the spirit of sharing and caring. It has special rituals, ethics, and values that could,
if properly observed, change a
Muslim’s affairs to the better.
On the day of Eid, a Muslim is
recommended by the Sunnah to
have a shower before going to the
Eid Prayer and wear the best of
his or her clothes. This reflects
Islam’s care for cleanliness and
beauty. A Muslim should be careful regarding his or her appearance, dress, and personal hygiene.
In the early morning of the Eid
day, a Muslim goes out to pray
Eid with his or her fellow brothers and sisters. Every member of
the community should share the
happiness and attend the gathering of the Eid. Kids, women and
men, young and elderly, should go
out for the Eid Prayer. It is wellknown that even women in their
menses are allowed to go out and
watch the Eid Prayer and celebration in the open areas (Al
musala) to share the community
this blessed time. This implants
in the Muslim’s heart the sense
of brotherhood and sisterhood,
unity, and togetherness.
After the Eid Prayer, Muslims
are advised—according to the
Sunnah — to change their route
on returning from the Prayer.
Jabir ibn ‘Abdullah (may Allah
be pleased with him) reported
that the Prophet (PBUH) used
to change his routes on the day of
Eid. (Al-Bukhari) This wonderful
recommended practice aims at,
among others, giving the Muslim
a chance to meet more friends,
neighbours, and community members in order to exchange Eid
greetings and cement social ties.
Offering the udhiyyah — a
highly recommended rite of
Eid Al Adha — manifests the
great spirit of sharing and caring. All members of the family
05
Prophet Muhammad’s
(PBUH) farewell sermon
After praising, and thanking Allah, He said:
E
spreads mercy, peace of mind, tranquility, and happiness. Hearts and
bodies, therefore, enjoy ‘Eid rituals and celebrations. People meet,
care for, and greet one another, and
hearts find peace and blessings in
praising and worshipping Allah,
Most High.
Eid is a day on which a Muslim
should bring himself or herself
closer to Allah by means of doing
good deeds — such as Prayers,
caring for the poor and the needy,
visiting the sick people, helping
those who are in need, etc. — and
refraining from evil practices
such harming people and severing ties of kinship.
In short, Eid Al Adha is a model
for the Muslim community which
maintains love, care, brotherhood
and sisterhood, beauty, and solidarity. Eid has significant social,
educational, devotional, and
spiritual messages that Muslims
should grasp and translate into a
complete way of life.
“O People, lend me an attentive ear, for I know not whether after this
year, I shall ever be amongst you again. Therefore listen to what I am
saying to you very carefully and TAKE THESE WORDS TO THOSE
WHO COULD NOT BE PRESENT HERE TODAY.
O People, just as you regard this month, this day, this city as Sacred,
so regard the life and property of every Muslim as a sacred trust.
Return the goods entrusted to you to their rightful owners. Hurt
no one so that no one may hurt you. Remember that you will indeed
meet your Lord, and that He will indeed reckon your deeds. ALLAH
has forbidden you to take usury (interest), therefore all interest obligation shall
henceforth be waived. Your capital, however, is yours to keep. You will neither
inflict nor suffer any inequity. Allah has
Judged that there shall be no interest
and that all the interest due to Abbas ibn
‘Abd’al Muttalib (Prophet’s uncle) shall
henceforth be waived...
Beware of Satan, for the safety of
your religion. He has lost all hope that
he will ever be able to lead you astray in
big things, so beware of following him in
small things.
O People, it is true that you have certain rights with regard to your women,
but they also have rights over you.
Remember that you have taken them as
your wives only under Allah’s trust and
with His permission. If they abide by your
right then to them belongs the right to
be fed and clothed in kindness. Do treat your women well and be kind
to them for they are your partners and committed helpers. And it is
your right that they do not make friends with any one of whom you
do not approve, as well as never to be unchaste.
O People, listen to me in earnest, worship Allah, say your five daily
prayers (Salah), fast during the month of Ramadan, and give your
wealth in Zakat. Perform Hajj if you can afford to.
All mankind is from Adam and Eve, an Arab has no superiority over
a non-Arab nor a non-Arab has any superiority over an Arab; also a
white has no superiority over black nor a black has any superiority
over white except by piety and good action. Learn that every Muslim
is a brother to every Muslim and that the Muslims constitute one
brotherhood. Nothing shall be legitimate to a Muslim which belongs
to a fellow Muslim unless it was given freely and willingly. Do not,
therefore, do injustice to yourselves.
Remember, one day you will appear before Allah and answer your
deeds. So beware, do not stray from the path of righteousness after I
am gone. O People, no prophet or apostle will come after me and no
new faith will be born. Reason well, therefore, O People, and understand words which I convey to you. I leave behind me two things, the
QURAN and my example, the SUNNAH and if you follow these you
will never go astray. All those who listen to me shall pass on my words
to others and those to others again; and may the last ones understand
my words better than those who listen to me directly. Be my witness,
O Allah, that I have conveyed your message to your people”.
WWW.ONISLAM.NET
HTTP://WWW.ISLAMICITY.COM
Pilgrims perform the noon prayer outside the Namera mosque (background) in the plain of Arafat on the outskirts
of Makkah yesterday.
are recommended to share and
witness the udhiyyah. Prophet
Muhammad (PBUH) used to ask
his beloved daughter Fatimah
to witness the udhiyyah. It was
reported that the Prophet said to
his daughter Fatimah,
“Watch your udhiyah (while it
is slaughtered) as you are forgiven
with the first drop of its blood.”
(Al-Bayhaqi) Moreover, the desirable division of the udhiyyah into
three thirds — one third for the
family, another for relatives, and a
third for the poor — is another brilliant example that shows how far
the Adha day implants love and care
in the Muslims’ hearts for family,
relatives, and for the whole society.
In the Muslim Ummah (community), no one is ignored or left
alone, as every member of the
Muslim community should, not
only, take care of his or her close
family and relatives but of all fellow Muslims.
Many Qur’anic verses and prophetic hadiths teach that Muslims
are brothers and sisters, and it is the
established duty of brothers and sisters to look after the needs of each
other. This impressive lesson of Al
Adha, should it be understood and
translated into practice, could help
reform the current conditions of
Muslims.
Eid is a day for exchanging
visits and maintaining family
ties. Maintaining ties of kinship
is an established duty that every
Muslim should carry out. Eid
is a golden chance to bring the
family members together, and to
visit one’s relatives, friends, and
community members. The Eid
day should not pass without visiting, calling, or e-mailing one’s
relatives and family members in
order to exchange Eid greetings
and cement family ties.
On the Eid day, Muslims are
recommended to engage in public
takbir (saying Allahu Akbar) in
the masjids, market-places, streets,
etc. This ‘ibadah’ (act of worship)
connects Muslims spiritually and
O People, and
understand words
which I convey to
you. I leave behind
me two things,
the QURAN and
my example, the
SUNNAH and if
you follow these
you will never go
astray.
06
VIEWS
FRIDAY 26 OCTOBER 2012
www.thepeninsulaqatar.com
Editorial
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Ukraine in the ring
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PUBLICATION
S UKRAINE braces for parliamentary elections to be held on
Sunday, all eyes are on President Yanukovych and his jailed
rival and former premier Yulia Tymoshenko, who is serving
seven years in prison for abuse of power. Through her daughter Yevgenia
Tymoshenko, the Ukrainian leader told citizens to throw out from power
what she called Yanukovych’s mafia. In a message read out by Yevgenia
from her incarcerated mother, the darling of the Orange Revolution
told her countrymen not to cast a single vote for Yanukovych’s party.
The run-up to the parliamentary elections in the former Soviet
republic has been an interesting one. Yanukovych’s ruling Regions
Party has been pitted against a loose coalition led by a boxing star
-- Vitali Klitschko of the UDAR (punch) party.
Months ahead of the elections, Tymoshenko, often referred to as the
‘gas princess’, has been in the spotlight over allegations of misbehaviour
and harassment in jail levelled by her. As the European Union and
the United States fretted over her incarceration—calling it disproportionate and politically motivated — Yanukovych’s government kept
ignoring all demands of her release, often scoffing at the allegations
and decrying Tymoshenko’s behaviour. At one point of time, the former
Prime Minister showed injuries on her body in photographs taken in
jail by her lawyer. The marks, she said, were the result of an assault
by prison guards on her body.
The sufferings of Tymoshenko put in perspective the state of politics
A
The other side
Syria spreads its war
Quote of
the day
in Ukraine, which under Yanukovych has been leaning heavily towards
Russia. The case of Russian opposition activist Leonid Razvozzhayev
places the bilateral bonhomie between Kiev and Moscow in perspective.
The activist was picked up in the streets of the Ukrainian capital by
what Kiev calls the ‘secret services’ and transferred to Moscow on the
sly for opposing Russian strongman Vladimir Putin. The West raised
a hue and cry and the US Embassy in Moscow expressed concern,
but another voice of dissent against an oppressive regime, it seems,
has been stifled. In the Ukrainian elections on Sunday, the policies
of Yanukovych will go to the test. How Ukrainians stamp the ballot at
the weekend will determine his future and that of the former Soviet
Republic. There has been growing concern in the West about the state
of democracy in Ukraine and if the Regions Party comes to power in
parliament, Yanukovych could consolidate his grip on power all the
more and lay the pitch for another presidential term in 2015.
The boxing star stares from billboards and election graffiti in
Ukraine and the blond braid of Tymoshenko is a marquee of opposition
election campaign in the nation of 46 million that may look forward to
change or be satisfied with a Russia-leaning dispensation.
The West will hope the opposition can throw out the ruling party from
parliament on Sunday. With more than a boxing crown at stake, the
boxing heavyweight of the opposition has quite a lengthy bout ahead
of him.
We will take care of every
single person, develop
democratic institutions and
establish the rule of law.
uring a visit to Washington in late August, Gen. Wissam al-Hassan, the intelligence chief of Lebanon’s internal security forces,
offered a grim assessment of the civil war raging in neighbouring Syria and its likely impact on the region. Dictator Bashar Assad, he
told us, still had a chance to outlast the rebellion against him, though
“it will take a couple of years and more than 100,000 killed.” For the
Assad regime, he added, “one of the solutions of the Syrian conflict is
to move it outside Syria. He survives by making it a regional conflict.”
A little more than seven weeks later, Mr. Hassan was dead, killed in
an Oct. 19 car bombing in Beirut that has taken Lebanon to the brink
of its own sectarian war. Most Lebanese not allied with the Hezbollah
movement agree with former Prime Minister Saad Hariri that “it is
clear as day” who sponsored the assassination. In short, Mr. Assad is
attempting to implement the very strategy that Mr. Hassan spoke of.
The intelligence chief was a key member of the pro-Western
group that governed Lebanon for several years after the 2005 “Cedar
Revolution” forced Syria to end 30 years of military occupation — and
he had been fighting to prevent Mr. Assad from meddling in his country.
In August, he exposed a plot by a former Lebanese cabinet minister
with close ties to Mr. Assad who had conspired to smuggle explosives
into the country for a series of bombings. He was pressing Lebanon’s
weak prime minister, Najib Mikati, to order the disarmament of a
pro-Syrian militia that had provoked clashes in northern Lebanon.
But Mr. Mikati is constrained by Hezbollah, a Syrian client that is
the strongest force in the current government. “Mikati won’t move”
against Syria’s provocations, Mr. Hassan told us, “unless Assad is dead
or outside the country.” Mr. Hassan proved all too prescient. Mr.
Mikati has done little to respond to the bombing — the worst such
attack in Lebanon in four years — other than to deploy the army to
quell incipient sectarian clashes. He has refused to resign, a step that
could open the way to the formation of a government that does not
include Hezbollah. In this, remarkably, he had the support of the Obama
administration, whose first response to the attack was to dispatch the
U.S. ambassador in Lebanon to join her Russian and Chinese colleagues
in meeting the president to appeal for “stability” in the country.
The State Department subsequently softened that stance, saying
that it would support a “process leading to a new government.” But
in Lebanon as well as Syria, the Obama administration is pursuing
the shortsighted policy of seeking to restrain anti-Assad forces. That
strategy has had no effect in either country other than to empower
U.S. enemies and jihadist groups, whose foreign sponsors are showering them with weapons and cash.
THE WASHINGTON POST
D
Bidzina Ivanishvili
Georgian Prime Minister
Cartoon Arts International / The New York Times Syndicate
American non-voters need not be derided
BY CHRISTIAN CARYL
f you’re a Republican, you
probably don’t like it when
people say nasty things about
your candidate. If you’re a
Democrat, you get steamed when
the other side insults your president or your party.
But there’s one electoral bloc
that both parties can vilify at
their leisure: those US citizens
who refuse to vote. They are routinely derided as stupid, or lazy
or hapless.
By now, many Americans have
already figured out that there
are problems with the way they
vote. Start with the fact that
some people’s votes count more
than others. The presidential vote
on November 6 is shaping up to
be a pretty tight contest, so it’s
entirely possible that the final
tally will be close. But, as anyone who’s heard of the electoral
I
college already knows, US presidents aren’t elected on the basis
of the popular vote. (Remember
Florida in 2000?) So there’s
already plenty of editorial anguish
over the inherent unfairness of
this arrangement.
And then there’s the controversy over registration.
Republicans, warning against
vote fraud, have introduced laws
across the country that raise the
bar for voter registration. Critics
of these efforts point out that
these laws address a kind of fraud
that is unlikely to occur, and gloss
over the type that is much more
threatening (namely, the wholesale manipulation of electronic
voting machines). Such critics
accuse the Republicans of actually
trying to suppress the turnout of
groups — minorities, the underprivileged, the elderly — who are
more likely to vote for Democrats.
These are all legitimate
problems. But what I don’t understand is why no one is addressing the elephant in the room:
the fact that some 40 percent of
Americans of voting age don’t see
any reason to cast their votes on
election day at all.
In national election after
national election, eligible voters
who choose to refrain from voting
make up what some political scientists have called a “silent plurality.” There have been moments
when that plurality was pretty
close to becoming a majority. In
1996, 49.1 percent of the voting
age population declined to go to
the polls. In 2008, turnout of eligible voters went all the way up
to 61.7 percent — the highest since
1968, mind you. But the number
of those who refused to vote — or
just didn’t care — was still significantly larger than those who
voted for Barack Obama, the winning candidate. Non-voters, in
short, make up the biggest electoral bloc in the nation.
You’d think this would be the
occasion for some soul-searching.
After all, how can you claim to
have a democracy when your
leaders are elected with a mandate from 30-odd percent of the
country’s eligible voters? It’s
estimated that some 90 million
Americans will abstain from
voting next month. You’d think
that this would prompt us to
ask some fundamental questions
about the viability of a system
that’s supposedly based on popular participation but actually
prompts rejection on a mass scale.
(Participation is even lower for
midterm congressional elections
— only 39 percent of the voting
age population showed up in 2010,
for example — and lower still for
elections on the state and city
levels.) Most of the articles on
this subject lately view it through
the predictable lens of how these
abstainers would affect the election if they actually chose to vote.
(The consensus seems to be that
most of them lean Democratic,
presumably because non-voters
do tend to be poorer and less welleducated and thus more inclined
to vote for liberal policies.) But
perhaps reporters are asking the
wrong questions.
Withholding one’s vote in a
presidential election is, in fact,
an entirely rational response to
the existing political order in the
United States. The electoral college is a big part of the problem,
of course. If you live in persistently Republican Texas, you have
very good reasons to doubt that
your vote for Obama will really
influence the outcome. If you live
in solidly liberal Massachusetts,
casting a vote for Mitt Romney
as president is likely to have little
effect. (And don’t get me started
on voting in Washington, DC.)
As a result, pundits and prognosticators say that there are
only nine states that really matter in this year’s presidential election: the so-called “battleground”
states where the outcome is still
uncertain enough to warrant
attention from the candidates. As
the Associated Press pointed out,
modern campaigns now have the
data to target voters even more
narrowly than that, and they’re
now focusing on just 106 “swing
counties” (out of 3,143 in the
United States).
The reason, of course, is the
winner-take-all system of the
electoral college, which dictates
that whoever wins a majority
of the votes in a state gets all of
that state’s electors. In fact, the
winner-take-all (or first-pastthe-post) principle pervades
American politics.
WP-BLOOMBERG
FRIDAY 26 OCTOBER 2012
www.thepeninsulaqatar.com
VIEWS
Obama blunders in ceding
political centre to Romney
orty-six percent of Syria’s
buildings are illegally
constructed, according
to a government study
in 2007 – and this includes the
homes in which more than half
the population live. The problem was mostly seen around the
large cities but, amid a widening
gap between rich and poor, the
authorities generally turned a
blind eye to it.
Particularly since this summer,
though, they have been bulldozing illegal buildings – but only in
restive areas. In other areas, the
authorities have been selective
in their demolition orders. The
campaign against illegal construction is thus being used to send a
message: if you rebel against the
regime, you will no longer enjoy
the favours bestowed by it.
A further complication is that
officials also accept hefty bribes
from internally displaced people
to allow them to use abandoned
or partly demolished buildings.
Additionally, the regime’s militias and rank-and-file officers
are raiding houses, ransacking
and then fraudulently selling or
leasing them.
Besides adding to people’s suffering amid the current conflict,
these practices are reshaping
neighbourhoods across the country, from large cities to small villages – which is a recipe for future
clashes between the old and new
owners. Many will feel their properties have been usurped by other
people or bought cheaply and at
some point may try to retake
them.
Mona, 37 years old, used to
live with her five children in a
flat under construction in Adra,
about 24km east Damascus where
low-income workers and military
personnel live. Earlier this month,
five intelligence officers raided her
flat and asked her to leave.
Adra has been a destination for
displaced people from other restive areas, like Douma, Harasta,
and Dhumair. Hundreds of families have moved there, some of
them sleep in the streets and others have occupied buildings under
construction.
Hussain al-Ali, a 68-year-old
man in Adra, was threatened
by a member of the “local committees” – pro-regime groups of
local residents to protect their
own areas – to be evicted from
his flat if he does not continuously stay in it.
Pro-government committees
control many buildings in those
areas, according to Mohammed
Hamdan, a blogger from
Damascus. They claim the flats
F
BY CLIVE CROOK
he third and final presidential
debate did little to change the race
between President Barack Obama
and Mitt Romney, who are tied
with just two weeks to go. Even so,
this week’s inconsequential contest provides
a key of sorts to understanding the election.
In the first debate — which was consequential and then some — Romney abruptly changed
from the severely conservative Republican
he’d presented to voters during the primaries
to the reassuringly pragmatic moderate he’d
seemed as governor of Massachusetts. It was
an audacious move, and one that strains credulity, in two respects: for the sheer distance
in ideology he had to walk back, and for the
timing, because he left this second outrageous
pivot so late in the campaign.
In the last debate, focused mainly on foreign
policy, he moved further toward moderation.
He struck a conciliatory tone and found little
in what Obama said to disagree with, making
the encounter in one sense a nonevent. He
was cautious to a fault, careful to avoid seeming recklessly hawkish, allaying concerns that
under his leadership the United States might
blunder into another war. This peacemaking
Romney couldn’t have won the Republican
nomination. But he could very well win on
November 6.
The cipher to understanding this election is
to ask, why didn’t Obama beat Romney to it?
Why didn’t he deny his Republican opponent
the middle ground of US politics by seizing it
himself?
At the outset, he was closer to the centre
than Romney was. And for Obama, this was
far less of a stretch. Yet he’s fought a campaign
aimed less at the middle of the electorate than
at the Democratic Party’s base — playing
on class war and adopting as its overriding
goal, at times almost its whole purpose, a tax
increase on the rich.
If Obama should lose this election, many will
say it was because the economy was weak and
because the president is black. Actually, it will
be because he fought it as a failed progressive
rather than a successful centrist.
Certainly, the economy is a negative for the
incumbent, but much less than generally supposed. Most voters understand all too well
that the president inherited the worst recession since the 1930s, and that the recovery
was going to be a long, hard haul. To be sure,
they’re asking whether his policies are helping, and they are far from convinced. They’ve
noticed his silence on where his economic
policies go from here. But the mere fact that
Syria’s black market
in housing adds to
the nation's turmoil
BY HASSAN HASSAN
Barack Obama has
fought a campaign
aimed less at the
middle of electorate
than at Democratic
Party’s base.
T
US President Barack Obama speaks during a campaign rally at Ybor City Museum State Park
yesterday in Tampa, Florida.
the economy is weak wasn’t fatal to Obama’s
prospects.
As for race, the fact that Obama is black
has been more an asset than a liability and it
remains so. There’s racism in America, but
there’s also an immense desire to overcome it.
The voters swinging back to Romney aren’t
racist, or they wouldn’t have supported Obama
in 2008. Remember the joyous inauguration
of 2009. The political centre of the country
was thrilled and proud to have elected a black
president: an exceptionally talented man,
and the best possible salve for the nation’s
unhealed racial wounds.
Every voter who chose Obama in 2008 still
wants him to succeed. But not all are convinced he can, and that’s partly because he has
stopped trying to be the president he said he’d
be. The need to fix Washington, the need for a
bridge-building, post-partisan presidency was
uppermost in centrist voters’ minds when they
elected Obama, and he’d made that the core
of his campaign. Washington is still broken —
more so than before — and Obama is no longer
even trying to mend it.
A fair response to this would be, can you
blame him? After 2008, an increasingly radical
Republican Party dedicated itself to ensuring
Obama’s failure. It made compromise difficult
and often impossible. On health-care reform
and the fiscal stimulus of 2009 — the signature achievements of Obama’s first term —
the president was forced to give ground and
got nothing in return. The pattern repeated
again and again. How can it be fair to criticise
Obama for failing to build bridges?
The president’s error wasn’t that he refused
to compromise. It was that he compromised
so reluctantly, denying himself ownership of
his own policies and making every accomplishment seem like a defeat.
He should have boasted about his ability to
get big, important things past an unyielding
Republican Party. He should have boasted
about the tax cuts in the fiscal stimulus,
rather than allowing them to appear as if
they were ground out of him as a concession
to Republican priorities. (If he had, he might
have won a bigger stimulus.) He should have
explained why health-care reform without the
so-called public option was a great success,
pushing back against the view of many in his
own party that this and other compromises
rendered the effort largely pointless.
Obama could have been a strong centrist,
which would have aroused even louder complaints from the Democratic left. Or he could
have been a weak progressive, constantly on
the retreat. He chose to be the latter. Policywise, the result might have been much the
same: a stimulus with more tax cuts and less
public investment than Democrats wanted and
a health-care reform resting much more heavily on the existing private-insurance model
than progressives would have liked. The crucial difference is that Obama the muscular
centrist could have taken credit for these
achievements — which is what they are — in
a way that Obama the battered progressive
has been unable to.
He would have been able to campaign on
them, rather than leaving them unloved and
unsold. He would have looked in charge rather
than at the mercy of intransigent Republicans.
He would have seemed his own man rather
than an instrument of Nancy Pelosi and the
House Democrats. He would have been the
president who never stopped trying to fix
Washington. Above all, he would have been
ideologically aligned with the swing voters who
decide elections.
Many in his party would have despised
him for it, just as they despised Bill Clinton
— whom they now revere — for moving to
the centre after his midterm setback in 1994.
WP-BLOOMBERG
07
are being used for humanitarian
purposes but in reality they use
them to earn money from displaced people.
Racan Alhoch, an activist from
Damascus’s Midan neighbourhood, told me: “If a home was
abandoned, the Assad army would
enter it, ransack it, take what
they find and label it the home
of a traitor.” Alhoch added that
there were incidents of regime’s
militias selling a property to more
than one buyer, only for buyers to
find out the property was to be
demolished.
Alawite residents in Damascus
are said to be selling their properties in the outskirts, including
in the neighbourhoods of Mazza86 and Tadhamun, and moving
back to their old villages. These
residents had originally moved
from their villages in the country’s middle and western region
to illegally constructed houses in
Damascus after President Assad’s
father took power. Buyers, however, are reluctant to purchase
these houses fearing the owners
will retake them if the regime
does not fall.
