085010 120010 6 52 TUESDAY, October 29, 2013 / 24 DHUL HIJJA 1434 AH timesofoman.com facebook.com/timesofoman twitter.com/timesofoman blog.timesofoman.com ISO 9001:2008 Certified Company In a bid to boost the relations between the Sultanate and the State of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, Emir of Qatar, is arriving on a two-day visit to the Sultanate today during which he will meet His Majesty Sultan Qaboos bin Said. The visit comes within the framework of the two leaders’ keenness to boost the cooperation and further realising the aspirations of the Omani and Qatari people. The Emir of Qatar will be accompanied by an official delegation. QATAR’S EMIR ARRIVES TODAY 209 Spain raps US eavesdropping amid outrage across world MADRID: Spain yesterday de- nounced newly reported mass US eavesdropping on its citizens’ tel- ephone calls, calling it “inappro- priate and unacceptable” as out- rage spread over the worldwide espionage programme. The Spanish government deliv- ered the message to US Ambassa- dor James Costos, summoned to explain the latest revelations in a growing scandal over US snoop- ing on telephone and online com- munications of ordinary citizens and world leaders including Ger- man Chancellor Angela Merkel. The news emerged just as a European Parliament delega- tion began a three-day mission to Washington to probe the impact of the surveillance on EU citi- zens’ “fundamental rights” and to discuss a threat to suspend an EU-US agreement on the transfer of banking data. Spanish Foreign Ministry offi- cials met the US envoy hours af- ter the El Mundo daily published a classified document purport- edly showing that the US secu- rity services tracked 60.5 million Spanish telephone calls in a sin- gle month. The National Security Agency (NSA) recorded the origin and destination of the calls and their duration but not the content, said El Mundo, which printed a classi- fied graph showing 30 days of call tracing up to January 8 this year. The graph illustrated the daily volume of calls monitored in the period, peaking at 3.5 million on December 11. The article was jointly authored by US blogger Glenn Greenwald, who said he had access to previ- ously secret documents obtained by former US intelligence con- tractor Edward Snowden. The Spanish Foreign Ministry said it had underscored with the US ambassador its concern over the reported snooping. Climate of trust “Spain conveyed to the United States the importance of pre- serving the climate of trust that governs bilateral relations and of knowing the scale of practices that, if true, are inappropriate and unacceptable between countries that are partners and friends,” it said in a statement. Spain’s state secretary for the European Union, Inigo Mendez de Vigo, “urged the US authorities to provide all necessary informa- tion about the supposed tapping in Spain”, it said. The US ambassador said in a separate statement that some of the security programmes played a “critical role” in protecting Amer- icans and were also instrumental in protecting allied interests. He promised to work diplomatically to address Spain’s concerns. El Mundo urged Spanish pros- ecutors to charge the NSA with spying, saying such tracing of tel- ephone calls without the proper judicial authority amounted to a criminal offence. In Washington, US lawmakers sought to soothe injured Euro- pean feelings as they held talks with the parliamentary mission from Brussels. “We hope for an open dialogue,” US House of Rep- resentatives intelligence commit- tee chairman Mike Rogers said. The Wall Street Journal said the NSA had tapped the phones of some 35 world leaders including close ally Merkel, who last week branded the snooping as unac- ceptable between friends. — AFP A classified document purportedly shows that the US security services tracked 60.5 million Spanish telephone calls in a single month SUMMONED: US Ambassador to Spain Andorra James Costos, right, leaves the Spanish Foreign Affairs Ministry in Madrid, yesterday. – AFP Burning trawler towed away to avert disaster REJIMON K [email protected]MUSCAT: Timely intervention by Salalah Port officials and fire fighting rescue team averted a major disaster at the Salalah port yesterday after a Korean flagged fishing trawler caught fire. Ac- cording to sources at the port, the trawler, ‘BAEKYANG 29’, which was docked at Berth No. 24, caught fire at around 2:30am. “As soon as the fire was noticed, officials and rescue team sprang into action. The entire crew was first evacuated safely. Then we noticed the trawler carrying am- monia, an inflammable item, used to preserve fish. There- fore, it was decided to tow the trawler to outer sea to avoid any disaster at the port. The tug boat towed the trawler 12 miles away from the port and just as they were trying to disconnect, the trawler sank,” sources told the Times of Oman. SALALAH PORT His Majesty congratulates Abdullah Gul MUSCAT: His Majesty Sultan Qaboos bin Said has sent a cable of congratulations to President Abdullah Gul of the Republic of Turkey on the occasion of the 90th anniversary of the Decla- ration of the Republic. In his cable, His Majesty the Sultan expressed his sincere congratulations along with his best wishes of health and hap- piness to President Gul and the people of Turkey further pro- gress and prosperity. - ONA TURKEY A5 Oman free of polio, but watchful OMAN Woman arrested 1 An Indian woman is in police custody since Friday in connection with her husband’s “unnatural death” that morning in Sur. >A3 REGION Jordanian MP held 2 A Jordanian Member of Parliament (MP) was arrested yesterday for his alleged role in a September fight in parliament. >A7 MARKET Islamic finance hub 3 London is striving to position itself as a major centre for Islamic finance, with a series of measures that have been undertaken. >B1 TOP THREE INSIDE STORIES REPUBLIC OF TURKEY 8-PAGE SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT ON 90TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE PROCLAMATION OF THE WITH TODAY’S EDITOIN world leaders including close ally German chancellor Angela Merkel’s phones were tapped by the NSA, said the Wall Street Journal 35 in e he Y
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085010 120010652
TUESDAY, October 29, 2013 / 24 DHUL HIJJA 1434 AH timesofoman.com facebook.com/timesofoman twitter.com/timesofoman blog.timesofoman.com ISO 9001:2008 Certifi ed Company
In a bid to boost the relations between the Sultanate and the State of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, Emir of Qatar, is arriving on a two-day visit to the Sultanate today during which he will meet His Majesty Sultan Qaboos bin Said. The visit comes within the framework of the two leaders’ keenness to boost the cooperation and further realising the aspirations of the Omani and Qatari people. The Emir of Qatar will be accompanied by an offi cial delegation.
QATAR’S EMIR ARRIVES TODAY
209
Spain raps US eavesdropping amid outrage across world
MADRID: Spain yesterday de-nounced newly reported mass US eavesdropping on its citizens’ tel-ephone calls, calling it “inappro-priate and unacceptable” as out-rage spread over the worldwide espionage programme.
The Spanish government deliv-ered the message to US Ambassa-dor James Costos, summoned to explain the latest revelations in a growing scandal over US snoop-ing on telephone and online com-munications of ordinary citizens and world leaders including Ger-man Chancellor Angela Merkel.
The news emerged just as a European Parliament delega-tion began a three-day mission to Washington to probe the impact of the surveillance on EU citi-zens’ “fundamental rights” and to discuss a threat to suspend an EU-US agreement on the transfer of banking data.
Spanish Foreign Ministry offi -cials met the US envoy hours af-ter the El Mundo daily published a classifi ed document purport-edly showing that the US secu-rity services tracked 60.5 million Spanish telephone calls in a sin-gle month.
The National Security Agency (NSA) recorded the origin and destination of the calls and their duration but not the content, said El Mundo, which printed a classi-fi ed graph showing 30 days of call tracing up to January 8 this year. The graph illustrated the daily volume of calls monitored in the period, peaking at 3.5 million on December 11.
The article was jointly authored by US blogger Glenn Greenwald, who said he had access to previ-ously secret documents obtained by former US intelligence con-
tractor Edward Snowden. The Spanish Foreign Ministry
said it had underscored with the US ambassador its concern over the reported snooping.
Climate of trust“Spain conveyed to the United States the importance of pre-serving the climate of trust that governs bilateral relations and of knowing the scale of practices that, if true, are inappropriate and unacceptable between countries that are partners and friends,” it said in a statement.
Spain’s state secretary for the
European Union, Inigo Mendez de Vigo, “urged the US authorities to provide all necessary informa-tion about the supposed tapping in Spain”, it said.
The US ambassador said in a separate statement that some of the security programmes played a “critical role” in protecting Amer-icans and were also instrumental in protecting allied interests. He promised to work diplomatically to address Spain’s concerns.
El Mundo urged Spanish pros-ecutors to charge the NSA with spying, saying such tracing of tel-ephone calls without the proper judicial authority amounted to a criminal off ence.
In Washington, US lawmakers sought to soothe injured Euro-pean feelings as they held talks with the parliamentary mission from Brussels. “We hope for an open dialogue,” US House of Rep-resentatives intelligence commit-tee chairman Mike Rogers said.
The Wall Street Journal said the NSA had tapped the phones of some 35 world leaders including close ally Merkel, who last week branded the snooping as unac-ceptable between friends. — AFP
A classifi ed document
purportedly shows
that the US security
services tracked
60.5 million Spanish
telephone calls
in a single month
SUMMONED: US Ambassador to Spain Andorra James Costos,
right, leaves the Spanish Foreign Aff airs Ministry in Madrid,
yesterday. – AFP
Burning trawler towed away to avert disasterREJIMON [email protected]
MUSCAT: Timely intervention by Salalah Port offi cials and fi re fi ghting rescue team averted a major disaster at the Salalah port yesterday after a Korean fl agged fi shing trawler caught fi re. Ac-cording to sources at the port, the trawler, ‘BAEKYANG 29’, which was docked at Berth No. 24, caught fi re at around 2:30am.
“As soon as the fi re was noticed, offi cials and rescue team sprang into action. The entire crew was fi rst evacuated safely. Then we noticed the trawler carrying am-monia, an infl ammable item, used to preserve fi sh. There-
fore, it was decided to tow the trawler to outer sea to avoid any disaster at the port. The tug boat towed the trawler 12 miles away from the port and just as they were trying to disconnect, the trawler sank,” sources told the Times of Oman.
S A L A L A H P O R T
His Majesty congratulates Abdullah Gul
MUSCAT: His Majesty Sultan Qaboos bin Said has sent a cable of congratulations to President Abdullah Gul of the Republic of Turkey on the occasion of the 90th anniversary of the Decla-ration of the Republic.
In his cable, His Majesty the Sultan expressed his sincere congratulations along with his best wishes of health and hap-piness to President Gul and the people of Turkey further pro-gress and prosperity. - ONA
T U R K E Y
A5Oman free of polio, but watchful
OMANWoman arrested
1An Indian woman is in police custody since Friday in connection with her
husband’s “unnatural death” that morning in Sur. >A3
REGIONJordanian MP held
2A Jordanian Member of Parliament (MP) was arrested yesterday for his
alleged role in a September fi ght in parliament. >A7
MARKETIslamic fi nance hub
3London is striving to position itself as a major centre for Islamic fi nance,
with a series of measures that have been undertaken. >B1
T O P T H R E E I N S I D E S T O R I E S
REPUBLIC OF TURKEY
8-PAGE SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT ON 90TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE
PROCLAMATION OF THE
WITH TODAY’S EDITOIN
world leaders including
close ally German
chancellor Angela
Merkel’s phones were
tapped by the NSA, said
the Wall Street Journal
35
in e he
Y
A2 T U E S DAY, O CTO B E R 2 9, 2 0 1 3
OMANSteps are being taken to make visas available online to Omanis by the end of this year
UK to ease visa norms for locals >A3
Oman, Switzerland review bilateral cooperationMUSCAT: On behalf of His Maj-esty Sultan Qaboos bin Said, His Highness Sayyid Fahd bin Mahmoud Al Said, Deputy Prime Minister for the Council of Min-isters yesterday received Filippo Lombardi, President of the Swiss Council of States who conveyed the greetings and best wishes of the Swiss leadership to His Maj-esty the Sultan, his government and the Omani people.
The president of the Swiss Council of States and Sayyid Fahd reviewed the growing relations between the two countries.
Lombardi hailed the progress made in the Sultanate under the leadership of His Majesty the Sultan at all levels, and pointed to Oman’s balanced policies in its for-eign relations and its eff orts to es-tablish the rule of law. During the meeting, they reviewed the bilat-eral cooperation between the two countries in economic and techni-cal fi elds, as well as exchange of ex-pertise and consultation on issues of concern to the two sides.
Majlis Al ShuraKhalid bin Hilal Al Ma’awali, Chairman of Majlis Al Shura, met Lombardi within the frame-work of his current visit to the Sultanate. During the meeting, Al
Ma’awali affi rmed that this visit would contribute in strength-ening and enhancing the rela-tions between the Omani and Swiss people, besides sharing the Swiss experience in the parlia-mentary fi eld.
State CouncilDr Yahya bin Mahfoudh Al Man-theri, Chairman of the State Council, met Lombardi and his accompanying delegation yesterday.
Al Mantheri pointed to the Shura’s march in the Sultan-ate and the stages it has passed, as well as the progress it has witnessed, which gained the Royal confi dence by provid-ing it with the legislative and oversight powers.
Al Mantheri affi rmed the Royal attention and care accorded by His Majesty the Sultan to this march at each stage of develop-ment, which is crowned by the parliamentary duality under Ma-jlis Oman. -ONA
G R O W I N G R E L A T I O N S
AUGUST MEETING: His Highness Sayyid Fahd bin Mahmoud Al Said, Deputy Prime Minister for the
Council of Ministers, with Filippo Lombardi, President of the Swiss Council of States, yesterday.
– Mohamed Al Rashdi
MUSCAT: Filippo Lombardi, President of the Swiss Council of States, said Switzerland has decided to open a new embassy in Mus-cat, within the frame-work of the bilateral ties that bind the two friendly countries. -ONA
Switzerland to open embassy
A3
OMANT U E S DAY, O CTO B E R 2 9, 2 0 1 3
Oman seeks Automatic Identifi cation System transponders on small boats to improve maritime security.
MUSCAT: Sayyid Badr bin Ham-ad Al Bu Said, secretary-general at Oman’s Ministry of Foreign Aff airs, urged citizens through a tweet yesterday to wait for an offi -cial announcement regarding the easing of UK visa procedures for Omani citizens.
“Yes, it is true but wait for the formal announcement by the
British authority as there is a mechanism that will have to be followed,” the offi cial tweeted in reply to a query on the microblog-ging portal.
Last week, while attending the ‘Oman and Sea’ exhibition in Paris, the Omani offi cial said that Omanis would soon get visas on-line to visit the UK. “The British government hopes to set in place easier procedures for the Omanis to obtain British visas,” he said
on the sidelines of the exhibition. Al Busaidi added that steps were being taken to make visas avail-able online to the Omanis by the end of this year without requir-ing them to visit the British Em-bassy for this purpose.
Meanwhile, according to me-dia reports in London, the Brit-ish government has decided to signifi cantly ease visa application procedures for Omanis intending to visit the country for medical treatment or tourism purposes. Those who wish to study or work in the country will still need to fol-low the conventional procedures.
ApprovalThe reports claimed that Omanis travelling to the UK for tourism or treatment will need to send an e-mail to the website of the British Embassy in Muscat and wait for approval that will come within a period of 48 hours.
The traveller then has to take a printout of the approval, which will be considered as a visa, when travelling to the UK. Upon arrival at any of the UK airports, fi nger-prints will be taken.
This new facility is also ap-plicable for citizens of Qatar, the UAE, and Kuwait, the media re-ports added.
MUSCAT: An Indian woman is in police custody since Friday in con-nection with her husband’s “unnat-ural death” that morning in Sur.
The 40-year-old woman, who teaches at Indian School Sur and is a mother of two girls studying in the same school, was taken into custody by the police for question-ing about her 49-year-old hus-band’s death.
According to sources, the teach-er had reportedly stabbed her hus-band who was in a drunken state, following a brawl.
The sources suspect that it might be an accidental death.
“He was found dead in the room
when the police came. The offi cials conducted the initial probe and re-quested for her custody,” family friends said.
“The victim was reportedly an alcoholic. We helped him fre-quently in reaching home since he used to be heavily drunk. He had
landed in trouble many times after being caught for drunken driving,” said the family friends, who have sought the embassy’s help to take up the case and help the accused.
ShelterThe couple’s children are now be-ing given shelter by one of the fam-ily friends. Eff orts are being made to send the two daughters, aged 11 and 13, to India as their mother is in police custody.
According to sources, the ac-cused has been lodged in women’s cell in Jalan, about 80km south-east of Sur.
“That is the nearest place from Sur where they have facilities to keep women detainees,” the source added.
SUR
The tweet of Sayyid Badr bin
Hamad Al Bu Said, secretary-
general at Oman’s Ministry of
Foreign Aff airs, on the easing
of UK visa procedures.
The deceased, left, and the ac-
cused woman in custody.
Oman transp
Sultan
A4 T U E S DAY, O CTO B E R 2 9, 2 0 1 3
OMAN
Sultanate has best record in fighting piracy
Times News Service
MUSCAT: The Sultanate of Oman has proposed installing high-tech Automatic Identifi cation System (AIS) transponders on small boats to improve maritime security.
Said bin Hamdoon Al Harthy, the undersecretary for Ports and Maritime Aff airs at the Ministry of Transport and Communications, said offi cials are talking to all GCC countries about installing AIS on small boats.
“We are still putting together a law on AIS for small boats. As for the big ships, we have no problem. The problem is only with small boats,” he said at the fi rst annual Port Security Middle East confer-ence at the Radisson Blu Hotel.
He added that Oman has the re-gion’s best record in combating pi-racy. “The number of incidents re-garding piracy have been reduced drastically this year and we hope
this will go down even further in the coming months,” he said.
Experts, meanwhile, said that the AIS system would bring uniform-ity in the registration of all types of vessels.
“The new practice may remove ambiguity and help in keeping com-mon records on all vessels and their owners in one centralised data sys-tem,” an expert said.
The AIS transponders, which automatically broadcast infor-mation such as a ship’s position, speed and navigational status at regular intervals to a central-ised control room, will be used by
these vessels for identifi cation and to display their locations. Cur-rently, only larger ships use such transponders.
Meanwhile, experts in sea-port security from both regional and international authorities met in Muscat yesterday for the fi rst annual Port Security Middle East conference at the Radisson Blu Hotel.
The conference, organised by IQPC (International Quality & Productivity Centre) and GEC (Global Exhibitions & Conferenc-es), was formally opened by Said bin Hamdoon Al Harthy.
Oman seeks Automatic
Identifi cation System
transponders on small
boats to improve
maritime security
BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY: Oman Chamber of Commerce and Industry Chairman Khalil Abdullah Al
Khonji inaugurates Italian Solo exhibition in Muscat, yesterday. – Jun Estrada/Times of Oman
Italian exhibition to cement trade ties with Oman: Envoy STAFF REPORTER
MUSCAT: The Chairman of the Oman Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Khalil Abdullah Al Khonji, inaugurated the Italian Solo Exhibition, a three-day trade show, at the Intercontinental Ho-tel yesterday.
The event, supported by the Italian Embassy, is the fi rst and only country trade exhibition in Oman that off ers an exclusive trade and business, networking and purchasing platform for man-ufacturers, distributors, dealers, traders, suppliers, entrepreneurs and those seeking to source and procure “Made in Italy” products.
Interested shoppers have the opportunity to buy the products
on display during the event, which will continue until October 31.
“It is a good opportunity. We managed to have some compa-nies from diff erent sectors. These fi rms provide design, art, technol-ogy, and beauty,” Paola Amadei, Ambassador of Italy to Oman, told the Times of Oman.
Amadei said the event was good for fostering trade relations between Oman and Italy and sug-gested that Omanis could benefi t from good quality, nice designs, and advanced technology when doing business with Italian com-panies. For Italian business peo-ple, Oman has good investment opportunities too, she added.
“We encourage Italians to look at Oman because this country
really off ers a great variety of op-portunities and is open to trade. It is investing in its infrastructure,” Amadei said.
The exhibition, which featured companies in sectors ranging from silver, food, and furniture to marble, marines and shipyards, and engineering, was organised with Easy Business LLC, a group of experts and professional advis-ers who bring together Omani and Italian businesses.
The sponsors of the event in-cluded National Bank of Oman, Messung Global Connect and Intercontinental Hotel Muscat. It was supported by the Oman Chamber of Commerce and In-dustry, Turin Chamber of Com-merce, and the Italian Embassy.
M A D E I N I T A L Y P R O D U C T S
We are still putting
together a law on AIS for
small boats. As for the
big ships, we have no
problem
Said bin Hamdoon Al HarthyPorts and maritime aff airs undersecretary
Minister of civil service leaves for MoroccoMUSCAT: Sheikh Khalid bin Omar Al Marhoon, the Minis-ter of Civil Service, yesterday left for Morocco to take part in the 98th regular session of the Executive Council of the Arab Administrative Development Organisation (ARADO) to be held at Rabat next Tuesday and Wednesday. The decisions made in Egypt would be discussed at the meeting and a new auditing offi ce for the ARADO accounts for 2014-2015 would also be chosen.
292 illegal workers heldMUSCAT: The weekly report of the joint inspection team at the Ministry of Manpower said that 292 workers were held for violating the Labour Law between October 20 and October 26, including 219 commercial workers, 42 farm workers and 31 housemaids and their equivalents. The statistics showed that 259 workers were caught including 139 absconding workers, 109 astray workers and 11 workers referred from other depart-ments. The Governorate of Muscat witnessed the largest num-ber of workers violating the law with 115, followed by the Gover-norate of North Al Batinah with 76 workers.
3,850 cosmetics boxes seized
MUSCAT: Personnel of the Judicial Control at the Public Au-thority for Consumer Protection seized 3,850 boxes of cosmet-ics for violating the provisions of the Consumer Protection Law at one of the outlets taking part in an exhibition organised at Oman International Exhibitions Centre. -ONA
B R I E F S
Over 60% of QMS project completed
MUSCAT: The Ministry of Regional Municipalities and Water Resources has com-pleted more than 60 per cent of the Quality Management System (QMS) project.
The current stage involves implementation of processes and procedures that were verifi ed at the ministry’s headquarters and the mu-nicipalities implementing the system.
This stage will be followed by a training programme for the internal auditors in December.
The ministry will initiate the internal audit and as-sessment of the system next January.
The project was initiated in March 2012 with the as-sistance of some quality management experts from the Tunisian Republic. The project is implemented in co-operation with the Ministry of Civil Service. -ONA
M U N I C I P A L I T I E S
A15
WORLDT U E S DAY, O CTO B E R 2 9, 2 0 1 3
SMARTEN UPDRIVE SAFE
A TIMES OF OMAN HANDS-FREE DRIVING INITIATIVE
The question today is why couldn’t the Obamacare system be made simpler? Well, if we are to answer this in one word we can only say that it couldn’t made made simpler mainly because of politics
Read the column by Paul Krugman >A13
Michael Jackson’s doctor released from prison
LOS ANGELES: Michael Jackson’s per-sonal physician, convicted for manslaugh-ter by administering a lethal dose of an-aesthetic to the pop singer, was released from a Los Angeles prison yesterday after serving half of his four-year sentence. Conrad Murray was released to his rep-resentatives, Los Angeles County Sheriff
spokesman Steve Whitmore said shortly after Murray left the county jail. The release came under a California state plan to reduce prison overcrowding. Murray’s six-week trial grabbed global attention after Jackson, preparing for a series of come-back concerts in London, died unexpectedly in 2009 at age 50.
Poland’s fi rst non-left PM Mazowiecki passes away WARSAW: Poland’s Tadeusz Ma-zowiecki, the fi rst non-Communist pre-mier in eastern Europe who was hailed as a father of Polish liberty, died yesterday aged 86. He died in a Warsaw hospital fol-lowing a long illness, close friend and Sen-ate speaker Bogdan Boruzewicz confi rmed. Mazowiecki was “one of the fathers of Pol-ish liberty and independence”, Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski told Polish Radio. One of the early members of the Solidarity movement, he became prime minister in August 1989, two months after Solidarity won elections and its iconic leader Lech Walesa tapped him for the job. “He was really one of the outstanding people I met on this journey,” of transition, Walesa told Poland’s TVN24 news channel.
Trial in News of the World phone-hacking case startsLONDON: The fi rst trial in the phone-hacking scandal that sank Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World opened yesterday with the tycoon’s key aide Rebekah Brooks in the dock along-side the British prime minister’s former media chief Andy Coulson. The two former editors of the tabloid are among eight defendants facing a jury for the fi rst time over the scandal that sent shockwaves through British politics. The defendants face charges ranging from illegally hacking the mobile phone voicemails of a murdered schoolgirl and celebrities such as Paul McCartney, to bribing public offi cials for stories and hid-ing evidence. They all deny the allegations against them.