There has been a tendency
to buy properties from people escaping the violence for
extremely cheap prices, according to Alhoch. “These wealthy
men are going to sit on these
properties until post-revolution
then sell them for profit which
gives us a whole slew of issues
to deal with in post-revolution
[Syria],” Alhoch said.
More than 800 flats have
been occupied by non-owners in
Damascus, according to an official.
A similar scenario is playing out
in Aleppo, where displaced people
have illegally occupied 1,800 flats
owned by the government’s housing authority. Also, many people
from Aleppo’s countryside moved
to the city and occupied deserted
buildings.
Other complications include
proving ownership when refugees outside the country return,
considering that many had left
in haste without carrying their
belongings with them. And people currently exploiting violence
to buy properties cheaply are
already being labelled as war
beneficiaries.
The issue of displacement in
general is among the legacies that
Syrians will have to deal with far
into the future, from the displacement of Kurds by the regime in
the 1970s to the ongoing practices
that are being overlooked by the
regime. As the violence continues in Syria, the issue is likely to
deepen. And the consequences
remain to be seen.
THE GUARDIAN
Hezbollah prepares for wider war than it may want
BY RONEN BERGMAN
ezbollah’s launching of
a pilotless spy plane,
which was shot down
by Israel’s air force in
the southern part of the country
in early October, has been seen as
more evidence that the Lebanese
militia is preparing for war.
Israelis assume that the drone
was gathering visual intelligence
to help Hezbollah in its goal of
bombarding distant targets with
long-range surface-to-surface
missiles.
No doubt it was collecting
information in case of another
confrontation with Israel, but
whether the terrorist group is
seeking a full-blown war is a more
complicated question that may
depend less on what Hezbollah
wants than on the heat it is getting from its patrons.
The group’s possession of so
sophisticated a craft (which was
assembled from Iranian-made
parts) is further evidence that
Hezbollah is the most advanced
and best-equipped militia of its
kind the world has ever seen.
Ever since it forced the Israelis’
panicky retreat from Lebanon in
2000, Hezbollah has been building up an immense military
force, with firepower that 90
percent of the world’s countries
H
don’t possess, according to Meir
Dagan, the former director of
the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence
agency.
The militia’s war doctrine is
based on the assumption that
Israel is hypersensitive to civilian casualties, that it cannot wage
a protracted war and that it will
always aim for the quickest possible clear-cut victory. With this in
mind, Hezbollah has constructed
a complex network of underground bunkers with the goal of
assuring survivability, redundancy
and an ability to maintain a prolonged missile barrage against
Israeli cities.
The doctrine proved itself in
the war between the two sides
in 2006, when Israel failed in its
attempt to liquidate Hezbollah
and was once again forced to
withdraw from Lebanon, bruised
and bleeding.
Hezbollah’s approach to combat
came from Iran. The organisation
was founded in 1983 by Iran’s
revolutionary guards as part of
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s
plan to export his revolution. Over
the years, with Iranian funding
and encouragement, the group
has become the most important
political and military player in
Lebanon.
In recent years, Hezbollah
has taken on an additional role,
serving as an effective bargaining chip in the balance of fear
between Iran and Israel, deterring the latter from going ahead
with any mission to attack Iran’s
nuclear installations. One reason that Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu has held
back is Hezbollah’s ability to
wreak havoc in Israel with its
huge stockpile of some 70,000
missiles and rockets, the most
powerful of which is the Scud D,
with a range of 700 kilometres
(about 435 miles). Were it not
for Hezbollah’s missiles, a top
Israeli defence official told me,
Israel would have struck Iran’s
sites long ago.
That said, one shouldn’t
draw conclusions based only on
Hezbollah’s past and potential
successes. The organisation is at
a crossroads. Syria, its secondmost-important ally, is going
through upheaval and faces fundamental changes. The munitions
from Iran to Hezbollah are transported through Syria. The regime
of Syrian President Bashar Assad
has also supplied large weapons
to Hezbollah, as well as provided
access to launching sites — “the
strategic bases,” as Mossad calls
them — for its missile barrages
against Israel.
Any regime that takes over
from Assad will remember who
supported him as he slaughtered
thousands of civilians. Being cut
off from Syria is a nightmare
for Hezbollah leader Hassan
Nasrallah.
No less menacing is the possibility, which is by no means farfetched, that the Arab Spring
will reach Lebanon, a prospect
that might include a rebellion
against Hezbollah’s state within
a state. Even the regime in Iran
is far from rock solid, and changes
there could significantly worsen
Hezbollah’s relations with its
patron.
With the perspective of time,
what appeared to be a victory
over Israel in 2006 takes on a
more complex cast. The war
began when Hezbollah abducted
two Israeli soldiers in a crossborder raid. Israel’s massive
response came as a surprise to
Nasrallah, and he admitted publicly that he hadn’t expected it.
Although Hezbollah survived
and was seen to have won that
round, Lebanon as a whole sustained heavy damage and many
Lebanese blamed Nasrallah for
precipitating it.
Nasrallah is aware that the
next confrontation with Israel
will look different. The Israelis
have invested in vast intelligence
operations since 2006. Hezbollah
believes that these efforts were
evident in the February 2008
killing in Damascus of Imad
Moughniyeh, the group’s military commander, with a boobytrapped headrest in his car, as
well in mysterious explosions at
some of its illicit missile depots
in Lebanon.
More important, Israel has
already declared several times
that if and when war breaks out
again, it will hold the Lebanese
government responsible and will
destroy government targets.
The 2006 war created a mutual
deterrence: the Israelis refrain
from an open pre-emptive assault
against Hezbollah’s missile stockpiles, while the militia is compelled to moderate its responses.
Instead, it has tried to avenge
Mughniyeh’s assassination and
other suspected Israeli actions
by attacking Israeli tourists and
diplomats in far-flung locations,
outside of the Middle East, from
New Delhi, and Baku, Azerbaijan,
to Bangkok.
Nasrallah’s
predicament
springs chiefly from his dual role
as Iran’s proxy and an authentic
Lebanese leader who would like
to be seen as leader of all the
Arabs, not only of the Shiites.
It was on behalf of the Iranians,
senior Israeli intelligence officials
told me, that Hezbollah operatives attacked Israeli tourists in
the Bulgarian resort of Burgas on
July 18, killing six people.
This was seen as revenge for
the assassination of Iranian
nuclear scientists for which Iran
blames Israel. And it is for Iran’s
benefit that Hezbollah has made
such intense preparations for
war, including the recent drone
reconnaissance mission. Iran, in
the event of an Israeli assault on
its territory, will demand that
Hezbollah wreak vengeance on
its behalf, and Nasrallah, the
Lebanese politician, is aware that
this could lead to devastation in
his country, for which he will be
blamed.
Yet it is doubtful that Nasrallah,
who owes everything he possesses
to Iran, could say no to such an
order from his patrons. Israeli
intelligence sources reckon that
he may well select a middle path
— a barrage that is limited in both
the number of missiles launched
and in time, so that Israel won’t
feel obligated to launch a full-scale
military attack in response. This
would be a dangerous gamble.
As Nasrallah has learned, it
is not always possible to know
what to expect from the other
side, especially when it comes
to the Israelis. Even a limited
engagement could deteriorate
into a war.
WP-BLOOMBERG
08
FRIDAY 26 OCTOBER 2012
www.thepeninsulaqatar.com
Sudan’s links
with Iran in
focus after blast
MIDDLE EAST
Relentless pursuit
Israel refuses to comment on allegation
KHARTOUM: Sudan’s links to
Iran came under scrutiny yesterday after Khartoum accused Israel
of being behind a deadly missile
strike on a military factory in the
heart of the capital.
The cabinet met in urgent session
late on Wednesday after the government said evidence pointed to Israeli
involvement in the alleged attack at
around midnight on Tuesday on the
Yarmouk military manufacturing
facility in southern Khartoum.
Sudan accused the Jewish state of
a similar raid 18 months ago.
Analysts, however, said they had
not ruled out an accidental cause for
the latest blast.
Israeli officials have expressed
concern about arms smuggling
through Sudan and have long accused
Khartoum of serving as a base of support for militants from the Islamist
Hamas movement that rules the
Gaza Strip.
Israel refused all comment on
Khartoum’s allegations, but Amos
Gilad, a top Israeli defence official,
called Sudan “a dangerous terrorist
state.”
Gilad, Director of Policy and
Political-military affairs at the
Defence Ministry, refused to reply
directly when asked whether Israel
was involved in the attack, which
Sudan said was conducted by four
radar-evading aircraft.
“The regime is supported by Iran
and it serves as a route for the transfer, via Egyptian territory, of Iranian
weapons to Hamas and Islamic Jihad
terrorists,” he told his country’s army
radio on Thursday.
“Sudanese President Omar Hassan
Al Bashir is regarded a war criminal.”
Bashir is wanted by the
International Criminal Court for
alleged crimes against humanity,
war crimes and genocide in Sudan’s
Darfur region where a rebellion
began in 2003.
His cabinet issued no statement
after Wednesday’s late meeting,
where Bashir joined anti-Israel protesters in chanting “Allahu akbar”
(“God is greatest”).
About
300
demonstrators
denounced the United States and
carried banners calling for Israel to
be wiped off the earth.
Jonah Leff, of Small Arms Survey,
a Swiss-based independent research
project, said the project has documented the presence of a drone,
landmines and other Iranian weapons in Sudan but he thinks they were
acquired directly from Iran rather
than being locally manufactured.
“There’s a lot of speculation that
Iran has provided technical assistance to the Sudanese for their weapons manufacturing but I haven’t been
able to confirm that they’re producing any Iranian weapons,” he said.
On a visit to Tehran last August,
Bashir described the relationship
between Sudan and Iran as “deeply
rooted.”
Leff identified Yarmouk as
part of Sudan’s Military Industry
Corporation, which claims to produce
a variety of weapons from pistols to
battle tanks.
“They’re highly secretive... It’s
hard to know what exactly they’re
producing and what is propaganda,”
Leff said.
Information Minister Ahmed Bilal
Osman told reporters on Wednesday
that the factory made “traditional
weapons.”
Nearby residents said an aircraft
or missile had flown overhead shortly
before the area exploded in flames,
sending bursts of white light into the
night sky.
Sudan called on the UN Security
Council to condemn Israel for what
its envoy, Daffa-Alla Elhag Ali
Osman, called “a blatant violation of
the concept of peace and security”
and the UN charter.
On Wednesday, before officials
accused Israel, the governor of
Khartoum state Abdul Rahman
Al Khider dismissed speculation that
“other reasons” caused the explosion,
which he said happened in a storeroom. A diplomatic source said “the
human factor” — a possible accidental
cause — should not be ruled out.
AFP
Members of the Free Syrian Army pass through a hole in the wall during fighting against pro-government forces in Harem town, Idlib
Governorate, yesterday.
Gaza flare-up ebbs with Egypt mediation
JERUSALEM:
A
deadly
flare-up in fighting between
Israel and Gaza’s militant
Hamas group subsided yesterday after Egypt helped to
restore calm ahead of the Eid
Al Adha holiday.
Weeks of simmering violence
intensified on Tuesday night,
when rocket fire from Gaza
drew Israeli airstrikes that
killed two Palestinian militants.
Palestinian militants were angry
over a series of Israeli strikes
that targeted shadowy jihadists
in Gaza. The hostilities came
to a boil on Wednesday, when
militants fired some 80 rockets
and mortars at southern Israel,
and Israeli aircraft struck Gaza
four times.
In all, five Palestinians,
including three militants, were
killed in the fighting and two
foreign laborers in Israel were
critically wounded. The fifth
Palestinian, a 24-year-old man,
died yesterday of wounds he
sustained in an Israeli strike,
said Gaza health official Ashraf
Al Kidra. It was not known
whether he was a militant.
The rocket and mortar fire
stopped overnight, though one
projectile landed in southern Israel yesterday morning,
causing no damage. The military said it last struck Gaza on
Wednesday morning. The violence ebbed as Muslims began
preparing for the Eid Al Adha
holiday, which begins today.
Both
sides
confirmed
Egyptian involvement in ending
the fighting. Under longtime
leader Hosni Mubarak, Egypt
had played an important role
in halting multiple outbreaks
of hostilities between Israel and
Gaza militants. The new government of Egyptian President
Mohammed Mursi who belongs
to Hamas’ parent movement,
the Muslim Brotherhood, kept
up the tradition.
Israeli defence official Amos
Gilad told Army Radio yesterday
that Egyptian security forces
have “a very impressive ability”
to convey to the militants that
it is in their “supreme interest
not to attack.”
Hamas spokesman Ayman
Taha said Egypt conveyed
Israel’s desire to contain the
violence.
“We said we’ll abide by the
calm if the occupation abides,”
he said, referring to Israel. “It
happened over the phone with
Egyptian intelligence.”
Hamas, which has killed
hundreds of Israelis in suicide
bombings and other attacks,
has largely avoided attacks
since a devastating Israeli military offensive nearly four years
ago. Hundreds of Palestinians,
many of them civilians, died in
the offensive.
It remains virulently antiIsrael but has sought to keep
things quiet as it consolidates
control of Gaza, which it seized
five years ago during a brief
civil war against the rival Fatah
movement.
AP
Iran close to end of centrifuge
installation, say diplomats
Algerian court
gives death to
eight men
VIENNA: Iran appears to
have nearly finished installing
centrifuges at its underground
nuclear plant, Western diplomats say, potentially boosting
its capacity to make weaponsgrade uranium if it chose
to do so.
Iran only disclosed the existence of the Fordow plant, built
inside a mountain to shield it
from air strikes, in 2009 after
learning that Western spy services had detected it.
The United States and its
allies are particularly worried
about Fordow because Iran is
refining uranium there to a
fissile concentration of 20 percent, which Iran says it needs
for a medical reactor.
The diplomats said they had
heard of indications that Iran
had put in place the last 640
or so uranium centrifuges of
a planned total of some 2,800
at the site, but had not started
running them yet.
the International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA), the
UN watchdog based in Vienna,
which is expected to issue its
next report on Tehran’s nuclear
programme in mid-November.
Diplomacy and successive
rounds of economic sanctions
have so far failed to end the
decade-old row, raising fears of
Israeli military action against
its arch enemy and a new
Middle East war damaging to
a fragile world economy.
Iran already has enough lowenriched uranium for several
nuclear bombs if it were refined
to a high degree, but may still
be a few years away from being
able to assemble a missile if it
decided to go down that path,
analysts say.
The IAEA said in its last
report in August that Iran had
doubled the number of centrifuges at Fordow to 2,140 in
about three months.
ALGIERS: An Algerian court
has sentenced to death eight
men for murdering a businessman, the APS agency reported
yesterday, adding that some of
them had confessed to being
members of Al Qaeda.
The trial lasted only three
days, involving 14 defendants, six
of whom claimed affiliation with
Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb,
the news agency said.
The eight sentenced to death
for pre-meditated murder were
also charged with kidnapping for
ransom, arms trafficking, money
laundering, conspiracy and murder in 2010 of Hend Slimana in a
village in the region.
The court of Tizi Ouzou, 100km
east of Algiers, delivered the verdict overnight Wednesday after
hearing 41 victims and 11 witnesses, media reports said.
Of the eight sentenced to death,
seven were present in the court
and one is on the run.
REUTERS
AFP
“I understand that they have
installed all the centrifuges
there,” one envoy said.
Another diplomat said he
also believed that the centrifuges had been placed in position, but that piping and other
preparations needed to operate
them may not yet be completed.
Twenty percent purity is
only a short technical step from
weapons grade, and the work
goes to the heart of Western
fears that a programme that
Iran says is purely peaceful is
in fact a cover for the development of a nuclear weapons
capability.
Any move by Iran to increase
output at Fordow would further
alarm the United States and
Israel, which have reserved the
option to use military force to
prevent Iran getting the bomb,
and complicate on-off diplomatic efforts to resolve the
dispute. There was no immediate comment from Iran or
Six killed in bomb attack on bus in Somalia
MOGADISHU: At least six civilians
were killed in war-ravaged Somalia after
their bus was hit close to the frontline
with Al Qaeda linked Shebab fighters,
witnesses said yesterday.
“Six people including two women were
killed, and at least five others were seriously
injured when a big explosion hit their minibus,” said Hassan Yahya, a witness.
“I saw four of the dead bodies, one of
them was my cousin... we don’t know who
fired the shot,” said Mohamed Abdirahman,
another witness.
African Union troops alongside progovernment forces have pushed some 120
kilometres northwest of Mogadishu to the
small village of Lego, as they seek to open
up the road from the capital to the key town
of Baidoa.
“There was fighting between the AU
forces and the Shebab... and the bus drove
into the middle ground between them,”
Yahya added, saying the incident took place
late Wednesday near Lego.
Somali military official Adan Warsame
confirmed civilians had been killed but could
give no further details. “There was heavy
fighting in the area, and we have reports a
bus drove through the war zone, and there
were casualties,” he said by telephone.
AU forces alongside government forces
are fighting the Shebab to secure control
of the key road that links Mogadishu with
Baidoa, a strategic town seized from the
Shebab by Ethiopian troops in February.
Baidoa, located 250 kilometres northwest
of Mogadishu, was the seat of Somalia’s
transitional parliament until the extremist
Shebab captured it three years ago. AFP
FRIDAY 26 OCTOBER 2012
www.thepeninsulaqatar.com
INTERNATIONAL
09
Hurricane Sandy aims
at US after Cuba havoc
US must brace for ‘a billion-dollar disaster’, says expert
HAVANA: Hurricane Sandy
grew into a major potential
threat to the east coast of the
United States yesterday after
hammering Cuba’s second-largest city and taking aim at the
Bahamas, US forecasters said.
Strengthening rapidly after
tearing into Jamaica and crossing
the warm Caribbean Sea, Sandy
hit southeastern Cuba early yesterday with 105-mph winds that
cut power and blew over trees
across the city of Santiago de
Cuba.
Reports from the city of 500,000
people, about 750km southeast of
Havana spoke of significant damage, with many homes damaged
or destroyed. According to one
Cuban radio report, at least one
person was killed, bringing the
death toll to at least three after
fatalities in Jamaica and Haiti.
US government forecasters
warned that much of the US East
Coast could get swiped by Sandy,
with flooding, heavy rains and
high winds from late yesterday.
By early next week, it could hit
an area of New England where
Hurricane Irene caused severe
damage last year. Forecasters
said the hardest-hit areas could
span anywhere from the coastal
Carolinas up to Maine, but New
York City and the Boston area
were also both potentially in
harm’s way.
“It is likely that significant
impacts will be felt over portions
of the US East Coast through
the weekend and into early next
week,” the National Hurricane
Center said.
In Cuba, communications were
difficult hours after the eye of the
dangerous Category 2 hurricane
came ashore just west of Santiago
de Cuba with waves up to 29 feet
and a 6-foot storm surge that
caused power outages and extensive coastal flooding, the Cuban
weather service said.
The storm and driving rains
triggered widespread flooding
across the southwestern half of
Haiti, with reports of life-threatening landslides in some areas.
In the United States, the
National Hurricane Center in
Miami said at 11am that Sandy
had moved well off Cuba’s coast
and was approaching the central
Bahamas with maximum sustained winds of 105 mph.
It was still a Category 2 storm
on the Saffir-Simpson scale of
hurricane intensity, but some
weakening is expected over the
next 48 hours as Sandy moves
through the Bahamas island
chain.
High winds, rains and pounding
surf are expected across parts of
Florida’s Atlantic coast, with the
biggest impact starting last night
and lasting through today.
Unlike Irene, which caused
billions of dollars in damage as it
swept across the US Northeast
in August last year, Sandy is
forecast to drop below hurricane
strength before making US landfall. But it will be moving slower
than Irene did, increasing its
potential for damage, weather
forecasters said.
Jeff Masters, a hurricane specialist and blogger with private
forecaster Weather Underground
(www.wunderground.com) said a
landfall on Monday along the US
mid-Atlantic coast could trigger
“a billion-dollar disaster.”
“In this scenario, Sandy would
A man walks near a damaged power line in Santiago de Cuba yesterday.
be able to bring sustained winds
near hurricane force over a wide
stretch of heavily populated
coast,” he said.
Alternately, Masters said, some
computer forecast models indicated Sandy had the potential
to unleash “the heaviest October
rains ever reported in the northeast US, Nova Scotia and New
Brunswick.”
Oravec said Said there could be
tropical-storm to hurricane-force
winds on the coast and added:
“Coastal flooding will be a big
concern.”
A Category 2 storm has winds
between 154 and 177 kph, meaning that Sandy was still within a
whisker of becoming a Category 3
hurricane as it bore down on the
Bahamas yesterday.
A tropical storm warning along
the Florida east coast has been
extended northward to the state’s
Flagler Beach and a tropical
storm watch has been issued for
the northeastern Florida coast
from Fernandina beach southward to north of Flagler Beach.
Sandy is expected to hit the
United States during a full moon,
increasing the flood potential,
since tides will be at or near their
highest.
“There’s a big potential for
huge effects from the storm,” said
NOAA’s Oravec.
REUTERS
Tymoshenko urges Ukrainians to reject Yanukovich
KIEV: Jailed opposition leader
Yulia Tymoshenko made an
impassioned call to Ukrainians
yesterday
to
throw
out
President Viktor Yanukovich’s
ruling party on Sunday and
stop a “dictatorship” which she
warned would isolate Ukraine.
Tymoshenko’s plea added to
tension ahead of a parliamentary
election in which Yanukovich’s
Party of the Regions is seeking
to hold on to its majority against
a divided opposition, weakened by
her imprisonment.
No opinion polls have been published in the former Soviet republic since October 18 in line with
an official information black-out.
But ratings before then showed
the Regions with a firm lead over
opposition parties which include
Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna
(Fatherland) and a new liberal
party headed by heavyweight boxing champion Vitaly Klitschko.
The government is unpopular
because of its tax and pension
policies. But most commentators expect the Regions, which is
bankrolled by Ukraine’s wealthiest industrialists, to hold on to its
majority in the 450-seat assembly, cementing the leadership of
Yanukovich who comes up for
re-election as president in 2015.
Tymoshenko, a former prime
minister and the country’s most
vibrant opposition leader, is serving a seven-year jail sentence
for abuse of office which the
United States and the European
Union have denounced as “selective justice” and see as political
BBC thrown into disarray
over ‘tsunami of filth’
US President Barack Obama addresses supporters during a campaign rally
at Byrd Park in Richmond, Virginia, yesterday.
The Washington Post
endorses Obama
WASHINGTON:
The
Washington Post editorial board
endorsed
President
Barack
Obama for another four years
yesterday, but stressed the “disappointments” of his first term.
A leading US daily newspaper
based in the capital Washington,
the Post said Obama was “better
positioned” than his Republican
challenger Mitt Romney to put
the United States back on a solid
financial track after a bruising
recession.
However, it added: “We come
to that judgment with eyes open
to the disappointments of Mr
Obama’s first term. He did not
end, as he promised he would,
‘our chronic avoidance of tough
decisions’ on fiscal matters.
“But Mr Obama is committed
to the only approach that can
succeed: a balance of entitlement
reform and revenue increases.”
The largely symbolic endorsement from the Post was a boost
to Obama as he heads in the final
gruelling days of a neck-and-neck
fight with Romney ahead of the
November 6 polls. The Post also
backed Obama four years ago.
Most of the paper’s newsprint
readership is based in Washington
and its suburbs in both Maryland
and Virginia, a toss-up state
that is usually considered solidly
Republican but went to Obama
in 2008.
Obama was the first Democratic
presidential candidate to win the
state since Lyndon B Johnson in
1964. But this year, polls show the
gap has closed between Obama
and Romney in the critical swing
AFP
state.
LONDON: British police
investigating alleged sexual
abuse by one of the BBC’s
most celebrated TV stars
said yesterday some 300 victims had come forward and
they were preparing to make
arrests in a scandal that has
thrown the broadcaster into
disarray.
Detectives said they had
been staggered by the number
of people who had come forward since the late Jimmy
Savile’s crimes were first
revealed just over three weeks
ago.
The head of the BBC’s governing body called the allegations a “tsunami of filth”,
and police said Savile was
“undoubtedly” one of Britain’s
most prolific sex offenders
ever.
“It’s quite staggering,” said
the police inquiry leader,
Commander Peter Spindler.