40 migrants found dead NIAMEY: Dozens of Nigerien migrants heading for Algeria died of thirst in the desert after their vehicle broke down, local offi cials said yesterday, while police said 19 survived. “About 40 Nigerians, who were attempting to emigrate to Algeria, died of thirst in mid-October,” Rhissa Feltou, the mayor of Agadez, said. “Many others have been reported missing since their vehicle broke down in the desert,” he said. “Travellers told us that they saw and counted up to 35 bodies, mostly those of women and children, by the road,” said Abdourahmane Ma-ouli, the mayor of Arlit. — Agencies
B R I E F S
JUSTICE SOUGHT: Turkish protestors run for cover as po-
licemen fi re water cannon and tear gas to disperse them
yesterday during a demonstration in Ankara against a
court’s refusal to detain a policeman accused of killing a
demonstrator during the popular unrest in June. A police
offi cer identifi ed only as Ahmet S. is on trial accused of
shooting to death 26-year-old Ethem Sarisuluk during
mass anti-government street protests in Ankara in June.
The Ankara court rejected a demand by the victim’s
lawyers that the defendant be detained and ruled instead
that he could take part in hearings via video conference
for security reasons. — AFP
Smartphones become visual sharing hubs
NEW YORK: Smartphones are giving a big boost to posting of photos and videos, according to a study released yesterday.
The Pew Research Centre sur-vey found 54 per cent of US Inter-net users now post original pic-tures or videos online, up from 46 percent last year.
And 47 per cent re-post images or videos they discover online, the survey found.
Much of this growth came from people using smartphone apps like Instagram or Snapchat, ac-
cording to Pew researchers.This survey found that 92 per
cent of Americans own a cell phone and 58 per cent own a smartphone. Some 18 per cent of cell phone owners use Instagram and nine percent use Snapchat to share images or videos.
‘People’s interactions’“Sharing photos and videos on-line adds texture, play, and drama to people’s interactions in their social networks,” said Pew Inter-net’s Maeve Duggan, author of the
report. “This all adds up to a new kind of collective digital scrap-book with fresh forms of storytell-ing and social bonding.”
Women are more active sharers than men, according to the survey: Some 59 per cent of online women
post photos and videos they have taken themselves, compared with 50 per cent of men.
Likewise, 53 per cent of women share some of the content they found elsewhere, compared with 42 per cent of men.
Among those in the 18-29 age group, 81 per cent have uploaded original content and 68 per cent have re-posted photos or videos.
Some 26 per cent of cell own-ers in this age group use Snapchat, while 43 per cent use Instagram.
‘Eager adopters’“A lot of photo- and video-sharing is happening on social media, where women are his-torically more likely to be users,” said Duggan.
“In terms of mobile, young peo-ple have always been early and eager adopters of new applica-tions and platforms for sharing,” she added. — AFP
The Pew Research Centre survey found 54% of
US Internet users now post original pictures or
videos online, up from 46% last year
Some 59 per cent
of online women
post photos and
videos they have
taken themselves,
compared with
50 per cent of men
A6
REGIONT U E S DAY, O CTO B E R 2 9, 2 0 1 3
It was ‘necessary’ for Iran to take part in the Geneva conference slated for next month
Lakhdar Brahimi, UN-Arab League envoy
DRIVE SLOWER LIVE LONGER
END CALL
SAVE LIVESA TIMES OF OMANHANDS-FREE DRIVING INITIATIVE
18-month jail term for Iranian actress
TEHRAN: An Iranian court has sentenced fi lmmaker and actress Pegah Ahangarani to 18 months in prison, her mother told Isna news agency yester-day, apparently for her social ac-tivities, political comments and interviews with foreign media.
“She has been sentenced to 18 months in the trial court,” Manijeh Hekmat, who is also a director, told Isna without giv-ing further details.
Ahangarani, 29, was arrest-ed in her fl at in July 2011 and was released on bail later that month. Currently, she is not in detention, as an appeals court must confi rm the sentence be-fore it is applied under the Ira-nian system.
Judiciary spokesman Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejeie mean-while told Isna Ahangarani was free and “had not been arrested”.
But Hekmat said that her daughter has been prevented from leaving Iran for nearly three years. “We hope with the new climate in the country (fol-lowing the election of moder-ate President Hassan Rowhani in June) leads to the reduction of her restrictions and her sen-tence would be reviewed,” Hek-mat said in a letter to the offi cial news agency, Irna.
According to Irna the sen-tence was issued because of her social activities, political comments she made and inter-views with she gave to certain foreign media.
Hekmat also said they would appeal the sentence. Even be-fore her arrest, the authorities had barred Ahangarani from leaving the country. She had been due to travel to Germany in 2011 to write her impressions of the Women’s World Cup in an Internet blog for German broad-caster Deutsche Welle.
Ahangarani won the award for a supporting role at the Ira-nian Fajr Festival in February 2013 for the movie Dar Band (Trapped). — AFP
S E N T E N C E D
IN TROUBLED WATERS: Ira-
nian fi lmmaker and actress
Pegah Ahangarani.
Arab foreign ministers to meet on Syria
CAIRO: Arab foreign ministers will meet in Cairo on November 3 to discuss backing the Syrian opposition at a proposed Geneva peace conference, a top Arab dip-lomat said yesterday.
Also UN-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi arrived in Da-mascus to seek support for a Syria peace conference, as Russia slammed rebels for threatening those planning to attend the so-called Geneva II talks.
Asked whether the ministers would discuss providing backing for the opposition groups, Arab League deputy chief Ahmed Ben Hilli told reporters “the meeting on Sunday will look into this mat-ter”. Ben Hilli said an offi cial date for the Geneva meeting has not been set. Arab League chief Na-bil Al Arabi had said the meeting would take place on November 23.
Brahimi, who travelled over-land to the Syrian capital after fl ying in to Beirut airport from Tehran, arrived at the Sheraton hotel accompanied by Syrian deputy foreign minister Faisal Moqdad. The envoy has been on a regional tour. The Syria leg of his mission to drum up support for Geneva II is the most sensitive
as he needs to persuade a wary re-gime and its hostile opponents to attend the talks. It is his fi rst visit to Syria since last December.
In Tehran, Brahimi said it was “necessary” for Iran to take part in the Geneva conference slated for next month and aimed at end-ing Syria’s confl ict.
Struggling for supportThe initiative’s backers, Washing-ton and Moscow, have struggled to win the support of the warring parties in Syria, where more than 115,000 people are estimated to have been killed in the 31-month confl ict. In the latest blow, 19 groups fi ghting to topple Assad issued a statement saying the Ge-neva conference “is not, nor will it ever be our people’s choice or our revolution’s demand”.
Russian Foreign Minister
Sergei Lavrov issued a stinging rebuke to the rebels. “It is outra-geous that some of these extrem-ist, terrorist organisations fi ght-ing government forces in Syria are starting to make threats,” Lav-rov said in televised comments.
“The threats are directed at those who have the courage to at-tend the proposed Geneva confer-ence being off ered by Russia and the United States with the entire world’s support.”
Under pressure from its back-ers to attend, the National Coali-tion opposition group is to meet on November 9 to decide whether to take part. But it has insisted it will only do so if there are guaran-tees Assad will step down, and its leader Ahmad Jarba has also said no talks can take place unless the regime frees women and children from its jails. — Agencies
The ministers will
hold meeting in Cairo
to discuss backing
the Syrian opposition
at a proposed Geneva
peace conference
BRUSSELS: The European Commission said it would provide 85 million euros ($120 million) in humanitar-ian aid to help people caught up in Syria’s civil war.
The funds are part of a 400-million-euro pledge following a UN appeal made in June, which has proved diffi cult to fi nance amid problems with a European Union budget over-run.
Nearly half the money (40 million euros) is to go on Unicef-led health and educa-tion programmes in Syria,
another 40 million euros will go towards helping some 500,000 Syrian refugees in Jordan.
The remaining fi ve mil-lion euros will allow Syrian students to follow Erasmus degrees at European universities.
The EU says it has so far mobilised 1.9 billion euros in relief aid since the Syrian crisis began in March 2011.
It says fi ve million Syrians are internally displaced, with another two million having fl ed the country. — AFP
EU vows $120m in aid
A7
REGIONT U E S DAY, O CTO B E R 2 9, 2 0 1 3
Jordanian MP held over shooting in parliamentAMMAN: A Jordanian MP was arrested yesterday for his alleged role in a September fi ght in parlia-ment, where another lawmaker fi red a Kalashnikov assault rifl e at a third colleague, an offi cial said.
“Yahia Al Saud was detained today after prosecutors charged him with inciting murder, defa-mation and slander,” the judicial offi cial said. “He was remanded in custody for 14 days pending fur-ther investigation,” he added.
On September 10, MP Talal Al Sharif shot a Kalashnikov at his colleague Qusay Al Dumaisi dur-ing an altercation in the lower
house, without hitting him. The shooting came two days
after an argument broke out in parliament between Dumaisi and Saud. Video footage showed Dumaisi removing his shoes and Saud his belt during the dispute, which fl ared due to diff erences over parliamentary procedure, before they were separated. “Pro-sectors found evidence that Saud incited Sharif to shoot at Dumai-si,” another judicial offi cial said.
MP Khalil Atiyeh, deputy house speaker, confi rmed the detention of Saud.
“Saud at the moment does not
enjoy immunity because parlia-ment is in recess,” Atiyeh said.
Saud, who faces up to three years in prison “could be expelled if convicted”, Atiyeh said. Sharif was expelled from parliament and Dumaisi suspended for one year.
Sharif, currently in jail, has been charged with attempted murder, possession of unlicensed fi rearms and resisting the secu-rity forces. In July 2012, a live television debate on domestic is-sues between two deputies also degenerated into fi sticuff s before one of them pulled out a gun and was overpowered. — AFP
CHARGED
The debate over one or two states rages on the one side, while liberals, who by now have embraced the notion of a two state solution, continue to shy away from any controversy and refuse to address Palestinian human rights
Read the column by Dr James J. Zogby >A12
A8
INDIAT U E S DAY, O CTO B E R 2 9, 2 0 1 3
It is premature to say anything about the blast now as investigation is still going on
Sushilkumar Shinde, Home minister
Mastermind identified as Patna blasts toll is 6
PATNA: Tahseen Akhtar, alleg-edly a member of Indian Mujahi-deen (IM), is the brain behind the string of explosions in Patna yes-terday that left six dead, authori-ties said yesterday.
“Tahseen Akhtar alias Monu, accused of several terrorist at-tacks, is man behind serial blasts in Patna,” an Intelligence Bureau (IB) offi cial here said.
“Initial investigation suggested the involvement of IM in serial blasts in Patna. The modus oper-andi and low-intensity bomb blasts are part of IM operation,” the IB of-fi cial said declining to be named.
The IB offi cial said that one of the suspects who was arrested has confessed to the involvement of IM in Sunday’s seven blasts — six of which took place in and around the Gandhi Maidan where BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Nar-endra Modi later addressed a rally.
“More information will come out after likely arrest of three or four suspects involved in the blasts,” the IB offi cial said.
Tahseen Akhtar, considered to be close to Yasin Bhatkal, the man who co-founded Indian Mujahi-deen, hails from a village in Sa-mastipur. In the last few months, the National Investigation Agen-
cy (NIA) on more than 10 occa-sions raided his native village but failed to fi nd him.
Earlier, the NIA issued an arrest warrant against Tahseen Akhtar, and also announced a reward of Rs1 million for information that could lead to his arrest.
Intelligence failureMeanwhile, the opposition slammed security arrangements yesterday after six people were killed by bombs at a rally by their leader Narendra Modi, fuelling fears of a bloody build-up to next year’s elections.
While Modi himself was not injured by the blasts in Patna, lead-ers of his party expressed outrage yesterday that such an attack could take place at a high-profi le event.
Sushma Swaraj, the party’s lead-er in parliament, tweeted that the attack represented a “gross intelli-gence failure”, while BJP president Rajnath Singh said “extra precau-tions should have been taken” given Modi’s status as BJP candidate in next year’s general elections.
“It is a case of gross under pre-paredness by the state, not even the minimum was done,” BJP spokes-woman Nirmala Sitharaman said.
Leader of Opposition in the Ra-jya Sabha Arun Jaitley said the blasts came as a reminder of “vul-nerability”, as mass gatherings oc-cur in the run-up to elections.
“These blasts are a grim re-minder of the vulnerability of the security of both senior leaders and political events being organised in the run-up to the elections,” Jaitley said.
“India cannot aff ord to be either soft on terror or soft on security. A policy against terror and the need for security cannot be relatable to the policy of vote bank politics of a given government,” he said. - Agencies
Initial investigation
suggested the
involvement of IM in
the Patna serial blasts.
The modus operandi
and low-intensity
bomb blasts are part
of IM operation, an IB
offi cial said
It is a case of gross
under preparedness by
the state, not even the
minimum was done
Nirmala SitharamanBJP spokeswoman
UP IN ARMS: BJP leaders and workers stage a protest against
Patna bomb blasts, in Bengaluru, yesterday. – PTI
NEW DELHI: A day after Gujarat Chief Minister Naren-dra Modi’s rally in Patna was targeted with multiple blasts, the government yesterday said adequate security is being provided to the BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate.
“Central Government has
provided adequate security to Modi,” Home Minister Sushil-kumar Shinde told reporters.
Modi has been accorded Z-plus security with round-the- clock protection by elite National Security Guard com-mandos. Shinde said he would visit Patna today to assess the
situation there following the serial blasts in the city Sunday that has claimed six lives and injured more than 80 people.
“I will review the situation in Patna tomorrow. It is pre-mature to say anything about the blast now as investigation is still going on,” he said. - PTI
Adequate security given to Modi, says Shinde
ARMY DRONECRASHESMilitary personnel and
onlookers at the scene
of an Indian Army
drone crash in
Rajouri district close
to the India-Pakistan
border yesterday.
The unmanned aerial
vehicle (UAV) was on a
surveillance mission, a
report said. — AFP
Karunanidhi’s wife deposes for fi ve hours in 2G caseCHENNAI: DMK president M. Karunanidhi’s wife Dayalu Am-mal, a prosecution witness in the 2G spectrum allocation case, deposed before a magistrate for around fi ve hours here yester-day. Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (CMM) M. Gopalan reached Karunanidhi’s residence around 9.40 am for the testimony. Karunanidhi’s daughter Kanimozhi, charged by the Central Bu-reau of Investigation (CBI) as a co-conspirator in the case, was present at the DMK chief’s residence. Speaking to reporters, K.K. Goel, senior public prosecutor for CBI, said the evidence had been recorded and Dayalu Ammal cooperated. He declined to share more details.
Charges against Kejriwal framed in defamation caseNEW DELHI: A court here yesterday framed charges against Aam Admi Party (AAP) chief Arvind Kejriwal in a defamation case fi led against him by an aide of Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit for his alleged “derogatory remarks” against her during protests against the power tariff hike. Chief Metropolitan Mag-istrate (CMM) Sanjay Bansal fi xed January 18 for recording of evidence in the case. The court, framing charges against Kejri-wal, said prima facie defamation charges are made out against him and put him on trial after he pleaded not guilty.
24kg of heroin recovered in Punjab, four arrestedAMRITSAR: The State Special Operations Cell (SSOC) of Punjab Police arrested four men yesterday and recovered 24kgs of heroin estimated to be valued at $19.5 million on the inter-national market, a police offi cer said. Assistant Inspector Gen-eral (AIG) Ashwani Kumar said the arrested people were Jasbir Singh alias Jassa, the kingpin of the drugs racket, Kuldip Singh, Avtar Singh and Tarsem Singh. - Agencies
B R I E F S
‘New US
immigration
policy to hurt
IT industry’
NEW DELHI: Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Shar-ma yesterday said elements in the new US legislation on im-migration would undermine the competitiveness of Indian IT businesses.
During a meeting with US Chamber of Commerce chair-man Steve Van Andel here, Sharma raised India’s concern over the US policy and said some measures related to skilled non-immigrant visas in the Compre-hensive Immigration Reform Bill passed by the US Senate recently were discriminatory.
Andel said the US Chamber of Commerce is on the “same page” on the issue and there is a need to be more vocal about the ill-eff ects of the proposed legis-lation, said a commerce minis-try statement after the meeting.
Indian fi rms have made invest-ments of more than $5 billion in the US in the last fi ve years, by way of acquisitions. - IANS
C O N C E R N
A9
INDIAT U E S DAY, O CTO B E R 2 9, 2 0 1 3
BJP fi les complaint against Rahul’s ‘hate speeches’ to ECNEW DELHI: A delegation of BJP leaders yesterday submitted a com-plaint against Congress vice-pres-ident Rahul Gandhi at the Election Commission (EC) here, accusing him of delivering hate speeches.
The BJP leaders alleged that Rahul Gandhi made sensational speeches to spread communal ha-tred in society.
“Rahul Gandhi is no Digvijaya Singh... He is the topmost leader of Congress and their superstar cam-paigner. He said BJP incites com-munal violence, he said Muslims are in touch with ISI, and none of the statements has been de-nied by the Congress,” BJP leader Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said.
“We have demanded that the EC
should take action against Rahul Gandhi and Congress,” he told re-porters after submitting the par-ty’s complaint to Chief Election Commissioner V. K. Sampath.
Apology demandedThe BJP also demanded an apol-ogy from the Gandhi scion for stat-ing that the Pakistani intelligence
had contacted Muslim youths af-fected by the Muzaff arnagar riots.
The party on Friday submitted a letter to the Election Commission that Rahul violated the Model Code of Conduct by his hate speeches.
Citing excerpts from Rahul’s speech made in Churu in Rajasthan last week, the Opposition party said its tone and tenor was to incite com-
munal hatred and tension between Hindu-Sikhs and Hindu-Muslims and make an appeal for votes in the favour of Congress on the basis of communal sentiments.
“A conscious attempt has been made by Rahul to mislead the pub-lic by trying to discredit the BJP by making absolutely false, baseless, unfounded allegations against
the BJP and its leaders, which is against the very spirit of the Model Code of Conduct as well as healthy democratic practices,” it said.
The Model Code of Conduct came into force on October 4, in the states of Delhi, Rajasthan, MP, Chhattisgarh and Mizoram, where the polls to the state assemblies are to be held. - Agencies
A L L E G A T I O N
Medha: Not
seen a bigger
liar than Modi
MUMBAI: Social activist Med-ha Patkar yesterday attacked Gujarat Chief Minister Naren-dra Modi for “illegally” pursuing his agenda of raising the height of the Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP) by making false claims.
“I have not seen a bigger liar than Modi. He has again started to play the SSP card despite knowing that the project has failed to live up to the tall politi-cal claims and paper promises. Fully knowing that it will aff ect 250,000 people, he is illegally pushing to clear the fi nal height of the dam,” Patkar told media-persons here.
Patkar, who earlier held dem-onstration opposing the dam’s height, said Modi’s ambitious “Statue of Unity” project was actually a ploy to raise the dam to its full height of 138 metres from the current 122 metres.
She also alleged a nexus be-tween the BJP governments of Gujarat led by Modi and Shivraj Singh Chouhan in MP.
“Modi’s recent claim that MP shall receive 800 MW of free electricity is an absolute lie, as every unit of the power is to be purchased at Rs2.10. The claims are attempts by the Modi-Shivraj nexus to raise the hollow issue of delayed benefi ts due to the SSP,” said Patkar. - IANS
D A M ’ S H E I G H T
A10
PAKISTAN T U E S DAY, O CTO B E R 2 9, 2 0 1 3
‘Serial attacker’ targets women in Sahiwal district, stabs 25ISLAMABAD: A young man has stabbed at least 25 women this month in a small Pakistani town, police said yesterday, and many women and girls are afraid to leave their homes.
“Most of the incidents have happened after sunset, but some schoolgirls were also attacked while going back home after school,” said Haseebul Hassan, the
spokesman for Sahiwal District in eastern Punjab province.
“We cannot confi rm the total number of incidents, but its be-tween 25 to 30.”
Doctors say most of the women in the town of Chichawatni were stabbed on the legs, stomach or back. The attacker’s motives are unclear, although police said he may be insane.
“Most of the women were stabbed after sunset, while two of them were wearing a burka at the time they were attacked,” Dr Asim Waqar at Chichawatni hospital said by telephone.
His hospital received its fi rst case on October 6 and has seen two or three cases a day since. Some victims have required stitches or surgery.
Stabbed multiple timesIn the most recent attack, a man on a motorbike dismounted and stabbed a 22-year-old woman multiple times as she was standing outside her house with her sister, Waqar said.
The police are hunting a sin-gle attacker, Chichawatni Station House Offi cer Tahir Aijaz said. They have announced a reward
equivalent to $2,000 for his arrest. Many victims who sought treat-
ment have not reported the at-tacks because the police have a poor reputation and they are for-bidden by tradition to speak to strange men. Police said that many women or girls now feared to go out at night or to school. Violence against women is common in Pa-kistan and activists say several are
murdered each day. Underfunded police rarely solve the cases, which can take years to work their way through congested courts. — Reuters
P A N I C A N D F E A R
Pakistan is wary of a new ordinance
Read the column by Kamal Siddiqi >A13
DOWN MEMORY LANE Wasim Sajjad, who had served as the acting President of Pakistan twice, looks at his an-
cestral home in Jalandhar, India, yesterday. Sajjad is currently visiting India. — PTI
Sharif’s reform eff orts under IMF scanner
ISLAMABAD: Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif faces the fi rst formal test of his economic policies this week during a visit by the International Monetary Fund. He has a long way to go.
Sharif swept to a landslide vic-tory in May after promising to fi x a sluggish economy.
Default avertedLast month, the IMF saved Pa-kistan from a possible default by agreeing to loan it $6.7 billion over three years, but its condition of quarterly reviews means the cash is not guaranteed.
A team led by the IMF’s region-al adviser, Jeff rey Franks, is visit-
ing this week to see if Pakistan is trying to meet conditions intend-ed to promote reforms.
The government has begun to tackle Pakistan’s fi scal problems, but diplomats say true success will come only when tax evaders are punished.
Yousaf Nazar, a former head of Citigroup’s equity investments unit, said previous governments had secured IMF help by em-phasising the country’s role as a vital ally in the Nato-led war in Afghanistan against Taleban insurgents.
Lack of intent“No government in Pakistan over the last 20 years has ever shown any intent to carry our serious re-forms,” Nazar said.
“The government is just ex-ploiting Pakistan’s position — playing the Taleban card — to get the US and IMF to continue to bail it out.”
Programmes scrappedEleven out of 12 IMF programmes since 1998 have been scrapped because Pakistan failed to insti-tute reforms.
“Governments have tried to ‘game’ the IMF, and achieved par-tial success each time,” two for-mer Fund offi cials concluded in a recent paper.
This time round, Sharif has promised the IMF to privatise loss-making state industries, re-form the energy sector, expand Pakistan’s tiny tax base and cut government borrowing. — Reuters
A delegation is
coming to see
whether Pakistan is
trying to meet the
conditions intended to
promote reforms after
the IMF agreed to a
$6.7 billion loan
The government is just exploiting Pakistan’s position
— playing the Taleban card — to get the US and IMF
to continue to bail it out
Yousaf NazarFormer head of Citigroup’s equity investments unit
HAVE YOUR SAY Send us your comments at facebook.com/timesofoman blog.timesofoman.com [email protected]
A11
ASIAT U E S DAY, O CTO B E R 2 9, 2 0 1 3
China to study smog’s impact on human healthBEIJING: China’s Health Ministry will set up a national network within fi ve years to provide a way of monitoring the long- term impact of chronic air pollution on human health, state media said yesterday. The network will gather data on PM2.5, or particulate matter with a diameter of 2.5 microm-eters, in diff erent locations around the country, the report said, citing a ministry statement. “The document noted that the absence of a long-term, systematic monitoring system has prevented the country from uncovering the link between air pollution and human health,” the report said.
Former Thailand PM faces indictment over crackdownBANGKOK: Thailand’s attorney general has decided to pros-ecute former premier Abhisit Vejjajiva and his ex-deputy on murder charges related to a bloody crackdown on anti-gov-ernment protests in 2010, offi cials said yesterday. The opposi-tion slammed the move as an attempt to pressure it to support a controversial amnesty bill that could allow fugitive former premier Thaksin Shinawatra to return from self-imposed ex-ile. About 90 people died and nearly 1,900 were wounded in a series of street clashes in 2010 between mostly unarmed “Red Shirt” demonstrators and security forces fi ring live rounds in central Bangkok. Abhisit, who is now the opposition leader, and his former deputy Suthep Thaugsuban ordered security forces to reclaim areas of the capital and allowed authorities to use arms, said a spokesman for the attorney general’s offi ce.
Suspect stoned to death after Afghan bus blastKABUL: Angry villagers in Afghanistan stoned a man to death and riddled his body with bullets, believing he set off a bomb on a bus that killed 18 civilians, offi cials said yesterday. The roadside blast ripped through a minibus carrying wedding guests in the central province of Ghazni on Sunday, killing 18 people. Villagers hunted down a local man who was found hid-ing in a chicken coop next to his home, with the bomb’s remote control apparently found nearby, Ghazni deputy provincial governor Mohammad Ali Ahmadi said. A crowd of more than 100 people dragged the man out, beat him with sticks and then stoned him with rocks until he was dead.
Japan N-watchdog urges ‘bold’ Fukushima actionTOKYO: Japan’s nuclear watchdog yesterday urged “bold and drastic” action to fi x problems with radioactive water at Fuku-shima, as it warned of the growing risks over coming months. TEPCO is battling to clean up the mess caused when reactors went into meltdown after the March 2011 tsunami struck and knocked out cooling systems. - Agencies
B R I E F SFive die as car ploughs into Tiananmen crowd
BEIJING: Five people including a Philippine tourist were killed and 38 others injured after a vehicle ploughed into crowds in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square yesterday and caught fi re, police said.
The blaze sent clouds of smoke billowing into the air near a giant portrait of Mao Zedong that hangs at one end of the square, the site of pro-democracy protests in 1989.
Witnesses and reports said the SUV drove along the pavement outside the Forbidden City, the former imperial palace, before
crashing -- prompting speculation the incident was intentional.
Immediately afterwards a secu-rity operation swung into force on the vast plaza, the symbolic centre of the Chinese state.
Explosion and fi re“I saw a car turn a bend and sud-denly it was driving on the pave-ment. It happened fast but looked like it knocked people over,” one eyewitness, said.
“I heard an explosion and saw fi re. The scene was very frighten-ing,” he added. “There were para-
military police who told people to get back into their cars and stop taking pictures.”
Images posted on Chinese social media sites showed the blazing shell of the SUV and a plume of black smoke rising near a portrait of communist China’s founder that hangs on the Forbidden City’s tow-ering wall, while crowds looked on.
Several pictures posted online were deleted within minutes, streets leading to the square were blocked off and barriers were erected.
Two AFP reporters were tempo-rarily detained close to the site and
images were deleted from their digital equipment.
“The incident led to fi ve deaths and 38 injuries,” Beijing police said on their verifi ed account on Sina Weibo, a Chinese equivalent of Twitter.
The driver of the vehicle and two passengers were killed, along with two tourists, one a woman from the Philippines and the other a man from Guangdong province in southern China, they said.
Three Philippine tourists and one Japanese were among the injured, police added, saying the vehicle had crashed into the guardrail on Jinshui Bridge, which crosses the moat around the For-bidden City, and then caught fi re.
The Southern Metropolis Dai-ly quoted an injured Philippine woman named Francesca as say-ing: “I heard the car’s horn honk-ing, but I noticed it too late. My mind went completely blank, and when I woke again I was complete-ly on the ground.”
Tiananmen Square is gener-ally kept under tight security, with both uniformed and plain-clothes personnel deployed. Many are equipped with fi re extinguishers.
Social media users speculated that the car was crashed inten-tionally. - AFP
Witnesses said the
SUV drove along the
pavement outside
the Forbidden City,
before crashing —
prompting speculation
that the incident was
intentional
MISHAP: Vehicles travel along Chang’an Avenue as smoke rises in
front of a portrait of late Chinese Chairman Mao Zedong at Tianan-
men Square in Beijing, yesterday. – Reuters
Four dead in fresh Bangladesh violenceDHAKA: Fresh violence erupted across Bangladesh yesterday, leaving at least four people dead as rival party activists clashed on the second day of a strike amid a mounting political crisis.
Police said street battles broke out throughout Bangladesh between thousands of supporters of the rul-ing party and the opposition, which is demanding the prime minister quit and make way for elections un-
der a caretaker government. A bomb blast in the western Ha-
rina Kundu town killed a local op-position offi cial, while elsewhere two activists were killed in separate clashes and a truck driver died after being pelted with bricks, police said.
Local offi cial targeted“Apparently the bomb was hurled, targeting him (the local offi cial). He died on his way to the hospi-
tal,” local police chief Mohibul Islam said.
At least 16 people in total have now died in the unrest that has es-calated since Friday, when the op-position Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and its allies staged mass rallies over arrangements for the elections.
Television footage yesterday showed protestors barricading highways, exploding crude bombs
and attacking political party of-fi ces in dozens of towns, with po-lice responding in some cases with tear gas and rubber bullets.
Schools, shops and other busi-nesses remained closed yester-day in towns and cities for the strike, which started on Sunday, while thousands of extra police and paramilitary offi cers have been deployed on the streets, po-lice said. - AFP
P O L I T I C A L C R I S I S
COMMEN ARYT I M E S O F O M A NT U E S DAY, O CTO B E R 2 9, 2 0 1 3
Founder: Essa bin Mohammed Al Zedjali Chairman and Editor-in-Chief: Mohamed Issa Al ZadjaliDeputy Editor-in-Chief: Anees bin Essa Al Zedjali Chief Executive Offi cer: Ahmed Essa Al Zedjali
Printed and published by: Muscat Press & Publishing HouseP.O. Box 770, Ruwi, Postal Code: 112, Sultanate of Oman.
Israeli and Palestinian negotiators are meeting in the latest chapter of the de-cades-long saga of on-again, off -again peace talks. With no leaks, and even less optimism, there is no shortage of specu-lation as to how the talks are going or whether any agreement is even possible.
Here in the US, supporters of the Palestinians are engaged in a sometimes heated but rather point-less debate as to what the “deal” should include or whether no deal is the best outcome — since that, it is projected, might lead inevitably to a one-state solution. This entire discussion is not only unedify-ing, it is a waste of energy and a cop-out.
This is not to say that the outcome doesn’t mat-ter. Rather it is an acknowledgment of the fact that the ultimate resolution of the confl ict won’t be impacted by the debates. Instead of exhaust-ing ourselves arguing about what we can’t control, we should be focused on what we can do to shine a light on the daily injustices visited upon Pales-tinians and mobilizing support for those whose human rights are being abused. It is here that an impact can be made.
There are human rights groups in Israel and Palestine that are engaged in this eff ort. They are documenting: cases of land confi scation and home demolitions; prisoners held without charges or tri-al; instances where vigilante gangs of settlers have desecrated mosques, cut down olive trees, beaten or killed Palestinian youngsters; and where the military has used collective punishment, excessive force, or acted to humiliate Palestinian civilians.
The victims of these illegal and immoral behav-iours deserve our attention. Their cases should be adopted, their names need to be known, and they should be supported until the injustice ends.
Thirty-six years ago we formed the Palestine Hu-man Rights Campaign (PHRC). Because none of the existing human rights groups would adopt Pal-estinian cases, we took it upon ourselves to adopt individual cases of Palestinians who: had been tortured; had their homes demolished; had been detained for prolonged periods without charges; or expelled from their homeland.
Back then, in the American discussion about the Israeli/Palestinian confl ict, Israelis were under-stood to be full human beings, Palestinians were not known. Americans knew Israelis as real people who had hopes and fears. Palestinians, on the other hand, were an abstraction with whom most Ameri-cans could not identify. And so Palestinians were presented either in negative stereotypes, or merely as a problem to be solved. We hoped to remedy this, by putting a human face on the Palestinian people.
Many of the Arab American and Palestine sup-port groups that existed back then were engaged, like now, in endless arguments about issues over which they had no control: which “political line”
was the most correct or what should be the form of governance for the future Palestinian state.
And back then, much of the American liberal left was largely silent on Palestinian issues. Those that were engaged, focused their eff orts on setting up “dialogues” in the vain attempt to promote recon-ciliation between Arabs and Jews.
When the PHRC came into existence, we were denounced by both groups. On the one hand we were told that we had “sold out” because we ig-nored the ideological debates and weren’t “pure” enough. The peace groups kept us at an arms-length saying that by challenging Israel’s behaviour we made Jewish groups defensive and uncom-fortable, thereby frustrating the eff ort to create a “no fault” dialogue.
More than three decades later, the situation is much the same.
The debate over one or two states rages on the one side, while liberals, who by now have embraced the notion of a two state solution, continue to shy away from any controversy and refuse to address Palestinian human rights. The former eff ort is wasted time and energy. The latter is an abdication of morality. Meanwhile Palestinians are still un-known and their rights are still violated.
As long as Palestinians are not known, the Amer-ican discourse about peace will remain hopelessly one-sided. When Israeli humanity is presented as confronting the Palestinian “problem” — guess who wins. If Americans can’t see or identify with the Palestinians: who lost their homes and lands; who were humiliated at check points in front of their children; or who were abused and denied ba-sic rights as prisoners - then all they will care about is how to insure security for Israelis.
To correct this situation, what is required is an embrace of justice and human rights, or as one of my early mentors, Dr. Israel Shahak (founder of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights) would say “to fi ght for equal rights for every human being”.
Whether there will be one state or two states will be decided, if it even can be, by the negotiators. But meanwhile, what of the victims? Who will speak for them? Who will give those who suff er the hope that their cries for justice are heard? And who will inform the US public that it is not only Israeli hu-manity that is threatened by the absence of peace? In fact, it is Palestinians who have paid and contin-ue to pay an enormous price.
Recognition of this reality is a key ingredient in the search for a just peace, because only when Pal-estinians are known and their rights are fully rec-ognized will the US feel the need to press for bal-anced peace that recognizes the rights and needs of Israelis and Palestinians alike.
The author is the president of Arab American Institute. All the views and opinions expressed in the article are solely those of the author and do not refl ect those of Times of Oman.
Who’ll speak for the Palestinian victims?
The debate over one
or two states rages
on the one side, while
liberals, who by now
have embraced the
notion of a two state
solution, continue to
shy away from any
controversy and refuse
to address Palestinian
human rights
Phasing out incandescent bulbs has stirred emotions This refers to the letter, Phasing the incandescent bulbs out makes sense (October 28). The move to phase out incandescent bulbs in Britain has created very strong emotions among Britons, said a section of the British media. A large number of them, especially a whole generation that has grown up with incandescent light bulbs, are indeed very sad to see the end of an item they grew up with. An English daily even vouched to distribute incandescent electric bulbs in thousands. Many, in fact, collected the bulbs as souvenirs. And a few others stockpiled old-fashioned electric bulbs of diff erent watts to sell them at a premium to souvenir and antique collectors. Reports in British newspapers suggested that the
price of 100w bulbs had already soared to £40. Amrita TalwarMumtaz
The furore was created more by nostalgia This refers to the letter, Phasing the incandescent bulbs out makes sense (October 28). There was a Facebook page titled ‘I Hate Energy Saving Light Bulbs’, where Britons poured out all their curses against the new bulbs. Someone announced to wear a dark glass all 24 hours and pretend being blinded by the EU ban. And yet another dedicated fan of incan-descent bulbs decided to burn 100 candles in her kitchen in addition to the new energy-saving bulbs which were being promoted by the European Union. The low
energy lights, however, took a bit more time to warm up and to get fully lit. What’s more, it was also not the brightest or even brighter than the one being replaced. But the moot question was whether the move to withdraw or ban the incandescent bulbs warrant so much of furore? At the root of the intense feelings generated by the extinction of the 100w light bulb there actually was sheer nostalgia and nothing more or less.Sumit ChatterjeeQurum
Sting operations of Indian TV channels lack ethicsThe sting operations carried out by the Indian television news channels is an example unethi-cal journalism where, unlike the investigative journalism of print
media, the television reporters resort to guiles and false imper-sonations. Viewed from the ethics of journalism, these sting opera-tions are absolutely unethical and deserve a blanket ban. K. R. SrinivasSeeb
Democracy, pluralism are in peril in Europe todayThe great gulf between Northern and Southern Europe is widening by the day. As it does so, resent-ment increases as the eff orts to save the eurozone infl ict ever greater pain upon the feckless, unhappy countries on the Medi-terranean littoral. Democracy and pluralism in the continent are in an unprecedented peril.Sumitra DasguptaQurum
READERS’ FORUM
Letters, containing not more than 200 words with full name, address and telephone number, may be sent by mail (Times of Oman, P.O. Box 770, P.C. 112, Ruwi), by fax (24813153) or by e-mail ([email protected])
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter
MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.
WASHINGTON WATCH
“Insure with
New India and
be secure”
Humans are biological survivors, part of an unbroken genetic stream linked to the remote past. Yet the history of civiliza-tions — rising, fl ourishing, crashing — is episodic. Why do
prosperous civilizations vanish? One team of scientists, studying an-cient pollens in the Middle East, believes it can explain the sudden col-lapse of the grand cultures that fl ourished there some 3,200 years ago. The cause — so the pollen says — was long-term drought. The strength of those vanished civilizations — Egyptian, Hittite, Mycenaean, a dense network of trading cultures in the eastern Mediterranean — can hardly be disputed. Until now, no one has been certain what caused them to collapse. As part of a new, comprehensive eff ort to reconstruct the nature of life in ancient Israel, a team of scientists in 2010 began studying core samples taken from beneath the Sea of Galilee.
They analyzed pollen samples from those cores at 40-year intervals, creating a fi ne-grained portrait of climatic changes during the period in question. What the pollen samples showed was a broad shift in veg-etation consistent with drought at its most intense around 1250 to 1100 BC. Drought is both a cause of cultural disturbance and a cause of other causes. It induces a cascade of changes, disrupting agriculture, trade and social cohesion. The coherence that produces a civilization can swiftly fall apart under those pressures, whether it occurs in the Middle East in the Late Bronze Age or in the American Southwest in the 12th century, when the people known as the Anasazi reached their cultural peak and then collapsed. The pollen fi ndings from the Sea of Galilee are interesting in and of themselves, but now, in an era of in-tensifying drought in so many places, they require more attention as reminders of how vulnerable even the strongest human societies may be to natural forces. - The Express Tribune
What the pollen says
As Britain prepares for the storms of winter, the Prime Minister must be wishing he had prepared better for the political bat-tering that his Government is taking over heating bills. This
wasn’t the kind of political weather he anticipated this autumn. Cam-eron and the Chancellor, George Osborne, had banked on having a rela-tively easy time of it, telling the country that austerity had paid off , that growth levels were rising and that the economy had turned a corner. Instead, ministers are fumbling for answers as Labour makes the run-ning with pledges to bring unpopular energy giants to heel. Rising GDP is almost forgotten. Nor does the storm over energy show any sign of abating. In the latest salvo, the charity Age UK says its latest research suggests more than three million elderly people fear they will be not be able to stay warm this winter, largely because of rising energy bills. A mass of contradictory-sounding advice is not easing the fears of older people. The Government’s Cold Weather Plan urges the elderly to keep the heating on all the time. Other voices insist that heating ought to be turned off by day, except in the living room. Cameron urges us to shop around for energy providers. The Energy Secretary, Ed Davey, among other things, counsels thicker jumpers, a piece of advice that has met considerable derision, inviting comparisons to the saying attributed, perhaps unfairly, to Marie Antoinette – that hungry Parisians should eat cake, if they can’t aff ord bread.
Cameron is weary of being called a posh boy who doesn’t know the price of milk. But it is his own fault if the stinging words of the dissi-dent Tory MP Nadine Dorries now come back to haunt him. It is re-miss of him that he failed to anticipate the level of outrage felt over the recent energy price rises. Worries about these bills are now one of people’s most pressing concerns, surveys show. A real fear of shiver-ing through the coming winter is no longer limited to old people, or the poor. It now embraces a good portion of the middle class as well.
This is an alarming development for the Tories, as the votes of that “squeezed middle” section of society may prove decisive in deciding what is likely to be a tight election. The Government will have to do more than write off Ed Miliband’s call for an energy price freeze as Marxist. It should have given Sir John Major’s call for a one-off wind-fall tax on the energy companies a more respectful hearing. Above all, it has got to stop rewacting and show some sign it is taking control of the energy issue. If it fails to do so, the idea will gain ground that the Government does not care about energy bills, or any other kind of bill, and Labour’s charge that the Tories are just the party of the rich will start to stick. If that happens, no amount of good GDP news will help Cameron in 2015. At roughly double the current price of electricity, the fi gure is bound to stir complaints that ministers have given in to a for-eign energy giant at the expense of hard-pressed British consumers by whom the subsidy will inevitably be paid over time in the form of yet higher bills.- The Independent
Rising anger over fuel bills in Britain
D R J A M E S J . Z O G B Y
PERSPEC IVET I M E S O F O M A N T U E S DAY, O CTO B E R 2 9, 2 0 1 3T I M E S O F O M A N A13
There has, in the last couple of years, been a rising inter-est in teaching children as
young as fi ve how to program com-puters. A new computer science curriculum has been introduced into schools in England and there are many of out-of-school cod-ing clubs up and down the country aimed at boosting programming skills. A £25 bare bones computer called the Raspberry Pi has soared in popularity and is helping chil-dren to code using a language
called Scratch. Even the BBC is wading into this space. Director General Tony Hall said he had plans to “bring coding into every home, business and school in the UK” in an initiative that will launch in 2015.
But the Beeb has form in this area: it put its name to a series of micro computers in the 1980s and they were taken up by pretty much every school in the land.
There are some people, however, who believe teaching children to code is pointless. Journalist Wil-lard Foxton wrote a blog on the Daily Telegraph website claiming “coding is a niche, mechanical skill, a bit like plumbing or car repair”.
He made his argument personal, calling the bulk of developers “ex-ceptionally dull weirdos” and said ICT was taught by “the runts of the teaching litter and seen as pointless by pupils”. But you only have to go back to the 1980s to see just why an apathetic approach to coding can be very damaging, more so now that we live in an age when children are surrounding by technology and use it every day. Thirty years ago, the Sinclair ZX81 was the height
of technology or at least it was for a lot of people. It cost £125 and those children who had parents who could aff ord this were very lucky. The same goes for children who had any form of computer at home, be it a Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC or, God forbid, a Dragon32.
It meant they had a chance to get to grips with the workings of a com-puter and an opportunity to code.
Many children did indeed turn their hands to programming. Whereas their parents’ battles with technology usually extended no further than trying to decipher the VCR, the kids, having hoodwinked parents into buying them a comput-er “for their education”, were play-ing games with titles as diverse as Jet Set Willy and Sgrizam, as well as managing to code their own.
It was not uncommon for teenag-ers to spend time after school tap-ping away. Some became rich doing so. It’s no accident Britain became a hotbed of games development tal-ent (an industry now worth £1 bil-lion to UK GDP).
But even though schools had those BBC Micros, not everyone got the chance to use them. They were
so expensive that schools could only aff ord to buy a small number. At my primary school they sat idle most of the time. I remember a group of us looking at them in awe, unable to turn them on because no-one had shown us how. For some, they were scary objects.
It caused a split. Those who had computers at home were very comfortable with the machines. Those who didn’t could barely tap two keys without spending an eternity scouring the keyboard wondering why someone had placed them all higgledy-piggledy. Computer-less children grew up computer illiterate. Worse, some became technophobes.
Today, we have a chance to rec-tify the mistakes of the past and en-sure that every child has the same start. By introducing all children to programming, it whets their ap-petite, opens up fresh possibilities, turns them from consumers into creators and aids their thought pro-cesses. Even if children do not go on to become programmers later in life, they will have learnt to express logic in a form that can be processed automatically. - The Independent
TODAY IN HISTORY
OPINION POLL
1618 Sir Walter Raleigh is executed. After the death of Queen Elizabeth, Raleigh’s enemies spread rumors that he was opposed the accession of King James.
1787 Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni opens in Prague.
1814 The Demologos, the fi rst steam-
powered warship, launched in New York City.
1927 Russian archaeologist Peter Kozloff
apparently uncovers the tomb of Genghis Khan in the Gobi Desert, a claim still in dispute.
1952 French forces launch Operation
Lorraine against Viet Minh supply bases in Indochina.
COUNCIL OF STATE OFFICE MEETSMUSCAT: – The Council of State offi ce held its 17th meeting of this year yesterday under the chairmanship of Sheikh Hamoud bin Abdullah Al Harthy, president of the council. The meeting approved minutes of the last meeting and reviewed the procedural list prepared by an apparatus of the council to implement the decisions by the offi ce of the Council of State. The offi ce also reviewed issues on the agenda of the fourth session of the council scheduled for October 31.
FROM OUR ARCHIVES
The question today
is why couldn’t the
Obamacare system
be made simpler?
Well, if we are to
answer this in one
word we can only
say that it couldn’t
made made
simpler mainly
because of politics
The good news about HealthCare.gov, the portal to Obamacare’s health exchange, is that the administration is no longer mini-
mising its problems. That’s the fi rst step toward fi xing the mess —
and it will get fi xed, although it’s anyone’s guess whether the new promise of a smoothly function-ing system by the end of November will be met. We know, after all, that Obamacare is workable, since many states that chose to run their own ex-changes are doing quite well.
But while we wait for the geeks to do their stuff , let’s ask a related question: Why did this thing have to be so complicated in the fi rst place?
It’s true that the Aff ordable Care Act isn’t as complex as opponents make it out to be. Basical-ly, it requires that insurance companies off er the same policies to everyone; it requires that each individual then buy one of these policies (the in-dividual mandate); and it off ers subsidies, depend-ing on income, to keep insurance aff ordable.
Still, there’s a lot for people to go through. Not only do they have to choose insurers and plans, they have to submit a lot of personal information so the government can determine the size of their subsidies. And the software has to integrate all this information, getting it to all the relevant parties — which isn’t happening yet on the federal site.
Imagine, now, a much simpler system in which the government just pays your major medical ex-penses. In this hypothetical system you wouldn’t have to shop for insurance, nor would you have to provide lots of personal details. The government would be your insurer, and you’d be covered auto-matically by virtue of being an American.
Of course, we don’t have to imagine such a sys-tem, because it already exists. It’s called Medicare, it covers all Americans 65 and older, and it’s enor-mously popular. So why didn’t we just extend that system to cover everyone?
The proximate answer was politics: Medicare for all just wasn’t going to happen, given both the power of the insurance industry and the reluc-tance of workers who currently have good insur-ance through their employers to trade that insur-ance for something new.
Given these political realities, the Aff ordable Care Act was probably all we could get — and make no mistake, it will vastly improve the lives of tens of millions of Americans.
Still, the fact remains that Obamacare is an im-mense kludge — a clumsy, ugly structure that more or less deals with a problem, but in an ineffi cient
way. The thing is, such better-than-nothing-but-pretty-bad solutions have become the norm in American governance. As Steven Teles of Johns Hopkins University put it in a recent essay, we’ve become a “kludgeocracy.” And the main reason that is happening, I’d argue, is ideology.
To see what I mean, look at the constant de-mands that we make Medicare — which needs to work harder on cost control but does a better job even on that front than private insurers — both more complicated and worse.
There are demands for means-testing, which would involve collecting all the personal infor-mation Obamacare needs but Medicare doesn’t. There is pressure to raise the Medicare age, forc-ing 65- and 66-year-old Americans to deal with private insurers instead.
And Republicans still dream of dismantling Medicare as we know it, instead giving seniors vouchers to buy private insurance. In eff ect, al-though they never say this, they want to convert Medicare into Obamacare.
Why would we want to do any of these things? You might say, to reduce the burden on taxpayers — but Medicare is cheaper than private insur-ance, so anything taxpayers might gain by hack-ing away at the program would be more than lost in higher premiums.
And it’s not even clear that government spend-ing would fall: the Congressional Budget Offi ce recently concluded that raising the Medicare age would produce almost no federal savings.
No, the assault on Medicare is really about an ideology that is fundamentally hostile to the no-tion of the government helping people, and tries to make whatever help is given as limited and indi-rect as possible, restricting its scope and running it through private corporations. And this ideology, at a fundamental level — more fundamental, even, than vested interests — is why Obamacare ended up being a big kludge.
In saying this I don’t mean to excuse the offi cials and contractors who made such a mess of health reform’s fi rst month. Nor, on the other side, am I suggesting that health reform should have waited until the political system was ready for single-payer. For now, the priority is to get this kludge working, and once that’s done, America will be-come a better place. In the longer run, however, we have to tackle that ideology. A society commit-ted to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn’t have to be that way. - The New York Times News Service
Obamacare is workable but rather clumsy and ugly
HISTORYNET.COM
Rare hybrid solar eclipse excites astronomers
GraphicsGraphic News /
A rare hybrid eclipse takes place on Nov 3 when the Moon passes directly across the Sun, producing a fleeting annular eclipse along the US east coast, followed by a total eclipse across the Atlantic & central Africa
Source: NASA
EA
RT
H
Umbra
SUN
SUN
Penumbra
Umbra
Moon
SUN
11:3012:00
12:3013:00 13:30 14:00
Path Of Total EclipsePath OfAnnular
Eclipse
% 100
% 80
% 60
% 40
% 20
% 20
% 40
% 60
% 80
% 100
Greatest totaleclipse
All timesGMT
Occurs at 12:47:36 GMT, lasts for 1 minute and 39seconds. Path width 57km
Never look directly ateclipse with naked eye, binoculars, cameras or
telescopes withoutspecialized solar filters
Total EclipseMoon’s umbral shadow obscures Sun completely
Annular EclipseMoon is further away from Earth than in total eclipse, so outeredge of Sun (annulus) is visible
Hybrid eclipse occurs when, due to curvature of Earth’s surface, it appears as total eclipse in some locations, and annular eclipsein othersSUN
LAST POLL RESULT
Will the NSA spying scandal aff ect and disrupt Nato alliance?