Having interviewed 130
of the alleged victims, officers had recorded 114 reports
of sexual assault or serious
sexual assault, mostly against
Savile - the outlandish,
cigar-chomping DJ turned
TV host who was one of the
BBC’s top presenters of the
1970s and 1980s.
The allegations, which first
emerged in an expose on the
rival British TV channel ITV,
have rocked the BBC, with its
chief George Entwistle admitting the broadcaster has been
damaged by the scandal.
The revelations have generated huge attention, not least
in the United States where
Entwistle’s predecessor at
the BBC, Mark Thompson,
is poised to take over as chief
executive of the New York
Times.
On Wednesday, lawyers representing some 30 alleged victims of abuse said their clients
said other celebrities were
involved, while some of those
abused by Savile have told the
media they were targeted on
BBC premises.
Prime Minister David
Cameron has said the BBC,
paid for by an annual tax on
all households with a colour
TV, had serious questions to
answer.
REUTERS
Mali back in African fold as world rallies to oust Islamists
DAKAR: The international
community has ramped up
efforts to help Mali drive radical Islamists from its north,
with the African Union taking
the nation back into its fold in
its bid to curb the extremist
threat.
Western powers are helping
the pan-African bloc draw up
plans for a military intervention
to be presented to the United
Nations in late November, offering logistical support rather
than troops to help Mali recover
its territory.
The African Union, which suspended Mali after a March coup
that led to the country’s rapid
implosion, on Wednesday readmitted it despite a lack of cohesion in Bamako, where an interim
regime has failed to assert itself.
Observers have warned of significant challenges as countries in
west Africa remain divided over
whether military intervention is
the best approach.
“Malians and the international community alike need
to redouble efforts to address
the prevailing situation in
the north,” urged Nkosozana
Dlamini-Zuma, chairperson of
the AU commission at a meeting
in Addis Ababa on Wednesday.
The African Union endorsed
a plan urging the “restoration
of state authority of the northern part of the country”, an
area larger than France which
was seized by Al Qaeda linked
extremists in the wake of the
coup.
AFP
vengeance by Yanukovich. In a
statement read out by her daughter Yevgenia, the 51-year-old
Tymoshenko, a political firebrand
in her heyday, described Sunday’s
election as a “war which can end
with your victory and a chance for
change or with our total historical failure.”
“If, thanks to your votes,
Yanukovich survives as a politician in these elections, he will
establish a dictatorship and will
never again give up power by
peaceful means,” she said.
Indicating that a year in prison
had not dimmed her powers of
oratory, she said Yanukovich’s
rule would be like a blaze tearing
through every family and every
company, engulfing freedom and
“isolating Ukraine from the rest
of the world”. The EU shelved
landmark agreements on free
trade and political association
with Ukraine after Tymoshenko
was sentenced a year ago. On
indifferent terms with Russia too,
many commentators see Ukraine
as being adrift in a grey no-man’s
land between Moscow, Brussels
and Washington.
Of the 450 seats in the singlechamber parliament, 225 will be
filled through voting by party lists,
in which the voter casts a ballot
for a party which presents a list
of candidates. The other half will
be filled by voting for individual
candidates in electoral districts
- a feature re-introduced by the
present parliament and one which
is assumed to favour the Regions.
REUTERS
10
FRIDAY 26 OCTOBER 2012
www.thepeninsulaqatar.com
PHILIPPINES
US Navy to guard ‘freedom of navigation’
US supercarrier’s Manila visit a routine event: Official
MANILA: The captain of a
United States supercarrier said
yesterday the US Navy’s presence in Asia would help safeguard “freedom of navigation”,
amid China’s claims to sovereignty over vast waters in the
region.
The commander of the USS
George Washington, which is on
a port call to the Philippine capital, said the United States was not
taking sides in territorial disputes
but stood firmly for keeping sea
lanes open.
“One of the reasons we deploy
throughout the region is so we
can carry forth the banner of
freedom of navigation. It is very
important to us given the trade
that travels throughout the region
on the seas,” Captain Gregory
Fenton said.
However Fenton emphasised
his ship’s visit to Manila was a
routine event and not related to
the recent tensions between the
Philippines, a close US ally, and
China over rival claims to parts
of the South China Sea.
He told reporters aboard the
Japan-based carrier that the
United States took no sides and
hoped the countries involved
would settle the disputes
diplomatically.
The Philippines has been moving closer to the United States, its
main defence ally, since a standoff began in April with China
over the Scarborough Shoal in
the South China Sea.
China claims the shoal as well
as nearly all of the South China
Sea, even waters close to the
coasts of neighbouring countries.
The Philippines says the shoal is
well within its 200-nautical-mile
exclusive economic zone.
The South China Sea is the
main maritime link between the
Pacific and Indian oceans, giving
it enormous trade and military
value.
Most of the seaborne trade,
including of oil and gas, between
Europe and the Middle East and
East Asia passes through the sea.
Aside from China and the
Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan,
Malaysia and Brunei also have
claims to the parts of the sea.
The USS George Washington’s
public affairs officer, Lieutenant
Commander James Stockman,
said the vessel had passed through
the South China Sea on its way to
the Philippines.
AFP
A US Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet is seen inside the nuclear-powered 97,000-tonne aircraft carrier USS George
Washington during a port call at the Port of Manila, Philippines yesterday.
Health workers protest Manila lifts five-year-old ban
privatisation plans
on Filipinos working in Jordan
MMDA finalises
traffic plan
during holidays
MANILA: At least 1,000 government health workers yesterday staged a walkout to protest
a plan to privatise state-owned
hospitals.
The health workers left their
stations during lunch break from
noon to 1 p.m. to stage a rally in
front of their respective hospitals to denounce the privatization of the Research Institute for
Tropical Medicine in Muntinlupa
and the Philippine Orthopedic
Center in Quezon City.
Lovely Tanghal, media officer
of the Alliance of Health Workers
(AHW), said they could not be
appeased by pronouncements of
the Department of Health that
the privatization of hospitals
would lead to the improvement
of services and benefit patients.
Villocino said. In northern
Mindanao, about 600 passengers
were stranded in various seaports
as the Philippine Coast Guard
ordered the cancellation of trips
of passenger boats and ships and
other sea craft.
According to the Philippine
Atmospheric,
Geophysic al
and Astronomical Services
Administration, Son Tinh is now
over Tablas island, Romblon with
maximum sustained winds of
65kph near the centre and gustiness of up to 80kph. The storm is
forecast to move west-northwest
at a speed of 20kph.
The Philippines sits in the socalled Typhoon Belt between the
South China Sea and the Pacific
Ocean, with at least 21 storms visiting the country yearly.
MANILA: The Metropolitan
Manila Development Authority
(MMDA) finalised yesterday its
over-all plan for traffic management and other contingencies for
the observance of this year’s All
Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day
as it called on local government
units (LGUs) to implement their
respective traffic plans around
cemeteries as early as possible.
MMDA Chairman Francis
Tolentino met representatives
of the Metro’s various LGUs
and cemetery administrators in
a command conference at the
MMDA office in Makati City.
Also present in the meeting
were officials from the National
Capital Region Police Office
(NCRPO).
Tolentino said that although
the MMDA and the LGUs are
now better prepared for All
Saints’ Day (November 1) and All
Souls’ Day (November 2), problems related to vehicle traffic and
parking are still expected.
The MMDA will be fielding 2,378
personnel from its traffic management, clearing and emergency
response units to the Metro’s 29
public and private cemeteries.
Tolentino said the MMDA
will focus on the Manila South
Cemetery located in Makati,
Manila North Cemetery, Loyola
Memorial Park in Marikina City
and the Manila Memorial Park in
Sucat, Parañaque City.
Tolentino said clearing personnel were also sent to these
cemeteries yesterday to keep
it free of trash in time for
November 1st.
Tolentino also called on the
public’s cooperation to keep the
cemeteries clean by not leaving
their trash behind.
Tolentino also said the MMDA
will also be discouraging vendors
of flowers and candles from setting-up shop at the gates of the
cemeteries.
THE PHILIPPINE STAR
THE PHILIPPINE STAR
“They are claiming that hospitals will not be privatized but
some of its services like laboratories will be passed on to the
private sector. Whichever way,
it won’t be good to patients,” she
said.
Tanghal added the private sector would not invest in hospitals if
they would not have any financial
gains.
Health Secretary Enrique Ona
warned the government health
workers that they could be suspended or dismissed from the
service if they disrupt hospital
operations.
“They cannot do that, they are
government employees. If they
want to do that, (do so) from noon
to 1pm,” Ona said.
THE PHILIPPINE STAR
MANILA: The Philippines
announced on Wednesday it
had lifted a five-year-old ban on
its nationals working in Jordan
that was imposed amid concerns
over poor labour conditions.
The ban was lifted after the
Philippine and Jordanian governments forged two agreements
this year aimed at protecting the
workers, including a minimum
monthly salary of $400, the overseas workers administration said.
The ban on Jordan was imposed
in 2007 due to “the growing
number of distressed Filipino
workers” who were seeking help
from Philippine diplomatic offices
there, the administration said.
“There were a whole variety
of issues. Some of them (were)
abused. Some were beaten. The
point was, because some of these
workers had run away, the deployment was stopped,” administration
vice chairman Hans Cacdac said.
Wednesday’s announcement
came after the Philippines said
last month it had won a long battle with Saudi Arabia and secured
a minimum monthly wage of $400
for Filipino workers there.
About 10 percent of the
Philippine population of almost
100m have gone abroad to work in
better-paying jobs than they can
get in their largely impoverished
homeland. Many of the Filipinos
in Middle East countries work
as maids, labourers, janitors and
other menial professions.
The
government
also
announced on Wednesday it had
partially lifted a ban on working in Lebanon that was imposed
after fighting erupted between
Israel and Hezbollah in 2006.
The ban on Lebanon was only
removed for Filipinos already
working there illegally, but talks
are going on to have it completely
lifted, Cacdac said.
There are more than 24,000
Filipinos working illegally in
Lebanon, according to government estimates.
The Philippine government
requires its citizens to obtain permits through labour agencies to
work overseas, in an effort to keep
track of them and ensure they are
not abused abroad.
AFP
Hundreds flee as tropical
storm hits Mindanao
Stranded passengers are seen inside the ferry terminal in Batangas port, Philippines, yesterday.
DAVAO CITY: Hundreds of
people fled their homes and
several houses were damaged
in Mindanao by tropical storm
Son Tinh, local officials said
yesterday.
About 120 families sought safer
grounds as floods spawned by the
storm inundated eight villages in
General Santos city. Son Tinh also
toppled trees and power lines in
Tagum city. This led to a black out
in Davao del Norte capitol.
Raul Villocino, disaster officer
in nearby Compostela Valley province, said Ofel’s strong winds produced big waves that slammed the
province’s coastal communities,
destroying at least five houses in
Maco town.
“Disaster teams in coastal
communities are still on alert
and monitoring the situation,”
Mayor aspirant
injured in ambush
No negotiations with terrorists: Govt Senator wants probe on
COTABATO
CITY:
Motorcycle-riding gunmen shot
and wounded in Sultan Kudarat,
Maguindanao Wednesday a
candidate for mayor in a town
in the second district of the
province.
Investigators
said
Yamashita Mangacop, an aspirant for the mayoral post of Datu
Hoffer town in Maguindanao,
was driving his vehicle at a highway at nearby Sultan Kudarat
when the suspects opened fire
as they got close, and wounding
the victim in his arm and hand.
Witnesses said Mangacop tried
to grab the handgun of one of the
suspects when more shots rang,
causing a commotion.
The gunmen sped away after
sensing that the attack has
caught the attention of people in
the area.
Police investigators are still
trying to determine the identities
of the gunmen and the motive for
the attempt on Mangacop’s life.
ZAMBOANGA CITY: The
newly installed area military
commander here rejected any
form of negotiations with the
Abu Sayyaf militants holding
captive a Jordanian journalist
and two Filipio television cameramen in Sulu.
Major General Rey Ardo,
chief of the Western Mindanao
Command (Westmincom), said
the hunt against the terrorist
groups, including the Abu Sayyaf
and its cohorts Jemaah Islamiyah
(JI) - terror cell of the Al Qaeda
- will continue in the southern
Philippines.
“We know the situation and
there is no negotiation with all
the terrorists,” Ardo said.
The military officer, however,
said any military operation
would be guided by intelligence
reports to avoid disrupting the
development efforts provided by
the provincial government and
various government agencies and
groups.
THE PHILIPPINE STAR
The Abu Sayyaf group is
suspected of holding captive
Jordanian broadcast journalist
Baker Atyani, bureau chief of
the Dubai-base Al Arabiya news
channel, and Filipinos Romelito
Vela and Rolando Letrico in the
mountains of Sulu for more than
five months now since they visited
the militant group last June 13
and ended up as hostages.
The Sulu provincial crisis management committee (CMC) has
been monitoring the case since
the Abu Sayyaf has yet to confirm if the group is indeed holding the victims hostage and if it
is demanding ransom for their
release.
Ardo said the soldiers in Sulu
are prepared to launch military
operations once given the signal.
Armed Forces Chief of Staff
General Jessie Dellosa said
that the Armed Forces of the
Philippines will continue to
enhance the capability of the
troops in wiping out the terrorists
and extremist militants operating
in the region.
“Western Mindanao is an
important operational theater
in the Armed Forces of the
Philippines’ internal security
operations and whatever gains
we made here have a direct
implication in the safety and
image of our nation,” Dellosa
said, assuring the troops of operational support.
At least six JI militants taking refuge with the Abu Sayyaf
group are being tracked down
by security forces from police
and military in Sulu province
following the successful United
States military technologybacked Philippine Air Force
(PAF) airstrike on the hideout
of the militants in the mountains
of Parang town that led to the
death of seven senior terrorist
leaders, including two JI members and Umbra Jumdail alias Dr
Abu Pula last February.
THE PHILIPPINE STAR
female elephant’s health
MANILA:
Sen
Miriam
Defensor Santiago yesterday
called on the Senate to conduct
an inquiry into the reported
need to transfer Mali, the only
female elephant in Manila Zoo,
to a sanctuary in Thailand due
to the animal’s frail health.
Santiago expressed concern
after the People for the Ethical
Treatment of Animals (PETA)
sounded the alarm for Mali, who
has reportedly developed health
problems due to her 35-year
stay at the zoo without receiving
proper care and condition.
In seeking for an inquiry,
Santiago echoed PETA’s concern
that it is extremely detrimental
for a female elephant’s mental
health and well-being because she
spent all her life at the zoo.
Veterinarian Dr Henry Melvyn
Richardson expressed concern over
Mali’s health and living condition
claiming that the elephant suffers
from fatal foot problems, including
chronic pressure sores on her feet,
which are open to contamination;
days’ worth of accumulated feces
and urine in her sleeping quarters; and cracked nails and pads
and overgrown cuticles, all of which
can harbour bacteria and become
infected.
Santiago also cited the statement of world known animal
authority Dr Jane Goodall, “the
Manila Zoo has failed Mali; not
only is she suffering from isolation and captivity-induced foot
problems; she has not even had
basic blood work conducted in the
three and a half decades that she
has been in the zoo.”
Santiago is in favour of having the elephant transferred to
Thailand because PETA officials
have vowed to shoulder its cost.
THE PHILIPPINE STAR
FRIDAY 26 OCTOBER 2012
www.thepeninsulaqatar.com
ASIA
20 killed in Myanmar
sectarian violence
11
S Korean leader’s son in the dock
UN calls for calm; unrest sparks exodus of thousands
YANGON: A new wave of
sectarian unrest in western
Myanmar has left at least 20
dead, officials said yesterday,
sparking an exodus of “thousands” of people and prompting the UN to express its grave
concern.
Hundreds of homes have been
burnt in the fresh outburst of
unrest in Rakhine state, which
was convulsed by BuddhistMuslim clashes in June that tore
apart communities and left tens
of thousands of mainly Muslim
Rohingya languishing in basic
camps.
More than 100 people have now
been killed in the state, according to the authorities, which have
imposed emergency rule in the
face of continued explosive tension in the region.
Rakhine state spokesman Myo
Thant said that the latest violence had left “at least 20 people” dead so far, from both the
ethnic Rakhine Buddhist and
Muslim communities, clashes
since October 21.
“The death toll can reach about
50,” he said, although the final
number of dead was difficult to
confirm immediately as security
forces struggled to reach remote
areas where the clashes occurred.
The United Nations issued a
statement saying it was “gravely
concerned” about the resurgence
in violence and called for calm in
the region.
“The UN is alarmed by reports
of displacements and destruction,”
said the UN chief in Yangon,
Ashok Nigam, adding that the
new unrest in Rakhine State had
“resulted in deaths and has forced
thousands of people, including
women and children, to flee their
homes”.
He appealed for “immediate
and unconditional access to all
communities in accordance with
humanitarian principles”.
About 75,000 people are estimated to still be displaced following the June unrest, and the
UN expressed fears over large
numbers of people fleeing to the
“already overcrowded” camps
near the state capital of Sittwe.
Myo Thant said at least 80
ethnic Rakhine Buddhists are
thought to have been injured in
the latest flare-up, but he had no
figures for wounded Muslims.
Earlier, he said that soldiers
were helping to provide security to affected areas in the
state, adding that houses were
torched in another town yesterday morning.
A security official, requesting
anonymity, confirmed the potential toll from this week’s bout of
unrest could hit 50, adding government forces were struggling
to reach pockets of violence in
distant areas, including around
the state’s main tourist attraction
of Mrauk U.
Myanmar’s 800,000 Rohingya
are viewed as illegal immigrants
from neighbouring Bangladesh by
the Myanmar government and
many Burmese -- who call them
“Bengalis”.
But Bangladesh has turned
away Rohingya fleeing the
violence.
There have been a series of protests by Buddhists in Myanmar
against the stateless Muslim
group, long considered by the
United Nations to be one of the
most persecuted minorities on the
planet.
The bloodshed has cast a
shadow over widely praised
reforms by President Thein Sein,
including the release of hundreds
of political prisoners and the election of opposition leader Aung
San Suu Kyi to parliament.
AFP
Lee Si-Hyung (centre), South Korean President Lee Myung-bak’s only son, speaks to the media as he arrives
at a special prosecutor’s office in southern Seoul yesterday. Lee appeared before the prosecutor to face
questions over alleged irregularities in a project to build his father’s retirement home.
S Korea holds North-focused military drill
SEOUL: South Korea yesterday kicked off an annual, largescale military exercise aimed at
countering threats from North
Korea at a time of heightened
cross-border tensions.
The week-long military
manoeuvres will involve 240,000
army, navy, air force and marine
corps personnel, along with police
officers, according to the Joint
Chiefs of Staff (JCS).
About 500 US soldiers will also
take part in the exercise, which
Pyongyang had condemned in the
past as tantamount to “a war of
aggression”.
Some 28,500 US personnel are
stationed in the South -- a legacy
of the 1950-53 Korean War that
ended with a ceasefire but not
a peace treaty, leaving the two
Koreas still technically at war.
This year’s Hoguk exercise has
been enlarged “to prepare for provocations by North Korea and an
all-out war, considering the recent
security situations,” the JCS said.
It will feature drills against infiltration, regional provocation as
well as full-scale conflict.
With South Korea gearing
up for a presidential election in
December, tensions on the Korean
peninsula have risen steadily in
recent months.
Pyongyang was particularly
enraged by a recent US-South
Korea agreement to almost triple
the range of the South’s missile
systems to 800km to cover the
whole of North Korea.
AFP
China reshuffles military ahead of power change Tokyo governor quits
BEIJING:
China’s
defence
ministry announced yesterday
further reshuffling of the top
military bosses, reflecting bargaining among the country’s
top leadership ahead of a power
transfer next month. The heads of
four top army departments were
changed, with the new appointees certain to gain a position on
China’s highest military body, the
Central Military Commission.
Zhang Youxia, 62, a general
thought to have close ties with
Xi Jinping, who is set to take
over as leader of China’s ruling
Communist party next month,
became head of the Armaments
Department, which oversees
weapons procurement.
The appointment clears a path
for the department’s previous
head, Chang Wanquan, 63, considered to be a protégé of outgoing Communist party leader Hu
Jintao, to become a powerful vicechairman of the Central Military
Commission.
The position of vice-chairman
traditionally ensures a seat on
China’s Politburo, a group of 25
people who oversee the ruling
Communist party. The Politburo
is set for a major reshuffle at the
party’s congress next month.
Steve Tsang, professor of
contemporary Chinese studies at Britain’s University of
Nottingham, said the appointments reflected a sidelining of
Vietnamese student
held for ‘spreading
propaganda’
Former Taiwan official indicted on corruption
HANOI:
A
20-year-old
Vietnamese student, missing
for two weeks since a police
raid on her home, is being held
for allegedly spreading propaganda against the one-party
communist state, reports said
yesterday.
University student Nguyen
Phuong Uyen, who was detained on
October 14, is accused of distributing anti-state leaflets and is being
questioned as part of a case involving “security matters”, according
to a brief report in the state-run
Ho Chi Minh City Law newspaper.
Uyen, a student at Ho Chi Minh
City’s Food Technology University,
is being held at a jail in Long An
province in southern Vietnam,
the report said, quoting sources
involved in the investigation.
Charges of disseminating antistate propaganda, which carry a
maximum sentence of 20 years
in jail, are routinely laid against
dissidents in a country where the
ruling Communist Party forbids
all political debate.
Uyen was arrested “after 10
policemen stormed into her
room” and was held at an undisclosed location, according to an
open letter by Uyen’s classmates
to Vietnam’s President Truong
Tan Sang on Saturday.
The letter, widely reproduced
on Vietnamese-language websites,
said Uyen was “always the first in
line to help school charity events
and activities,” the students wrote,
calling for her immediate release.
Rights groups accuse Vietnam
of stepping up its fight to stamp
down on dissident in recent years,
amid scrutiny from increasingly
bold online critics.
AFP
TAIPEI: A former top official in
Taiwan’s cabinet was indicted on
graft charges yesterday for abusing his influence to solicit and
accept bribes, prosecutors said.
Lin Yi-shih, formerly the
cabinet secretary-general and
a vice chairman of the ruling
Kuomintang party, was charged
with four accounts of corruption
for pocketing about Tw$60m
($2m) in bribes, they said.
Prosecutors refused to identify
the firm involved due to data protection laws, although local media
named it as China Steel.
more extreme commanders, as
well as continued bargaining
between Xi and Hu.
For example, Zhang Yang,
former head of a military area in
southern China, was promoted
to head the army’s General
Political Department ahead of
Liu Yuan, a general connected
to Bo Xilai.
“These promotions have been
agreed to by Hu Jintao and
Xi Jinping, and show they are
finally agreed on most of the
positions in the Central Military
Commission,” said Tsang.
“What was important about
Liu Yuan is that he was quite
nationalistic, and in the ballpark
where he could be promoted... we
“Lin violated his position to
collect bribes... since he had the
influence over the management
and operation of the state firm to
get the contracts,” the supreme
prosecutors’ office said in a
statement.
Lin, 42, resigned from the cabinet in June after a businessman
accused him of taking bribes in
exchange for several contracts
with the state firm when he was
a lawmaker in 2010.
The case came to light after
Lin solicited another bribe,
for Tw$83m, from the same
are not seeing the promotion of
generals known to be outspoken
nationalists.”
Fang Fenghui, formerly a
military commander in Beijing,
became the army’s chief of general staff, and Zhao Keshi, formerly commander of a military
area in eastern China, is now
the head of the army’s General
Logistics Department.
The
Defence
Ministry’s
announcement came two days
after it named General Ma
Xiaotian as the new head of
China’s airforce and appointed a
new military chief in the southwestern Chengdu military zone,
which includes most of Tibet.
AFP
businessman after assuming
his cabinet post earlier this year.
The businessman refused and
reported him to the authorities.
Prosecutors did not specify the
jail term they are seeking for Lin
in the case, which has seen both
his mother and wife indicted on
money laundering charges.
Lin had initially claimed the
graft allegation amounted to
a political set-up, until a tape
of him demanding the bribes
from a businessman surfaced in
media.