Should Egypt reopen the Rafah tunnels with Gaza on humanitarian grounds?
Visit timesofoman.com to cast your vote
No76.5%
Can’t say5.9%
Yes17.6%
This week, President of Pakistan Mamnoon Hussain promulgated
the Protection of Pakistan Ordinance. We are told by the government’s PR section that this ordinance maintains that the writ of the state would be established at all costs. It is a lofty thought. But one is unclear why an ordinance is needed for this purpose. Such questions are possibly some-what unfashionable to ask in this charged environment so maybe best to let it go.
According to the govern-ment, the ordinance ensures that security and law enforce-ment agencies would jointly investigate incidents of ter-rorism and elements creat-ing terror and fear would be considered as enemies of the state. So far so good.
The draft of the ordinance also states that Pakistan and its people have been exposed to undeclared and thankless wars that proliferated in the country’s neighbourhood since 1979. It says elements hostile to its existence, in col-laboration with unscrupulous locals have since claimed the lives of 40, 000 people of all ages and religious denomina-tions in the second campaign that began in 2001.
Both 1979 and 2001 are sig-nifi cant in terms of the history of the region. 1979 was the year of the Iranian revolution as well as the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
The year 2001 we all know was when the September 11 attacks happened in the US. But one is unclear why the two are being linked.
Possibly because in 1979, Pakistan government started sowing what it then went on to start reaping in the post 2001 scenario.
The ordinance reads “ex-traordinary disposition dic-tates unusual dispensation.” This should raise some red fl ags. The ordinance gives extraordinary powers to the law enforcers and security establishment.
This possibly goes against the spirit of Pakistan’s consti-tution. For example, one such power that may be given is to hold a person without fram-ing any charges for more than
three months. Such strong-arm measures did not help in the past. In most instances, they have made things worse.
Mindful of the furore it will create, the government insists that the new legislative initia-tives have been proposed in line with international best practices, to declare that the constitution and rule of law shall be the overarching um-brella. But this is a claim that needs to be tested. All evi-dence suggests otherwise.
The powers that be, how-ever, feel this is the way to go. There is a belief that one of the reasons why Pakistan is los-ing the war against militants is because it is not punishing them hard enough. There is a point there.
But whether this is being addressed through this pro-posed legislation remains to be seen. It is one thing to ar-rest the terrorists, another to follow up and see them through to their convictions.
Freshly back from the US, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif will want all political par-ties to vote in favour of the ordinance when it is tabled in parliament. One fears that as has happened in the past with legislation that give ex-traordinary powers to govern-ment agencies, this too will be passed without much debate.
One remembers how in the US, no one wanted to be seen to be unpatriotic and all sorts of legislation that curtailed personal freedoms was passed.
The problem is that such moves may end up backfi ring, more so in Pakistan where the ability and the system are both under question. There is even less accountability. One is afraid that innocent people will bear the brunt of this. Pakistan needs to have more transparency.
Take for example the opera-tion being conducted by the Rangers in Karachi. While it claims success, one needs to look at the long term. The na-tion is still unclear why the prime minister decided to do away with an independent body to oversee the whole operation. He had announced this earlier. Today no one knows for sure how many people are being caught every day, how many released and what is happening in between.
The Islamabad-appointed Karachi police chief has also announced that more than a thousand ex-servicemen will be hired by the city police soon. This is outra-geous. What is even more deafening is the silence of all parties concerned.
At a time when such ap-pointments should be made on merit and of people who belong to Karachi, to decide to hire more outsiders will only add to the problems of the city. - The Express Tribune
Pakistan is wary of a new ordinance
Storms just don’t tear down
K A M A L S I D D I Q I
D AV I D C R O O K E S
PA U L K R U G M A N
A14
WORLDT U E S DAY, O CTO B E R 2 9, 2 0 1 3
Clearly this has been a diffi cult night for many Londoners, and continues to be an incredibly trying morning
Boris Johnson, Mayor of London
Eight lives lost as storm lashes northern Europe
LONDON: At least eight peo-ple died and more than 300,000 homes were left without power yesterday as a fi erce storm swept across northern Europe.
Four people were killed in Britain, two in Germany, one in The Netherlands and another in France as heavy rain and high winds battered the region over-night and into the morning.
The rough conditions at sea also forced rescuers to abandon the search for a 14-year-old boy who disappeared while playing in the surf on a southern English beach on Sunday.
British Prime Minister David Cameron described the loss of life as “hugely regrettable”.
Winds reached 99 miles per hour on the Isle of Wight off the southern English coast, according to Britain’s Met Offi ce national weather centre.
Heavy rain and winds of 80 mph elsewhere brought down thousands of trees and caused the mass cancellation of train ser-vices across southern England and The Netherlands, as well as in parts of Germany.
In Britain, a 17-year-old girl died after a tree fell onto the parked caravan where she was
sleeping, while a man in his fi fties died when a tree fell on his car, po-lice said.
Gas pipe explosionThe bodies of a man and a woman were later found in the rubble of three houses in London that col-lapsed in an explosion thought to have been caused after a gas pipe was ruptured in the storm.
A woman in Amsterdam was killed by a falling tree as she walked along a canal, while a woman in her fi fties was pre-sumed dead after being swept away by waves in the western French region of Brittany, author-ities in those countries said.
And in western Germany, two people were killed when a tree fell on their car.
Some 270,000 homes lost pow-er across Britain, with a further 75,000 homes aff ected in north-ern France, according to industry
organisations. Thousands were later re-connected.
The electricity also went down at a nuclear power station in southeast England. Dungeness B station automatically closed down both its reactors, leaving its diesel generators to provide pow-er for essential safety systems.
Even Buckingham Palace in London was aff ected, although Queen Elizabeth II was not stay-ing there at the time.
A spokeswoman said several slates fell off the roof and two of the windows were cracked.
Train operators across south-ern England had on Sunday can-celled services for the next morn-ing in anticipation of bad weather, following warnings by forecasters and the media.
Many commuters delayed their journeys until the storm passed mid-morning, leaving central London stations eerily quiet dur-
ing what normally would have been the rush hour.
London’s Heathrow airport cancelled 130 fl ights, about 10 percent, while delays were reported on the Eurostar cross-Channel train service due to speed restrictions.
‘Trying morning’“Clearly this has been a diffi cult night for many Londoners, and continues to be an incredibly try-ing morning,” said London Mayor Boris Johnson.
More than 450 people were stranded on two ferries outside the port of Dover after it closed for more than two hours, fi nally dock-ing shortly after 0900 GMT.The Met Offi ce said 50 millime-tres (almost two inches) of rain fell in some areas of Britain over-night, while the Environment Agency issued around 130 fl ood alerts. — AFP
Four people were
killed in Britain, two
in Germany, one in
The Netherlands
and another in France
as heavy rain and
high winds battered
the region
AFTERMATH: Contractors work on clearing the debris after a tree fell on a car during a storm in
London, yesterday. More than 300,000 homes were left without power across northern Europe and
trains and planes were cancelled as a fi erce storm battered the region. — AFP
Lenient sentence in gang rape case sparks protestNAIROBI: Over one million fu-rious campaigners have signed a petition demanding justice after three men accused of brutally gang raping a Kenyan school-girl were ordered to cut grass as punishment.
The ferocious attack on the teenage girl and lack of ac-tion against those who carried it out has sparked outrage in the country.
The 16-year-old, known by the pseudonym Liz, was report-edly attacked, beaten and then raped by six men as she returned from her grandfather’s funeral in western Kenya in June, be-fore the gang dumped her, bleed-ing and unconscious, in a deep sewage ditch.
Yesterday, the number of those who signed an online petition started by Kenyan woman Nebila Abdulmelik and publicised by the campaign group Avaaz passed the million mark and was contin-uing to grow.
‘Worst punishment’“Letting rapists walk free after making them cut grass has to be the world’s worst punishment for rape,” Abdulmelik said. “It’s an absolute failure of the entire sys-tem and an absolutely shameful response by Kenya’s police.”
The victim knew some of the
attackers, and three of them were taken by villagers to the local po-lice station, the girl’s mother ear-lier told Kenyan media.
“The three... were only or-dered to cut grass around the police camp and set free shortly after,” the girl’s mother told the paper.
She is now wheelchair-bound with a broken back, caused either by the beating or by being hurled down into the pit, and also suf-fered serious internal injuries from the rape.
“My wish is to see justice done,” the girl told The Nation newspaper, which fi rst reported the story and has led a campaign including raising funds to cover medical costs.
“I want my attackers arrested and punished.”
Police failuresLawmakers have condemned the attack and subsequent police fail-ures, ordering action to be taken.
“Liz’s ordeal is unbearable to imagine, but the only way to stop police dealing with victims with such heartless negligence is by holding them to account,” said Dalia Hashad, campaign director for Avaaz.
Kenya’s police chief David Ki-maiyo said in a statement at the weekend that “investigations are complete”, and that the force was awaiting only instructions from the offi ce of the director of public prosecutions.
He gave no further details.Rape is a major problem in
Kenya, and is often not taken se-riously by the police, according to studies.
One government study in 2009 found that as many as a fi fth of women and girls were victims of sexual violence, although other later studies have put the rate even higher. — AFP
K E N Y A
GROWING ANGER: African
Women’s Development and
Communication Network
Communication head Nebila
Abdulmelik points at a page of
the campaign group Avaaz’s
website yesterday in Nairobi
showing the number of over
a million campaigners who
signed a petition to demand
justice for a Kenyan schoolgirl
who was gang raped. — AFP
Cypriot police hunt for man kidnapped as toddler NICOSIA: Cypriot police said yesterday they were investigating claims that a British man believed kidnapped as a toddler on the Greek island of Kos in 1991 was sighted in Cyprus recently. “An investigation has started and it was launched after we received a message from Interpol,” a police spokesman said. “But as yet there is nothing concrete to announce,” he added. The case of Ben Needham was re-ignited after Greek authorities were hand-ed a video of a man seen in Cyprus who resembles a computer generated image of how he would look now, aged 23.
Six killed in Spain gas leakMADRID: A gas leak at a coal mine in northwestern Spain killed six people yesterday, an emergency services spokesman said. Five others were taken to hospital in Leon in northwest-ern Spain after the gas leak at the Santa Lucia mine, the spokes-man said. Emergency services had initially reported that fi ve people had died.
Sugar factory fi re put outRIO DE JANEIRO: A fi re at a sugar warehouse in Brazil has been put out after unleashing a fl ood of caramel that threatened nearby homes, the company said yesterday. “It is now under con-trol,” a spokesman for the Agrovia sugar company said. The blaze erupted on Friday triggering a fl ow of melted sugar that spread into the town. — AFP
B R I E F S
A15
WORLDT U E S DAY, O CTO B E R 2 9, 2 0 1 3
SMARTEN UPDRIVE SAFE
A TIMES OF OMAN HANDS-FREE DRIVING INITIATIVE
The question today is why couldn’t the Obamacare system be made simpler? Well, if we are to answer this in one word we can only say that it couldn’t made made simpler mainly because of politics
Read the column by Paul Krugman >A13
Michael Jackson’s doctor released from prison
LOS ANGELES: Michael Jackson’s per-sonal physician, convicted for manslaugh-ter by administering a lethal dose of an-aesthetic to the pop singer, was released from a Los Angeles prison yesterday after serving half of his four-year sentence. Conrad Murray was released to his rep-resentatives, Los Angeles County Sheriff
spokesman Steve Whitmore said shortly after Murray left the county jail. The release came under a California state plan to reduce prison overcrowding. Murray’s six-week trial grabbed global attention after Jackson, preparing for a series of come-back concerts in London, died unexpectedly in 2009 at age 50.
Poland’s fi rst non-left PM Mazowiecki passes away WARSAW: Poland’s Tadeusz Ma-zowiecki, the fi rst non-Communist pre-mier in eastern Europe who was hailed as a father of Polish liberty, died yesterday aged 86. He died in a Warsaw hospital fol-lowing a long illness, close friend and Sen-ate speaker Bogdan Boruzewicz confi rmed. Mazowiecki was “one of the fathers of Pol-ish liberty and independence”, Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski told Polish Radio. One of the early members of the Solidarity movement, he became prime minister in August 1989, two months after Solidarity won elections and its iconic leader Lech Walesa tapped him for the job. “He was really one of the outstanding people I met on this journey,” of transition, Walesa told Poland’s TVN24 news channel.
Trial in News of the World phone-hacking case startsLONDON: The fi rst trial in the phone-hacking scandal that sank Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World opened yesterday with the tycoon’s key aide Rebekah Brooks in the dock along-side the British prime minister’s former media chief Andy Coulson. The two former editors of the tabloid are among eight defendants facing a jury for the fi rst time over the scandal that sent shockwaves through British politics. The defendants face charges ranging from illegally hacking the mobile phone voicemails of a murdered schoolgirl and celebrities such as Paul McCartney, to bribing public offi cials for stories and hid-ing evidence. They all deny the allegations against them.
40 migrants found dead NIAMEY: Dozens of Nigerien migrants heading for Algeria died of thirst in the desert after their vehicle broke down, local offi cials said yesterday, while police said 19 survived. “About 40 Nigerians, who were attempting to emigrate to Algeria, died of thirst in mid-October,” Rhissa Feltou, the mayor of Agadez, said. “Many others have been reported missing since their vehicle broke down in the desert,” he said. “Travellers told us that they saw and counted up to 35 bodies, mostly those of women and children, by the road,” said Abdourahmane Ma-ouli, the mayor of Arlit. — Agencies
B R I E F S
JUSTICE SOUGHT: Turkish protestors run for cover as po-
licemen fi re water cannon and tear gas to disperse them
yesterday during a demonstration in Ankara against a
court’s refusal to detain a policeman accused of killing a
demonstrator during the popular unrest in June. A police
offi cer identifi ed only as Ahmet S. is on trial accused of
shooting to death 26-year-old Ethem Sarisuluk during
mass anti-government street protests in Ankara in June.
The Ankara court rejected a demand by the victim’s
lawyers that the defendant be detained and ruled instead
that he could take part in hearings via video conference
for security reasons. — AFP
Smartphones become visual sharing hubs
NEW YORK: Smartphones are giving a big boost to posting of photos and videos, according to a study released yesterday.
The Pew Research Centre sur-vey found 54 per cent of US Inter-net users now post original pic-tures or videos online, up from 46 percent last year.
And 47 per cent re-post images or videos they discover online, the survey found.
Much of this growth came from people using smartphone apps like Instagram or Snapchat, ac-
cording to Pew researchers.This survey found that 92 per
cent of Americans own a cell phone and 58 per cent own a smartphone. Some 18 per cent of cell phone owners use Instagram and nine percent use Snapchat to share images or videos.
‘People’s interactions’“Sharing photos and videos on-line adds texture, play, and drama to people’s interactions in their social networks,” said Pew Inter-net’s Maeve Duggan, author of the
report. “This all adds up to a new kind of collective digital scrap-book with fresh forms of storytell-ing and social bonding.”
Women are more active sharers than men, according to the survey: Some 59 per cent of online women
post photos and videos they have taken themselves, compared with 50 per cent of men.
Likewise, 53 per cent of women share some of the content they found elsewhere, compared with 42 per cent of men.
Among those in the 18-29 age group, 81 per cent have uploaded original content and 68 per cent have re-posted photos or videos.
Some 26 per cent of cell own-ers in this age group use Snapchat, while 43 per cent use Instagram.
‘Eager adopters’“A lot of photo- and video-sharing is happening on social media, where women are his-torically more likely to be users,” said Duggan.
“In terms of mobile, young peo-ple have always been early and eager adopters of new applica-tions and platforms for sharing,” she added. — AFP
The Pew Research Centre survey found 54% of
US Internet users now post original pictures or
videos online, up from 46% last year
Some 59 per cent
of online women
post photos and
videos they have
taken themselves,
compared with
50 per cent of men
SYDNEY: An expedition to a re-mote part of northern Australia has uncovered three new verte-brate species isolated for millions of years, with scientists yesterday calling the area a “lost world”.
Conrad Hoskin from James Cook University and a Nation-al Geographic fi lm crew were dropped by helicopter onto the rugged Cape Melville mountain range on Cape York Peninsula earlier this year and were amazed at what they found.
It included a bizarre looking leaf-tail gecko, a gold-coloured skink — a type of lizard — and a brown-spotted, yellow boulder-dwelling frog, none of them ever seen before.
“The top of Cape Melville is a lost world. Finding these new species up there is the discovery of a lifetime -- I’m still amazed and buzzing from it,” said Hoskin, a tropical biologist from the Queensland-based university.
“Finding three new, obvi-ously distinct vertebrates would
be surprising enough in some-where poorly explored like New Guinea, let alone in Australia, a country we think we’ve explored pretty well.”
Within days of arriving, the team had discovered the three new species as well as a host of other interesting fi nds that Hoskin said may also be new to science.
The highlight was the leaf-tailed gecko, a “primitive-look-ing” 20 centimetre-long creature that is an ancient relic from a time when rainforest was more wide-spread in Australia.
The Cape Melville Leaf-tailed Gecko, which has huge eyes and a long, slender body, is highly dis-tinct from its relatives and has been named Saltuarius eximius,
Hoskin said, with the fi ndings de-tailed in the latest edition of the international journal Zootaxa.
“The second I saw the gecko I knew it was a new species. Every-thing about it was obviously dis-tinct,” he said.
The Cape Melville Shade Skink is also restricted to moist rocky rainforest on the plateau, and is highly distinct from its relatives, which are found in rainforests to the south.
Also discovered was a small boulder-dwelling frog, the Blotched Boulder-frog, which during the dry season lives deep in the labyrinth of the boulder-fi eld where conditions are cool and moist, allowing female frogs to lay their eggs in wet cracks in the rocks. — AFP
A16
WORLDT U E S DAY, O CTO B E R 2 9, 2 0 1 3
Berlusconi daughter ‘not to replace’ embattled fatherROME: Silvio Berlusconi’s oldest daughter Marina yesterday denied speculation within her father’s party that she could replace him as centre-right leader due to the billionaire former prime minis-ter’s legal diffi culties.
Berlusconi, 77, is embroiled in a series of court cases, and the approach of a Senate vote on
whether to expel the media mag-nate from parliament, possibly exposing him to the risk of arrest, has intensifi ed talk in his party of Marina taking over.
Several party members told Ital-ian media over the weekend that Marina might enter politics, while others said such decisions should be made democratically.
“Once again I am forced to deny this in the most absolute manner: I have never had and have no inten-tion of engaging in politics,” said a statement from the 47-year-old Marina, who heads her father’s business empire.
The statement comes amid deepening divisions in his centre-right party as Berlusconi’s convic-
tion for tax fraud at his Mediaset empire threatens the career of a man who has dominated Italian politics for the last two decades.
Berlusconi’s decision to sus-pend the activities of his People of Freedom (PDL) party and revive his old Forza Italia group last week has exacerbated a rift between loy-alist supporters of the four-times
prime minister and a rebel group who back Interior Minister Ange-lino Alfano.
Alfano led a revolt earlier this month that thwarted the tycoon’s attempt to bring down the govern-ment of Enrico Letta, a coalition that includes the centre-right and their traditional rivals the centre-left Democratic Party. — Reuters
R U M O U R S T R A S H E D
Marina Berlusconi
Species isolated for millions of years discovered An expedition to
a remote part of
northern Australia
found a bizarre
looking leaf-tail
gecko, a gold-coloured
skink and a brown-
spotted, yellow
boulder-dwelling frog
LOST WORLD: Finding three new, obviously distinct vertebrates
would be surprising enough in a poorly explored place like New
Guinea, let alone in Australia, a country explored pretty well, said
expedition member Conrad Hoskin. — AFP/CONRAD HOSKIN/JAMES COOK UNI-
VERSITY QUEENSLAND
The top of Cape Melville is a lost world. Finding these new species up there is the discovery of a lifetime — I’m still amazed and buzzing from it
Conrad Hoskin, Scientifi c expedition member
MARKEWWW.TIMESOFOMAN.COMT U E S DAY, O CTO B E R 2 9, 2 0 1 3B
Muscat
6,652.72 + 1.53
+ 0.02%
Dubai
2,912.83- 11.15
- 0.38%
Abu Dhabi
3,884.94 - 6.20
- 0.16%
Saudi Arabia
8,059.21 - 66.19
- 0.81%
Kuwait
7,938.80 - 50.75
- 0.64%
Bahrain
1,198.36 + 1.54
+ 0.13%
Qatar
9,643.50- 26.19
- 0.27%
CURRENCY RATES* DRAFT RATES (RO1)* GOLD PRICES*Forex rates vs RO1*
US Dollar ................................. 2.58
Euro .............................................1.86
Bangla Taka........................198.81* Rates are as of Oct . 28
Source: BankMuscat
Indian Rs .................................. 159.00
Pakistan Rs ............................. 273.75
Sri Lanka Rs ...........................335.35
Bangla Taka...........................200.50
Phil Peso ..................................... 111.30
* Rates as of Oct. 28 Source: Oman UAE Exchange
Muscat 24ct per gm (RO) .............16.91
Muscat 22ct per gm (RO) ............16.35
10 Tola Bar Muscat (RO) ................. N/A
Dubai 24ct per gm (Dh) ............163.50
Dubai 22ct per gm (Dh) ............. 154.75
10 Tola Bar Dubai (Dh) ..................... N/A* Rates as of Oct. 28
Source: Atlas Jewellery
Type ............................Delivery...........Price
Oman Crude ............. (Spot) ...... $106.13
Dubai Crude ............. (Spot) ......$103.39
Murban Crude ........ (Spot) ...... $110.98
Arabian Light ......... (Spot) ......$109.25
Arabian Heavy ....... (Spot) ................N/A
N.Sea Brent ............... (Spot) ......$107.96
West Texas Int ....... (Spot) ........ $97.98
CRUDE OIL PRICE
Toyota’s recent success — analysts estimate it will post record profi t this fi scal year — illustrates how Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s policies that have weakened the yen are benefi ting Japan’s exporters >B3
‘ABENOMICS’ HELPS TOYOTA OUTSELL GM
London is striving to position itself as Islamic fi nance hub
LONDON: London is striving to position itself as a major centre for Islamic fi nance, with a series of measures that have been under-taken in the recent past.
The capital city of United King-dom, which is traditionally con-sidered as a major fi nancial hub in the world, has five special-ised Islamic banks, 22 law firms specialised in Islamic fi nance
business and four international accounting fi rms to provide all professional services needed for Islamic fi nancial institutions.
Three-day conferenceDavid Cameron, prime minister of the United Kingdom, recently announced that the London Stock Exchange will be launching a FTSE Sharia Index, which is also in line with the set strategy.
“This is the fi rst time that World Islamic Economic Forum (WIFE)
is held in a non-Muslim Euro-pean capital. The choice of this vibrant, cosmopolitan, yet ancient city is no coincidence. London is home to a vast multicultural popu-lation and a great gateway for trade and commerce, fi nance, culture and philosophy,” said Tun Musa Hitam, chairman of WIFE, ahead of the three-day conference here between October 29 and 31.
Islamic fi nance“I am delighted that the FTSE has taken forward this innovative idea to launch a Sharia Index. I hope it will stimulate further business be-tween the Islamic and non-Islamic world in the years ahead, deliver-ing growth and prosperity for people all over the world. By doing business together can we build bridges world-wide for the greater god of mankind,” he added.
“London is a unique city and adaptable. We have a large domes-tic population (who need Islamic
fi nance),” noted Kit Malthouse, chairman of London Partners, an agency working to attract overseas investment. He said there has been huge investment into London for developing transport infrastructure.
The World Islamic Economic Forum, which is taking place at Lon-don Excel, has attracted over 2,600 delegates from 130 countries. The forum, titled ‘Changing worlds, new relationships’, is jointly hosted by the governments of the UK and Malaysia, 18 global lenders, fi ve central bank governors and more than 2,300 chief executive of-fi cers, captains of industry, aca-demic scholars, regional experts, professionals, corporate managers, policy makers and business leaders.
The World Islamic Economic Forum, which is
taking place at London Excel, has attracted over
2,600 delegates from 130 countries. The forum
is titled ‘Changing worlds, new relationships’
Forum to devise roadmap for SMEs in OmanBUSINESS REPORTER
MUSCAT: As the MEED Oman Projects Forum 2013 took off yes-terday, all indications pointed to the fact that the small and medium en-terprises (SME) sector will emerge as an engine of growth for the pri-vate sector. The three-day MEED Oman Projects Forum 2013 is fo-cussing on SMEs and exploring op-portunities in Oman’s $112 billion market for major projects.