AFP
to set up new party
TOKYO: Beijing-baiting Tokyo
governor Shintaro Ishihara,
whose bid to buy disputed
islands ignited a smouldering
row between Japan and China,
resigned yesterday to start his
own national political party.
The outspoken 80-year-old
Ishihara said Japan’s pacifist postwar constitution was “ugly” and
needed to be reframed.
“As of today, I will resign as
Tokyo governor,” Ishihara told a
news conference, brandishing a
white envelope, in an announcement that took Japan’s political and media establishment by
surprise.
“I’m planning to return to
national politics. I want to do so
by forming a new party with my
associates.”
Newspaper reports earlier
yesterday said Ishihara wanted
to forge a grouping big enough to
rival the two largest established
parties before an expected general
election.
But they had made no mention
of the four-term Tokyo governor
stepping down from a position he
has held for more than 13 years.
Ishihara, whose pronouncements on history have irked
China -- he once denied the 1937
Rape of Nanking ever happened
-- said he saw much wrong with
national politics.
“There are several contradictions, big contradictions, which
we hope the state itself will solve,”
he told reporters.
“One contradiction, bigger than
anything, is the Japanese constitution, which was imposed by the
(post World War II US) occupying army, and is rendered in ugly
Japanese.”
Like many on the right of politics, Ishihara objects, among other
things, to Article 9 of the constitution, which bars Japan from
waging war.
Ishihara, an irascible voice for
decades in Japan’s national dialogue, will co-opt members of the
tiny right-wing Sunrise Party for
his new venture, the daily Yomiuri
Shimbun reported.
He will also seek to join hands
with the mayor of Osaka Toru
Hashimoto, a straight-talking
maverick whose recently-formed
Japan Restoration Party has
ambitions to seize control of the
powerful lower house.
Embattled Prime Minister
Yoshihiko Noda is under pressure to call a general election
after telling opposition parties
he would go to the polls “soon” if
they supported his unpopular bill
to double the consumption tax.
His own approval ratings
are low and his ill-disciplined
Democratic Party of Japan is
likely to be given short shrift by
voters disillusioned with its three
years in office.
AFP
Oil spill drill
Chinese ships enter disputed Senkaku waters
A helicopter spreads mock oil dispersant during Oilex 2012, an oil spill
response joint exercise in Hong Kong yesterday.
TOKYO: Four Chinese government ships spent several hours
in territorial waters around disputed Tokyo-controlled islands
yesterday, for what Japan’s
coastguard said was the first
time in three weeks.
The move came as Tokyo and
Beijing reportedly prepared for
talks on a row that has derailed
the relationship between Asia’s
two largest economies and dented
their huge trade ties.
It also came hours before
outspoken nationalist Shintaro
Ishihara -- whose plan to buy the
East China Sea islands sparked
the last few months of hostilities
-- resigned as Tokyo governor to
start his own national party.
Maritime surveillance vessels
began entering the 12-nauticalmile zone around one of the
islands shortly after 6:30 am (2130
GMT Wednesday), the Japanese
coastguard said in a statement.
They remained there for more
than seven hours before moving
out to so-called contiguous waters,
a band that stretches a further 12
nautical miles from shore.
Fisheries patrol ships and
another vessel were spotted in
waters near the archipelago,
known as Senkaku in Japan and
Diaoyu in China, coastguards said.
Maritime surveillance vessels
and fisheries patrol ships are
operated by different Chinese
government agencies but are not
military.
Japanese Vice Foreign Minister
Chikao Kawai “strongly protested
to the Chinese ambassador by telephone about the Chinese ships’
intrusion into Japan’s territorial
waters”, the foreign ministry in
Tokyo said in a statement.
In Beijing, foreign ministry
spokesman Hong Lei said there
was nothing abnormal about
Chinese ships exercising jurisdiction in the area.
“The Chinese maritime surveillance vessels conducted routine
patrols in the territorial waters
around China’s Diaoyu Islands
to safeguard the country’s sovereignty on October 25,” he said,
according to the official Xinhua
news agency.
Tensions have risen in recent
months over the islands, which
lie in rich fishing grounds. The
seabed in the area is also believed
to harbour mineral reserves.
After weeks of a sometimes bitter diplomatic stand-off over the
issue, which has hit multibillion
dollar trade ties, senior officials
were reported to be readying for
further talks.
Arrangements are being made
for a meeting in Tokyo next week
between Kawai and his Chinese
opposite number Zhang Zhijun
to discuss the islands dispute, the
Mainichi Shimbun said Thursday.
The meeting would follow
unannounced talks in Shanghai
last weekend, the Japanese daily
said. The two officials also met in
Beijing in September.
AFP
FRIDAY 26 OCTOBER 2012
www.thepeninsulaqatar.com
12
30 killed as
Taliban storms
Afghan village
PAKISTAN / AFGHANISTAN
Lahore market
Militant commander among the dead
KABUL: A senior Taliban
commander and 24 of his fighters were killed in a battle with
Afghan security forces in a
northern village which also left
five police dead, officials said
yesterday.
The commander of the attack
was the Taliban shadow governor for the northern province of
Faryab where the gunfight took
place on Wednesday, according to
the officials.
“The brutal enemies of
Afghanistan attacked a village
bazaar. They killed five local
police,” Abdul Satar Barez, the
Faryab deputy governor said.
“When we received reports
about the incident we sent reinforcements. Twenty-five Taliban
fighters including Mullah Yaar
Mohammad, their shadow governor for Faryab, were killed,”
Barez said.
Two British
soldiers killed
in Helmand
LONDON: Two British soldiers,
one of them a female medic, and
a man believed to be an Afghan
policeman were killed in a shooting incident in Afghanistan, the
Ministry of Defence in London
said yesterday.
The Times newspaper reported
that a gunbattle broke out
when British troops in southern Helmand province mistook
the policeman for an insurgent,
but the ministry said the circumstances were still being
investigated.
The Afghan was not in uniform
and was not part of the foot patrol
that the British forces were carrying out in Nahr-e Saraj district
when the incident happened on
Wednesday, the ministry said in
a statement.
“There was an exchange of gunfire that resulted in the deaths of
a Royal Marine... a female soldier
from 3 Medical Regiment and
an Afghan man who is believed
to be a member of the Afghan
Uniformed Police but who was not
wearing uniform at the time,” the
spokesman said.
“The UK patrol were not working with any Afghan partners at
the time.”
The spokesman added: “At this
stage we do not know what initiated the exchange of gunfire and
an investigation is ongoing. Further
details will be provided as information becomes available but at this
time the situation remains unclear.”
A Ministry of Defence spokesman declined to give further
details whether it was believed
to be a case of mistaken identity,
or whether it was one of growing number of so-called insider
attacks by Afghan forces on their
Western allies.
AFP
The Taliban are traditionally
active in southern and eastern
parts of Afghanistan. But in
recent years the Islamic militants
have infiltrated previously peaceful parts such as the northern
provinces.
Barez said the death of the
Taliban shadow governor had
dealt the insurgents in his region
a major blow.
Despite being toppled from
government by a US-led invasion
in 2001, the Taliban have shadow
provincial administrations headed
by governors, which tax the population and run their own form of
justice, often including executions.
Nato has some 100,000 troops
helping the Western-backed
government of President Hamid
Karzai fight the insurgents, but
they are due to leave by the end
of 2014.
AFP
A man decorates his cow as he waits for customers at a livestock market ahead of Eid Al Adha in Lahore, yesterday.
No foreigners on election watchdog: Afghan govt
KABUL: The Afghan government stressed that it will not
accept foreigners on a key election watchdog ahead of 2014
presidential elections, a move
that may undermine the credibility of the poll.
President Hamid Karzai last
week said the presence of foreigners in the Electoral Complaints
Commission (ECC) went against
the “sovereignty” of Afghanistan,
hinting that two foreigners on
the five-member body may be
removed.
“The membership of (the) two
foreign nationals... goes against
Afghanistan’s national constitution,” Karzai’s spokesman, Aimal
Faizi, said on Wedensday.
He added that foreigners were
still welcome as election monitors
but the government was able to
ensure the poll was fair.
The 2014 vote coincides with
the departure of Nato-led troops
and the international community
view the election as one of the last
major hurdles before the transfer of security responsibilities to
Afghan forces.
“The transparency and credibility of the elections are of
think tank warned this month
that the Kabul government could
fall apart after Nato troops withdraw, particularly if the 2014
presidential elections are plagued
by fraud.
But Afghan officials dismissed
the report, insisting that the government was committed to free
and fair elections.
AFP
Protest against drone attacks
Afghanistan, Pakistan eye
US vote with foreboding
A United Citizen Action demonstrator holds a burning US flag during a protest in Multan, yesterday against the
US drone attacks in Pakistani tribal areas. A US drone fired two missiles at a suspected militant compound
in northwest Pakistan, killing three people.
Taliban threatens another child activist
KABUL: A young activist from
the same area of Pakistan as
Malala Yousafzai, the girl shot
in the head by a Taliban gunman this month, has been
warned in a threatening phone
call that she will be next.
Hinna Khan, a 17-year-old
from Swat, was named during a
call made to her mother’s mobile
phone two days after Malala, who
spoke out against the Taliban, was
attacked as she sat in a van with
her classmates, in the town of
Mingora.
Hinna’s father, Reyatullah
Khan, said: “The Taliban have
kidnapped me and tortured me
in the past for promoting women’s development, but now they
are threatening the entire family.”
paramount importance” for Nato,
its spokesman in Afghanistan,
Dominic Medley, said during a
press conference on Tuesday.
Karzai was re-elected in a
second post-Taliban poll in 2009
amid allegations of widespread
voting irregularities, and will
complete his term next year
(2014).
The International Crisis Group
Khan has long publicly opposed
the Taliban and in 2008 he gathered a “jirga” of locals to denounce
the extremists for forcing schools
to close down in Swat. Since
1999 he and his wife have worked
through their own organisation to
promote development and literacy
programmes that support women.
Although he has received
threats for many years, he is now
taking them far more seriously in
the wake of the attack on Malala,
who is now recovering in hospital
in the UK.
Two weeks before the attempt
to kill the 14-year-old, Khan discovered someone had painted a
red cross on the gate of the family
house in Islamabad, where they
have lived since fleeing Swat.
“I removed it but someone just
repainted it,” he said. “Then after
Malala was attacked we received
telephone calls threatening that
‘your daughter is next,’ and
‘we have already sent people to
Islamabad to target her.’”
The caller said the family were
guilty of having “forgotten your
culture”.
The Taliban - which have issued
no public warning against the
Khans - justified their attempt
to kill Malala because she had
campaigned for “secular” rule,
rather than the form of government based on the movement’s
interpretation of Islamic law.
Hinna has also been involved
herself in her parent’s work,
organising demonstrations in
Islamabad in 2008 calling for
peace in Swat. At the time the
valley was struggling to cope with
a rising Taliban insurgency, later
crushed by a major military operation mounted by the Pakistani
army. The insurgents also took
over the Khans’ house in Swat,
turning it into a Taliban “office”
in early 2009.
Reyatullah Khan said he had
not received any help, despite
appealing to the country’s interior minister for protection. He
said he was so concerned that
he was thinking of joining relatives in Afghanistan - a substantially more dangerous place than
the leafy suburban streets of
Islamabad.
THE GUARDIAN
KABUL: The US election is a
side-show on the frontline of the
war on terror where Afghans
feel abandoned by Washington’s
looming
troop
withdrawal,
which some in Pakistan fear
could cause more violence and
instability in their country
regardless of who secures the
White House.
The Afghan conflict, America’s
longest war, is now in its 12th year
and both President Barack Obama
and his challenger Mitt Romney
are stressing their determination
to bring the majority of US troops
home by the end of 2014.
For some Afghans, ruled by
President Hamid Karzai’s fragile government and battered by
daily Taliban attacks around the
country, the end of Nato combat
operations raises fears of a return
to the bloody chaos of the 1990s.
“If they withdraw foreign
troops from Afghanistan, civil war
in Afghanistan will start again,”
Del Agha, a driver aged around
30 said.
“I want from the new US president that Nato forces should
stay in Afghanistan a bit longer,
till there is good security in
Afghanistan.”
But analysts say little will
change in US policy towards the
region regardless of who wins on
November 6.
The vast majority of Nato’s
105,000 troops, 68,000 of them
American, will leave Afghanistan
and the country will have to learn
to stand on its own feet -- particularly if it is to secure the billions
of dollars in foreign aid it wants.
“The idea is that it’s time for the
Afghans to perform. Our performance in the next years will determine the level of our relationship
with the Americans, the level of
their financial support,” Omar
Sharifi of the American Institute
of Afghanistan Studies said.
One crucial aspect of the
US-Afghan relationship as yet
unresolved is the legal status of
American forces who remain in
the country after 2014.
Washington wants its troops
to have immunity from prosecution in local courts, but Karzai
says Afghans will not accept that.
After failing to secure a similar
deal in Iraq, Obama left no permanent US military presence
there.
In Pakistan, itself battling rising Islamist extremism, there
are fears the Nato withdrawal
will mean a surge in violence
spilling across the border and
an intensification of America’s
hugely unpopular drone campaign
against militants.
While Pakistan publicly calls
the missile strikes an infringement of its sovereignty, the United
States sees them as a vital tool in
the fight against militants allied
to the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
Analyst and retired senior
army officer Talat Masood said
the continuation of the programme would depend on conditions on the ground, not on who
occupies the Oval Office.
“If the militants continue
their operations within Pakistan
and increase their activity in
Afghanistan, then of course
the use of drones will increase
because there is no question of
using ground troops,” he said.
US-Pakistan relations lurched
from crisis to crisis in 2011, first
when a CIA contractor shot dead
two people in Lahore, then when
the US carried out a secret raid
to kill Al Qaeda leader Osama
bin Laden and culminating in a
botched US air strike that killed
24 Pakistani border guards.
Mistrust remains high and
the next US president will face
a tricky balancing act, trying to
continue the process of repairing
ties while pressuring Pakistan to
do more to tackle extremists in
its territory.
In a rare note of agreement
during Monday’s final presidential
debate, Romney backed Obama on
the use of drone technology, while
the president revealed the depths
of the suspicion that bedevils relations with Pakistan.
Touting his high-stakes decision to send US commandos to
hunt down bin Laden on Pakistani
soil without informing Islamabad,
Obama said that “if we had asked
Pakistan for permission, we would
not have gotten (him)”.
AFP
INDIA
No dispute over
Kasab’s security
bills: Police
NEW DELHI: There is no
dispute with the Maharashtra
government over the payment
of bills for providing security
to 26/11 terrorist Ajmal Kasab
lodged in a Mumbai jail, an
Indo-Tibetan
Border
Police
(ITBP) official said yesterday.
“There is no dispute with
the Maharashtra government.
They are in talks with the government of India and the issue
will be resolved soon,” ITBP
Director General Ranjit Sinha
told reporter here on the sidelines of the force’s golden jubilee
celebrations.
The ITBP has prepared a bill
of over `26 crore, till August 31,
for providing a security cover to
Kasab. The Maharashtra government has already made it clear
that it won’t settle the bill till the
central government chips in.
Since March 2009, over 150
ITBP personnel have been
deployed in and around the jail
to protect the jailed Pakistani terrorist, one of the 10 who sneaked
into Mumbai and the only one
to be caught alive during the
mayhem. The union home ministry Tuesday recommended the
rejection of the mercy petition of
Kasab, who has been sentenced to
death by the trial court, a government source said.
Kasab’s mercy petition was
made to the president after the
Supreme Court August 29 upheld
his death sentence.
IANS
Helping the poor
FRIDAY 26 OCTOBER 2012
www.thepeninsulaqatar.com
Rahul unlikely to figure
in cabinet reshuffle
Fresh faces set to fill slots of junior ministers
Chief of Congress party Sonia Gandhi presents the 210 millionth biometric card to Vali, a resident of Rajasthan, during the national launch
of a scheme to make direct cash transfers to the poor, at Dudu recently.
NEW DELHI: Congress leader
Rahul Gandhi is unlikely to
join the Manmohan Singh government in a cabinet reshuffle
scheduled for Sunday, sources
in the party and Rashtrapati
Bhavan said yesterday.
According to Congress sources,
the reshuffle will be a precursor
to a change in the organisational
set-up of the party which is aiming to create a new team to face
the 2014 general elections and a
slew of state polls next year.
The Congress and the partyled central government have
been hit by controversies revolving around alleged corruption
in the allocation of coal blocks.
Individual graft allegations have
also surfaced against some union
ministers and even Robert Vadra,
Congress chief Sonia Gandhi’s
son-in-law.
According to Congress sources,
the portfolios of some ministers
with dual charges may change
and some fresh faces may join the
government to fill the six slots of
junior ministers, which became
vacant after Mamata Banerjeeled Trinamool Congress quit the
United Progressive Alliance in
September. Party sources said
some young leaders may make it
NRIs renew demand for absentee voting
itting in their homes
and offices across
the globe, hundreds
of
thousands
of
Americans are busy
choosing the next leader of the
world’s biggest superpower. It is
as easy and as quick as ordering
a burger.
And, what about the world’s
largest democracy? India boasts
of having sent our nearly seven
million of its diaspora to countries in every corner of the
planet. Yet, in this day and age
of highly advanced communications technology, its citizens
are required to be present at the
rickety polling booths in India to
be able to exercise their right of
adult franchise.
With elections looming
over one of the most prolific
manpower exporting states,
Gujarat, and general elections
due thereafter, many overseas
Indians and their organisations
have renewed the demand for
absentee voting.
As many as 23 American
states allow their voters staying abroad to cast their ballot
via e-mail, while the remaining
offer the facility via mail and
fax. E-mail voting waspermitted in only 12 states during the
last presidential race in 2008.
But one year later, U.S. Congress
signed the Military and
Overseas Empowerment Act, a
law that has pushed states to
offer adequate time and delivery
S
13
– states that
methods
to
went to polls
voting troops
after allowing
and
civilian
Moiz Mannan
NRI voting in
expatriates.
According
2011 not a sinto data posted online by Gerry
gle vote was cast. In Goa and
Cohen, a special counsel to
West Bengal, one NRI each
cast their vote. More than two
the North Carolina General
weeks into October, barey four
Assembly, roughly half of the
state’s military personnel and
of the 10-million-odd non-resthree-fourths of its overseas
ident Gujaratis (NRGs) were
reported by the media to have
voters who requested ballots
filled the relevant Form 6A, for
opted for email transmission
as of the first week of October.
applying for inclusion of their
names in the electoral rolls.
Nationwide, the Overseas Vote
Foundation reports, about 5
The NRIs are campaigning for amendments to the bill
percent of voters cast ballots
via email.
have a provision for absentee
Of course, the exercise is not
voting facility for Indians livwithout hacking concerns, but
ing abroad. The options being
there are ways and means to
talked about are Postal Ballot,
make it secure. The larger issue
Internet Voting or a combinais that of giving overseas citizens
tion of these two. The Election
a sense of participation in the
Commission of India (ECI), by
home country’s affairs.
itself or through the Indian misThe Indian Parliament has
sions overseas post the ballots to
approved voting rights for nonNRIs and then NRIs would post
resident Indians in elections
it back to the specified address.
However, given the scarcity of
with the Lok Sabha adopting the Representation of the
time and resources this would
People (Amendment) Bill, 2010,
prove to be a rather herculean
and cumbersome.
However, they are allowed to
Alternatively, registered NRI
exercise the franchise only if
they are present in the constituvoters could use the Internet to
ency on the polling day.
print ballot paper and submit
Election Commission figures
online, but concerns have been
show that just over a 10, 000
raised about India’s preparedNRIs have registered are votness and Internet penetrations
ers so far - an abysmal number
and connectivity.
compared to the Indians abroad.
The third option is a comIn Punjab, Uttar Pradesh,
bination of these two wherein
Uttarakhand, and Manipur
the ECI uploads e-ballots on its
THE NR EYE
Eid greetings
Paper artist Gurpreet Singh shows his latest creation, which is a model of the Grand Mosque in Makkah,
ahead of Eid Al Adha festival in Amritsar yesterday. Singh said he made this artwork to wish Muslims all
over the world a happy Eid Al Adha.
website and NRIs can download, exercise their franchise
and send it back as per the
norms, attaching attested passport identification page copy,
proof of residence or any other
documents.
Reports from London last
Sunday spoke of a Leicesterbased group, Pravasi Bharat,
which mobiled a protest near
Mahatma Gandhi’s statue in
Tavistock Square in central
London and marched to India
House where they handed the
letter to a High Commission
official. The letter said: “There
is an important principle at
stake: all citizens should have
equal rights, regardless of where
they happen to be at election
time,’’ and pointed out that several countries such as Britain,
America and Canada allowed for
absentee voting for their overseas citizens.
The campaign that went
online (www.pravasbharat.
org and Pravasi Bharat on
Facebook) also plans demonstrations in the US and is
appealing to NRIs in Gulf countries to send their request letters to nearest embassies.
The North American Punjabi
Association (NAPA) is another
to have joined the chorus and
urged the Indian government to
develop a mechanism which will
facilitate NRIs exercise their
right to vote.
THE PENINSULA
40 whales die in
mass stranding
NEW
DELHI:
About
40 whales died in a mass
stranding on the west coast
of India’s remote North
Andaman island in the Bay of
Bengal, wildlife officials said
yesterday.
“The short-finned pilot
whales were found by fishermen
who alerted us and investigations show it was a case of mass
stranding,” said Ajai Saxena, a
wildlife official in Port Blair.
Saxena said no previous mass
stranding had been reported in
the Andamans, but that it was
a natural phenomenon that
occurs when whales get disoriented and are unable to swim
back into deep water.
Emergency teams headed
to the beach near Elizabeth
Bay on the North Andaman
island where the whales were
stranded, but they were unable
to help. A post-mortem has
been conducted on one of adults,
which weighed 2 tonnes. AFP
to the government at the instance
of Congress general secretary
Rahul Gandhi.
Minister of State for Commerce
and Industry Jyotiraditya
Scindia and Minister of State for
Communications and Information
Technology Sachin Pilot may be
elevated, they said.
Congress spokesperson Manish
Tewari, MP Deepa Dasmunshi
and actor-turned-politician
Chiranjeevi, who merged his Praja
Rajyam Party with the Congress
last year, are likely to be the fresh
faces in the cabinet, the sources
said.
Rahul Gandhi’s close associates
Manicka Tagore and Meenakshi
Natarajan could also be inducted
into the cabinet, said the sources.
Among the ministers who may
be dropped from the cabinet are
Coal Minister Sriprakash Jaiswal,
Tourism Minister Subodh Kant
Sahai and Steel Minister Beni
Prasad Verma.
External Affairs Minister S
M Krishna could also be in this
group, said the sources.
Both Sahai and Jaiswal came
under attack from the opposition
on the coal blocks allocation issue.
Ministers
holding
dual
charge,
including
Human
Resource Development and
Communications and Information
Technology Minister Kapil Sibal,
Law and Justice and Minority
Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid
and Power and Corporate Affairs
Minister Veerappa Moily, may be
left with a single portfolio each,
said the sources.
With the death of Vilasrao
Deshmukh, who was minister for
science and technology, there was
a vacancy for a cabinet post for
a leader from Maharashtra, said
the sources.
The party sources said that
the reshuffle would give sufficient time to the new ministers to be prepared for the
winter session likely to be held
November-December.
From among the UPA constituents, Agatha Sangma, minister
of state for rural development,
may be replaced with Nationalist
Congress Party (NCP) leader
Tariq Anwar.
NCP chief Sharad Pawar is said
to be miffed with Agatha after she
defied the party line and campaigned for her father and former
Lok Sabha speaker P A Sangma,
who contested the presidential
poll against UPA nominee Pranab
Mukherjee.
IANS
Ambani still India’s richest man: Forbes
MUMBAI: Energy giant Reliance
Industries
chairman
Mukesh
Ambani has retained his title as
the world’s richest Indian — for
the fifth year in a row — with a
net worth of $21bn, according to
Forbes.
London-based steel baron L N
Mittal follows Ambani as the country’s second richest person, with
wealth of $16bn, the US business
magazine said on its website yesterday ahead of its November Asian
edition.