Delivering the opening re-marks, MEED Events chairman Edmund O’Sullivan said Oman is a trading nation and has enjoyed decades of peace and stability. He said the forum will come up with a comprehensive roadmap for set-ting up and running successful SME businesses in the Sultanate.
Edmund further said, “GCC is the starting point for your strat-egy in the Middle East. The fi ve factors that support GCC growth are oil and gas, economic diversi-fi cation, population growth, glo-balisation and governance.”
Participating in a panel discus-sion on ‘International and local case studies on developing suc-cessful SMEs’, Issa Al Ismaili, executive director of Oman World Tourism, said, “We began with a start-up capital of OMR20,000 and it took us fi ve years to sustain. We sell Oman as a destination. A good team with just the right skills
is very important for any service industry. We are also involved in many tourism investment pro-jects. We all need to support the SME sector for the over-all devel-opment of the country.”
diversifi ed economyRaphael V. Parambi, CEO of Na-tional Company for Projects & Management, observed that the SME Development Fund is aimed at supporting small and medium enterprises (SMEs). “Our survey reveals that to promote SMEs, there are four identifi ed factors — crea-tion of entrepreneurial culture; nur-turing; fi nancing and legitimising.”
He said that senior people need
to guide younger entrepreneurs who are not mature enough to take correct decisions.
Speakers reviewed Oman’s ini-tiatives to promote growth of the SMEs, highlighting the role of the Public Authority of Small and Medium Enterprises in driving development in the sector; initia-tives to facilitate the development of the SMEs to create a more di-versifi ed economy and updates on Oman’s comprehensive infra-structure plans to support entre-preneurial ventures, champion innovation and foster the growth of a business culture.
Figures compiled by the MEED Projects show that 40 major projects
are being executed or planned in the Sultanate. Of these, almost 25 per cent are in the construction sec-tor, which is dominated by plans to build a new town in Duqm.
National rail programmeA similar amount of capital in-vestment is planned in the trans-port sector. This includes the $15 billion national rail programme. Oil and gas projects combined ac-count for almost $40 billion of the major projects being executed or planned in Oman.
Oman is already pushing ahead with many major projects. Around $40 billion worth of them are under execution, though some of the larger
ones are at an early stage of develop-ment. But the largest portion of the Omani major project programme is yet to come to the market.
More than $50 billion of major projects are under design or study. Some $56 billion of major projects under execution or planned are due for completion by the end of 2017. All $112 billion of projects are due for completion by the end of 2022, MEED’s fi gures show.
M E E D O M A N P R O J E C T S F O R U M 2 0 1 3
HAVE YOUR SAY Send us your comments at facebook.com/timesofoman blog.timesofoman.com [email protected]
INNOVATIVE IDEA: David Cameron, prime minister of the UK, has
announced that the London Stock Exchange will launch FTSE
Shaira Index, which is also in line with the set strategy. – Bloomberg News
EXPLORING BUSINESS: The three-day MEED Oman Projects Forum 2013 is focussing on SMEs and
exploring opportunities in Oman’s $112 billion market for major projects. -A. R. Rajkumar/TIMES OF OMAN
The five factors that
support GCC growth are
oil and gas, economic
diversification,
population growth,
globalisation and
governance
Edmund O’Sullivan Chairman, MEED Events
Kuwait wealth fund hires ex-BofA banker
DUBAI: Kuwait Investment Au-thority (KIA), the Gulf state’s sov-ereign wealth fund, has appointed a head for its newly-created infra-structure arm, seeking to bolster its investments in the sector, two sources familiar with the matter said.
Hakim Drissi-Kaitouni, previ-ously a vice-president at Bank of America Merrill Lynch in London, has joined as a managing direc-tor of Wren House Infrastructure Management, a fully-owned unit of KIA, the sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity as the matter is not public.
The Wren House arm, which was set up in April by the wealth fund and housed under its Lon-don-based Kuwait Investment Of-fi ce (KIO), also hired Marc Keller, another BofA Merrill banker, to assist Drissi-Kaitouni in identify-ing investments in the sector, one of the sources said.
Both Kuwait Investment Offi ce and BofA were not immediately available for comment.
Sovereign wealth funds in the Gulf Arab region, which hold about $2 trillion in assets, are beefi ng up their infrastructure investments, lured by stable returns and seeking to diversify their investment port-folios which have been traditionally heavy on equities. - Reuters
I N F R A S T R U C T U R E H E A D
B2
MARKETT U E S DAY, O CTO B E R 2 9, 2 0 1 3
Cheraman Financial eyes investment from NRIs
BUSINESS REPORTER
MUSCAT: The Kerala-based Che-raman Financial Services, India’s fi rst interest-free non-banking fi -nancial services company (NBFC), is looking to channel Gulf NRIs’ money into India’s infrastruc-ture development, equity partic-ipation and developing wakf (re-ligious endowments) properties.
In Oman to identify a section of Indians in the Gulf who are keen to invest but were averse to the idea of interest, A. P. M. Moham-med Hanish, managing director of Cheraman Financial Services, said that the government of Ker-ala has 11 per cent equity stake in the company. The company will be investing in Sharia-compliant companies and participating in equity as well as leasing in con-struction and medical sector and also developing wakf properties.
The company, with an authorised
capital of Indian Rs10 billion, has already taken off with a small wakf project in Kannur in Kerala and will follow suit in other parts of Kerala and across India.
Says Hanish, “After our com-pany’s inception in 2009, the Reserve Bank of India fi nally is-sued the licence to us on July 20, 2013 following months of discus-sions and clarifi cations. We have been allowed to operate in equity fi nance and leasing. We also in-tend to focus on infrastructure development, especially on wakf lands, in association with state wakf boards and local muttawalis (caretakers) of the wakf land.
“About 6,00,000 acres of wakf land is lying idle according to the Sachar committee report,” he added.
As far as equity fi nance is con-cerned, Hanish said, “Major infra-structure projects initiated by the state government and government of India are intended to be taken
up. Also, major commercial pro-jects in the private sector which require equity fi nance will also be provided with such fi nance. In case of leasing, we will primarily focus on construction equipment and medical equipment sectors, since lease returns are faster.”
Dr P. Mohammed Ali, chair-man of the Cheraman Financial Services, said, “The source for mobilising fi nance is by way of share capital since deposits are not allowed. Major sources of funding would come from non-
resident Indians, the various sov-ereign funds in the Middle East, banks, institutional investors and family businesses being run by Arab nationals.”
Sustainable returnsAdds Dr Mohammed Ali, “This initiative would give people an op-portunity to invest in India on non-interest terms with sustainable returns. In India, a section of the community does not use the con-ventional banks because of their faith and for them it is a blessing to
use fi nancial instruments which comply with their faiths.”
Adds Hanish, “We had exten-sive discussions that have result-ed in commitments to the tune of Rs1 billion, apart from the 11 per cent equity of the Kerala gov-ernment. Promoters’ equity will come to around 26 per cent. In this sector, foreign investments are allowed to the tune of 49 per cent of the authorised share capi-tal. We had serious discussions at the highest levels with the UAE banks and some of them evinced a keen interest to become part-ners. Following our experience in the UAE, we had discussions with high networked individuals and organisations in Oman.”
Hanish, who is also the manag-ing director of Roads and Bridges Development Corp. of Kerala, further said, “People in the GCC countries have invested huge amounts of sovereign and indi-vidual funds abroad and a sizeable chunk of these were in IFF (inter-est-free fi nancing) businesses. We intend to woo a portion of these funds so that Kerala’s and India’s infrastructure can be developed.”
India’s fi rst interest-free NBFC, is looking
to channel Gulf NRIs’ money into India’s
infrastructure development, equity
participation and developing wakf properties
WOOING INVESTORS: A. P. M. Mohammed Hanish, left; and P.
Mohammed Ali are in the process of indetifying a section
of Indians in the Gulf who are keen to invest.
HAVE YOUR SAY Send us your comments at facebook.com/timesofoman blog.timesofoman.com [email protected]
EFG-Hermes targets Gulf investment bank deals
CAIRO: EFG-Hermes, the Egyptian investment bank whose deal to merge with Qatar’s Qinvest col-lapsed in May, said it’s seeking deals in the Gulf as political turmoil at home discourages foreign investors.
The Cairo-based bank is in the ‘fi nal stages’ of closing three in-vestment banking deals in the United Arab Emirates and is build-ing a ‘good pipeline’ of mandates in Saudi Arabia, Karim Awad, chief executive offi cer of EFG-Hermes investment bank, said in an e-mailed response to questions. The bank declined to name the companies involved in the deals.
The Arab world’s most popu-lous country, which has yet to hold presidential and legislative elec-tions following the ouster of for-mer President Mohamed Mursi, has experienced its worst econom-ic slowdown in two years amid the political upheaval. That comes as Gulf countries such as Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar report accelerating growth.
“Our home market has been impacted by political events that are out of our hands and we have therefore focused a lot of our en-ergy on building a market share in the other regional markets where we are present,” Awad said.
“The political situation is making a number of our clients bearish on Egypt.” - Bloomberg News
E G Y P T
Indian cental bank may hike rates
NEW DELHI: India’s central bank hinted in a report yester-day that it would further raise interest rates this week as infl ation remains high.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI), which holds its monetary policy meeting in Mumbai on Tuesday, said in its macroeco-nomic report on the eve of the decision that infl ation remains ‘above comfort levels’.
Annual infl ation in September jumped to a seven-month-high of 6.46 per cent, led by surging food and fuel prices.
“Various surveys, including those by the RBI, show that busi-ness confi dence remains weak,
while infl ation expectations have risen again,” the central bank report said.
“The monetary policy will need to aim at anchoring infl ation ex-pectations, while appropriately addressing growth risks,” it added.
Second riseThe report supports the widely held expectations of economists that the RBI will raise interest rates today, in what would be its second rise in two months.
The RBI said it expects “a mod-est improvement in growth” in the second half of the fi scal year to March 2013 “on the back of a good monsoon and some improvements
in industrial growth”. The economy grew by 4.4 per
cent year-on-year in the April to June quarter, the slowest quarterly expansion in four years.
Last month new central bank gov-ernor Raghuram Rajan — who had warned he was prepared to take un-popular steps to bring the econ-omy back on track — surprised markets by increasing interest rates to help control infl ation.
Wholesale infl ation has been above the RBI’s comfort zone of 5 per cent for four successive months. But business leaders have long been seeking a cut in rates to help revive sluggish do-mestic growth. - AFP
I N F L A T I O N C O N C E R N
Barclays expects Asia boost for euro bonds amid record sales HONG KONG: Barclays, the UK’s second- largest bank by assets, pre-dicts Asian companies will further increase sales of euro-denomi-nated bonds after issuing a record amount of debt in the currency.
Companies from Asia outside Japan have sold €5.5 billion ($7.6 billion) of bonds in the shared currency since December 31, more than any previous year and double 2012 volumes, data shows. China Petrochemical, Asia’s larg-est refi ner, led €1.55 billion of note off erings this month, the most by the region’s issuers since May, data shows.
“Issuers here are fi nding that the euro market is increasingly competitive,” said Jon Pratt, head of debt capital markets for Asia at Barclays. “We have introduced a range of European insurance companies and pension funds to Asian companies this year. These investors have previously never bought Asian credits.”
Money fl ows into European bond funds hit a 25-week high in the period to October 23, even as total debt funds took in just $527 million, according to data pro-vider EPFR Global. The political impasse in the United States as Congress struggled to reach an agreement on raising the debt ceiling sapped appetite for the nation’s assets while favoring Eu-rope, EPFR wrote in an e-mailed note dated October 11.
High-yield bond fundAbout 35 per cent of a global high-yield bond fund run by Brandy-wine Global Investment Man-agement, a unit of Legg Mason, is already invested in Europe, according to Brian Kloss, a Phil-adelphia-based money manager at the company, which oversees about $48 billion. The fund will increase its holdings as the region returns to growth, he said in an in-terview last week in Hong Kong.
Globally, borrowers pay an av-erage 1.91 per cent for euro debt,
29 basis points less than for dol-lar notes, Bank of America Merrill Lynch indexes show. Euro-denom-inated notes gained 1.22 per cent this year as of the end of last month, beating Asian dollar-denominated bonds, the indexes show.
“Some Asian investors are shifting some of their invest-
ments into euro currency as they are getting more comfortable with the currency fundamentals and are seeing more supply from the region,” said Pratt. These funds view it as a way to “partially mitigate the risks of US dollar currency depreciation and rising US interest rates.” - Bloomberg News
E C O N O M Y
Issuers here are finding that the euro market is
increasingly competitive. We have introduced a
range of European insurance companies and pension
funds to Asian companies this year. These investors
have previously never bought Asian credits
Jon PrattHead (Debt capital markets for Asia), Barclays
B3T U E S DAY, O CTO B E R 2 9, 2 0 1 3
MARKET
Japanese premier’s policies work as Toyota outsells General Motors
TOKYO: Toyota Motor outsold General Motors (GM) and all other carmakers for the second time in three quarters, in the lat-est example of how Japan’s larg-est manufacturers are benefi ting from Abenomics.
Japan’s biggest company and its subsidiaries sold 2.5 million vehicles in the July-to-September period, up 2.8 per cent from a year earlier, according to fi gures re-leased yesterday by the Toyota City-based carmaker. Third-quarter
sales at Detroit-based GM, report-ed earlier this month, rose 5.5 per cent to 2.4 million vehicles while Volkswagen boosted deliveries, excluding heavy trucks, to about 2.33 million, according to data from the companies.
Toyota’s recent success — ana-lysts estimate it will post record profi t this fi scal year — illustrates how Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s policies that have weakened the yen are benefi ting Japan’s exporters and helping revive an economy that’s
been through three recessions in fi ve years. Large manufacturers are more confi dent than they’ve been since 2007, and share prices are near the highest in half a decade.
“In the past few months, Abe-nomics has pushed up sales of Jap-anese carmakers by weakening the yen,” said Yuuki Sakurai, president of Fukoku Capital Management. “The selling prices of some Japa-nese cars in the United States have been lowered to make them more competitive.”
Toyota shares have gained 58 per cent this year, compared to GM’s 23 per cent. Volkswagen’s stock has been little changed.
Toyota outsold GM in the fi rst nine months of 2013, putting the company on track to lead the in-dustry for a second straight year. Toyota sold 7.41 million vehi-cles versus GM’s 7.25 million and VW’s 7.03 million, according to the companies.
Yen reversalThe yen has fallen about 11 per cent against the dollar in 2013, creating a tailwind for Japanese brands as they face the most competitive lineup of vehicles from GM, Ford Motor and
Chrysler in a generation.Before Abe, the Japanese cur-
rency hobbled exporters for years, appreciating to a postwar high of 75.35 to the dollar in October 2011 from about 115 four years earlier. The yen began tumbling in late 2012 as polls showed Abe, who called for unprecedented mon-etary-easing policies that would weaken the currency, was going to be Japan’s next head of state. The yen traded at 97.67 to the dollar.
Currency manipulatorIn the US, Toyota’s deliveries rose 12 per cent in the July-to-Sep-tember period, enough to outsell Ford for the fi rst time in 15 quar-ters as the weaker yen gave the
Japanese company room to off er higher incentives for its best-selling Camry model.
Toyota sold 586,016 vehicles in the US last quarter, second only to GM’s 697,113.
Honda Motor’s US deliveries rose 13 per cent to the highest in 21 quarters, Nissan’s climbed 10 per cent and Fuji Heavy Indus-tries’ Subaru saw deliveries surge more than 30 per cent for a second straight quarter.
The total US market expanded 9 per cent and GM posted 6.9 per cent growth, according to data.
The benefi ts from the yen have prompted Ford chief executive offi cer Alan Mulally to call Japan a currency manipulator that’s giving local exporters an unfair edge. US automakers have hired lobbyists to oppose Japan’s entry into the Trans-Pacifi c Partnership, a US-led free-trade agreement that’s being negotiated.
While Toyota saw its smallest drop in Japan deliveries in four quarters, falling deliveries in the domestic market contributed to Toyota posting slower sales growth than GM. - Bloomberg News
Japan’s biggest company and its subsidiaries
sold 2.5m vehicles in the July-to-September
period, up 2.8% from a year earlier
Apple sales may show mobile shift lifting Google to FacebookSAN FRANCISCO: Apple and Facebook will report quarterly earnings this week that under-score the technology industry’s division into two camps: provid-ers that are adapting to shifting mobile and Web tastes, and those that have lagged behind.
Apple is predicted to report a rise in iPhone sales after last month’s release of new models, while Face-book follows on October 30 with some analysts projecting a bigger chunk of its revenue to come from mobile advertising.
Google, Amazon.com and Sam-sung — companies that have helped pioneer mobile and Internet-based services — have released results that have surpassed estimates in the past two weeks. By contrast, those struggling to adapt to the changes have reported earnings that disappointed investors. They include International Business Machines, Yahoo, and security-software company Symantec.
“Many of the old-guard com-panies are being displaced and the companies that are at the ad-vent of these forces are becoming dominant,” said Van Baker, direc-tor of research at Gartner.
Microsoft’s results last week show that the divide between haves and have-nots can exist within the same company. The Redmond, Washington-based software maker made up for the shortcomings in its consumer personal-computer business with better-than-predicted numbers for corporate programs like In-ternet telephone and messaging software, and by more than dou-bling sales from business cloud services like online versions of Offi ce and the Azure service for hosting applications on the Web.
Diverging trendsInvestors are rewarding the companies disrupting their in-dustries and leading the new trends. Google surpassed $1,000 a share for the fi rst time after re-porting results, and Amazon also jumped 9.4 per cent a day after posting its earnings.
“The new tech companies like Google and Amazon did well, while companies that rely on old tech, like IBM, didn’t,” said Daniel Morgan, a fund manager at Syno-vus Trust in Atlanta, which owns Microsoft shares.
The popularity of smartphones, tablets and tools that let people to work, shop or watch videos from anywhere with an Internet connection has upended a tech-nology industry that long profi ted from a model of selling PCs and accompanying software.
That divergence is refl ected in technology-spending forecasts. Market-research fi rm IDC pre-dicts personal computers (PC) shipments will fall almost 10 per cent this year worldwide.
By contrast, mobilephone ship-ments are projected to increase by 7.3 per cent in the same pe-riod, fueled by demand for smart-phones, with tablet unit sales growing an estimated 59 per cent, IDC said in August.
Much of the disruption has been led by Apple, whose co- founder Steve Jobs coined this the ‘post PC’ era. - Bloomberg News
P E R F O R M A N C E
Emirates negotiating
big deal with BoeingDUBAI: Emirates Airline is ne-gotiating over a potentially ‘sub-stantive’ order for United States Boeing’s B777 new-generation airliner, the airline’s chief executive Tim Clark said yesterday.
Clark told the Financial Times newspaper: “We are in a relatively advanced stage of commercial negotiations... I think whatever
happens there will be a substantive order for the new 777.”
The newspaper estimated that the fast-growing airline needed between 100-175 aircraft of the 777x type which would represent an order exceeding $30.0 billion (21.7 billion euros).
The 777x is to replace the current Boeing 777 model. - AFP
B 7 7 7 O R D E R S
TREND SETTERS: Apple is predicted to report a rise in iPhone
sales after last month’s release of new models, while Facebook
follows with some analysts projecting a bigger chunk of its
revenue to come from mobile advertising. – Bloomberg News
HAVE YOUR SAY Send us your comments at facebook.com/timesofoman blog.timesofoman.com [email protected]
STRATEGY Toyota’s recent success
— analysts estimate it
will post record profi t this
fi scal year — illustrates
how Prime Minister
Shinzo Abe’s policies that
have weakened the yen
are benefi ting Japan’s
exporters and helping
revive an economy that’s
been through three
recessions in fi ve years
MUSCAT: MSM 30 index trad-ed on a fl at note and closed at 6652.72 points, marginally up by 0.02 per cent. MSM Shariah Index also closed up by 0.13 per cent at 1048.67 points.
Gulf Investment Services was the most active in terms of vol-ume as well as turnover. Oman Education Training Investment was the top gainer and closed up by 9.24 per cent, while National Securities was the top loser, clos-ing down by 9.09 per cent.
Altogether 1,153 trades were ex-ecuted in yesterday’s session gen-erating a turnover of OMR4.73 mil-lion with over 17.5 million shares traded. Out of 57 traded stocks, 12 advanced, 23 declined and 22 were unchanged. At the close of the ses-sion, Omani investors switched to net buyers for OMR85,000. GCC & Arab investors were net sell-ers for OMR76,000 followed by Omani investors who sold shares worth OMR9,000.
Financial Sector Index mar-ginally up by 0.01 per cent at 8146.73 points. DIDIC, Financial Services and Gulf Investment Ser-vices increased by 1.92 per cent, 0.61 per cent and 0.50 per cent respectively. National Securities, DBIH, United Finance, Al Izz Is-lamic Bank and Taageer Finance declined by 9.09 per cent, 2.13 per cent, 1.91 per cent, 1.82 per cent and 1.23 per cent respectively.
The Industrial Sector Index down by 0.21 per cent at 9820.30 points. Salalah Mills, Oman Ce-ment and Al Anwar Ceramic in-creased by 1.85 per cent, 0.51 per cent and 0.38 per cent % respec-tively. Oman Fisheries, Voltamp Energy, Al Hassan Engineering , Construction Material Indus-tries and Jazeera Steel Product declined by 2.70 per cent, 2.27 per cent , 1.88 per cent, 1.35 per cent and 1.29 per cent respectively.
Services Sector Index margin-ally up by 0.04 per cent at 3490.67
points. Oman Education & Train-ing Institute, Al Kamel Power, Shell Oman Marketing, ACWA Power Barka and Renaissance Services increased by 9.24 per cent, 3.70 per cent,1.13 per cent, 0.66 per cent and 0.57 per cent respectively. OIFC, Al Jazeira Services and Nawras declined by 1.08 per cent, 0.82 per cent and 0.38 per cent respectively.
Emerging market stocks upEmerging-market stocks rose for the fi rst time in four days as Samsung Electronics led a surge in technology shares. Malaysia’s ringgit climbed to the highest level in four months amid defi cit reduction measures.
The MSCI Emerging Mar-kets Index added 0.6 percent to 1,033.36 in New York. Samsung, the world’s biggest seller of smart-phones and TVs, gained 2.3 per cent after two brokerages raised their share-price estimates. Petro-leo Brasileiro climbed to the high-est level in four months after the Brazilian state-run energy compa-ny said it’s asking the government to raise local fuel prices to inter-national levels.
The ringgit advanced after Prime Minister Najib Razak an-nounced a goods and services tax to help cut the fi scal defi cit.
Nine out of 10 groups in the meas-ure for developing-nation stocks gained today, led by a 1.4 per cent ad-vance in technology companies. The industry, which surged to the highest level on record last week, is also driv-ing gains in the broader emerging-market gauge this month. Sam-sung is introducing software to help share content across devices, inviting developers to create more applications for its products.
The gauge for developing na-tions has climbed 4.7 per cent in October, poised for a second monthly advance. - United Securities/
Bloomberg News
B4
MARKETT U E S DAY, O CTO B E R 2 9, 2 0 1 3
MSM index moves upGulf Investment Services was the most
Security Name .................................................... Volume .....Turnover ... Trades ......... High .........Low ..........Close ......... Prev. .......... Diff . ............ Diff .............Last ..........Last ............ Last ................ Market Cap .........Par........................................................................................................................................................................................ Pr. ............ Close ........... RO ............... % .................Pr ..............Bid ............ Off er ............................................value
RBI expected rate hike aff ects rupeeMUMBAI: In a range-bound ses-sion, the rupee trimmed initial gains and ended six paise lower at 61.52 against the dollar yesterday, in line with a fall in local equities ahead of the RBI’s policy review meeting.
Month-end dollar demand from importers, mainly oil refi ners, also put pressure on the rupee, a forex dealer said.
The rupee resumed higher at 61.35 per dollar against the previ-ous close of 61.46 at the interbank
foreign exchange market and hov-ered in a range of 61.37 to 61.60 per dollar before settling at 61.52, a fall of six paise or 0.1 per cent.
“Since the last one week, the ru-pee has been trading in the range of 61.20-61.80...This shows that there is a lack of direction,” said Abhishek Goenka, CEO of India Forex Advisors.
“Today’s RBI monetary policy will be keenly watched, where a 25 bps repo rate hike is widely expected.”
According to some banks, the Reserve Bank of India may in-crease a key interest rate to 7.75 percent from 7.5 per cent in its Second Quarter Review of Mon-etary Policy today to contain ris-ing prices, while also announcing steps to ease liquidity.
The 30-share S&P BSE Sensex fell 113.24 points, or 0.55 per cent, extending losses for the fi fth straight trading day. The dollar in-dex was up 0.05 per cent against a
basket of six major global rivals. Forward dollar premiums ended
slightly better. The benchmark six-month forward dollar pre-mium payable in March edged up to 213-1/2-215-1/2 paise from 213-215 paise previously, while far-forward contracts maturing in September rose to 441-444 paise from 439-442 paise.
The RBI fi xed the reference rate for the dollar at 61.5030 and for the euro at 84.8825. - PTI
I N D I A N C U R R E N C Y
Sensex falls for fi fth day, down 113 points MUMBAI: The benchmark Sensex fell for the fi fth day in a row today, declining 113 points in a late sell-off as investors turned cautious ahead of the Reserve Bank of Indian (RBI) policy re-view meeting.
State Bank of India, the coun-try’s largest lender, HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank were among the shares that dragged the Sensex lower. The fall would have been more pronounced but for gains in HDFC, Larsen & Toubro and Re-liance Industries shares. Sectors that fell were FMCG, realty, met-als and banks. ITC tumbled 3.63 per cent and was the top loser on the Sensex after CLSA cut its earnings per share estimates by around 2 per cent.
The 30-share S&P BSE Sensex opened on a positive note and touched a high of 20,771.38 be-fore profi t booking set in. The index closed down 113.24 points, or 0.55 per cent, at 20,570.28. It has lost 324 points in the past fi ve sessions. The 50-share CNX Nifty on the National Stock Ex-change dropped 43.80 points, or 0.71 per cent, to end at 6,101.10. The SX40 index of the MCX Stock Exchange closed almost 60 points down at 12,249.69.
“Nifty opened on a fl at note and witnessed selling pressure for rest of the trading day. Intraday volatility was seen ahead of the RBI’s monetary meet tomorrow and also as FO expiry day is ap-proaching this week,” said Nidhi Saraswat, senior research analyst at Bonanza Portfolio. “Further, profi t-booking aggravated the
selling sentiment.” The Reserve Bank of India may
increase a key interest rate to 7.75 per cent from 7.5 per cent in its Second Quarter Review of Mone-tary Policy on Tuesday to contain rising prices, while also announc-ing steps to ease liquidity, accord-ing to some banks.
The market may also remain volatile as investors in the fu-tures and options segment decide whether to roll over their posi-tions on the expiry of equity de-rivative contracts on Thursday, a broker said.
Key indices in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan and South Korea rose after weaker-than-forecast United States con-sumer confi dence spurred bets the Federal Reserve will main-tain its stimulus programme.
European markets were mixed in early trade as indices in Ger-many and UK moved up, while France’s CAC was quoted lower. In the domestic market, 22 Sensex shares declined. Apart from ITC, the losers included Sesa Sterlite (-3.26 per cent), Tata Steel (-2.94 per cent), State Bank of India (-2.41 per cent), Hindalco Industries (-1.97 per cent) and Hero Moto-Corp (-1.86 per cent).
The gainers were Larsen, which rose 1.89 per cent, HDFC 1.35 per cent, ONGC 1.02 per cent and Reliance Industries 0.49 per cent. Among the S&P BSE sec-toral indices, FMCG dropped 2.56 per cent, followed by realty 2.1 per cent, metal 1.63 per cent, bankex 1.2 per cent and power 1.16 per cent. - PTI
I N D I A N S T O C K S
B5T U E S DAY, O CTO B E R 2 9, 2 0 1 3
ROUND-UP
After Muscat success, Redtag goes to Salalah
MUSCAT: After the huge success of the opening of its stores within the Muscat city, Redtag, one of Middle East’s fastest growing value retail brands, has now an-nounced the opening of its fourth store in Salalah, Oman signalling its continued expansion across the Sultanate.
Redtag, off ers high end design and premium quality at an aff ord-able price. Since its launch last year in Oman, it has been laying its own path and is now synony-mous as the brand favouring style over fashion.
Inaugurating the new outlet, Akram Hassan Abdulah Al Mu-razza, director general, Minis-try of Commerce and Industry, Dhofar Governorate, said that people in Salalah have improved their standard of living and there are many takers for products of-fered by such retailers. “The pres-ence of retailers catering to the mid-market segment helps Oman to position itself on the global front,” he said.
Ernest J. Hosking, CEO of the Redtag Group said, “We are very happy to be opening in Salalah and to be expanding further into the Sultanate of Oman. The city
is a popular destination for tour-ism due to the natural attractions of the nearby mountains and abundant stands of frankincense trees. The beautiful beaches and coastline is a major attrac-tion too. Thus, opening a Redtag outlet and catering to the needs of customers and tourists in Salalah was imperative.”
An introductory off er is up for grabs for customers shopping at the brand new Redtag outlet in Salalah where shoppers will be entitled to get a voucher worth OMR3 for every purchase of OMR10. Since the Redtag outlet in Salalah is a full concept store with fashion as well as home de-partments – customers will have a plethora of choices. Keeping in line with its current in-store layout, the Salalah outlet too will feature large aisles and bright and spacious setting that will enhance
the feel-good factor. Shoppers can look forward to a wide array of trendy clothes and accessories under one roof, which will make it truly a one-stop shop for all their shopping requirements.
Redtag’s expansion is a testa-ment of the fact that the brand stands for long-standing tradi-tions of exceptional customer service, great value and a broad assortment of merchandise for the Omani community off ering a unique experience for shoppers every time they shop with Redtag.
Ernest J. Hosking, CEO of the Redtag Group said, “By opening our fourth Redtag store, we have taken a signifi cant step forward in our plan to position Redtag as a fash-ion retailer who makes the shortlist of any price-sensitive shopper in Salalah. Redtag is already a force to be reckoned within KSA, Kuwait, Bahrain, UAE, Qatar, Yemen, Iraq,
Egypt, Uzbekistan and Jordan and we want the brand to achieve the same stature in Salalah, Oman too. Shopper can expect to see new collections in the store regularly and frequently.”
With this latest launch Redtag has crossed more than 110 stores across all regions, and the brand has established fi rm footprints across the GCC. The Group retail philosophy of providing style-conscious customers with fashion and homeware at aff ordable pric-es has gained attraction across the Middle East with continued growth expected across the region in coming years.
The store features distinctive niches and departments off er-ing the latest fashion range with the hottest new international trends in textures and fabrics to guarantee its patrons an enjoyable shopping experience.
“Being a value-focused retailer off ering a range of fashions for the entire family and home-ware for budget-conscious shoppers, the Redtag brand off ers the latest in fashion and accessories for men, women, infants and newborns, supplemented by comprehen-sive range of merchandise for the home, dining, bed, bath as well as home décor items and toys.
Add a one-stop shopping destina-tion concept and the Redtag brand becomes a compelling proposition in the retail market. This proven by the fact that the company has grown from 29 stores to a chain of over 100 stores (including fran-chisees) in GCC within the past fi ve years,” commented Nasser Kunnu-mal, country manager for Redtag.
Redtag, off ers high
end design and
premium quality
at an aff ordable price
Genetco signs deal with ONEICMUSCAT: Genetco, Canon’s busi-ness partner in Oman, has been signed as a printing service provid-er for Oman’s National Engineer-ing & Investment Co. (ONEIC).
The deal is the fi rst signing of its kind for Canon in Oman and is fur-ther evidence of the brand’s grow-ing strong position among the top providers of professional business printing solutions in the region.
The deal with ONEIC involves the purchase of an imagePRESS 1110. Designed for print rooms that demand the highest stand-ards, the imagePRESS 1110 deliv-ers the sharpest prints and han-dles a diverse range of media for trouble-free operation. Equipped with Variable Data Printing soft-ware, the solution off ers the com-pany to print from a database with a master document template, and then output that document from the Canon printer, by employing a set of conditional business rules, so every page generated carries unique water/electric billing in-formation for each customer.
Naoshi Yamada, deputy manag-ing director, Canon Middle East, said; “Canon is an expert and trusted partner to its customers, helping them drive profi table busi-ness performance through contin-ued understanding of the needs of their customers. This deal repre-sents a significant breakthrough for the brand in the Sultanate and will redefine the current offering within the professional
print environment of ONEIC.”Adept at anything from fast
turnaround, short-runs to com-plex Variable Data Printing, the imagePRESS 1110 delivers im-pressive production speeds of 110 impressions per minute. The variety of in-line fi nishing possi-bilities available including perfect binding, multi-folding, saddle-stitching, punching, one or three edge trimming, and high capacity
stacking, makes it an ideal printer of choice for organisations such as ONEIC.
“Canon is a market-leading, cus-tomer focused company provid-ing a complete range of business imaging solutions. ONEIC was looking for ways to save a signifi -cant amount on their print-related costs and also increase productiv-ity. Our expert team studied the requirements of the company by looking at all factors involved and then recommended the industry-leading Canon imagePRESS 1110 solution which addressed all the diffi culties the company faced with their previous printing infra-structure,” said Dr. Muthanna Al Durrah, CEO, Genetco.
The imagePRESS 1110 is able to print images at a true 1200 x 1200dpi (with 256 halftones) reso-lution. At this high quality, it pro-duces sharp characters, smooth corners, clean gradient transi-tions, resulting in sharper text and images that are extremely clear and detailed.
S E R V I C E P R O V I D E R
The Zubair Corporation establishes new department for community engagement
MUSCAT: In line with its fi rm belief in the importance of col-laboration and engagement be-tween the community and private sector organizations, The Zubair Corporation has established a new department to champion the eff orts of community engagement within the Sultanate. The depart-ment will carry out the mission of strengthening channels of com-munication and engagement with diff erent segments of the society in order to achieve sustainable development in various fi elds.
The new Community Engage-ment department will be entrust-ed to study and analyse social de-velopment needs, and to develop social programs and community-based initiatives in various fi elds, targeting diff erent age groups. It will also be in charge of sup-porting Omani youth to enhance their skills and capabilities, and encourage positive initiatives in various fi elds in a way that better serves them for now and prepares them for the future.
The department will take the responsibility of opening chan-nels of dialogue between the cor-poration and diff erent segments of society in order to enhance the confi dence of the Omani youth in
working for the private sector.Stressing on the objectives of
the new department and urging other private sector establishment to follow its lead, Khalid bin Mo-hammed Al Zubair, Managing Di-rector of The Zubair Corporation, said: “This is a milestone for The Zubair Corporation in particular and for the private sector in gen-eral. I absolutely call on other companies and private sector institutions to make eff orts in this regard and to join hands with the public sector in order to achieve sustainable development
in all fi elds.”Ibrahim bin Abdullah Al-Salmi
has joined The Zubair Corpora-tion as the Social Communication Manager. He is one of the pioneers of social media and voluntary work in the Sultanate, and he has a long experience in the fi eld of commu-nity-based initiatives.
The Department will begin implementing its strategic plan to achieve further progress with the full support of The Zubair Corpo-ration, and will boost communica-tion with society through a range of community-based initiatives.
E X C L U S I V E A S S I G N M E N T
Ek Shaam Teray Naam evokes huge response
MUSCAT: Alpha Events, Oman organised a grand evening of poetry and prose entitled Ek Shaam Teray Naam (An evening devoted to you), at Al Falaj Hotel, recently, which was a huge suc-cess. World-renowned Pakistani Urdu poet Wasi Shah entertained a large number of poetry lovers from Pakistani, Indian and Omani communities, for more than an hour and a half with his loving and inspirational works and got big applause. Even at the end of the programme, audience, who gave Wasi Shah standing aviation, was still eager to listen to more ghaz-als and poems from the favourite poet and the hall remained packed to capacity.
Well-known Pakistani intellec-tual and writer, Dr Ayoub Shaikh added to the charm of the fam-ily oriented literary and cultural evening with his presence and was appreciated. The Chief Guest, K. K. Ahsan Wagan, chargé d’aff aires at Embassy of Pakistan, in his ad-dress, lauded the eff orts of the or-ganiser, Alpha Events, Oman and the presenter Ittfaq Travel & Tour-ism and Ittfaq Cargo & Courier and other sponsors, for providing assistance to the embassy to pro-mote the cultural diplomacy of Pakistan in the Sultanate of Oman.
He also urged his countrymen
to obey the rules and regulations of Oman and to develop more soft image of Pakistan here. Former Ambassador of Pakistan, Nawa-bzada Aminullah Khan Raisani also graced this memorable event as the guest of honour.
The local participants included Hafi z Faisal Sultan, Mohammad Afzal, Murtaza Qadri, Syed Jamil Zaidi, Zakir Hussain Zakir, Pushpa Negi, Azra Aleem, Muhammad Zakariya Babur, Qamar Riaz and Prof.Umeed Rafi que, who also paid tribute to famous guest poet and popular TV anchor, Wasi Shah.
Leading Pakistani businessmen, Chaudhry Mohammad Aslam,
Haji Muhammad Boota and Chaudhry Abid Majeed presented a memento to K. K. Ahsan Wagan in recognition of his meritori-ous services to boost the beauty and richness of Pakistani culture in Oman. On behalf of prominent Pakistanis, Sarfraz Mohammad Nawaz and Chaudhry Mohammad Ilyas and the host, Fahad Awais Munir, the chief guest, K. K. Ah-san Wagan gave away mementos to some distinguished guests and the presenter Mian Muhammad Munir, who also presented cash prizes to some lucky winners from the audience, who gave correct an-swers to the questions.
E N T E R T A I N I N G F A R E
Kia presents fi rst ever YouTube Music AwardsMUSCAT: Recently, YouTube, in partnership with Kia Motors Corporation, announced nomi-nations for the fi rst ever YouTube Music Awards, a global event cul-minating in a live show from New York City on November 3.
Six categories, including Vid-eo, Artist, and YouTube Phenom-enon of the Year, are now open for voting to fans around the world.
The lineup of top performers at the YouTube Music Awards con-tinues to grow. Avicii, M.I.A., Earl Sweatshirt, and Tyler the Creator join previously announced acts Eminem, Lady Gaga, and Arcade Fire for the live show, with You-Tube sensations Lindsey Stirling and CDZA also on tap to per-form. Actor and musician Jason Schwartzman is joined by come-dian and musician Reggie Watts to host this live event presented in partnership with Kia Motors Corporation. Music video vi-sionary Spike Jonze is creative director, with executive produc-ers VICE Media and Sunset Lane Entertainment.
Nominations for the YouTube Music Awards have been deter-mined based on YouTube data over the last 12 months, with nominees representing the artists and vide-os with the highest levels of You-Tube fan engagement, including views, likes, shares, comments, and subscriptions.
The six nomination categories and nominees for this year’s You-Tube Music Awards are Video of the Year: Honouring the world’s
most loved music videos, these nominees represent the videos with the most fan engagement on YouTube over the last year. Artist of the Year: Honoring YouTube’s most loved acts, nominees rep-resent the most watched, shared, liked, and subscribed to artists over the last year. Response of the Year: Honoring the best fan remix, parody or response video, these nominees represent the top “unoffi cial” fan videos on You-Tube based on the videos fans watched, shared or liked. You-Tube Phenomenon: Recogniz-ing the YouTube trends that the world could not get enough of, nominees are based on the songs that generated the most fan vid-eos. YouTube Breakthrough: Honoring music’s breakout new acts, nominees represent the art-ists who experienced the biggest growth in views and subscribers over the last year. Innovation: Rec-ognizing the groundbreaking crea-tivity of music videos on YouTube, these nominees were selected by an international panel of artists and creators to represent the most creative and innovative vid-eos from the last 12 months.
In the run up to the YouTube Music Awards, fi ve music events will be streamed from around the world on YouTube, culminating in the live awards celebration in New York City. The shows from Seoul, Tokyo, Moscow, London and Rio will kick off at 5am ET on November 3, and fans can tune in at youtube.com/YouTube.
T I T L E S P O N S O R
Create pleasant ambience at home with Reed Diff users
MUSCAT: A pleasant or foul smell creates the fi rst impres-sion when we enter a room. A quick whiff of a space will di-rectly infl uence our frame of mind for better or worse.
Fill your home with a fresh, clean scent with reed diff users from Adore, now exclusively available across Lifestyle stores.
Indulge in the gorgeous new scents by Adore - Arabian Nights and Luxury Tempta-tions, ideal for any room at home. These stylish diff users fi ll your home with a sublime fragrance to relax, indulge and exhilarate your senses. With a scalloped edge bottle present-ed in a luxury gift box, this will make a wonderful gift for your loved ones.
Lifestyle’s in-house brand Adore specializes in innovative and quality products ranging from decorative gift candles, reed diff user, and potpourri.
A D O R E B R A N D
B6
ROUND-UPT U E S DAY, O CTO B E R 2 9, 2 0 1 3
‘Kerala offers an idyllic getaway for holiday travellers from Oman’
Times News Service
MUSCAT: Kerala is a holiday destination travellers from Oman should explore, advises Ramesh Nair, director, The Explore Holi-days. He says besides the diver-sity of the land, Kerala is an idyl-lic and convenient getaway for outbound tourists from Oman. Explore Holidays with its head-quarters in Kerala recently opened their offi ce in Oman.
Share with us briefl y how was Explore Holidays conceived? What inspired you to get into the travel industry?
I belong to Kerala which was hardly known as a tourist desti-nation till the 1980s. In the 1990s, thanks to aggressive promotion by the state, the ‘Gods Own Country’ tagline of the state tourism board, and accommodation infrastruc-ture created by Taj, the home-grown CGH Group of the Casino Hotels and other hoteliers/groups, Kerala began to fl ower as a tourist destination. People began to wake up to the beauty of Kerala – its beaches, its backwaters, its green-ery, its hills, its wildlife, its rich culture, arts like Kathakali, Kalari-payettu, Teyyam, woodcarving and silk weaving, its architecture, and other attractions. Kerala is also a leader in ayurveda and yoga. Many
tour operators and travel agents from northern India and overseas began operating tours to Kerala. I felt that I could leverage my knowledge of Kerala’s language, culture and lifestyle to provide ground handling services for their groups and FIT clients. This led to my starting Explore Holidays which focuses largely on Kerala and its neighbouring states of Ta-mil Nadu and Karnataka.
How do you propose to mould yourself as leader in the tour-ism industry considering there are so many players?
We are a very specialised opera-tor with a focus on places we know well. We have drivers who know the terrain, language and destina-tions of Kerala, and they have also been oriented in dealing with tour-ists of diff erent profi les.
Which are the segments you cater to currently? Which oth-er segments do you plan to tap?
Currently, most of our clients come for houseboat stays, back-waters cruise, relaxing holidays at beach, waterfront and hill resorts, and ayurvedic resorts. There are some who visit religious pilgrim-
age places, wildlife reserves or architectural sights like forts, tem-ples and palaces. Some business travellers also come to Kerala. MICE tourism like conferences and incentives is big here. We are always looking for new openings – for instance, wildlife/birdwatch-ing/ecotourism in Kerala is a new fi eld we have entered. We are mentioned in http://www.mam-malwatching.com/Oriental/ori-entindia2011.html as an operator for the Kerala – Tamil Nadu wild-life reserves, and this has inspired us to research deeper into starting specialised mammal or birdwatch-ing tours in this part of India.
Name some of the initiatives you have taken to engage with the Omani market?
Recently we have started an of-fi ce at Oman. Our counterpart, Venu Vasudevan (ex-country man-ager KLM) who has much experi-ence of doing business in the Gulf region will represent the company.
What are some of the popular packages that Explore Holi-days off ers?
We have various packages like Marvellous Kerala, Amazing
Kerala, Enchanting South India, among others. We do have Ayur-veda Package too.
Which are some of the top spots you recommend to the Omani travellers and why?
Kerala is one of India’s greenest states and enjoys high rainfall – therefore, superb waterfalls, lush green forests full of big wildlife like elephants, tigers and bears, tea and spice plantations, paddy fi elds, backwaters and lakes lined with greenery, cool hill resorts and a lovely misty monsoon are some of the hall marks of the state. Since there are fl ights from Oman including the national car-rier’s to Kochi, Kozhikode and Thiruvananthapuram, this is a convenient destination for travel-lers from Oman to get into a very diff erent environment.
The top destinations we recom-mend are Munnar, Wayanad dis-trict and Periyar lake for enjoying forests, green hills, plantations and wildlife, and Kumarakom,
Alapuzha and Kolam for cruises on the backwaters. Those who like architecture and cultural heritage may be interested in the mosques of Kozhikode and Kasaragod, the Bekal fort, the palace and Syna-gogue of Kochi, the monuments of Thiruvananthapuram, the church-es of Kottayam, and the cultural highlights of Thrissur district which has famous performing arts academies.
In the monsoon, Athirapally is a delightful place to enjoy water-falls and rainforests. Those who prefer beach holidays can choose from Kovalam, Marari and Bekal. Since Indians comprise a large expat population of Oman, Hindu pilgrimage tours to Sabarimala, Ettumanoor, Guruvayoor, Thiru-vananthapuram, etc also have a signifi cant market.
At these destinations, there are good hotels and resorts, and at some places even heritage houses or plantation properties off er unu-sual accommodations. Halal food is easily available everywhere in
Kerala. The fi sh, seafood and veg-etarian food here is also exempla-ry. Thus, we feel that Kerala is an idyllic and convenient getaway for outbound tourists from Oman.
Are you open to custom-made packages? Could you elaborate?
We are extremely well posi-tioned to off er custom-made packages. Many tour operators and individual clients send us details of their interests, budgets and special requirements, and we make the itinerary for them. Whether it is a medical and wellness trip with accommoda-tions in ayurvedic resorts and yoga ashrams, a recreational hol-iday, a honeymoon, a beach holi-day, a wildlife tour, a pilgrimage, we plan the itinerary and work out costing for the client. We are open to handling specialised tours like agriculture, birdwatching, arts, handicrafts, martial arts/music/dance, cooking lessons, cuisine, etc if we get enough time to plan the package.
Explore Holidays with
its headquarters in
Kerala recently opened
their offi ce in Oman
Bank Sohar reiterates support to women on Omani Women’s Day MUSCAT: Inspired by the Royal vision of His Majesty Sultan Qa-boos bin Said for the empower-ment of Omani women, Bank Sohar continues to play a com-mendable part in the realisation of this strategic national goal and be a leader in gender diversity; supporting women in the work-place, as customers and in the community. Through a multi-pronged eff ort that combines fe-male recruitment, skills develop-ment, leadership training, as well as entrepreneurship promotion, Bank Sohar is determined to make a diff erence not only to help wom-en fulfi ll their potential as lead-ers in the bank, but to also play a critical role with its customers and communities in supporting and furthering the role and growth of women as partners alongside men in national development.
“Bank Sohar is committed to be-ing a leader in the advancement of women in the Sultanate and aside from our own eff orts we are a proud supporter of many local organisations focused on helping women on a personal and profes-sional level. A key example of such a contribution is the bank’s spon-sorship of the Al Mara Excellence Awards which is planned to be or-ganised November 17th,” said Ms. Munira Abdulnabi Macki, DGM of Human Resources and Corpo-
rate Support. “Furthermore, as a community focused organisation, we will always join Oman to com-memorate Omani Women’s Day, a day set aside to celebrate the suc-cess and contribution of women in the Sultanate.”
Bank Sohar has, since its in-ception in 2007, made impressive strides in empowering Omani women both within the bank and in the community, as key driv-ers of economic development. Thanks to a comprehensive pro-gramme adopted by the Bank since its launch, women now account for a creditable 28 per cent of its workforce. They hold positions of signifi cant responsibility, author-
ity and leadership across the vari-ous departments including Retail Banking, Wholesale Banking, Hu-man Resources and many more.
“As an organization where women make up more than 28 per cent of our employee base, we take a keen interest in women’s issues, because these are topics of concern and interest to our em-ployees, our community and to our customers across our bank-ing network,” added Ms. Munira Abdulnabi Macki.
Thus, in the context of this year’s Omani Women’s Day, which was celebrated across the nation on October 17, Bank Sohar has a lot to be proud of in terms of its ongo-ing policy of engaging women as partners in the Banking Sector.
At Bank Sohar over 171 women currently work alongside men to-wards the unifi ed goal of achieving the Bank’s growth objectives. They have made impressive strides in all aspects of their jobs, with sev-eral of them already holding posi-tions of authority by virtue of their professional performance and tal-ent. They have demonstrated their indispensability to the success of the bank’s operations by shoul-dering their responsibilities with remarkable confi dence, effi ciency and poise. Clearly, they represent a vital part of the Bank Sohar family and the community.
P R O U D T O B E C O M M I T T E D
KR Group sponsors women empowerment workshopMUSCAT: The Khimji Ramdas Group is always at the forefront of corporate social responsibility activities and people empower-ment endeavours. Recently the Group concentrated its eff orts on one of the country’s most vital human resources – its women.
Through two of its business units, The Watches Division and P&G Division (Wella Koleston brand), KR lent its support to a fi ve-day workshop titled “Devel-oping Women Entrepreneurs” aimed at Omani women, to help them successfully manage their business ventures. Conducted free of charge for the participants, at the Oman Chambers of Com-merce & Industry, the sympo-sium was KR’s way of recognising women’s aspirations of steering their own destiny through eco-nomic independence and es-tablishing their own identity as successful businesswomen.