Despite holding the top position,
Ambani has seen his fortune drop by
$1.6bn in the past 12 months, Forbes
said. “Reliance remains India’s most
valuable firm despite ongoing battles
with federal oil ministry over KG-D6,
country’s largest offshore gas field
where output has sharply declined,”
said the report.
Mittal also had a tough year, losing
$3bn, “as shares of his ArcelorMittal,
the world’s largest steelmaker, tanked
due to surging costs and slumping
demand in Europe”, the magazine
said. Software firm Wipro’s chairman Azim Premji is the third richest
Indian with wealth of $12.3bn.
The magazine noted that India’s
slowing economy got a recent boost
when the government “ended months
of policy paralysis” through a series of
reforms to boost foreign investments
in retail, insurance and aviation.
AFP
14
FRIDAY 26 OCTOBER 2012
www.thepeninsulaqatar.com
BUSINESS
Vodafone
180,146
8.96
Rayyan Bank
183,747
Industries
Qatar
26.35 217,439
149.30
Nakilat
269,600 15.49
Qatar Islamic
Bank
9,522
Barwa
76.60 187,419 28.35
Gulf Holding
40.-62
Comm. Bank
of Qatar
25.00 226,867 72.30
Int. Islamic
Bank
9,926
51.90
UK bounces back from
double dip recession
Economy rebounds by 1 percent in the third quarter
LONDON: The British economy has escaped from its longest double-dip recession since
the 1950s, rebounding by 1 percent in the third quarter with
the help of the London Olympics,
official data showed yesterday.
British gross domestic product (GDP) grew at the strongest quarter-on-quarter rate for
five years in the July-September
period thanks to one-off factors
such as the Olympic Games — and
after output had contracted for
three quarters.
Market expectations had been
for the economy of Britain, which
is not part of the eurozone, to
have expanded by 0.6 percent in
the third quarter compared with
the second after falling into a
double-dip recession in late 2011.
British Prime Minister David
Cameron welcomed the data that
gave a boost to the London stock
market and sterling, but warned
against complacency amid global
economic headwinds.
“There are always one-off figures in all of these announcements, but I think they do show
an underlying picture of good
positive growth,” Cameron said.
He added: “There is still much
to do, but these GDP figures show
we are on the right track, and our
economy is healing.”
Finance minister George
Osborne echoed the cautious sentiment, saying that recent “weak
data from the eurozone were a
reminder that we still face many
economic challenges at home and
abroad.”
The ONS added that output
had been flat in the third quarter
compared with a year earlier, and
in a blow to government hopes of
maintaining a recent upturn in
employment, US car giant Ford
said it would shut two British
plants.
The data provided the first
estimates of British third-quarter GDP, leaving them open to
potential revisions in the coming months. Analysts said that
Thursday’s data reduced the
chances of the Bank of England
pumping out more new cash next
month to stimulate the economy,
as part of its quantitative easing
(QE) policy.
“The UK was long overdue
some good news on growth. This
reinforces our long-held view
that the Bank of England will not
extend QE next month but can
afford to wait before easing policy
again,” HSBC said.
Britain escaped from a deep
downturn in late 2009 but fell
back into recession at the end of
2011. GDP, or the combined value
of produced goods and services,
contracted by 0.4 percent in the
second quarter of this year after
shrinking by 0.3 percent in the
first—and by 0.4 percent in the
final quarter of 2011.
“GDP was estimated to have
increased by 1.0 percent in Q3
2012 compared with Q2 2012,”
the Office for National Statistics
said in a statement. “The largest
contribution to the increase came
from the services sector. There
was also an increase in activity in
the production sector. Activity in
the construction sector fell.”
Growth was lifted by one-off
factors, including the London 2012
Olympic Games and rebounding activity after an extra public
holiday for Queen Elizabeth II’s
Diamond Jubilee in the second
Gold rebounds
above $1,700
Ford deepens European cuts, sees $3bn losses
NEW YORK: Gold rose above
$1,700 an ounce yesterday, a day
after it fell under that, in reaction
to encouraging United Kingdom
GDP growth data and expectations the Bank of Japan will further loosen its monetary policy.
Bullion, a traditional inflation
hedge, rose after data showed
Britain posted its strongest
quarterly economic growth in
five years, although temporary
effects may have masked a weaker
underlying picture.
“The nice U.K. report suggested that the global economy is
rebounding slowly, and the fund
liquidation we saw earlier this
week seems to have dried up,” said
Bill O’Neill, partner of commodity
investment firm LOGIC Advisors.
Gold rebounded from a sevenweek low hit on Wednesday after
the US Federal Reserve stuck
to its plan to keep stimulating growth until the job market
improves but made few surprises.
Spot gold was up 0.6 percent at
$1,711.30 an ounce by 1:23pm EDT
(1723 GMT), rebounding from
Wednesday’s low of $1,698.39.
US COMEX gold futures for
December delivery were up $10.50
an ounce at $1,712.10, with trading volume to finish in line with its
30-day average, preliminary Reuters
data showed. Bullion rallied to an
11-month peak above $1,795 an ounce
in early October on optimism after
the Fed’s latest program of purchasing mortgage-backed debt.
Momentum has since stalled,
leaving prices vulnerable to swings
in wider markets, with weak global economic data helping send
prices below $1,700. Also, speculation that the Bank of Japan will
unveil further monetary stimulus
boosted gold. Sources told Reuters
the Bank of Japan is expected to
ease monetary policy next week
by expanding asset purchases.
Silver climbed 1.2 percent at
$32.03 an ounce.
REUTERS
LONDON/DETROIT:
Ford
unleashed a second volley of
European job cuts and plant
closures yesterday to try to
halt regional losses it expects to
total $3bn over two years.
A day after announcing the closure of a major car plant in Genk,
Belgium, Ford told British unions
it would scrap its Southampton
van factory and an associated
stamping facility in Dagenham
next year, slashing 1,400 jobs.
Yesterday’s announced closures end vehicle manufacturing
by Ford in Britain and bring its
total job cuts to 6,200, reducing
European production capacity by
quarter, the ONS said.
“Not only did the UK pull out of
its double-dip in the third quarter,
but the one percent quarterly rise
in GDP was a fair bit better than
expected,” said Vicky Redwood,
senior economist at the Capital
Economics research group.
“Admittedly, much of this
reflected temporary factors. We
think that the reversal of the
Jubilee effect probably added
about 0.5 percent, the Olympic
ticket sales added 0.2 percent
and there may have been a wider
Olympic boost.
“But even accounting for this
suggests that underlying output managed to rise by a small
amount—an improvement on
recent quarters. It won’t be plain
sailing from now on, though. There
are still a number of constraints on
the recovery.” Britain was facing
considerable difficulties ahead, not
least from tight credit conditions
and worries about the impact of
the debt crisis in the eurozone, a
key trading partner.
Other major headwinds
included rising inflation on higher
energy and food prices, an uncertain jobs market and ongoing austerity measures from Britain’s
coalition government aimed at
slashing a record-high deficit.
“Our economy desperately
needs an injection of confidence.
But this is no time for complacency and wishful thinking,” said
Ed Balls, economy spokesman
for the opposition Labour party.
“Today’s figures show that underlying growth remains weak and
that our economy is only just back
to the same size as a year ago -- 12
months of damaging flatlining.”
AFP
18 percent to save $450-500 million a year, the company said.
With no market recovery in
sight, car makers are struggling to scrap underused factories and surplus jobs that are
racking up losses in Europe.
The Southampton plant was the
fourth European vehicle plant closure announced this year.
Ford Chief Executive Alan
Mulally told reporters and analysts the cutbacks were designed
to “return profitability to our
very important European operations by mid-decade”, setting new
medium-term operating margin
goal of 6-8 percent.
Morgan sports car
Kierra Morgan (left) and Yvonne Tang talk before taking a ride in a
Morgan sports car during the opening of China’s first Morgan sport
cars showroom in Shanghai yesterday. Sales growth in the global
luxury market is expected to slow sharply this year, as Chinese and
European customers rein in spending and concerns about the global
economy take their toll. Chinese consumers, many of whom shop
abroad, have become the world’s No. 1 buyers of luxury goods, ahead
of the Japanese, the Americans and the Europeans, according to one
recent study.
Construction work under way on a new building which will be called Leadenhall in the City in central London
yesterday. Britain powered out of its longest double-dip recession since the 1950s after its economy returned to
growth in the third quarter with a robust gain of 1.0 percent, official data showed.
Stephen Odell, chief executive
of Ford of Europe, said during the
same call that Peugeot’s, French
government-backed refinancing deal
announced on Wednesday raised
questions, highlighting transatlantic
tension over the industry.
“I don’t think it’s sustainable for
support from governments to keep
competitive companies going forward, particularly in a protracted
downsized economy,” he said.
Workers at Ford’s British plants
were distraught. “It’s a kick in the
teeth,” said Dominic O’Callaghan,
39, a shop steward at Dagenham.
“The guys worked hard.”
PSA Peugeot Citroen has
encountered stiff government
and union resistance to 8,000
planned job cuts and the closure of its Aulnay plant, while
General Motors’ Opel division is
in protracted talks to slash jobs
and close its Bochum plant in
Germany - but not before 2016.
“What’s remarkable about Ford
is how quickly things are moving,
which is a sign of good management,” said London-based UBS
analyst Philippe Houchois. “With
GM Europe you always wonder
what’s going on - it looks like they
are still bogged down in deciding
what to do.”
Ford had previously forecast a
full-year European loss in excess
of $1bn, without giving further
guidance. Yesterday, the company
increased the loss forecast to more
than $1.5bn and said it would likely
be repeated next year. But Ford
said overall pre-tax profit improved
in the third quarter, excluding nonrecurring items.
The announcements came in
a grim week for the industry.
Also, Chinese-owned Volvo Car
Corporation said it was cutting
production in Belgium, while
Germany’s Daimler said late on
Wednesday it would not improve
profit margins next year.
REUTERS
Qatar eyes major stakes
in seven European banks
DOHA: Qatar is considering buying major stakes in
investment banks in Europe.
Negotiations are underway with
seven banks suffering from accumulated financial crises due to
economic recession in Europe,
reported Al Arabiya News.
Qatari delegations are leading broad negotiations to widen
their investment portfolio in
Luxembourg, in order to diversify
their income generating investments, the report said.
Widening of investments in
the foreign markets by Qatar’s
investment authority is part of
Qatar’s strategy to diversify the
sources of income, away from gas
and fuel sectors, which contribute 55 percent of Gross Domestic
Product (GDP). Qatar Holding
invested its budget surplus in the
past two years in foreign lucrative
projects, which sets a record for
the investments in Europe.
The global economic crisis,
which hit the United States and
the European Union and other
industrialised countries, contributed in creating many investment
opportunities that fit with the
aspirations of countries aiming at
long term investments, such as
Qatar’s investments in real estate,
foreign companies, manufacturing plants, banks and even fashion
houses.
“Europe suffers from economic
recession and aims at attracting
foreign investors, and Qatar is
one of the countries that can
benefit from these opportunities,” Basheer Al Kahlout, an
economist told Al Arabiya in an
interview.
As for the cost of the sovereign
bonds issued by Qatar and used
in expanding its investments, alKahlout explained that the cost
is extremely minimal compared
to other bonds in the Gulf, which
favors the opportunities of borrowing in the actual time frame.
Qatar foreign investment
in 2011 reached $6.027bn, as
per UN investment conference
report for 2012, with an increase
of 223.5 percent in 2010, which
was estimated at $1.863 bn. It
is likely that these investments
will contribute to creating future
jobs in recipient countries, along
with boasting the well needed
reserves of foreign currencies in
these countries, in the context of
the actual economic crisis.
The International Monetary
Fund expected a 6 percent growth
of the Qatari economy in this year,
noting that the expected growth
in the next four years will be done
through non-oil or energy sectors,
the report said.
THE PENINSULA
FRIDAY 26 OCTOBER 2012
www.thepeninsulaqatar.com
BUSINESS
15
Microsoft unveils Windows 8, new tablet
NEW YORK: Microsoft unveiled a
revamped version of its flagship Windows
system yesterday designed for increasingly
mobile consumers and previewed Surface,
its entry into the hot tablet market.
The new Windows 8 operating system and
the new tablet will go on sale today to mark
a new offensive for the US tech giant seeking a new strategy to keep pace with Apple
and Google and a dramatic shift away from
PCs to mobile devices.
“Windows 8 brings together the best of
the PC and the tablet,” said Microsoft chief
Steve Ballmer. “What you have seen and
heard should leave no doubt that Windows
8 shatters the perception of what a PC really
is... It works perfect for work and play and
it is alive with your world.”
At a New York news event, Microsoft
announced that Windows 8 will be launched
today in 37 languages and 140 worldwide
markets. It can be downloaded beginning
at 12:01 am local time worldwide and will
be sold at retail stores.
Microsoft is also launching a version
called Windows RT, designed for tablets
and available pre-installed on new devices
including its own Surface tablet. Some
analysts point out the Windows RT offers
Microsoft a chance for a fresh start in controlling both hardware and software in a
single device. The new tablet system “represents the best shot Microsoft has against
Apple and Google,” said Roger Kay at
Endpoint Technologies Associates. “WinRT
is where things are going.”
The software giant gambled by changing
long familiar user interface features to make
Windows 8 compatible with trends toward
keeping programs and data in the Internet
“cloud” and relying on mobile gadgets at
Qatar Navigation
nets QR637.4m
profit in 9 months
Panos Panay, the general manager of the Microsoft Surface, displays a Surface tablet during a
press conference in New York yesterday.
work and at home.
Surface, which seeks to challenge Apple’s
market-ruling iPads and rivals built on
Google’s Android software, will be among
Windows-powered devices sold in realworld Microsoft stores that will “pop up”
on Friday in the United States and Canada.
Microsoft promised that the temporary,
holiday-season shops will feature a “curated
collection of Microsoft’s coolest products.”
The news comes two days after Apple introduced its “iPad mini” in a bid to crowd out
lower-priced offerings by rivals Amazon,
Google and Samsung.
Surface — a late entry in the market —
has a 10.6-inch screen and starts at $499,
challenging the larger-format iPads. But
Surface appears to be a cross between a
tablet and a PC, equipped with a flip-out
rear “kickstand” to prop it up like a picture
frame and a cover that, when opened, acts
as a keypad so tablets could be switched into
“desktop” mode for work tasks.
Windows 8 and an accompanying version
of Microsoft’s free Internet Explorer web
browsing programme were designed to optimise touch-screen capabilities in tablets and
various “convertible” PCs. Windows, the first
version of which was launched in the 1990s,
remains the dominant PC platform with some
90 percent of the world market. But in the
mobile world, it is struggling against Apple’s
iOS and Google’s Android system.
AFP
DOHA:
Qatar
Navigation
(Milaha) has recorded a net profit
of QR637.4m for the nine months
period ended September 30, 2012,
an increase of 9 percent when compared with QR584m posted for the
corresponding period in 2011.
The company’s Earnings per Share
(EPS) amounted to QR 5.57 for the
first nine months of 2012 versus QR
5.10 for the same period in 2011.
“Milaha’s maritime and logistic
segment net profit strongly improved
during the first 9 months of 2012 versus the same period in 2011, driven by
port operations and container transport activities”, the company stated
after announcing the results.
Continued weakness in product
tanker rates resulted in lower net
profit for the Gas and Petrochem segment relative to 2011; however the
segment performance improved in
both the second and third quarters.
Year-To-Date net profit for
European stocks mixed, sterling gains
LONDON: European stock
markets posted mixed results
yesterday but the pound gained
ground after data showed that
Britain had marched smartly
out of recession, news that offset
a sharp drop in profit at Spanish
banking giant Santander.
London’s FTSE 100 index of
top companies closed essentially
unchanged at 5,805.05 points,
Frankfurt’s DAX 30 gained 0.10
percent to 7,200.23 points and in
Paris the CAC 40 fell by 0.44 percent to 3,411.53.
In London, Gekko Global
Markets trader Anita Paluch said
that “very strong growth in the
UK GDP, not seen in five years,
has confirmed the double dip
recession is over.
“Although the growth was
expected, the numbers published
have exceeded all expectations
and cheered up the market.”
Britain, which is not part of
the eurozone, has pulled out of
its longest double-dip recession
since the 1950s, and its economy
returned to growth in the third
quarter with a robust gain of
1 percent, the data showed.
Markets had expected the British
economy to expand by 0.6 percent
from the previous three-month
period, after falling into a second
trough of recession in late 2011.
Elsewhere in European trading, Madrid’s IBEX 35 stock index
dipped 0.16 percent to 7,229.20
points after Santander reported
a third-quarter profit plunge as
it wrote down billions of euros in
assets. Santander’s share price
lost 0.59 percent to ¤5.75.
In New York, US stocks slipped
in midday exchanges even though
weekly unemployment claims and
durable goods orders were better than expected and Procter &
Gamble earnings beat forecasts
as well. The Dow Jones Industrial
Average was off by 0.11 percent,
while the broad-based S&P 500
fell by 0.23 percent and the
Nasdaq Composite was flat.
Stock markets had won some
support earlier in the day from
rumours that the Bank of Japan
and Japanese government were
preparing to implement further
stimulus measures in the next
few days, said ETX Capital trader
Markus Huber.
In foreign exchange trading, sterling jumped to $1.6121
from $1.6041 late in New York
on Wednesday. The euro fell
to 0.8037 pounds from 0.8086
pounds, while the European single
currency edged down to $1.2957
from $1.2972. The dollar gained
to 80.04 yen from 79.79 yen.
In Tokyo, stocks rose 1.13 percent, boosted by the weaker yen
Milaha’s offshore segment was lower
relative to 2011, largely due to weaker
performance in the first quarter,
although results have improved over
Q2 and Q3, 2012.
“While general weakness in the
global maritime sector, combined
with volatility, continues to have a
negative impact, our strong position in the local and regional supply
chain has helped offset this weakness
to a large extent”, said Sheikh Ali
bin Jassim Al Thani, chairman and
managing director of Milaha. “Our
strategic investments and non-core
reserve portfolio continue to provide
a strong buffer against the global
market conditions”.
Starting Q1 2012, Milaha began
reporting segment financials under
its new structure, following the realignment of the company into a
corporate entity and strategic business pillars.
THE PENINSULA
QATARI MARKET
and speculation of further monetary easing by the Bank of Japan,
as the world’s third-largest economy struggles to gain traction.
Other Asian stock markets
closed mixed overall however
after the US Federal Reserve
said it would maintain its loose
monetary policy until there was
stronger evidence that the economy is back on its feet.
On Wednesday the Fed said
it would stick to its $40bn a
month bond-buying programme
— known as quantitative easing
— for as long as needed and keep
interest rates at record lows until
at least 2015.
Despite recent figures pointing to an improvement in the US
economy — including in household
spending and in the housing market — the Federal Open Market
Committee said growth remained
at a “moderate” pace.
AFP
Bond
Coupon Maturity
Currency
Mid Price
Yield
Moodys
S&P
Qatar Govt
5.15%
4/9/2014
USD
106.31
0.74 %
Aa2
AA
Qatar Govt
3.125%
1/20/2017
USD
105.94
1.67 %
Aa2
AA
Qatar Govt
6.55%
4/9/2019
USD
126.38
2.15 %
Aa2
AA
Qatar Govt
5.25%
1/20/2020
USD
119.13
2.36 %
Aa2
AA
Qatar Govt
4.5%
1/20/2022
USD
114.38
2.73 %
Aa2
AA
Qatar Govt
9.75%
6/15/2030
USD
181.50
3.51 %
Aa2
AA
Qatar Govt
6.4%
1/20/2040
USD
140.50
3.96 %
Aa2
AA
Qatar Govt
5.75%
1/20/2042
USD
128.88
4.05 %
Aa2
AA
Qatari Diar
3.5%
7/21/2015
USD
105.75
1.35 %
Aa2
AA
Qatari Diar
5%
7/21/2020
USD
117.00
2.56 %
Aa2
AA
Comqat
5%
11/18/2014
USD
107.13
1.48 %
A1
A-
Comqat
3.375% 4/11/2017
USD
104.13
2.39 %
A1
A-
QIB
3.856% 10/7/2015
USD
105.13
2.05 %
NR
NR
QNB
3.125%
11/16/2015
USD
104.25
1.69 %
Aa3
A+
QNB
3.375% 2/22/2017
USD
105.25
2.10 %
Aa3
A+
Doha Bank
3.5%
USD
103.81
2.58 %
A2
A-
Qtel
3.375% 10/14/2016
USD
105.63
1.90 %
A2
A
Qtel
7.875%
6/10/2019
USD
130.13
2.85 %
A2
A
Qtel
4.75%
2/16/2021
USD
113.00
2.97 %
A2
A
Qtel
5%
10/19/2025 USD
113.88
3.65 %
A2
A
Rasgas
5.5%
9/30/2014
USD
108.50
1.01 %
Aa3
A
Rasgas
5.832% 9/30/2016
USD
110.13
3.08 %
Aa3
A
Rasgas
5.298% 9/30/2020
USD
112.75
3.45 %
Aa3
A
Moodys
S&P
3/14/2017
SOVEREIGNS
Bond
UDC okays financing
contract revision
DOHA: The United Development
Company,
in line with the
Company’s Board of Director’
decision, has approved the revision of the financing contract
between a pool of banks and
Medina Centrale. The Board’s
decision was to restructure the
facility agreement for a funding ceiling of QR1.1bn provided
by a pool of Banks to Medina
Centrale OMC, a wholly owned
subsidiary of UDC. This is to
revise the financing cost applied
on the above facility and to take
advantage of the opportunity to
restructure the financing and
reduce the interest that was
agreed upon with the financing
banks. The Board of Directors
decided to repay to International
Bank of Qatar QSC an amount
of QR84.77m, UDC’s statement
published on Qatar Exchange
THE PENINSULA
site noted.
Unilever sales up
LONDON: Unilever’s quarterly
sales growth beat forecasts as
demand for cleaning and personal care products in China
helped the consumer goods group
outshine larger rival Nestle.
Shares in the maker of Dove
soap and Cif cleaners climbed to
equal their all-time high as the
Anglo-Dutch group shrugged off
the worries about slowing growth
in China that have rattled a procession of consumer goods companies recently.
Unilever posted underlying sales
growth of 5.9 percent in the third
quarter, ahead of a company-compiled consensus of 5 percent and a
second-quarter rise of 5.8 percent.
Emerging markets, which make up
55 percent of sales, grew 12.1 percent.
REUTERS
South African strikes ease as Brent crude
gold mine pay deal reached edges higher
JOHANNESBURG:
South
Africa’s gold mines agreed a
wage deal with unions yesterday
as the bulk of the gold sector’s
striking miners returned to
work under threat of dismissal.
The returns marked success of
a sort for a new tough approach by
mining firms, but at least 12,000
gold and 20,000 platinum miners
were still pursuing a wave of illegal strikes that have cost Africa’s
largest economy over 10bn rand
($1.14bn) this year, according to
the National Treasury.
About 100,000 workers in all
have downed tools across South
Africa since August in the often
violent strikes that have triggered
downgrades of South Africa’s
credit ratings, and awkward questions about government performance for President Jacob Zuma
and the ruling African National
Congress (ANC).
After three weeks of negotiations, the National Union of
Mineworkers (NUM) and the gold
industry, which employs around
157,000, announced agreement
on wage increases of between
1.5 and 10.8 percent for different
categories of mine workers. The
deal is seen as a wage sweetener
and comes as several mining firms
have played hard-ball by sacking
workers for illegal strikes.
Harmony Gold, South Africa’s
third-largest producer, said most
of its 5,400 employees who were
threatened with dismissal at
its Kusasalethu mine were now
back at work. Strikes were also
now over at two of Gold Fields’
three mines, where workers faced
threats of being sacked.
“Stability in the gold mining industry has been achieved
at many of the operations and
there are hopes that this trend
will continue,” said Chamber of
Mines executive Elize Strydom.
But AngloGold Ashanti, South
Africa’s biggest producer, said on
Wednesday it had sacked around
half of its 24,000-strong local workforce who had ignored an ultimatum to return to work or be fired.
AngloGold spokesman Alan
Fine said the company was optimistic the dismissed workers
would return to work after they
appealed their dismissals.
Mining firms have usually
taken back most fired workers
because it is more costly to train a
new workforce. Analysts say this
round of strikes will lead to some
permanent job losses with firms
shutting down marginal shafts.
The strikes have highlighted
persisting glaring income inequality in South Africa, which has
increased since Nelson Mandela’s
ANC took over following the end
of white-minority rule in 1994,
promising “a better life for all”.
Some in the business community worry that Zuma, who faces
ANC leadership elections at the
end of the year, might try to buy
social stability with increased
welfare spending.
But Finance Minister Pravin
Gordhan, presenting an interim
budget on Wednesday, said there
was no more money to dish out,
bringing relief to investors worried about spiralling debt.
Gordhan cut South Africa’s
GDP forecast for the year to 2.5
percent from 2.7 percent and said
the government needed some time
to determine the full impact of
the mine strikes on growth.
NEW YORK: Brent crude
futures edged higher in choppy
trading yesterday, lifted by economic data, but gains were limited by rising oil inventories and
tepid demand figures.
Brent is trying to snap a string
of seven straight lower settlements,
but remained on pace to post a
weekly loss. US crude prices seesawed near flat after briefly turning lower and trying to avoid a
sixth straight session of losses.
Oil was supported by British
government data showing gross
domestic product rose 1.0 percent
in the third quarter, beating forecasts for a 0.6 percent gain after
GDP contracted 0.4 percent in
the previous quarter.
US economic reports were
mixed. Initial jobless claims fell
last week, supporting oil prices,
but the four-week average was
up. Durable goods orders were up
more than expected in September,
but excluding defense and aircraft,
were unchanged.
A government report showing
US crude oil stocks jumped 5.9 million barrels last week continued to
weigh on oil prices. The inventory
rise was well above the expected
increase of 1.9 million barrels
in a Reuters survey of analysts.
Demand for refined products over
the previous four weeks was below
the year-before period, the Energy
Information Administration said.
Brent December crude rose 40
cents to $108.25 a barrel by 12:15
p.m. EDT (1615 GMT). Thursday’s
$107.46 low trade put Brent briefly
below the 100-day moving average
of $107.58. US December was up
6 cents at $85.79 a barrel, having
swung from $85.23 to $86.75.
REUTERS
REUTERS
PDA*
Maturity
Currency
Mid Price
Yield
Abu Dhabi Govt 5.5%
4/8/2014
USD
107.19
0.48 %
Aa2
AA
Abu Dhabi Govt 6.75%
4/8/2019
USD
127.38
2.18 %
Aa2
AA
Dubai Govt
6.7%
10/5/2015
USD
110.75
2.87 %
NR
NR
Dubai Govt
4.9%
5/2/2017
USD
106.25
3.40 %
NR
NR
Dubai Govt
7.75%
10/5/2020
USD
121.13
4.55 %
NR
NR
Dubai Govt
6.45%
5/2/2022
USD
112.25
4.83 %
NR
Qatar Govt
4%
1/20/2015
USD
106.31
1.13 %
Aa2
AA
Bahrain Govt
6.273% 11/22/2018
USD
114.00
3.68 %
NR
BBB
Bahrain Govt
5.5%
3/31/2020
USD
107.25
4.35 %
NR
BBB
Egypt Govt
5.75%
4/29/2020
USD
103.00
5.26 %
B2
B
Morocco Govt
4.5%
10/5/2020
EUR
99.88
4.52 %
NR
BBB-
NR
*Periodic Distribution Amount
IMPORTANT NOTE:
Published by HSBC Bank Middle East Limited, P O Box 57, Doha, Qatar which
is licensed and regulated by Qatar Central Bank and Jersey Financial Services
Commission. Information quoted is from publicly available sources or proprietary
data and subject to change. HSBC accepts no liability for any loss or damage arising
out of the use of all or part of this material. This information is general and does not
take into account individual circumstances, objectives or needs. The price of bonds
can and does fluctuate. The secondary market for bonds may not provide significant
liquidity or may trade based on prevailing market conditions. Past performance is not
a reliable indicator of future performance. You should consider these matters and
consult your financial advisor prior to making any investment decisions.
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Bullion - Mumbai
Gold (10 gm) Standard
Rs. 30950.00
Silver (1 kg)
Rs. 60860.00
Indian Rupees
QR1 = 14.60
Sensex
BSE
18793.44
NSE
5717.15
LIC (International) launches New Gold Investment Plan ‘GOLD PLUS’ –
which provides an opportunity to invest in GOLD ETF & GOLD SPOT, PAN
Card/Demat Account not required.
Short-term investment plan from LIC International upto 6.4 percent return
p.a. (in dollar)
Housing loan from HDFC LTD
Mutual Fund: Buy & Sell: SBI MF, HDFC MF, UTI MF, Birla Sun Life MF,
Tata MF, Reliance MF etc.
Contact: Investec, Tel: 44325060/44365060 email: [email protected]
FRIDAY 26 OCTOBER 2012
www.thepeninsulaqatar.com
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ATTESTATION
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CURTAINS
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JEWELLERY
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Bin Mehmoud - Tel./Fax: 44422906
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AL JAWHAR CURTAINS & FURNITURE
Salwa Road, Qatar Decoration Roundabout. Tel: 44689897
LANDSCAPING
CARPET
DOHA GOLF CLUB, LANDSCAPE DIVISION
KASHMIR HANDICRAFT EMPORIUM
Handmade Cartpets, Handicrafts & Furniture. Al Mirgab
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Suhaim Bin Hamad St., Brown Bldg., Next to IBQ Bank.
Tel: 44479794/44131850/44478379
Carpet Grass for Sale: Tiff-way 419 and Princess 77
E-mail: [email protected]
Fax: 4496 0719 Tel: 4496 0705 / 4496 0793
MOBILE PHONES &
ENHANCEMENTS
FLORIST
CCTV SECURITY SOLUTIONS
ANAN SECURITY SYSTEMS
QATAR INTERNATIONAL NURSERY
CCTV - Remote Monitoring Security Solutions for Industrial,
Commercial & Residential Security. Contact: 33216343
Email: [email protected]
Garden Services, Irrigation Systems, Soft & Hard Landscaping, Indoor & Outdoor
Plants, Water Fountains, Fresh Cut Flowers & Garden Maintenance. Tel: 44212630
Fax: 44213619 www.qinagriqatar.com E-mail: [email protected]
COMPUTER TRAINING CENTRE
FURNITURE
FAMILY COMPUTER CENTRE
APOLLO FURNITURE
Al Rayyan Complex, Rayyan Road.
Tel: 44435361/44370779 Fax: 44449130
Salwa Road.
Tel: 44689522 (3 Lines)
www.apollofurnitureonline.com
COMPUTERS & NETWORKING
ORIENTAL CARPET CO. & FURNITURE
Limited - Selected - Low Prices. Suhaim Bin Hamad St.,
Brown Bldg., Next to IBQ Bank. Motorcycle.
Tel: 44479794, 44131850, 44478379
HELPLINE GROUP OF COMPANIES
Certificate attestation from India, UK, USA, Australia, Gulf Countries and
Canada. We have 15 years experience & approved Agency.
GSM: 77711129 Tel: 44351974/44919213 - www.helplinegroups.com
ARTIFACTS OF ARABIA
Solid Wood Furniture, Antiques, Art & Decor.
Call David: 55614573
www.artifactsofarabia.com
EXPAND DOCUMENT CLEARANCE
Affordable Rate. Certicate Attestation in 7 Indian Working Days. Attestation from
India/UK/USA/Australia & GCC. Tracking Facility. Free Pick-Up & Delivery.
GSM: 55540420/3009244 Tel: 44430824 - www.attestation.qa
GLASS COATING
APOLLO ENTERPRISES
A/C MAINTENANCE &
SERVICES
Crystal Bond Glass Coating Against The Sun’s Harmful Rays,
Heat Resistance. Salwa Road. Tel: 44426664
GSM: 55830870/33599574 E-mail: [email protected]
NATIONAL COMPUTER CENTER
Desktops, Laptops, Printers, Scanners, UPS, Softwares, ERP,
Accessories, Networking & Cabling
Tel: 44351200 Fax: 44315058 - [email protected]
GIFTS
ARTIFACTS OF ARABIA
CLEANING AND MAINTENANCE
Arabian Style Gifts and Souvenirs See. Also Corporate
Contracts and Tenders. www.artifactsofarabia.com
GSM: 55614573 - David
AL MUTWASSIT CLEANING & PEST CONTROL
Kharaba Street, Behind White Mosque,
Tel: 44367555 Fax: 44367999 GSM: 55875920/55860432
HOME CONTROL SYSTEM
MEDICAL SERVICES
DR. AJU ABRAHAM, MBBS
MRCPsych (UK), CCST (UK), Dip. CBT (UK)
Consultant Psychiatrist.
Tel: 44365051 - www.drajusclinic.com
METAL REPAIRS
APOLLO ENTERPRISES
Belzona Polymerics - Tel: 44426664
GSM: 55871914/55524897 E-mail: [email protected]
[email protected]
CAPITAL CLEANING COMPANY W.L.L.
NASSER KOOL CLEANING & MAINTENANCE
Cleaning - Insulation - Repairing - Replacement.
GSM:66595860/77228897/77228836
E-mail: [email protected]
CITYSCAPES AIRCONDITIONING
Installation, Maintenance and Servicing of all kinds of Split,
Window and Package of Type A/C. GSM: 33709599/
55175012/ 33414781 E-mail: [email protected]
BURHA TRADING
All kinds of A/C Maintenance & Services
A/C Tech. from Philippines. Waranty after maintenance
Something different at moderate prices. Tel: 33202138 / 77619899
FIDELITY SERVICES COMPANY
A/C. Maintenance, Cleaning, Relocation, Repair for all types of
AC’s 7/7 - Office: 44186738, GSM: 66144629
Complete General Cleaning Services for Old and New Villas
Tel: 44582257/44582546 Fax: 44582529 Mobile: 33189899/
55565328 E-mail: [email protected]
MOVERS
PARAGON SHIPPING & LOGISTIC W.L.L.
For International/Local Relocation.
Doha - Qatar.
Mobile: 55803404 Tel: 44299555
PRESTIGE GENERAL SERVICES
General Cleaning for Villas, Flats, Sofa, Carpets, Floor Tiles, Marble Polish. Daily,
Weekly, Monthly & Yearly Contracts. GSM: 66752291 Tel: 44323040 Fax: 44131012
E-mail: [email protected] - www.prestigegeneralservices.com
CEYLON CONSOLIDATORS UNITED LOGISTICS W.L.L.
Logistics Partner in the Modern World. Door to Door Cargo All
Over The World. Tel: 44670532/44662305/44410402/44310
504 Fax: 44416068 E-mail: [email protected]
TALENT CLEANING SERVICES
General & deep cleaning for villas, flats, carpets, sofas, floor tiles, marble polishing, specialised safety certified window cleaning for high rise buildings.
Tel.Fax: 44127324 GSM: 66004530 E-mail: [email protected]
E2E GLOBAL PACKERS & MOVERS W.L.L.
TRIPLE CLEANING
Turnover/General Cleaning, Janitorial, Commercial & Residential, Events/Parties. Carpet Wash, Tiles,
Window Wash, Light AC Cleaning, Floor Polishing, etc.Tel: 44324959 GSM: 33916349 Fax: 44433530
E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.as-expected.com
INVEST IN QATAR
LEADER MIDDLE EAST W.L.L.
For fast & reliable BUSINESS SET-UP, LOCAL SPONSORS, Trade
Licences, Joint Ventures, Public Relations, Visas & Real Estate Services.
Tel: +974 55745147/55201189 E-mail: [email protected]
FIDELITY SERVICES COMPANY
Part-Time Maid Service. Reliable maids for cleaning and
generalhousekeeping duties. Flexible packages at low rates
For booking : 66144629, 44186738
HELPLINE GROUP OF COMPANIES
We provide A to Z support for the Company Formation, Commercial
Registration, PRO Services & Real Estate Services. Call Now:
77711129/44351974/44919213 - www.helplinegroups.com
AL SADEQ TRAD. & MAINTENANCE CO.
General Cleaning for Villa, Flat, Building, Carpet Shampooing, Sofa Sets, Marble Polish, Manpower Supply &
Pest Control - Daily, Weekly, Monthly & Yearly Contracts (24 Hours Service). GSM: 33020107/33020108
Tel: 4436068 Fax: 44353336 E-mail: [email protected] [email protected]
CASA BLU COMPANY
Tel: 44694020/90 Fax: 44694010
[email protected] - www.casabluinteriors.com
BLINDS
DENTAL
AL JAWHAR CURTAINS & FURNITURE
Vertical-Venitian Blinds
Salwa Road, Qatar Decoration R/A. Tel: 44689897
DR. Saeed Mohammed Abdelkhalek, MS, Prosthodontics.
Opposite Villagio. Tel: 44513289 Fax: 44693086
AL MASA DENTAL COMPLEX
DR. Sami Khalil Elmorsi Elsharoud, MS, Restorative Dentisty &
Endodontics. Opposite Villagio. Tel: 44513289 Fax: 44693086
AL MASA DENTAL COMPLEX
P.O. BOX: 23933. E-mail: [email protected]
Tel: 44606822 Fax: 44606977 GSM:55879234
BICYCLES & WATER SPORTS
SKATE SHACK
Al Ain # 3, Salwa Road,
For Direction call: Tel: 446-92532
GSM: 552-47885/779-36152 - www.skate-shack.com
P.O. Box : 31400, Doha, Qatar
Tel: +974 44622703, 44622705 GSM: 66836037
E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.softlabqatar.com
Labs
HR MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
(DEVELOPED SPECIFICALLY FOR QATAR)
• Document Management System • Inventory Management System • Plant Management System
AL MASA DENTAL COMPLEX
BLASTING AND PAINTING
M. PALLONJI QATAR
Software Lab Qatar
Expertise and capability to develop any kind of Software to suit your specific business needs!!!
AL SHARK EXHIBITION
Vertical-Venitian Blinds.
Bin Mehmoud. Tel./Fax: 44422906
Software
CURTAIN & UPHOLSTERY
IT SOLUTION
DR. Mohammed Naveed Yawar
GB, General Scope Dentist (Rajiv Gandhi University of Health
Sciences). Opposite Villagio. Tel: 44513289 Fax: 44693086
ELECTRONICS REPAIRING
INTN’L TRDG. & TECHNICAL SVCS. CO. (INTER-TECH)
Hardware, Software, Networking, ERP, Cabling, Servers, UPS,
Network Operation, Maintenance, etc.
Tel: 44416556 Fax: 44416410 - [email protected]
IMMIGRATION SERVICES
‘WE GET THE JOB DONE’
Specialised in Governmental work, Work Visa, Family Visa,
Resident Permits and many more. Email: [email protected]
Tel: 44675502, Fax: 4467-5503 Website: deltaqatar.com
IMPORT SERVICES
EASY SOULTION ELECTRONICS
IMPORT FROM CHINA/INDIA
We repair all kinds of electronics equipment (TV, LCD, LED,
Plasma, Car Stereo, Amp), Vaacum Cleaner, Motor, Dish +
Antenna. GSM: 33807561 Tel: 44322332
Building Materials/Industrial Items/Steel/Aluminium Sections/
Panels, etc. 18 year old Indian Company having China Office.
GSM: 33391248, [email protected]
Professional’s in Int’l & Domestic Relocations & Removals
Office Shifting & Industrial Packing. E: [email protected]
Tel: 4451 6688, Mobile: 5599 0644, Fax: 4468 8631
MONEY EXCHANGE
QATAR-UAE EXCHANGE
Service is our Currency. Al Sadd Street. Tel: 44445558
City Center. Tel: 44115959
Clock Roundabout (Near Gold Souq). Tel: 44368222
MASSAGE
THAI LADY MASSAGE & BEAUTY SALON
For Ladies. Thai Massage, Oil Massage, Steam Bath
Home Visit.
Villa No.4, Al Kinana St., Al Sadd Road. Tel: 44350143
KOTTAKKAL AYURVEDIC MASSAGE CENTRE
Oil Massage, Hotel & Home Visit.
Opposite Hamad Hospital. Al Rayyan Street.
Tel.: 44360061 GSM: 33453697
INTERNATIONAL MASSAGE CENTER (AYURVEDIC)
Rejuvanation, Back & Joints Pain, Paralysis, Rheumatic Diseases. Home
Services. Opposite: Al Jazeera TV, Bin Omran.
Tel.: 44218166 GSM: 77702421
iRest Massage Chair
Buy Online www.qbuy.qa
2nd Floor, Quality Hyper Market
GSM: 55684777
MEDIHERB
Separate Section for Gents & Ladies. Back, Neck & Joint Care, Indian
Ayurvedic Massage, Holistic Rejuvenating Massage. Fareej Al Nasar, Near
Midmac R/A.Tel.: 44690363 GSM: 66167700 www.mediherbqatar.com
MUSIC
MUSIC HOUSE
Courses Offered: Guitar, Drums, Keyboard, Violin, Voice, Piano, Piano
Tuning + Rentals, Band Rehearsal Studio. Call: 44550203/
77469047/66022769 - E-mail: [email protected]
FRIDAY 26 OCTOBER 2012
www.thepeninsulaqatar.com
18
CLASSIFIEDS
SERVICES
MANPOWER SUPPLY
FOR RENT
RENT A CAR
APOLLO REAL ESTATE
Doha’s leading Real Estate Agency can offer you a wide selection of available
properties. Apartment to compounds and office space. Give us your requirements and let us find
you a place that fits. With over 30 years experience in Doha, we know the market.
Qatar’s first Real Estate Company under British Management
Call: Office: 44689522, Maureen 55864352
Abubakar 55850815, Peter 55506803, Dexter 55872145
www.apollopropertiesonline.com
NURSERY
THE LITTLE HANDS NURSERY
Age group 2 months to 4 years. Separate classes for babies, toddlers & students
with spacious play area. British Management & Camera Protection. Location: New
Salata, 137 Al Maahed Street, (at the back of Birla Public School) GSM: 55312803
HELLO BABY NURSERY (ABU HAMOUR & KHARTIYAT)
We start registration for September 2012.
We follow English Curriculum.
Abu Hamour: 77759789 Al Khartiyat: 33000819
OPTICS
MODERN GULF OPTICS
Please visit for all types of Eye Glasses, Sun Glasses, Contact
Lenses, Eye Test for Driving License and Industrial Safety
Glasses. Near Crazy Signal. Tel: 44310768
OFFICE INTERIORS/FIT-OUT
CONTRACTOR
OFFICE EXPERTS
A cost effective office service provider: Office Interior, Office
Stationery & Supplies, Office Space, Office Services - An
initiative of Sama Group W.L.L. T: 44447705 - F: 44447709 E: fi[email protected] W: www.samagroup.me
PORTABLE/CHEMICAL TOILETS
BEAM CONSTRUCTION
Near Al Saliya Sports Stadium. Tel: 44901760 Fax: 44901566
GSM: 33138018 E-mail: [email protected]
PARTY ITEMS &
BALLOON DECORATION
PARTY KINGDOM
Near Jaidah Flyover, Nasrallah Centre.
Tel: 44353501/ 44366431
E-mail: [email protected]
EUROPCAR
You rent A lot more than a car. Opp. Al Sharq Bldg.,D-Ring
Road. Tel: 44660677 Fax: 44662677 Airport: 44621188
BASE RENT A CAR
Cars that fits your Needs & Budget. We Deliver & Pickup.
Call for a quote 24 Hours @ 55206569
OASiS RENT A CAR AND TRANSPORTATION
YOU RENT MORE THAN A CAR WITH OASiS. Fax: 44130033
Tel: 44130011/44130022 GSM: 55157587 (Rental)/ 55129615
(Transportation) [email protected] - OasisCars.com
NICE RENT A CAR
Solution for Transport & Leasing all types of vehicle & Heavy Equiment.
Tel: 44413392 GSM: 55514223 Fax: 44317896 Website: niceqatar.com
E-mail: [email protected]/ [email protected]
THE OWNERS RENT A CAR + LIMOUSINE SERVICE
24 Hrs Service! Tel: 44515515 GSM: 55149555 Fax: 44515155
Contact Mr. Anjum Malik E-mail: [email protected]
JABRCO RENT A CAR
FOR SALE
We have many vehicles like 2009, 2010 & 2011 models for rent with a comfortable
price on daily/weekly and monthly. Main office: 44663933 GSM: 33131241 - Branch
Barwa Village: 44152020 GSM: 33640652 E-mail: [email protected]
E2E FLEETS
15/26/30/55/60/65 Seated Buses with or without Driver
Excellent Service & Competitive rates - Tel: 4460 5291
Email: fl[email protected] - Mobile: 3307 4056
SERVICES
WEBSITE
GO RENT A CAR
Competitive Rates for Car Rental & Leasing.
Tel: 44325500 Fax: 44375753 GSM: 33697075/66983107
E-mail: [email protected]
AL DAR CAR RENTAL
ANNOUNCEMENTS
24 Hours. Bin Omran, Ahmed Bin Ali St., PO Box 24816
Tel: 44877789 GSM: 55599972/55732070, Fax: 44866637
[email protected]
TRADE CHEM LTD.
Special Corporate leasing and Rental rates. Price includes Comprehensive Insurance,
Maintenance, Replacement Vehicle etc. Driven by Values. E-mail: info@regencyfleets.
com Tel: 44433822/44554046 Fax: 44554047 Branches: Airport - Tel.: 44153086
Beverly Hills - Tel.: 44122131 Movenpick Tower & Suites: Tel.: 44966107/30122300
P O Box: 21748 - Tel: +974 44278006 Fax: +974 44278007
E-mail: [email protected]
COUNTRY RENT A CAR - BARWA AL WAKRA
PEST CONTROL & CLEANING
DOHA PEST CONTROL & CLEANING CO. W.L.L.
For Pest Control & Cleaning Services - Fax: 44360838.
Email: [email protected] GSM: 55513862/55814832/
55514709 Tel:44360901/902 Web: www.dohapest.com
QATAR PEST CONTROL COMPANY W.L.L.
Email: [email protected]
web: www.qatarpest.com GSM: 55517254/66590617
Tel: 44222888 Fax: 44368727
REAL ESTATE
AL MUFTAH SERVICES & RENT A CAR WLL
C Ring Road Main Office Tel: 44328100/44442003,
Fax: 44414339 - Musherib Branch Office: Tel: 44326840/ 44426649,
Fax: 44312899 E Mail: [email protected] Website: www.racqatar.com
ADAM REAL ESTATE COMPANY
STATIONERY & OFFICE
SUPPLIES
OFFICE EXPERTS
A cost effective office service provider: Office Stationery &
Supplies, Office Interior, Office Space, Office Services - An
initiative of Sama Group W.L.L. T: 44447705 - F: 44447709 E: [email protected] W: www.samagroup.me
TRIOS - OFFICE & PROJECT SUPPLIES
Stationary, Computer Supplies, Gift Items, Cad Plotting &
Digital Printing. Tel: 44919114-15 Fax: 44919116
E-mail: [email protected] - www.triosqatar.com
SCAFFOLDING
APOLLO ENTERPRISES SCAFFOLDING DIVISION
Al Kuwari Blgd., 8th Floor, Al Sadd, Near Sebstain Rest.
Tel: 44366932 Fax: 44366931 GSM: 55500789 / 55803731
Contract/Hire/Sale - Salwa Road. Tel: 44693334
Fax: 44416274 GSM: 55521089/55560246/55536285
www.apollo-qatar.net - E-mail: [email protected]
APOLLO REAL ESTATE
COSMOS TOOLS & INDUSTRIAL SUPPLIES CO. W.L.L
Salwa Road. GSM: 55864352/55506803/ 55872145
Tel: 44689522 www.apollopropertiesonline.com
E-mail: [email protected]
Scaffolding & Ladders. Tel: 44151824 (3 Lines), 44315500 Fax: 44151825/
44214809 GSM: 55898593 E-mail: [email protected]
Main Showroom: Beside Doha Stadium, near to Clock R/A. Branch: Barwa Village, Bldg. No.2, Shop 8 & 10
RENT A CAR
AVIS RENT A CAR
Main Office at Daihatsu Showroom Complex on
‘C’ Ring Road. Tel: 44667744 / 44622180 Fax: 44657626
BUDGET RENT A CAR
The Best Car Rental Service in Qatar.