The seminar was divided into two main components handled individually by the Art of Living Foundation and Matrix Oman. Together they focused on the best ways to develop skill sets for at-taining success in private busi-ness and ventures
Commenting on the workshop, Asma Khalis, Art of Living, In-ternational Faculty member said, “We thank the Khimji Ramdas
Group for their support of our ini-tiatives. The KR Group is always recognized for their unwavering commitment to social causes and their support of this workshop, through their businesses like Khimji’s Watches and P & G Divi-sion, proves just how committed they are.”
Suleiman Al Rahbi, National Director of Matrix Oman said, “We are extremely grateful to the Khimji Ramdas Group for extend-ing whole hearted support to the workshop. We can think of no bet-ter corporate partner to represent the cause of the Omani woman than KR. Their unequivocal sup-port refl ects the company’s high regard and respect for one of the country’s most valued resources – its women.”
The Art of Living session
taught women how to eliminate and deal with stress through meditation, yoga and other tech-niques. Women, especially those juggling home and work, were introduced to de-stressing ac-tivities designed to develop self-confi dence and help them take fi rmer charge of their daily lives without the added pressure.
The second component, deliv-ered by Matrix Oman, focused on developing business skills of ac-counting, book-keeping, market-ing and encouraging women to be more open to challenges in the entrepreneurial fi eld.
The workshop was held at the Oman Chamber of Commerce and Industry (OCCI); on its con-clusion all participants received certificates recognising their active participation.
C S R I N I T I A T I V E
Vasudevan Ramesh Nair
T U E S DAY, O CTO B E R 2 9, 2 0 1 3
ROUND-UPB7
al Mazyona campaign celebrated in Sohar
MUSCAT: Bank Muscat marked a celebration in Sohar as part of the OMR1 million al Mazyona year-end grand prize campaign across the Sultanate. The grand prize will be shared by 10 customers cover-ing all the governorates, including one Priority Banking customer, who will receive OMR100,000 each. Customers maintaining a minimum balance of OMR1000 for the last quarter of the year are eligible for the grand prize draw. A large turn-out of customers and senior bank offi cials attend-ed the al Mazyona family event held in Crowne Plaza Hotel. The highlight was al Mazyona operetta,
which evocatively conveyed the message of prudent savings hab-its through the folklore song and dance programme.
Ali Jama, senior regional man-ager – North Batinah, said: “al Ma-zyona reaffi rms the bank’s vision and constant eff orts to fulfi ll the aspirations and ambitions of the largest banking family in Oman. The fl agship savings scheme has won the hearts of people and suc-ceeded in realising the dreams of thousands of customers. The bank attaches great importance to inculcating prudent savings and spending habits and has tailored al Mazyona scheme with this ob-jective in mind. The series of big prizes from Bank Muscat is the major attraction of al Mazyona which off ers fair and transpar-ent winning chances for all seg-ments of customers.” al Mazyona
2013 scheme off ers a total prize money of over RO 7 million. As on date, the scheme off ers the biggest prize money in Oman and the re-gion. Notably, the enhanced prize money is shared by more win-ners as customers from all gov-ernorates are guaranteed to win prizes ranging from OMR1000 a week, OMR50,000 every quarter to OMR100,000 at the end of the year. The 2013 al Mazyona scheme reaches out to all individual seg-ments with exclusive prizes ear-marked for ladies, youth, children and high savings balance custom-ers in all regions. al Mazyona has consistently been a huge success. The objective of al Mazyona is to create a lifetime change for win-ners and allow them to invest their prize money in things that will make a lasting diff erence and the well-being of their families.
An added attraction is that the winning chances get multiplied by the number of years customers are associated with al Mazyona savings scheme. For example, if a customer has been saving for 5 years, his chances of winning get multiplied by 5 times and simi-larly if he has been maintaining al Mazyona savings account for 20 years, his chances get multiplied 20 times and so on. This benefi t is unique only to al Mazyona savings scheme and no other bank off ers this, as on date. This provides high savers with the best chance to win the year-end RO 1 million prizes.
Over the years, al Mazyona has succeeded in inculcating a strong savings culture in Oman. The fl exible scheme makes regular saving easier and is available across the largest network of 138 branches in Oman.
The grand prize
will be shared by 10
customers covering
all the governorates,
including one Priority
Banking customer,
who will receive
OMR100,000 each
Seasons promotion on Nissan Maxima MUSCAT: Nissan Oman from the house of Suhail Bahwan Au-tomobiles has introduced an ex-citing line up of off ers on all their SUV, Crossover, Sedan and LCV models. Their special ‘seasons promotions’ are not to be missed until October 31, 2013 which have been launched for Nissan’s most valued patrons.
Nissan has a heritage of show-casing some of the most amazing benefi ts for their customers by introducing unique off ers on their prestigious line up of vehicles. In an eff ort to make Nissan vehicles aff ordable and accessible to all, Suhail Bahwan Automobiles has taken up this unique initiative. The Nissan Maxima is a great fusion between a sedan and the soul of a sports car. And this combination of sports sedan styling along with ample comfort and luxury that the Maxima provides has made it a favorite among the youngsters in the Sultanate. Customers buying
the sporty Nissan Maxima will be eligible for several benefi ts that include free registration, free in-surance, free 6 years extended war-ranty and free 1 year or 10,000 kms (whichever comes fi rst) periodic maintenance. One of the major highlights include that customers will be eligible to avail all the above benefi ts along with guaranteed cash back of OMR500.
The breakthrough exterior design of the Maxima imparts a feeling of powerful driving mo-tion which combines an ag-gressive stance and the power-ful 3.5L, V6 engine with 290 HP/64000 RPM Xtronic CVT transmission. The new Nissan Maxima delivers quick accel-eration and lasting euphoria with Paddle shifter, Cruise control and Bluetooth technology for a better driving experience.
Apart from its performance, Nissan Maxima also off ers maxi-mum comfort and safety.
A T T R A C T I V E O F F E R S
Malabar Gold announces online shopping, Mine Diwali collectionMUSCAT: Malabar Gold & Dia-monds announced their foray into online shopping with launch of www.shopmgd.com along with launch of their price friendly Mine Diamond Diwali collection. Both the launches were done by Brand Ambassador Kareena Ka-poor in a glittering function held at JW Marriot, Mumbai, in the presence of many dignitaries and senior directors of Malabar Gold & Diamonds.
The products purchased through shopmgd.com has various features which includes return within 14 days, free insurance cov-erage, life long free maintenance, detailed break up of pricing with gold rate, labour charges, stone weight among others. Since they are certifi ed products, they can easily be exchanged at its stores.
Brand Ambassador Kareena Kapoor added “I am very happy to be here at the launch. My schedule
has always been very hectic and with Diwali around the corner, I always need to purchase gifts for my friends and family. Malabar Gold and Diamonds E commerce site launch comes at a perfect tim-ing. I can shop for my favorite piec-es at my convenience and get it de-livered at home. And if it is coming from a trusted group like Malabar Gold & Diamonds, then we don’t have to worry about the quality”.
Company also launched ‘Mine
Diamonds Diwali Collection’ an-other exclusive and price friendly product off ering from the brand. This collection has a range of necklaces crafted by the talented designers of Malabar Gold & Dia-monds in association with The R&D team.
These diamond necklaces are of premium quality diamond certi-fi ed by IGI, and has the character-istic product off ering of Malabar Gold & Diamonds.
S H O P O N L I N E
Modify lifestyle, prevent kidney stone formation, says expertMUSCAT: Modifi cation of life-style can prevent formation of kidney stones to a certain ex-tent. Often, stone patients, after the surgery, take it for granted that they are completely free from possible stone formation in future.
In fact, the risk of stone for-mation for patients who had suf-fered from stones before is very much likely, says Dr Arun Panackal (M.B.B.S, M.D, FCS – Urology), urologist at KIMS Oman Hospital. Lifestyle modifi -cations include enough water in-take, a diet low in salt and animal protein, caution with calcium supplements and oxalate-rich food items and moderate exer-cise. Indeed, one must ensure that he/she drinks enough water, and avoid chocolates.
Kidney stones that remain in-side the body can lead to many conditions, including severe pain and ureter (the tube connecting the kidney and bladder) blockage that obstructs the path urine uses to leave the body. It is a must for stone patients to undergo follow up with their urologist regularly, Dr Panackal added.
CausesAbout 25 per cent of patients with kidney stones have a family history of stones. The peak inci-dence of urinary calculi is from the twenties to the forties. The prevalence of urinary calculi is higher in those who live in moun-tainous, desert, or tropical areas. Dietary factors that increase the risk of stone formation include low fl uid intake and high dietary intake of animal proteins, sodi-um, refi ned sugars, fructose etc.
In Oman, risk of stones is pri-marily due to less water intake and more animal protein. Water intake plays a major role in the prevention of stones. It acts by two ways. First, it causes me-chanical expulsion of stones, second it prevents saturation of
urinary minerals that can cause stone formation. The presence or absence of certain trace ele-ments in water has been impli-cated in the formation of urinary calculi. For example, zinc is an inhibitor of calcium crystalliza-tion. There are certain diseases that can result in stone forma-tion hyperparathyroidism, in-testinal diseases, post intestinal surgeries, gout, cancers, bed rid-den patients, urinary tract infec-tions and patient on long time catheters.
SymptomsKidney stones typically leave the body by passage in the urine stream, and many stones are formed and passed without caus-ing symptoms. If stones grow to suffi cient size (usually at least 3mm) they can cause obstruc-tion of the ureter.
This leads to pain, most com-monly felt in the fl ank (the area between the ribs and hip), lower abdomen, and groin (a condi-tion called renal colic) is often described as one of the strongest pain sensations known. Renal colic can be associated with nau-sea, vomiting, fever, blood in the urine, pus in the urine, and pain-
ful urination. Renal colic typical-ly comes in waves lasting 20 to 60 minutes, peristaltic contrac-tions of the ureter as it attempts to expel the stone, beginning in the fl ank or lower back and often radiating to the groin or genitals.
Pain from renal stones comes only when they move down or causes obstructions. That is why stone can remain in the kidneys for years without causing problems.
DiagnosisThe diagnosis of kidney stones is made on the basis of information obtained from the history, physi-cal examination, urine analysis (pain with blood in the urine is striking sign of urinary stones) and Ultrasound examination and CT Scan also aid in the diagnosis. There are some stones that can-not be seen on X-rays (like uric acid stone which are common with gout patients).
Management Patients always have a concep-tion that medication can break the stone, there is no medication till now that can break the stone, except for the uric acid stone which can be dissolved by Citra soda. That is one of the reasons that surgical techniques are de-veloping so fast. Management of stones depends upon the size and the position of the stone in the urinary tract.
For kidney stones there is no medical management, but some herbal medications have shown some benefi t but it is diffi cult to comment on it. For ureteric stones depending upon the size and symptoms medical management are tried to help in the passage of stones. Surgery also depends on the size and the position of the stone; small stones less the 5mm in the kidneys can be left for observation.
Today, any size of stone irre-spective of the position can be taken out completely with endo-scopic techniques.
H E A L T H Y L I V I N G
Dr. Arun Panackal
B8
ROUND-UPT U E S DAY, O CTO B E R 2 9, 2 0 1 3
omanoil launches new brand of lubricants
MUSCAT: Oman Oil Market-ing Company (omanoil) has launched its own brand of lubri-cants in the Sultanate of Oman as part of its strategy to diversify the petroleum industry.
Announcing the launch, Engi-neer Omar Ahmed Salim Qatan, CEO, omanoil, said, “We are de-lighted to introduce our new lu-bricant products under the oma-noil brand and celebrate another milestone in our ten-year history. This range of lubricants marks the fi rst ever product of its kind to be manufactured by omanoil, and we are pleased to off er our specially designed range to better serve the
nation and people with local products of international standards.”
Engineer Nabeel Al Ruwaidhi, general manager for commercial, lubricants, marine, aviation and business development, Oman-oil said, “The products we are introducing to the Omani mar-ket include a range of lubricants starting with Optimo – a passen-ger car motor oil developed to pro-vide power and performance and Maximo – a diesel range catering to commercial vehicles.
“Also under the omanoil brand are Marino – an advanced for-mulation oil specially developed for fi shing and leisure outboard engines and Ancillary – a range that reduces wear and tear and includes cool guard, gear guard, power guard, speed guard and fric-tion guard. We manufacture these
products outside Oman. We export our products to many countries.”
Enhancing its comprehensive product off ering, omanoil’s range of high performance automotive, commercial and speciality lu-bricants and greases have been formulated to heighten all-round performance of vehicles and im-prove driving satisfaction. Pro-viding high quality lubricants to cater to every vehicle engine need, omanoil is keeping its promise to better serve the na-tion with local products of inter-national standards.
He further said, “In creating the lubricants range, we coupled our innate understanding of our customers’ lifestyles as well as our knowledge of Oman’s diverse terrain and weather conditions with extensive research and devel-
opment. We have adopted the most advanced global technology to produce lubricants especially tailored to Oman.”
Produced at state-of-the-art facilities, omanoil ensures its lu-bricants meet international qual-ity standards and the specifi ca-tions of the American Petroleum Institute. Engineer Al Ruwaidhi went on to say that with the vast development of vehicle engines, the applications for lubricants have increased by type and speci-ality. omanoil will keep abreast of this ever-changing development to formulate lubricants to supply modern day vehicles and all types of equipment needs. Shaukath Hussain Assadi, senior lubricants manager and Prakash Rangaraj, lubricants export manager, were present on the occasion.
Providing high quality
lubricants to cater to
every vehicle engine
need, omanoil is
keeping its promise to
better serve the nation
with local products
of international
standards
A’Saff a Foods launches Khayrat beef burger MUSCAT: A’ Saff a Foods has reinforced its brand promise by off ering customers one of their most tasty Khayrat beef burg-ers which are high in taste and quality. The launch of the new brand is a major step forward in A’Saff a Foods becoming one of the leading food producers in Oman and across the region as it diversifi es into new areas building on the success of its chicken products that use the best quality ingredients that are healthy, tasty and 100 per cent pure Halal. Leading the launch of the new range of Khayrat food products is the new 100 per cent natural and tasty beef burger, which has been made using only the best quality ingredients. The burger will be the fi rst of a long list of beef, meat and vegetable products introduced to A’Saff a customers which will continue to be produced us-ing A’Saff a’s principles with only the most natural ingredients and 100 per cent pure Halal preparation techniques. Sidhar-tha Lenka, Head Marketing & Sales of A’Saff a foods said “The name Khayrat means ‘the fi nest of crops’ or the ‘best quality ingredients’ and this is what we strive to provide for our cus-tomers in everything we produce, and the new range of meat and vegetable products planned to launch soon will not be any diff erent.” “Everything will be produced using the fi nest and healthiest of ingredients and will strictly adhering to the Halal procedures A’Saff a is famous for using across our range of poul-try products. Now we can bring families across the Sultanate a wide range of food choices that everyone can enjoy”.
PSC ladies wing cooking competition on Oct 31MUSCAT: Ladies wing of Pakistan Social Club Oman has announced that the Ladies Cooking Competition 2013 would be held on October 31, 2013 at Hotel Al-Falaj from 5 p.m. on-wards. Ladies from all communities are invited to visit and enjoy this family fi esta in Muscat. Naheed Ayaz, wife of Pa-kistan’s ambassador to Oman will be the chief guest of the festival. Three chefs from renowned hotels will judge the food prepared by the participants. Top three positions will be awarded. Other activities to add some sparkle to the event is live musical show performed by well-known singers. Henna and nail polish will be available. Stall displaying jewellery, la-dies textile, shoes, cosmetic items and a food court will be an attraction. Alongside, a quiz competition will be held and at-tractive prizes will be given away. This family fi esta is open to the ladies and girls of all communities residing in Oman.
Chopard’s vibrant range of handbags now in OmanMUSCAT: Chopard, an in-ternationally renowned lux-ury house, is off ering a new range of leather handbags and clutches which is chic, func-tional and boasts of vibrant colours and opulence. This range can be ordered in Oman at the Khimji’s Watches show-room, the one-stop destination for world class brands. Epony-mous with bright colours and luxurious textures, Chopard’s new range is the ultimate breath of fresh air intended for a re-fi ned, dynamic woman of today, who appreciates the discreet luxury of extremely beautiful objects. Known for its innova-tive use of precious skins and distinct colour palette, these new handbags combine exquisite Italian craftsmanship with legendary Chopard style. Madhursinh Jesrani, general man-ager, Khimji’s Watches comments: “The latest Chopard hand-bags are exclusive, authentic and timeless. Be it the Happy Day bag in orange calfskin or the Imperiale All Day Mini bag in soft light pink calfskin, the new range is the quintessence of classic elegance and makes for the ultimate luxury accessory. All day or all night, these beautiful bags are never out of place. Its fi nesse and quality of its materials with a spacious volume and beautiful colours meet the needs of today’s woman”.
B R I E F S
NEW OFFERING: Senior offi cials of omanoil launched the new products here on Sunday.
– Jun Estrada/ TIMES OF OMAN
Special off er on Renault FluenceMUSCAT: Suhail Bahwan Auto-mobiles has gained rave reviews from auto fanatics in the region for this year’s launch of their new Phase 2 Renault Fluence.
Now, the new Renault Flu-ence is available across Oman with the new 1.6 16V 112 CVT X-Tronic automatic gearbox and the 2.0 16V 143 CVT X-Tronic Automat-ic gearbox. With Renault’s growing popularity amongst all segments of people in town, Renault Oman has introduced a special pricing scheme for their valued customers where they can buy the stylish Renault Fluence at OMR89 on CVI (Con-tinuous Variable Instalment) basis with an initial 20 percent down payment only.
Customers also get to avail unlimited benefi ts like free reg-istration, free insurance, 6 years unlimited mileage warranty, free AAA road assistance and lastly free service for 20,000 kms/1 year (whichever is earlier). Eligi-
ble customers can now avail this unique off er that will make their purchasing convenient and easy. The Renault Fluence is packed with high-end technologies designed to make driving simpler. The vehicle also off ers a range of driver-assistance technologies, including the hands-free key card for no-touch locking and unlocking of doors, as well as push-button ignition.
On the higher equipment level,
the parking assist system of new Fluence features four rear-park-ing sensors neatly integrated into the rear bumper. Another intelli-gent feature is the automatic park-ing brake, which applies itself as soon as the ignition is turned off and released once the engine is running again.
The Renault Fluence off ers more generous passenger space than other vehicles in the same class. Interior measurements are highly
impressive, with elbow room of 1,480mm in the front and 1,475mm at the rear. Rear passengers enjoy class-leading legroom, with 238mm of knee space, with access to more than 23 litres of in-cabin storage. The boot capacity of 530 litres is among the biggest in C-Sedan class, with a low loading sill (727mm) and wide aperture (1,020mm).
From its entry level model, the Renault Fluence off ers ABS with electronic brake force distribu-tion, emergency brake assist, three-point front safety belts with pre-tensioners and load limiters, driver and front passenger air-bags, three-point Isofi x child seat anchorage for the outer rear seats and projector headlights.
Available as standard or option-al, depending on the equipment level, are safety key features such as stability control (ESP) with under steer control, front side airbags, as well as front and rear curtain airbags.
A T T R A C T I V E B E N E F I T S
WWW.TIMESOFOMAN.COM
SPOR SY O U R G A M E
SECTIONC T U E S DAY, O CTO B E R 2 9, 2 0 1 3
WMS’ YOUNG DRIVERS SHINE IN UAE SERIESThe Wahaibi Motorsport backed trio of Shihab Al Habsi, Khalid Al Wahaibi and Waheeb Al Kharusi have shown their mettle at the Round 2 and 3 of the UAE Rotax Max challenge Kart series at the Dubai Autodrome recently. >C6
Golfi ng gathers ‘huge momentum’ in Oman
SPORTS REPORTER
MUSCAT: National Finance, one of the leading fi nancial com-panies in the Sultanate, in asso-ciation with International Heavy Enterprises (IHE), offi cial deal-ers of Volvo Trucks & Buses, is all set to organise an Open Golf Tournament at the Ghala Valley on Friday.
Speaking to Times Sport in an interview, Robert Pancras, chief executive offi cer of National Fi-nance said with Oman becoming a top destination for golfers in the Middle East, the tournament will be an ideal platform.
“This inaugural tournament gives golfers, who are members of a local golf club, a real opportu-nity to up their game, and also en-courages the youth to get involved and experience the essence of this globally acclaimed sport,” Pancras said.
According to Pancras with the investments made in golf course development and associated infrastructure, there has been
a real upsurge in participation in the sport.
“In Oman, golf has been wit-nessing the game’s popularity increasing, with a number of pro-fessional courses sprouting and more people being enthused by the precision sport.
“Working in collaboration with our partners IHE and Ghala Valley Golf Club has allowed us to stage a signature golf tourna-ment — something exclusive for the local golfi ng community, and has increased awareness about the sport of golf in the Sultanate,” Pancras noted.
Pancras said with more tourna-
ments being organised, there has been a noticeable upsurge in tal-ent and interest in the sport.
“Our aim is to capitalise on this interest and contribute meaning-fully to raise the profi le of golf in the Sultanate, while recognis-ing some of the fi nest golfers here,” he said.
The organisers, according to Pancras, may plan on holding the event annually.
“We are hopeful that this tour-nament will be a great success and we defi nitely look forward to taking a decision about a possi-ble 2014 edition in consultation, of course, with our partners,” he said.
When asked if the company would support more such ini-tiatives in the future, Pancras had this to add: “National Finance has supported the development of a number of sports over the years, and more recently has sponsored junior football. We will continue to be supportive and look for the right opportunities where we be-lieve we can add value.”
G O L F
Our aim is to capitalise
on this interest
and contribute
meaningfully to raise
the profi le of golf in the
Sultanate
Robert PancrasCEO, National Finance
The National Finance
and International Heavy
Enterprises Open Golf
Tournament will be staged
at Ghala Valley on Friday
OOC board to meet on Nov 4MUSCAT: The Oman Olympic Committee (OOC) board mem-bers are scheduled to gather for the second meeting of the year under the chairmanship of com-mittee chief Khalid bin Moham-med Al Zubair on November 4.
According to a press release, the main agenda, however, will be reviewing of the programmes and activities held from May to September this year. The mem-bers will also assess the results of courses and international meet-ings prior to Oman’s participation
in the fourth Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games in South Ko-rean city of Incheon in June-July, second Asian Youth Games host-ed by Nanjing , China in August and September-October Islamic Solidarity Games organised in South Sumatra in Indonesia.
The board will also be briefed on Oman’s participation in the Association of National Olympic Committees (ANOC) meeting where the Sultanate was repre-sented by OOC chief Khalid Al Zubair and General Secretary
Taha Al Kishry. Oman’s par-ticipation in the Arab National Olympic Committees meeting in Saudi Arabia, where Al Zubair was elected as a member, will also come up for discussion.
The board members are also scheduled to hold discussions on invitations received for the in-ternational events to be held in 2014 and possible participation in those events, the prominent be-ing the World Martial Arts Festi-val to be organised in Kish (Iran) from November 12 to 16 in 2014.
R E V I E W I N G A C T I V I T I E S
Aiyman strikes gold for Oman
MUSCAT: Aiyman Al Kulaibi turned the golden boy of the Sul-tanate winning the country’s fi rst medal of yellow colour in the on-going GCC Swimming Champion-ships at the Sultan Qaboos Sports Complex yesterday.
On the second day of the region’s premier swimming meet, Aiyman made a splash in the pool, delight-ing the local fans by winning the top honours in the 200m back-stroke competition.
The Omani swimer clocked two minutes and 9.55 seconds (2:09.55) to fi nish well ahead of Kuwait’s Salman Jabir Mandani (2:12.93) and UAE’s Yaqoob Yousef Al Saadi (2:13.70) to clinch the gold.
Aiyman’s eff ort helped Oman, who won 11 medals on the in-
augural day, to take their medal tally to 20.
After yesterday’s competitions in the open category, the medal winners were honoured during a colour ceremony presided over by Oman Olympic Committee chief Khalid bin Mohammed Al Zubair and attended by Oman Swimming Association chairman Taha Al Kishry and members of Arab and GCC swimming bodies.
In the morning, Omani swim-mers bagged four medals besides Aiyman’s gold. In the fi rst race of the day, Oman won both silver and bronze in the 1,500m freestyle.
Mohammed Al Habsi took sil-ver in clocking 17:16.14 to fi nish behind Kuwait’s Abdullah Al Fa-had (17:14.71) while fellow Omani
Khalid Al Kulaibi (17:26.79).In the 50m freestyle for un-
der-10 boys, Kuwait’s Bader Majdi (31.47) took gold ahead of compa-triot Saud Thamer (31.70) and Ra-him Abdulali Hussein (32.92).