Head Office - 44310411 Airport Arrival - 44153048
Airport Departure - 44622678/55808638 (24 Hrs)
AL MUFTAH RENT A CAR WLL
HO, D’ Ring Road -Tel: 44328100, 44634444 - Branches: Airport
44634433, C’ Ring Road -Tel: 44442003, Grand Hamad
Avenue - 44326840, Ras Lafffan: Tel.: 44748840
E Mail: [email protected] Website: www.rentacardoha.com
AL SULAIMAN RENT A CAR
Main Office D’ Ring Road. Tel: 44911711/44911710 Fax: 44911699.
E-mail: [email protected] Musherib: 44355477/44440702/44315616
Fax: 44355466. Al Wakra: 44646775/44649153 Fax: 44646773
Al Khor: 44796677/44725378 Fax: 44796633
BUYING
WATER TANK CLEANING
A car has a choice of vehicles to suit your needs. Special cost provide nice service to our customer.
What’s more? Comprehensive, Maintenances & Replacement Vehicle. Come to you at affordable
rates, etc. Tel.: 44154467 GSM: 55440424 E-mail: [email protected]
TOURS IN QATAR
QATAR INTERNATIONAL TOURS
Tel: 44551141/44552242 GSM: 55010137/55864568
Fax: 44653461 E-mail: [email protected] - Website: www.qittour.com
TRANSLATION SERVICES
Model 2011. White colour.
Excellent condition.
Done 20,000 kms. Fully automatic.
Under company warranty. Price QR.65,000.
Call: 33906216
REGENCY FLEETS (A Regency Group Co.)
PEST CONTROL & CLEANING
PRODUCTS
ALTIMA FOR SALE
AL MUTWASSIT CLEANING & PEST CONTROL
Kharaba st, Behind white Mosque.
Fax: 443679 99 GSM. 55875920/55860432
We buy all kinds of used household
items. Office Furniture, Electric and
electronics items.. Fridge, A/Cs,
Freezer, TV & Computers.
Call: 55505773
CAPITAL CLEANING COMPANY
Cleaning Water Tanks & Pest Control. Fax: 44582529
GSM: 55565328/33189899 Tel: 44582257/44582546
E-mail: [email protected]/[email protected]
YOGA SERVICES
YOGASHA
First time in Qatar. Counselling and Yoga Services.
Almajaz Builiding Office 3, Al Kharatiat. Tel: 44422052
GSM: 55264002 - www.yogasha.com
Pen.Mag
Tel: 44557857
Fax: 44557870
E-mail: [email protected]
19
FRIDAY 26 OCTOBER 2012
www.thepeninsulaqatar.com
SPORT
Woods just off pace after
red-hot finish in Malaysia
The former world number one is three shots behind leader Matteson
KUALA
LUMPUR:
Tiger
Woods endured a testing day on
the greens at the CIMB Classic
yesterday but his pinpoint long
game kept him well in contention just three shots back of
first round leader American
Troy Matteson.
World number two Woods was
exceptional from tee-to-green en
route to a five-under-par 66 and
a share of seventh place after
picking up five shots on the back
nine at the PGA Tour-organised
48-man, no cut event in Kuala
Lumpur.
However, other than a 20-foot
putt on the 10th for birdie, the
American was left frustrated as
time and again, putts shaved the
hole or lipped out.
Golf: CIMB Classic
scores
First-round scores from the CIMB Classic, cosanctioned by the US PGA and Asian Tour, at the
par-71 Mines Resort and Golf Club yesterday
(USA unless stated):
63 Troy Matteson
64 Jeff Overton, Brian Harman, Robert
Garrigus
65 Gaganjeet Bhullar (IND), Tom Gillis
66 Tiger Woods, Jbe Kruger (RSA), Danny
Chia (MAS), Greg Chalmers (AUS), Ricky
Barnes, J.B. Holmes
67 Pat Perez, Kevin Stadler, Kevin Na
68 Martin Laird (SCO), Jason Dufner, Ben
Crane, Brendon de Jonge (ZIM), David
Lipsky
69 Carl Pettersson (SWE), Chris Kirk, Bob
Estes, Sean O’Hair, Kyle Stanley, Masanori
Kobayashi (JPN), Jimmy Walker, Charlie
Wi (KOR), Ryan Palmer
“Turning at even par I felt like
I was getting run over there and I
felt like I had to shoot something
at least three or four-under on
the back nine and I happened to
get one more,” Woods told reporters as sweat dripped from him
on a humid day in the Malaysian
capital.
“What was frustrating was
turning in even par and I’m eight
back. It is going to take something
20 plus (under) to win the tournament so you got to be aggressive and we got to go get it,” added
Woods, who birdied three of his
last four holes.
Matteson, twice winner of the
PGA Tour’s Fry’s Open, went one
better than Woods and birdied
the last four holes, including holing his bunker shot on the last,
for a sparkling bogey-free eightunder round and a one-shot lead.
“I knew I’d be doing good if I
could leave myself seven or eight
feet for par and it bounced and
slam dunked in the hole,” the
world number 156 told reporters
of his 63rd shot of the day.
While Matteson went about his
business on the relatively short
Mines Golf Course with little fanfare, a crowd of more than 500
flocked to watch Woods on his
return to Malaysia for the first
time in 13 years.
Many more are expected for
the second round of the Asian
and Malaysia Tour co-sanctioned
event with Friday being a public
holiday.
Last to tee-off with Australian
Marcus Fraser, Woods thrilled
the galleries with a number of
fizzing tee-shots but despite the
Thongchai Jaidee of Thailand (right) retrieves his ball on the 6th green beside Pablo Larrazabal of Spain during the
first round of the BMW Shanghai Masters golf tournament at the Lake Malaren Golf Club in Shanghai yesterday.
34 degrees Celsius temperatures,
the American’s putter was stone
cold as he reached the turn in
even par.
His round ignited with the
lengthy birdie putt on the 10th
and another tap in for birdie on
the par-five 11th after he found
the green in two.
The 36-year-old moved to
three-under with his fifth birdie
of the day at the 290-metre 15th
when he drove into a greenside
bunker off the tee and managed
to hole a straight five-footer.
Another sharp iron approach
to the par-three 16th left a similarly shot putt for birdie which
Woods holed before an up-and
down at the par-five 17th made
it three birdies in a row.
“I missed a couple out there...
realistically it could have been
seven or eight, but even at the
turn and to get to five, it was a
nice little comeback,” Woods said.
India’s Gaganjeet Bhullar led
the way for the 10 Asian Tour
players in the field after shooting a 65, with Danny Chia leading
the Malaysian charge by matching Woods’s 66. “You never know
this week, it could be an Asian
Tour player’s week,” the Indian,
ranked fifth on the region’s order
of merit, said.
REUTERS
Donaldson tops leaderboard in Shanghai
Jamie Donaldson of Wales celebrates on the 18th green during the first round of the BMW
Shanghai Masters golf tournament
at the Lake Malaren Golf Club in
Shanghai yesterday.
SHANGHAI: Four of the
world’s top five golfers including
number one Rory McIlroy are
at Lake Malaren this week, but
it was world number 51 Jamie
Donaldson who outshone all the
stars yesterday.
The Welshman shot a courserecord 10-under-par 62 to lead
the BMW Masters by four shots
after the first round.
Donaldson won his first tour
title at the Irish Open at Royal
Portrush earlier this season after
10 years and 255 tournaments of
trying.
He would be wise not to look
over his shoulder when he tees off
in the final group today.
If he does he will see a worldclass chasing pack headed by
Ryder Cup stars Peter Hanson
and Francesco Molinari at sixunder bearing down on him.
More ominously, US PGA
champion McIlroy, who won on
this course last year when the
tournament was an invitational
event, lurks just one shot further
back after a
playing and tryBMW Masters scores
birdie on 18 gave
ing to beat one
the Northern Leading scores yesterday after the first round another.”
of BMW Masters, Lake Malaren Golf Club,
Irishman a 67.
McIlroy said
Ryder
Cup Shanghai, China:
the benign, windless conditions
captain
Jose (Par-72, 7,607 yards)
made good scorMaria Olazabal,
pleased to get his 62 Jamie Donaldson (WAL).
ing possible, but
clubs back in his 66 Peter Hanson (SWE), Francesco Molinari was still might(ITA).
hands after guidily impressed
ing his team to 67 Michael Hoey (ENG), Jose Maria Olazabal by Donaldson’s
an emotional vicround.
(ESP), Rory McIlroy (NIR).
tory at Medinah
“Jamie
has
less than four 68 David Horsey (ENG), Edoardo Molinari shot 10-under,
(ITA), Alexander Noren (SWE), Martin which is pheweeks ago, also
Kaymer (GER), Louis Oosthuizen (RSA), nomenal scorshot a sublime
Justin Rose (ENG).
bogey-free 67 to
ing, and I was
be five off the 69 George Coetzee (RSA), Ross Fisher (ENG), just happy to
David Lynn (ENG), Bernd Wiesberger stay somewhere
lead.
(AUT), Charl Schwartzel (RSA), Nicolas within touchAnd McIlroy
Colsaerts (BEL), Paul Lawrie (SCO), Liang ing distance,” he
said it was good
Wenchong (CHN), Graeme McDowell (NIR). added yesterday.
to see his skipp e r’s
name
He did that
alongside his.
with “my best
“Yeah, Ollie’s name on the
two shots of the day”, a driver in
board there was nice to see,” said
the 18th followed by a nine-iron
McIlroy. “A few weeks ago 12 indifrom 144 yards to within four feet
viduals came together as part of
for a birdie three.
the team and now we’re back
“It was definitely a nice way to
finish and puts me in a good position,” said McIlroy.
Far from out of the picture,
with 54 holes still to play on
the long and demanding Jack
Nicklaus-designed 7,607-yard
course, are world number five
Justin Rose (four-under), number
three Luke Donald and number
four Lee Westwood (both on
two-under).
But it was Donaldson who sparkled in Shanghai, and he rated the
bogey-free 62 as one of the rounds
of his life despite having twice
shot 61 in previous tour events.
“Yeah it’s up there with the
best rounds I’ve ever shot. The
golf course is harder than the
other two I played, the other low
scores.
“The golf course is no pushover by any stretch of the imagination,” said Donaldson, 37.
Donaldson’s round contained
10 birdies, five each on front and
back nines, and eight pars during yesterday’s playing session in
Shanghai.
AFP
Sandoval
stars as
Giants crush
Tigers 8-3
SAN
FRANCISCO:
Pablo
Sandoval blasted a record-tying
three home runs to power the
San Francisco Giants to a surprising 8-3 win over the Detroit
Tigers and ace Justin Verlander
in the opening game of the
World Series yesterday.
Sandoval became just the
fourth player to hit three homers in a World Series game with
his solo shot in the first inning
and a two-run blast in the third
off Verlander, and a roundtripper in the fifth off reliever Al
Alburquerque.
The Venezuelan joined Babe
Ruth (1926, 1928), Reggie Jackson
(1977) and Albert Pujols (2011) in
accomplishing the feat.
Verlander had yielded only two
runs in more than 24 innings in
three playoff wins this postseason
but on Wednesday, he gave up five
runs on six hits in four innings.
“Obviously the big guy
(Sandoval) had one of those
unbelievable nights that happens
once in a while in a World Series,”
Detroit manager Jim Leyland told
reporters. “What a night for him.”
Not only was the hard-throwing Verlander bludgeoned by
Sandoval, who hit just 12 home
runs during the regular season,
he was outpitched by soft-tossing
left-hander Barry Zito.
Giants starter Zito pitched into
the sixth, allowing one run on six
hits to register the victory. Zito,
who won 15 games this season,
has been solid down the stretch
of the season as San Francisco
has won all 14 of his last starts.
The thrilling power display by
Sandoval that had the Park crowd
waving their orange rally rags in
a frenzy turned the Giants into
frontrunners for the first time
this postseason.
The Giants, who were the first
team in 25 years to reach the
World Series despite hitting the
fewest home runs in the majors,
have won six do-or-die games in
the playoffs against the St Louis
Cardinals and Cincinnati Reds.
“To hit three home runs, I
mean, that’s always a surprise,”
San Francisco manager Bruce
Bochy said. “But the guy can hit.
He’s got a great ability to get the
good part of the bat on the ball.
“We’re not known for our
power, but it’s nice to get three
home runs. He’s been locked in
for a while,” he said, referring to
Sandoval’s three home runs during the previous two series. “Just a
tremendous night. A night I know
he’ll never forget.”
The Game One showing was
especially sweet for Zito, who was
left off the 2010 World Series roster, and Sandoval, who scarcely
played two years ago when the
Giants won the Fall Classic over
the Texas Rangers.
Bochy saluted the performance
by Zito, who until this season had
been a free agent flop.
“He’s been throwing the ball
very well, and I was happy and
glad to tell him that he had the
start tonight,” Bochy added. “He
was excited about it. REUTERS
QMSF’s Abu Shaikha appointed Al Balooshi eyes second win
Senior Vice-President of UIM
DOHA: Qatar’s Sami Abu
Shaikha (pictured) has been
appointed
senior
vice-president of the UIM (Union
Internationale Motonautique),
powerboat racing’s governing
body, at a meeting in Corfu,
Greece.
Abu Shaikha is heavily involved
in marine sports through his daily
involvement as a board member
and general secretary of the
Qatar Marine Sports Federation
(QMSF) and attends the majority
of the federation’s domestic and
foreign events as the team’s legal
advisor.
“This appointment comes
as a result of all the hard work
carried out by everyone at the
QMSF headed by Sheikh Hassan
bin Jabor Al Thani,” said Abu
Shaikha.
A lawyer by trade, Abu
Shaikha represents the QMSF
at numerous UIM meetings and
was already a member of the
UIM Committee before agreeing
to take on the exciting new role
at the 85th UIM Annual General
Assembly, held on the Greek tourist island over recent days.
Abu Shaikha’s appointment
comes as a result of the retirement of the much-respected
American Charles Strang.
“Sami has been a very important board member in the QMSF
since day one of the announcement of establishing the federation in Qatar in 2000,” said Sheikh
Hassan bin Jabor Al Thani, president of the Qatar Marine Sports
Federation.
“Since then he has filled the
General Secretary position and
been one of the QMSF’s strategic internal forces to direct us in
the right direction. With his solid
background at the QMSF and his
legal profession, this made him a
very strong candidate for the Vice
President position with the UIM.
I know it is not an easy job to do,
but it’s another task on his plate
now. We wish him a very successful role in the new position,” he
added.
THE PENINSULA
LAS
VEGAS,
USA:
Qatar’s
Al-Anabi driver Khalid Al Balooshi
(pictured) will be eyeing a second
victory in Las Vegas this weekend for the fifth of six races in the
Countdown to the Championship
NHRA Play-offs and the second-tolast race of the season. Qualifying
is set for today and tomorrow
with eliminations scheduled for
Sunday.
In the 13th race near Denver,
Colorado, alBalooshi captured the first
round win of his Top Fuel career taking
out seven-time NHRA Full Throttle
Top Fuel World Champion Tony Schumacher. Two
races later in Seattle, Washington, alBalooshi began
a string of six-straight events at which he advanced
to the second round.
Then earlier this month in Pennsylvania, the
rookie driver from Dubai advanced to his first-career
semifinal and his first-career final round before winning his first-career race as a Top Fuel driver.
Now, alBalooshi is preparing for this weekend’s
race in Las Vegas, the same track on which he
clinched last year’s NHRA Pro Mod championship. With a race win under his belt, alBalooshi
will approach the last two races of the season differently. His goals have changed.
“My goal for this season was to
learn enough and become a good
enough driver to win one of the 23
races,” alBalooshi said.
“I knew our team could do it; I
knew I could do it. For so long, things
did not go our way, but little by little we found our racing luck; we got
better and better. To win a race is
incredible. Now that we won our first
race, we want to win more. Our new
goal is to win again this season. This
week when I go to the race track, I
will feel different. I will be relaxed,
and our team will have less pressure.
In Las Vegas, we will all feel better about our season
and ourselves,” he added.
The Al-Anabi and reigning NHRA Top Fuel
World Champions owned by Sheikh Khalid bin
Hamad Al Thani, silver team and driver Shawn
Langdon are still mathematically in contention
to win the team’s third consecutive NHRA Full
Throttle Top Fuel World Championship.
Shaun Langdon trails points leader Antron Brown
by 140 points with just two races remaining. For
Langdon to win the World Championship this season, he must win the season’s last two races and hope
the drivers ahead of Langdon are eliminated early
at both races.
THE PENINSULA
20
FRIDAY 26 OCTOBER 2012
www.thepeninsulaqatar.com
SPORT
Ferguson plans new move
EPL: Major selection headache for the Manchester United manager
LONDON: Manchester United
head to Premier League leaders
Chelsea on Sunday with Alex
Ferguson (pictured) admitting that not only is he worried
about his porous defence but he
now has a problem in attack albeit a “good” one.
United, who are second domestically, beat Braga 3-2 in the
Champions League on Tuesday
after trailing 2-0 inside the first
20 minutes to top Group H with
maximum points from their three
games.
Javier Hernandez, who has
often been overlooked this season
despite scoring three goals from
four starts, netted twice to rescue the win and
the Mexican has
given manager
Ferguson a selection dilemma
for the clash at
Stamford Bridge.
“The boy is
improving all the
time,” Ferguson
told reporters.
“He is fantastic in training
and he’s always
practising.
“His goal ratio
for us is fantastic. For his
second goal he
bends around
the back of the defender. It is a
great ball in from Tom Cleverley
but his movement is terrific. He’s
given me a problem - but that’s a
good thing.”
With Robin van Persie, Wayne
Rooney and Danny Welbeck also
vying for spots upfront, United
look spoilt for choice against a
Chelsea side who have their own
problems.
Among them is the continuing
absence of skipper John Terry,
serving the second of his fourmatch English ban for racially
abusing Queens Park Rangers
defender Anton Ferdinand last
year.
They could also be without
midfielder Frank Lampard, who
was having a scan on the injured
calf that caused him to limp out of
Chelsea’s 2-1 Champions League
defeat at Shakhtar Donetsk after
only 18 minutes on Tuesday.
The weekend’s other high
profile match is fourth-placed
Everton facing Liverpool in the
first Merseyside derby of the season at Goodison Park on Sunday.
Champions and third-placed
Manchester City are at home to
Swansea City tomorrow and fifthplaced Tottenham Hotspur visit
lowly Southampton on Sunday.
Despite it still being relatively
early in the campaign, Chelsea’s
meeting with United could have
a significant bearing on the outcome of this season’s title race.
Chelsea’s superb 4-2 comefrom-behind win at Spurs on
Sunday was their seventh victory out of eight matches this
term and they host United as one
of the only two
unbeaten sides
in the league,
with City being
the others.
Chelsea lead
the table with
22 points, followed by United
and City on 18,
Everton on 15
and Spurs leading a trio of clubs
on 14.
U n i t e d ,
though, have not
lost any of their
last five games
against Chelsea
and their meeting in the league there last season
was a classic as they came back
from 3-0 down to draw 3-3.
That scoreline encapsulates
their current problem - potent
in attack but weak at the back.
United fell behind for the
eighth time in 12 games this season against Portugal’s Braga and
Ferguson is perplexed.
“I can’t understand our defending,” he said.
“I can’t get to the bottom of it.
We certainly make it difficult for
ourselves. If you analyse the goals
we are conceding they are all different types.
“It is difficult to put my finger
on it and it certainly doesn’t give
us a good start to games that’s for
sure. It is always at home as well.
“It is not a problem away from
Old Trafford, at least not in terms
of early goals. We will sort it
though, I’m sure of that.”
REUTERS
GENEVA: Embattled world
cycling officials will meet
today under pressure to implement real reforms in the wake
of the doping scandal around
global icon Lance Armstrong.
The International Cycling
Union (UCI) this week effectively erased Armstrong from
the cycling history books when
it decided not to appeal sanctions imposed on the American
by the United States AntiDoping Agency (USADA).
A damning report by USADA
last week concluded that
Armstrong helped orchestrate
the most sophisticated doping
programme in the history of
sport.
He will now lose all of his
results from 1998, the year
he resumed racing after successfully battling cancer, and
a year before the first of his
seven consecutive yellow jersey
wins from 1999-2005. Having
failed to catch Armstrong in
over 200 anti-doping tests, the
UCI believes it is now far better equipped and says it has the
support of many in the sport.
Manchester City coach Roberto Mancini looks on during the UEFA
Champions League Group D match against Ajax Amsterdam at
the Amsterdam Arena in Amsterdam on Wednesday. RIGHT: AFC
Ajax’s Manager Frank De Boer looks on from the dugout ahead
of kick-off for the same match. Ajax won 3-1.
Valencia table offer to
Chelsea skipper Terry
LONDON: Formner England
captain John Terry (pictured)
could be on his way out of
Chelsea and heading for Spanish
club Valencia in the January
transfer window, the Daily
Mirror reported yesterday.
Terry is serving a four-match
Football Asociation ban for
racially abusing QPR defender
Anton Ferdinand and Chelsea
have slapped a fine on the player
into the bargain.
The Mirror reported that FIFA
agent Francois Gallardo has
claimed Terry has been offered
the chance to relaunch his career
in the Spanish top-flight.
Valencia are reportedly ready
to offer the 31-year-old defender
an 18-month contract, with an
option for another year.
Gallardo
t ol d
Radio
Intereconomia: “Valencia are
negotiating, and I am involved in
person, with the signing in the
winter transfer market.”
He added: “The offer is on his
table. The player is out of contract
in June and will not renew there
England’s World
Cup winning star
Connelly dead
for several reasons at Chelsea and
he wants to come to Spain.”
Gallardo explained: “Terry has
problems. They are insulting him
and he is not taking it anymore.
He asked to leave, not us. It’s real.
This has been going on for 15 days
and two meetings have already
taken place. The deal is already
on his table - a year and a half
plus one.”
He added: “I think he will
accept.”
Cycling:
Embattled
UCI set for
reform talks
LONDON: John Connelly, who
was a member of England’s 1966
World Cup winning squad and
won League titles with Burnley
and Manchester United, died
yesterday aged 74, his former
clubs announced.
He played in England’s opening
match in the tournament, a 0-0
draw with Uruguay at Wembley,
but did not feature in any of the
other games.
The winger, who played 20
times for England between 1959
and 1966, was Burnley’s top scorer
when they won the League in 1960
and was a member of the Burnley
team that lost the 1962 FA Cup
final to Tottenham Hotspur.
He joined United in 1964 and
won the title with them in his
first season at Old Trafford playing in every match.
REUTERS
NY City Marathon
likely to expunge
Armstrong results
NEW YORK: Lance Armstrong’s results in the New
York City Marathon will likely
be expunged, once organizers
are sure any appeals of the
disgraced cyclist’s lifetime ban
are complete.
“We anticipate that his results
will come out of our records,
but will wait for the appeals
process to be completed before
officially acting,” the New York
Road Runners said in a statement. The event, sanctioned by
national and international governing bodies for its sport, will
honour the ban first imposed by
USADA and confirmed UCI.
Armstrong’s punishment for
his role at the heart of what
USADA called the biggest doping programme in sports history includes a lifetime ban and
a loss of all results since August
1998.
AGENCIES
McLaren in no mood
to give up title chase
NEW DELHI: Sporting director Sam
Michael is adamant that McLaren will
not throw in the towel in this season’s
Formula One title battle, saying the team
is targeting wins in the final four races of
the season.
Red Bull top the drivers’ and constructors’ championships after three successive
victories for two-time defending champion
Sebastian Vettel.
But Australian Michael, speaking ahead
of this weekend’s Indian Grand Prix in
New Delhi, said McLaren drivers Lewis
Hamilton and Jenson Button would fight
McLaren Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton
of Britain poses with a fan at The Buddh
International circuit in Greater Noida, on
the outskirts of New Delhi ahead of this
week’s Indian Grand Prix 2012.
until the bitter end despite a disappointing
few weeks for the team.
“We’re going to push to the end. Our
target at McLaren is to win every race,
and we’ll do our best to achieve that,” said
Michael during a telephone interview.
“Red Bull took quite a big step across
Singapore and Suzuka (Japanese Grand
Prix), so they will be tough competitors,
but our target is still to beat them.
“The gaps are very small now, so it only
takes one or two tenths to swing from one
way to another, and that can be driven
off (one team’s) development working, or
another team not bringing enough.
“It will usually swing from one race to
another. We do believe we can take the challenge to them. We are turning up trying to
finish first and second in the last four races.”
Before the Singapore Grand Prix on
September 23, Hamilton was second in the
drivers’ title race and McLaren were the
nearest rivals to Red Bull in the constructors’ championship.
But after Vettel’s three straight wins in
Singapore, Japan and South Korea, both
Hamilton and Button have ruled themselves
out.
Hamilton, set to join Mercedes next year,
is fourth in the drivers’ standings on 153
points, trailing Germany’s Vettel on 215
points. Button is sixth with 131 points.
Michael insisted that despite the recent
setbacks, McLaren would keep their focus
on this year in terms of development of the
car.
“It’s a pretty straightforward decision
between 2012 and 2013, because the rule
changes for next year are quite small compared to what they would be for normal
years,” he said.
“Most of the development work we do on
this car will carry over anyway. Although
there are different programmes, there is
Ferrari Formula One driver Fernando Alonso
of Spain wears a traditional Indian marigold
garland as he attends an event to promote
handwashing with soap in Greater Noida,
on the outskirts of Delhi yesterday.
quite a lot of transfer so it is not that big
a decision to decide to continue developing
the 2012 car. Our target is still to do as well
as we can, and to achieve that we need the
car. At his point we normally don’t go into
specific details, but we do have upgrades
coming (for the next races).”
Meanwhile, Germany’s Nico Hulkenberg
stayed silent yesterday about reports he has
signed a deal to switch to Sauber next year
to replace McLaren-bound Mexican Sergio
Perez.
“I know there is lots of talk about my
future, but at this point I don’t want to comment on the speculation,” he told reporters
before this weekend’s Indian Grand Prix.
“I want to focus on this weekend, which
is the most important thing.”
If Hulkenberg does move to the Swiss
team, it remains unclear who his prospective team-mate would be. The list of possible partners includes current Sauber driver
Kamui Kobayashi of Japan along with several others.
AGENCIES
FRIDAY 26 OCTOBER 2012
www.thepeninsulaqatar.com
SPORT
21
Na keeps semi hopes alive
WTA Championships: Serena wins in straight sets against Azarenka
ISTANBUL:
Li
Na
kept
alive her hopes of reaching
the semi-finals of the WTA
Championships with a resilient
and polished performance in a
straight sets win over Angelique
Kerber yesterday.
The former French Open
champion from China’s 6-4,
6-3 win over the hard-working German may have also had
something to do with the energy
Kerber expended while earning
match points in a massive threehour effort against world number
one Victoria Azarenka the night
before.
Kerber nevertheless started
well, breaking serve almost at
once and holding her lead until
4-2.
But once Li had broken back
for 4-4 she was more nimble of
step, more flat-hitting of ground
stroke, and eventually more motivated for success too.
By the end of the first set
Kerber was becoming wayward
with her serve and looking discouraged, which prompted some
very intense in-your-face exhortations from coach Torben Beltz.
Li by contrast was nodding
relaxedly at comments from her
new coach Carlos Rodriguez, of
whom she says: “He makes me a
little bit stronger in the mind as
well as in tennis.”
Such qualities came in useful
when Li was confronted with her
early deficit, as did her liking for
bold stroke-making.
Tennis Results
Results from the WTA Championships
Women’s Singles Round Robin matches
yesterday
Group A
3-Serena Williams(US)beat 1-Victoria
Azarenka(Belarus)6-4 6-4
8-Li Na(China)beat 5-Angelique
Kerber(Germany)6-4 6-3
She was particularly potent
with sharp cross-court backhand
angles in making the break back
and when she maintained similar
pressure in her next return game
Kerber cracked.
The woman from Wuhan engineered two set points for herself,
often threatening the Kerber
second serve, and on the third
Kerber delivered a costly double
fault, her sixth.
It changed the match. Li broke
again at once in the second set,
and although Kerber bravely chiselled out a break back Li broke
twice more, penetrating increasingly with her raking drives.
Kerber’s resistance never completely disappeared and included
one innovative double-handed
shovel shot that launched a
remarkable lob over her head
while facing the wrong way.
But it made little difference,
and if the eight-seeded Li can do
well against Azarenka today she
could yet qualify against the odds.
Meanwhile, Serena Williams
clinched her third win at the
WTA Championships with a
Serena Williams of USA reacts during her match against Victoria Azarenka of Belarus at the WTA Championships
tennis tournament in Istanbul, yesterday.
6-4, 6-4 victory over Victoria
Azarenka that prevented the
Belarusian from guaranteeing
the end-of-year number one spot.
World number three Williams,
who had defeated Azarenka in the
US Open final last month, had
already made sure of her place
in the semi-finals after beating
Li Na and Angelique Kerber.
Yesterday, she hit 35 winners and
11 aces.
Azarenka must beat Li Na
today to make sure of her place
in the semi-finals.
M e a nw h i l e
in
Basle,
Switzerland, France’s Benoit
Paire defeated Polish qualifier
Lukasz Kubot 6-4, 6-4 yesterday
to set up a dream quarter-final
against Roger Federer at the
Swiss Indoors.
The 23-year-old Paire is buoyed
by achieveing his highest ranking of 46 and fresh from beating
Andreas Seppi in the first round
of the competition. AGENCIES
Nadal pulls out of London, Paris events
PARIS: Rafael Nadal (pictured), out of action since
June, will miss the ATP Tour
Finals in London and also next
week’s Paris Masters owing to
his injured left knee, virtually
condemning him also to miss
the Davis Cup final as a result.
Nadal had hoped to make
London and potentially the
Davis Cup final, which starts
on November 16, but the world
number four had been fighting a
losing fitness battle.
“It’s disappointing for me to
miss the last two tournaments of
the season in Paris and London,
but it doesn’t come as a surprise,”
said French Open winner Nadal.
“I will hopefully resume my
tennis practice soon since I am
making good progress with my
recovery from injury. I am not
ready to compete in time for
these events so I will continue
my recovery in Mallorca and
work hard to be back as soon as
possible.”
The former world number
one has not played a competitive
match since his shock loss to
unseeded Czech Lukas Rosol in
the second round at Wimbledon
on June 28.
The 26-year-old Mallorcan has
been suffering with Hoffa syndrome, an inflammation of the
fatty tissue situated behind the
kneecap in his left knee.
He declared in late September
that he would not return to the
circuit until he was 100 percent
fit.
Nadal missed the London
2012 Olympics and the US Open,
but had hoped he might make
London from November 5-12
and the Davis Cup final against
Disgraced Malik eyes Pakistan batting coach job
LAHORE,
Pakistan:
Disgraced former Pakistan captain Salim Malik (pictured)
yesterday said he has applied
for the job of national batting
coach, insisting he is not barred
after a court lifted his life ban
four years ago.
Malik, 49, was banned by
Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB)
in 2000 after a judicial inquiry
conducted by Justice Malik
Mohammad Qayyum found
him guilty of offering bribes to
Australian players to lose.
Australian trio Shane Warne,
Tim May and Mark Waugh
alleged Malik offered them huge
sums to underperform during
their team’s tour to Pakistan in
1994.
Malik, who always pleaded his
Australia’s
Holland out for
Test season
SYDNEY: Australian Test spin
bowling prospect Jon Holland
will miss the entire season after
undergoing shoulder surgery,
Cricket Victoria said yesterday.
The Victorian left-armer, who
was rated among the two best Test
spin options by national chairman
of selectors John Inverarity last
week, suffered a shoulder injury
while playing Melbourne club
cricket last weekend.
Cricket Victoria said Holland
had reconstructive surgery on
his shoulder on Wednesday and
would miss the rest of the season.
“It’s disappointing news but I
have come back from this before
and I believe I still have a lot
of good cricket ahead of me,”
Holland said.
AFP
innocence, was also
named in an inquiry
conducted by India’s
Central Bureau of
Investigation, which
led to life bans on their
captain Mohammad
Azharuddin and Ajay
Sharma.
The ban on Malik
was lifted by a court
in Lahore in October
2008, but the decision
has not been endorsed
by the International
Cricket Council (ICC),
which reportedly blocked his
appointment to the PCB academy
in Lahore in 2008.
Malik, a stylish batsman in his
day, now claims that he is cleared
of all fixing charges.
“I am cleared and
my life ban was lifted
four years ago,” Malik
told reporters after
submitting his application with the PCB.
“I am cleared by the
PCB and the ICC so I
can now be involved
in any cricket related
activity.”
PCB earlier this
month advertised the
post of batting coach
in an attempt to overcome the national
team’s frailties, which let them
down in major events like the 2011
World Cup and World Twenty20
in Sri Lanka this month.
During an illustrious career,
Malik scored 5768 runs in 103
Tests and 7170 runs in 283 oneday internationals and said he
could help improve Pakistan’s
batting.
The fact he does not have a
level III coaching qualification,
as required by the PCB, has not
put him off.
“A Test cricketer like me
doesn’t need any coaching course
or any certificate,” he insisted.
“I have the ability to help the
batsmen overcome their problems
which have been the main hurdle
in team’s performance.”
Pakistan hired Australia’s
Dav Whatmore as head coach
in March this year followed by
Englishman Julian Fountain as
fielding coach and bowling coach
Mohammad Akram to lift the
team.
AFP
Sun TV awarded Hyderabad IPL team
NEW DELHI: Regional television network
Sun TV yesterday won an auction to buy
the Indian Premier League team based in
Hyderabad after the cash-strapped Deccan
Chronicle group was forced to sell.
Sun TV, owned by the Chennai-based Maran
group, put in the highest bid of $15.9m a year
for the rights to the franchise in the lucrative
Twenty20 league that was founded in 2008.
“The IPL Governing Council met earlier today
in Mumbai to open the bids for a new IPL franchise,” the Board of Control for Cricket in India
said in a statement.
“Sun TV network have won the Hyderabad
franchise for an amount of 850.50m rupees
($15.9m) per year.”
It was not known whether Sun TV will retain
the team’s previous name of the Deccan Chargers.
The Deccan Chronicle media group, which
bought the Chargers before the inaugural IPL
season, was thrown out of the league due to financial violations including failure to pay players’
salaries.
The Sun TV network runs 32 channels, mainly
in south Indian languages, which reach 95 million
households, according to its website. The network
is also viewed in 27 other countries.
Among the players signed up with the
Hyderabad franchise are Kumar Sangakkara of
Sri Lanka, South African fast bowler Dale Steyn
and Australian batsman Cameron White.
The Chargers won the tournament in 2009 but
finished second-last this year.
The new franchise will join the eight other
teams from Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore,
Kolkata, Delhi, Mohali, Pune and Jaipur in the
sixth edition of the IPL scheduled for April-May
next year.
The IPL has attracted large television audiences and many of the world’s best players
such as West Indies’ Chris Gayle and England’s
Kevin Pietersen, but it has also been dogged by
controversy.
Former IPL team, Kochi Tuskers were
expelled last year over a financial dispute, while
an attempt to eject the Rajasthan Royals and
Kings XI Punjab over breaking ownership rules
AFP
was blocked after a court battle.
the Czech Republic in Prague
on the following weekend. Both
events will take place on hard
courts, which are more likely to
aggravate existing injuries than
Nadal’s preferred surface, clay.
Brad Drewett, ATP president,
said: “We wish Rafa all the best
as he continues his rehabilitation
from injury. Rafa is an incredible champion and it goes without
saying that he has been missed
on the ATP World Tour over the
past few months. We look forward to welcoming him back on
the tour very soon.”
AFP
Two British
athletes
have bronze
medals stolen
LONDON: Two Olympians
have had their medals stolen
during a night out after leaving
a Buckingham Palace reception
with Queen Elizabeth II to honour British athletes who took
part in this summer’s Games.
Rower Alex Partridge and
hockey player Hannah Macleod
took to Twitter to publicise the
search for their missing Olympic
bronze medals, which disappeared while they were at a club
in Mayfair, central London, in the
early hours of Wednesday.
Partridge, 31, said both his
Olympic blazer and medal were
stolen and asked for the items to
be returned.
He and Team GB also tweeted a
photograph of a man whom they
believe may have information
about what happened.
Scotland Yard said it was
looking into reports of a stolen
Olympic medal and blazer from
a venue in Mayfair.
“It was believed the items were
taken between midnight and 5am
on Wednesday, October 24,” the
spokesman said, adding that no
arrests have been made.
Macleod, 28, also said on
Twitter that she was “devastated”
after her medal was taken at the
same time but Scotland Yard
said it had not yet been informed
about the second missing medal.
“I’m not after punishment. If
you picked up a Bronze Olympic
medal that isn’t yours pls just
send anonymously back to GB
hockey-Bisham Abbey,” Macleod
wrote.
Partridge and Macleod were
among British Olympic and
Paralympic stars who attended a
Buckingham Palace reception on
Tuesday at which Prime Minister
David Cameron and London 2012
chief Sebastian Coe were also
present.
AFP
Serbian FA
suspends two
U-21 players for
England fracas
COLOMBO: Injured Sri Lanka
spinner Ajantha Mendis has
been left out of the Twenty20
and one-day squads to play New
Zealand.
Mendis has not fully recovered
from a side strain picked up during Sri Lanka’s opening world T20
match against Zimbabwe on Sept.
18, although he missed only one
game and played in the rest of the
tournament to finish as the top
wicket-taker with 15 wickets at
an average of 9.80.
“Ajantha played these matches
taking painkillers, he has still not
recovered 100 percent from the
injury. He is still under treatment,” Sri Lanka team manager Charith Senanayake said
yesterday.
Also rested from the T20
side were batsman Mahela
Jayawardene, who gave up the
captaincy after the world final,
and Lasith Malinga.
T20 squad:
Angelo Mathews
(captain), Nuwan Kulasekara,
Dilshan Munaweera, Tillakaratne
Dilshan, Kumar Sangakkara,
Dinesh Chandimal, Jeevan
Mendis, Lahiru Thirimanne,
Thisara Perera, Shaminda
Eranga, Akila Dananjaya,
Sachithra Senanayake, Upul
Tharanga.
Squad
for
first
three
ODIs: Mahela Jayawardene
(captain), Angelo Mathews,
Tillakaratne Dilshan, Kumar
Sangakkara, Dinesh Chandimal,
Lahiru Thirimanne, Thisara
Perera, Jeevan Mendis, Nuwan
Kulasekara, Lasith Malinga,
Shaminda
Eranga,
Upul
Tharanga, Rangana Herath, Akila
Dananjaya, Tharindu Kaushal.
BELGRADE:
The
Serbian
Football Association has suspended Under-21 national team
players Ognjen Mudrinski and
Nikola Ninkovic for a year for
their involvement in a brawl
with England rivals during a
Euro 2013 qualifier.
England won the match on
Oct 16 1-0 after scoring with the
last kick of the game and fighting broke out between players and
officials immediately following the
final whistle.
“Having reviewed the television
footage of the incidents, the FSS
disciplinary committee decided to
ban Ninkovic and Mudrinski from
playing for Serbia at any level for
a period of one year,” the Balkan
country’s soccer governing body
(FSS) said yesterday.
“Also, staff members Srdjan
Maksimovic
and
Andreja
Milutinovic have been banned
from their coaching duties at any
level for Serbia for two years. All
four have violated the FSS ethics
and fair-play code.”
England Under-21 left back
Danny Rose has complained he
was racially abused by Serbia fans
before, during and after the game.
The FSS have denied the racism charges, which will be decided
upon by UEFA.
UEFA President Michel Platini
said on Tuesday Serbia could face
tough sanctions if television footage proved home fans made monkey chants at Rose.
“Over a year ago we gave
Croatia and Serbia a serious yellow card, now we will see what
the disciplinary committee will
decide,” Platini told reporters at
a Euro 2016 meeting in Paris.
“We will get the report from
the delegates and the report from
the officials, we have the television footage - the disciplinary
committee will deal with it.”
The FSS said after the game
that Rose had provoked the
home fans in an “inappropriate,
unsportsmanlike and vulgar manner” after England scored to win
2-0 on aggregate and advance to
next year’s finals in Israel.
REUTERS
REUTERS
Mendis left out
of Sri Lankan
squads
FRIDAY 26 OCTOBER 2012
www.thepeninsulaqatar.com
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Legends Of Valhalla: Thor
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22:00
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10:00 The American
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12:00 Say Anything14:00 Evan Almighty
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Houston
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22:50
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C R O S S W O R D
HYPER
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
20
10
11
32
39
40
44
45
42
46
How to play Hyper Sudoku:
A Hyper Sudoku Puzzle is solved by filling the numbers from 1 to 9 into the blank cells. A Hyper
Sudoku has unlike Sudoku 13 regions (four regions overlap with the nine standard regions). In all
regions the numbers from 1 to 9 can appear only once. Otherwise, a Hyper Sudoku is solved like
a normal Sudoku.
How to play Kakuro:
The kakuro grid, unlike in sudoku, can be of any
size. It has rows and columns, and dark cells
like in a crossword. And, just like in a crossword,
some of the dark cells will contain numbers. Some
cells will contain two numbers.
However, in a crossword the numbers reference
clues. In a kakuro, the numbers are all you get!
They denote the total of the digits in the row or
column referenced by the number.
Within each
collection of cells
- called a run - any
of the numbers 1
to 9 may be used
but, like sudoku,
each number may
only be used once.
Yesterday’s
answer
By Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman
63
58
82
90
91
69
83
92
84
85
86
96
97
102 103 104
89
110
114
119
120
115
116
117
125
126
Lascivious
They have flat tops
Most excellent, in modern slang
Set forth
Kind of wine
Heir, usually
French farewell
*Male pattern baldness?
Content of a 2003 decryption
With 78-Down, character
commemorated in the answers to this
puzzleÕs starred clues
Muddy
Japanese consent
*Baying?
Transfers, as funds
Title words before ÒEasyÓ for Linda
Ronstadt and ÒHardÓ for John Lennon
Coach
Walk in the park, say
Menu heading
French 101 verb
Thumbing of the nose
E-mail address ending
*CardiologistÕs concern?
Bridge responses
Sen. Daniel Inouye, for one
Bridge response
Hit on the noggin
Saw to it
The Lion, not the Witch or the Wardrobe
Discovery medium
Fingers
*Caries?
VCR button
Pretty up
TonyÕs relatives
106
111
118
124
ACROSS
98
105
123
41
42
44
46
47
48
51
54
56
57
59
60
63
65
66
67
71
72
74
88
71
94
122
29
30
32
36
38
70
87
121
1
8
13
20
21
22
23
24
26
28
50
76
93
108 109
113
49
80
95
107
48
59
75
79
100 101
19
65
74
78
18
55
64
68
73
81
99
54
57
62
77
37
17
43
47
53
67
72
36
16
29
35
56
66
15
25
34
52
61
14
28
33
41
51
Yesterday’s answer
13
22
27
31
38
60
12
24
26
30
9
21
23
Zits
8:00
8:30
9:00
10:00
10:30
11:00
11:30
12:00
12:30
13:00
14:00
14:30
15:00
16:00
17:00
17:30
18:00
19:00
19:30
20:00
20:30
21:00
22:00
22:30
23:00
Secrets
Border Security
Dirty Money
Auction Kings
Extreme
Fishing
Mythbusters
How Do They
Do It?
How It’s Made
Border Security
Dirty Money
Auction Kings
Dirty Great
Machines
World’s Top 5
Wheeler
Dealers
112
75 Occupants of the lowest circle of
DanteÕs hell
77 Zig or zag
78 Had haddock, say
80 Dispenser item
81 Citation
83 *Marriage in 2004, divorce in 2011?
90 Mix (in)
91 Inventor after whom a Yale residential
college is named
93 Soviet author Ehrenburg
94 View from a control tower
95 Sweet drink
96 They have pointed tops
98 Bel ___ cheese
99 Twist spinoff
102 *Conduct classes?
106 ÒWhat ___ thou art, act well thy partÓ
107 Heaps
108 ÒGod helps ___ ÉÓ
110 Pitcher of coffee?
113 *Petrified wood?
118 Any of the Bront‘ sisters
121 Necessitates
122 Prime cut
123 Steep slopes
124 Application enclosures, often
125 Ecclesiastical council
126 Vituperates
DOWN
1 ItÕs a trap
2 Singer whose name sounds like a cry
3 *Endless bagpipe tune?
4 Item in a box in the basement
5 ___ a secret
6 Heir, often
7 St. Benedict, e.g.
8 Kellogg offering, briefly
9 Clint : the Good :: ___ : the
Ugly
10 South of Mexico
11 Heaps
12 Con manÕs plant
13 ÒWe Shall OvercomeÓ
singer
14 *Stable hands?
15 Broadway bigwig: Abbr.
16 ÒThis isnÕt going well at
all!Ó
17 Poetic ending
18 Catch on
19 Squeals
25 Passover month
27 Snowy Floridian?
30 Audible reproof
31 Rat-___
33 Owns, in the Bible
34 It can be balanced and
biased simultaneously
35 Fit to serve
37 Actress Sommer
39 French composer of
ÒVexationsÓ
40 87-Down, e.g., by birth
43 Extinct emu-like birds
45 Fr reÕs sibling
47 Parade figure, informally
48 *Gold-plated forceps?
49 Man of the house?
50 Onetime Time competitor, briefly
52 Tighten (up)
53 Works (up)
55 See 103-Down
58 Work without ___
60 Corrupting atmosphere
61 Like many a ditz
62 Prime Minister David
CameronÕs alma mater
63 ÒThere is ___ in the affairs
of men .?.?.Ó
64 1965 title role for Ursula
Andress
S
C
I
O
N
M
I
C
R
O
O
V
O
I
D
R
P
M
S
E
R
A
T
A
I
D
A
K
I
N
G
S
O
L
V
E
R
O
T
B
S
S
N
O
R
E
A
E
G
I
S
S
C
A
D
S
E
L
S
A M
O
H I
E S
A T
R E
T S
S T
H
A R
P A
E T
S
M
I
N
I
M
T
E
S
S
I
E
R
O
T
65 Birdsong
68 Supersized
69 Language from which
ÒclanÓ comes
70 Dweller along the Volga
73 Abbr. after many an
officerÕs name
76 2001-02 Nickelodeon
sitcom
78 See 28-Across
79 DictatorÕs first words?
82 ÒMorningÓ person
84 Bigwigs
85 A.C. or D.C.
86 When repeated, a childÕs
taunt
87 Comedian Smirnoff
88 Job for the Hardy Boys
89 Actress Martha who played
SinatraÕs love interest in
ÒSome Came RunningÓ
92 ÒS.N.L.Ó specialty
95 Gold prospector Joe with a
state capital named after
him
97 ÒDays,Ó for one
99 Nabisco offering
100 Agreeing (with)
101 They may produce suits
103 Early hurdles for 55-Down
members: Abbr.
104 Annual May event
105 2010 Nobelist Mario Vargas
___
109 ÒBonanzaÓ role
111 Prefix with bel
112 Name dropperÕs notation?
114 ___ card
115 Slip on
116 Musician Brian
117 SpringfieldÕs Flanders
119 Steamboat Springs, Colo.,
for one
120 European streaker, once,
in brief
I S S
T S A B
E W G U
A D
A R
G
D E N E
A T E T
P R A C
T I T U
O M E T
R
N S
S A U
S P A
T Y
L
B E
A
A T
S
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE
O
L
I
V
E
P
A
N
E
L
U
S
E
R
S
S
T
A
B
A
T
T
H
A
T
R
A
T
E
X
I
I
I
E
C
O
N
S
E
N
G
B
E
T
O
N
A
M
E
N
D
R
E
X
E
S