Meanwhile, Oman’s Moham-
med Abdullah denied Kuwait a clean sweep in the 50m freestyle competition. He took silver in 24.44 seconds while
Mohammed Ahmad (23.56) and (24.49) took gold and bronze re-spectively.
The gold in 100m breaststroke went to UAE’s Mubarak Moham-ed Salem (1:04.17) who fi nished ahead of Kuwait pair of Abdulrah-man Fahad Al Badr (1:04.47) and Ahmad Fahad Al Bader (1:04.56).
In 200m individual medley, the Kuwaitis fi nished one-two with Saud Thamer Shamrookh (2:55.03) and Bader Majdi (2:59.35) taking gold and silver respectively. Qatar’s Rahim Abdullali Hussein (3:01.22) fi nished third.
In 4x100m medley, Kuwaiti team of Saud Abdulaziz, Abdul-rahman Fahad Bader, Marzouq Faisal Al Salem and Mohamed Ahmed (3:56.89) won gold ahead of UAE’s Yaqoob Yousef Al Saadi, Mubarak Mohammed Salim, Ali Ahmad Al Kaabi and Mohammed Jassim Al Muhairi (3:57.66) while Omani quartet of Aiyman Al Ku-laibi, Issa Sameer Al Adawi, Nid-hal Suleiman Al Harrassi and Mo-hammed bin Abdullah (4:20.47) clinched bronze.
The Kuwaiti swimmers contin-ued their dominance in the after-noon starting with a 200m free-style gold won by Saud Abdulaziz. Saudi Arabia’s Ali Habib Issa and
Kuwait’s Ahmed Hussein Ahmed won silver and bronze respectively.
In the 400m individual medley, Marzouk Faisal Al Salem won an-other old for Kuwait while Rahman Yahya Al Kulaibi bagged silver for Oman. The bronze medal went to Bahrain’s Khalid Abdulla Baba.
In 50m breaststroke for un-der-10 boys, Kuwait’s Fahim Mas-sad Fahim and Abdullah Ahmed Eid won gold and silver while Bahrain’s Abdulla Khalid Jamal won bronze.
In 100m butterfl y, UAE’s Obaid Ahmed Al Jasmi won gold medal and his compatriot Ali Saeed Al Kaabi took silver with Oman’s Nawaf Munir Al Qasimi bagging the bronze.
In 200m breaststroke, Kuwaiti’s Ahmad Fahad Al Bader took gold followed by fellow countryman Abdulrahman Fahad Bader and Oman’s Issa Samir Al Adawi.
Kuwait won two more gold med-als taking top honours in both 4x50m freestyle and 4x100m free-style events. In 4x50m, Qatar won silver ahead of Bahrain while in the 4x100m UAE pipped Oman for silver.
The Omani’s eff ort helped the hosts, who won
11 medals on the inaugural day, to boost their
medal tally to 20 on the second day
GOLDEN MOMENT: Oman’s Aiyman Al Kulaibi, who won the gold in
the 200m backstroke event, is fl anked by silver medalist Salman
Jabir Mandani of Kuwait and bronze medalist Yaqoob Yousef Al
Saadi of the UAE. – Supplied photo
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SPORTST U E S DAY, O CTO B E R 2 9, 2 0 1 3
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‘I live to win Slams’
ISTANBUL: Serena Williams believes her best years may still be ahead of her after she ended 2013 in record-breaking style on Sunday. The 32-year-old American successfully defended her WTA Championships title, beating Li Na 2-6, 6-3, 6-0, to fi nish 2013 with a 78th victory against just four loss-es, and 11th title of the year.
Williams fi nished the campaign with prize-money of $12,385,572, shattering the all-time women’s record set last year by Victoria Azarenka, who won $7,923,920.
It’s also the third-highest single season prize-money total in tennis history, men’s and women’s, only Novak Djokovic’s 2011 and 2012 totals are higher.
She is the fourth player ever to win four or more titles at the season-ending event and the old-est champion. Williams is also the fi rst player to win 11 WTA titles in a season since 1997 when Martina Hingis won 12.
Worryingly for her fl agging ri-vals, she now boasts a record of winning 32 of her last 34 matches against top fi ve players.
Furthermore, Sunday’s triumph
may just persuade Williams that adding to her 17 Grand Slam titles during 2014 is certainly possible, and that winning another six, to overhaul Steffi Graf, might eventu-ally come within reach too.
But Williams declined to say whether or not 2013 was her best year. “I live to win Slams,” she said. “I am excited to win the WTA Championships, but I would say (this season is) only top three. I am not going to say that this is the best. I think some years I can do better and next year, I hope, look forward to it.”
Williams, who will turn 33 next
September, did agree, however, that she might reduce the number of tournaments on her schedule in 2014 after playing more than 80 matches this year.
“I think 15 is a bare minimum....defi nitely not more, maybe one or two fewer, maybe 13 or 14.”
Williams had needed three sets to beat Jelena Jankovic in a drain-ing semifi nal on Saturday and was in trouble on Sunday at a set down and 3-3 in the second before she reeled off nine games in succes-sion against her 31-year-old Chi-nese opponent.
“I’ve just had a really long year,
and I’m just really excited, hon-estly. I really didn’t expect to get through this match today,” admit-ted the American.
Asked how she had managed to refuel after her exhausting near-disaster against Jankovic, Wil-liams said: “My mum said maybe to get out of my room and have din-ner. “I didn’t do treatment and that got my mind off tennis altogether and I think it helped.”
As for Li Na, Williams said she felt some empathy. “Li is older and adding some things to her game,” she said. “And I defi nitely want to do the same.” - AFP
Worryingly for her
fl agging rivals,
Serena Williams now
boasts a record of
winning 32 of her last
34 matches against
top fi ve players
VICTORY NO. 78: Serena Williams, left, Li Na pose their trophies afte the WTA Championships fi nal in
Istanbul on Sunday. – Reuters
Age is no barrier as Li hits new heightsISTANBUL: Li Na’s fi ne perfor-mance in getting to the fi nal of the season-ending WTA Champion-ships was one in the eye for those who suggested that her best was behind her.
Instead, at the age of 31, Li has not only become the fi rst Asian to reach world No. 3 but her game is evolving cleverly enough to hope for further triumphs in 2014.
Although Li conceded the last nine games in a 2-6, 6-3, 6-0 loss to Serena Williams on Sunday, there was evidence of new tacti-cal options and growing self-con-fi dence as she overcame Victoria Azarenka, the world No. 2, and then troubled the world No. 1 in the fi nal.
At fi rst she downplayed her hopes and achievements, as perhaps she needed to, both for modesty’s sake and to avoid self-infl icted pressure.
“Number three was the goal at the beginning of the year. I don’t know, lucky or happy in the last tournament, I made it,” she said.
“So it’s a pretty good ending for 2013,” Li added, prompting the question whether she would now aim for world number two.
“Why not?” she said, shrugging her shoulders.
More importantly she will keep her focus to day-to-day mat-ters, like adding to her ability to take the ball early and dictate the pattern of the rallies, like improv-ing and mixing in more serve-vol-leys, and paying close attention to her schedule to avoid injury and exhaustion.
Li is also trying to access po-tential still contained within her and to release unused abilities.
Her coach Carlos Rodriguez
has, she says, been trying to get her to unlock herself, not get so tight inside, and to play more freely.
“I don’t know, I think maybe it’s diff erent between Chinese and Western, because I think West-ern people, they like to share how you are feeling now,” the woman from Wuhan said.
“For myself, if I feeling some-thing, I never try to talk to the team. I always block (the feeling). I always feel I’m strong enough, I can fi x everything.
“But this is I think a weakness. So I think the real strong person, for sure, they will speak out, be-cause they fi nd someone can help them to be even more stronger.
“So that’s why I was feeling ter-rible every time I talked to Carlos. But now I am feeling much better, because I try to open my mind a little bit to share the feeling.
“If he really want it, I can be more like Serena. Maybe he should teach me (that),” she said with a hint of the humour which has made her so popular.
As for how to beat Serena Wil-liams, something she has man-aged only once in 11 attempts, more than fi ve years ago, Li was more cautious.
“I don’t think any other player gives me the same feeling,” she admitted, referring to the Ameri-can’s ability to overwhelm not only with sheer power but with her presence.
One remedy Li attempted dur-ing the fi nal on Sunday against the 32-year-old American brought smiles both from her and her listeners.
“Yeah, don’t look at her at all, you know,” she said. - AFP
G O O D E N D T O 2 0 1 3
Federer doesn’t
care about top
spot: Nadal
PARIS: Been there, done that. Roger Federer does not need to be world No. 1 anymore and he might well be a top contender at next year’s Australian Open, his chief rival Rafa Nadal said.
Federer’s decline has been well documented since 2011 but the Swiss, however, does remain a formidable opponent, according to current world No. 1 Nadal.
“I don’t have any doubt that he will be playing better than what he did this year,” the Span-iard told a news conference at the Paris Masters, where the two could clash in the fi nal.
“No doubt about that. His tal-ent allows him to keep being one of the favourites, to keep win-ning the best tournaments of the year. So talking about if he’s able to be back or try to be back in the No. 1 (spot), I think it’s not his goal, because at the end he already has been there. He has been in the top positions of the ranking for a long time.” - Reuters
R A N K I N G
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SPORTST U E S DAY, O CTO B E R 2 9, 2 0 1 3
Kiwis seek revenge in Bangladesh
DHAKA: New Zealand will be seeking to avenge a humiliating loss to Bangladesh three years ago when the One-day International (ODI) series against the hosts starts here today.
New Zealand were stunned in 2010 when they went down 4-0 to a young Bangladeshi side, a drub-bing that sparked repercussions back home with several team offi -cials forced to quit.
New Zealand captain Brendon McCullum insisted yesterday that the current side has learnt the les-sons from that defeat.
“We certainly haven’t forgotten it, 4-0 was a very one-sided con-
test which Bangladesh thoroughly deserved to win,” McCullum said ahead of the fi rst ODI.
“We played some bad shots, we weren’t prepared for the series and we have tried to plan against that by having guys prepare a lot better.
“From our point of view we want to carve out our own performanc-es, and it would be great for us to turn the tables from what hap-pened the last time,” he said.
New Zealand were frustrated in
the just fi nished Test series, with both matches against the hosts in Chittagong and Dhaka ending in a draw.
But McCullum said he was more confi dent of his side’s chances in the one-dayers, pointing to the ex-perience and success of the play-ers in the shorter game.
“We have got more experience in the one-day side,” he told a press conference in Dhaka.
“I think, now the Test team we
are developing as a Test team we are nowhere near the fi nished product. I think the one-day team is pretty set in how we play.”
“We have had more success in the one-day game of late, we prob-ably feel a lot more confi dent in the one-day format at this point of time.”
Bangladesh captain Mushfi qur Rahim was drawing inspiration from the Test series, which they dominated in phases, while also
remembering their stunning suc-cess three years ago.
“If you see the overall results, we have earned a lot of positive things in terms of individual per-formances and the team as well,” Mushfi qur said.
“So from this side, everyone is confi dent. The last time we played against them we won 4-0 in the ODIs, so we have good memo-ries, although that is three to four years ago.
“I think in our own ground we are a strong side in the one-day internationals. If we can play up to our potential in all the three departments then we will do well,” he said.
However, Bangladesh suf-fered an injury blow in the lead up to the series, with pace bowler Shafi ul Islam ruled out with a twisted ankle to be replaced by Al-Amin Hossain.
All-rounder Shakib Al Hasan and batsman Mominul Haque were also suff ering from fever, but Mushfi qur said both should be available for Tuesday’s fi rst match at the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium.
The second and third matches will be held on October 31 and No-vember 3 in Dhaka and Fatullah respectively.
New Zealand (from): Bren-don McCullum (captain), Kane Williamson, Hamish Rutherford, Colin Munro, Ross Taylor, An-ton Devcich, Grant Elliott, Tom Latham, Corey Anderson, Nathan McCullum, Adam Milne, James Neesham, Tim Southee, Mitchell McClenaghan, Kyle Mills.
GRUDGE SERIES: New Zealand’s Nathan McCullum, left, stretches during a training session at the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium
in Dhaka yesterday. Right, Bangladesh players pictured during their training session. – AFP
Broad stands his ground on decision not to walkLONDON: England’s Stuart Broad has defended his decision not to walk in the most controver-sial incident of the fi rst Ashes se-ries this year, suggesting the huge row blew up because Australia had “wasted” their two referrals.
In the fi rst Test at Trent Bridge, the fast bowler edged a ball from spinner Ashton Agar to Michael Clarke at fi rst slip but did not walk after umpire Aleem Dar gave him not out.
Australia had already used up all their reviews during England’s second innings in the opening Test so were unable to challenge the decision. Broad later admitted hitting the ball.
“My fi rst comment on that whole incident is I could name you 18 or 19 players who played in an Ashes series who nicked it and didn’t walk,” Broad told the BBC in an interview.
“We could be here all day if I named players from the past. I am trying to think of someone in the modern game who is consistently a walker.”
Broad rode his luck to make 65 and added 138 runs in a seventh-wicket stand with Ian Bell, which proved crucial for the hosts as they went on the win the Notting-ham Test by 14 runs to take a 1-0 lead in the series.
Captain Clarke and his team-
mates were left shaking their heads in disbelief at the decision which sparked a huge debate on Twitter about the spirit of cricket.
“It’s a really interesting debate and something that got blown so out of proportion maybe because the Australians were frustrated they had wasted two referrals,” Broad said.
“It was an important moment in the game because, let’s be hon-est, if Belly and I hadn’t put on those runs, we wouldn’t have won the Test match so we would only have won 3-1 or something.”
As it was, England won the series 3-0.
Australia coach Darren Leh-mann was handed a fi ne by the International Cricket Council af-ter he accused Broad of “blatant cheating”.
Lehmann later apologised to Broad for the verbal attack, which came in a radio interview.
“Ryan Harris came over to me and apologised,” Broad added. “First of all he said from the play-ers we have given him (Lehmann) a hard time and his comments were unacceptable.
“The he (Lehmann) came across and said: ‘I meant it in jest’ and I said, ‘in black and white it doesn’t look like jest to me’.
“He said something along the lines of, ‘listen to the interview’ and I said, ‘I have far better things to do with my time’, and that was about it.
“We shared a nice drink and I said, ‘see you in November’.”
Broad is expected to come un-der heavy fi re from the fans Down Under when the return Ashes se-ries starts with Brisbane Test on November 21. - Reuters
S I M M E R I N G R O W
Stuart Broad
Ryder scores ton on return from injury
WELLINGTON: New Zealand batsman Jesse Ryder compiled a well-crafted century in his fi rst match since surviving an assault that left him in a coma with serious head injuries.
The 29-year-old hit 22 boundaries on his way to 117 on debut for Otago against his for-mer team Wellington yesterday.
Ryder, who averages almost 41 in Tests with three hundreds, has been in self-imposed exile from the New Zealand team since early 2012 following a breach of team discipline.
The burly left-hander spent almost a week in hospital in late March after an incident outside a Christchurch bar left him with a fractured skull and rib inju-ries. He was kept in an induced coma for more than two days.
While recovering from the as-sault, Ryder was suspended for six months for failing a drugs test for banned stimulants he said he took in a supplement to lose weight.
The ban ended this month and the cricketer with a his-tory of alcohol and disciplinary problems said he would turn over a new leaf in an attempt to break back into the New Zea-land team. Ryder has played 18 Tests and 39 One-day Interna-tionals for his country. - Reuters
R E M A R K A B L E
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SPORTST U E S DAY, O CTO B E R 2 9, 2 0 1 3
Ensure proper disposal of garbage.
Don’t litter a beautiful country like OMAN. TR Engineering down E&Y
MUSCAT: TR Engineering re-corded a 45-run win against Ernst & Young in a Raha Poly Products-sponsored D Division T20 match.
Electing to bat fi rst, TR Engi-neering piled on 214 for the loss of fi ve wickets in the 20 stipulated overs and then restricted Ernst & Young to 169 for fi ve in 20 overs.
Brief scores: TR Engineering 214 for 5 in 20 overs (Javed Sheikh 64, Sharif Pin-dook 47, Rashid Muhammad 33, Adil Amin 21 n.o.; Ankit Desai 2/25) bt Ernst & Young 169 for 5 in 20 overs (Saif Shamsuddin 47, Noman Yousaf 47 n.o., Nayaz Mohammed 43; Javed Sheikh 2/26, Adil Amin 2/26). Points: TR Engineering - 2 pts (3 games, 2 pts), Ernst & Young - Nil (3 games – 4 pts).
Al Faisal humble MajeesAl Faisal notched up an easy 93-run win against Majees to record their fourth consecutive win in the Enhance sponsored E Divi-sion T20 tournament.
Deciding to bat fi rst, Al Faisal piled on 221 runs for the loss of eight wickets in 20 overs. Majees in their turn were restricted to 128 for eight in 20 overs.
Brief scores: Al Faisal 221 for 8 in 20 overs (Ihsan Mohammed 56, Mohammed Afrat 43, Mohammed Irfan 28; Moham-med Adnan 3/27, Adnan Mehboob 3/43 and Prakash Joshi 2/42) bt Majees 128 for 8 in 20 overs (Muhammad Adnan 28 n.o., Ali Akhtar 23 n.o.; Mohd Sufyan 3/11, Ab-dul Rauf 2/25). Points: Al Faisal - 2 pts (4 games, 8 pts), Majees - Nil (3 games – 2 pts).
ISC Urdu Wing winISC Urdu Wing defeated Al Re-hwan in a ‘G’ Division T20 match.
Opting to bat fi rst, ISC Urdu Wing scored 170 for the loss of seven wickets in 20 overs. Al Re-hwan, after being docked one over for slow over rate, were bowled out for 127 off 15.4 overs.
Brief scores: ISC Urdu Wing 170 for 7 in 20 overs (Reyaz Zaidi 80 n.o., Manjit Singh 23; Aboo P.C. 2/20, Salih 2/26) bt Al Rehwan 127 all out in 15.4 overs (Shiraj N.A. 50, Salih 26; Syed Waseem Abbas 3/14, Syed Ahmad Salman 3/25, Dr. Wasam 2/12). Points: ISC Urdu Wing – 2 pts (3 games, 2 pts), Al Rehwan - Nil (4 games – 2 pts).
Easy for Landscape In an F Division T20 match, Seeb Landscape Architecture registered a 41-run win against Oasis Water.
Landscape Architecture, bat-ting fi rst, scored 185 for nine wickets in 20 overs and then re-stricted Oasis Water to 144 for eight wickets in 20 overs.
Brief scores: Landscape Architec-ture 185 for 9 in 20 overs (Prasad Peruli 54, Darwish Ellickal 40, Pradeep Rajan 24;
Huawei fl ying highIn an I Division T20 match, Hua-wei recorded a three-wicket win against Oneic.
Deciding to bat fi rst, Oneic managed to score 141 for eight wickets in 20 overs. Huawei, de-spite losing wickets regularly, reached the victory target for the loss of seven wickets.
Brief scores: Oneic 141 for 8 in 20 overs (Atif Jalali 48, Kamal Haider 29; Sanjeev Ku-mar Bhandari 4/24) lost to Huawei 142 for 7 in 19 overs (Fazaludeen Shari 40, Nadir Ali 24
Abu Maather beat Al AnsariIn a J Division T20 match, Abu Maather registered a six-wicket win against Al Ansari. Opting to bat fi rst, Al Ansari were bowled out 87 in 14.4 overs. Abu Maather in reply raced to their target off 11.4 overs losing four wickets.
Brief scores: Al Ansari 87 all out in 14.4 overs (R. Manikandan 26; Shahid Sharif 3/4, Nazim Hamduley 2/11, Rizwan Butt 2/16 and Akhil Vijayan 2/19) lost to Abu Maather 90 for 4 in 11.4 overs (Na-zim Hamduley 29, Muzaff ar Shiralkar 28; Adnan Nalwala 3/22). Points: Abu Maather – 2 pts (3 games, 6 pts), Al Ansari - Nil (2 games – 1 pt).
O M A N C R I C K E T L E A G U E
J DIVISION: Abu Maather players celebrate win over Al Ansari.
I DIVISION: Team Huawei after their win over Oneic.
F DIVISION: The victorious Landscape Architecture team.
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SPORTST U E S DAY, O CTO B E R 2 9, 2 0 1 3
Jazz Boys to host FRiENDi Mobile Challengers CupMUSCAT: The Jazz Boys Crick-et Club will host the seventh FRiENDi Mobile Challengers Cup from November 8.
According to a press release is-sued by the organisers yesterday, the matches will be played on two Fridays (November 8 and 15) at the Gubrah Power Plant lush green grounds. The tournament is open to all but the Oman Cricket’s A Division players are not allowed to participate in the event.
The organisers have also come out with a unique idea of accept-ing entries, 16 to be precise, from those teams who have not fea-tured in the fi nal of any of Jazz Boys-conducted tournaments.
This year’s tournament will be sponsored by FRiENDi Mo-bile, Danube, Abdul Fatah Mohd Noor Co, Al Hajiry Group and Tile Marine and supported by Pocari Sweat, The Body Shop, Palm Res-taurant and Red Bull.
The teams to register their entries so far are Unicorns, Tile Marine, Rain Riders DLP, OEC, Shanfari CT, United Metals, Rahil Sports, QAD, Tellicherians, Trust CT, Muscat Strikers, Ruwi Kings, Beatrice CT, Asfandyar CT, Mars XI and Al Khoud CC.
The tournament draw will take place at Palm Restaurant at 7.30 pm on November 4.
The members of champion and runners-up teams will be given trophies as well as gift hampers. There will also be individual priz-es with best batsman, best bowler, best fi elder, best wicketkeeper, best catch, the oldest player as well as the player to hit maxi-mum sixes to be presented with
FRiENDi modems. The best player of each match
will get a FRiENDi Mobile while player of series will be honoured with a modem and an LCD TV.
The best dressed and most col-ourful team will be get a colourful trophy and a modem. A modem will also be given to ‘best spectator’.
C R I C K E T
India bullish on F1 returnGREATER NODIA: Indian Grand Prix organisers were bull-ish about the troubled race’s future yesterday despite a drop in the estimated crowd fi gures and its disappearance from the schedule next year.
Organisers did not reveal how many people came to watch Sebas-tian Vettel’s coronation as world champion for the fourth time, but estimates varied from 50,000 to 60,000. While not confi rmed, the fi gures for Sunday are lower than the 95,000 who attended the in-augural race day in 2011 and the 65,000 who watched it last year.
Offi cials had been hoping for a strong turn-out to help ensure the Indian race returns, as promised,
on the 2015 calendar after surpris-ingly being dropped for 2014.
However, promoters Jaypee Sports International (JPSI) said the crowd fi gures were similar to attendances at other grands prix around the world.
“We were always confi dent of good crowd numbers,” a JPSI me-dia offi cer said. “Formula One is new to the country and it will take time for fans to warm up to it.”
“We are close to the average at-tendances worldwide on race days, except perhaps in Silverstone which attracts a bigger crowd,” he added. “We will defi nitely host the race again in 2015.”
The Indian GP has been hit by a troubled economy and sliding
rupee, government apathy, a lop-sided fi nancial arrangement and the lack of a home-grown driver to create local buzz.
on Sunday’s race even came un-der threat from a court petition seeking its cancellation over al-leged unpaid entertainment taxes, but the hearing was postponed.
Formula One supremo Bernie Ecclestone did not attend this weekend, despite Vettel entering the race as a near-certainty to seal a fourth straight world title.
Ecclestone has said India will be back in 2015, but many fear the worst as Formula One juggles increasing congestion with new races planned in America, Mexico and Russia. — AFP
M O T O R S P O R T S
India’s new league delayed
NEW DELHI: A new football tournament in India that was to feature former international stars of the game has been post-poned after opposition from domestic clubs, organisers said yesterday. The franchise-based event by the All India Football Federation (AIFF) and its com-mercial partners IMG-Reli-ance, which was due to be held from January to March next year has now been pushed back until September.
“Keeping in view of various key factors, including schedul-ing confl icts with the (national) I-League, it has been decided to launch the Indian Super League on a permanent window of September to November start-ing from year 2014,” an offi cial statement said. The Kolkata-based Telegraph quoted unnamed sources as saying that possible franchise owners had told AIFF that there was not enough time to prepare for such a league.
Former international stars such as Thierry Henry, Rob-ert Pires, Hernan Crespo, Fre-drik Ljungberg, Dwight Yorke and Louis Saha were reported to have been lined up for the league. Squads for the eight yet undecided city teams were to comprise nine foreign and 13 In-dian players each. — AFP
F O O T B A L L
This year’s tournament
will be sponsored
by FRiENDi Mobile,
Danube, Abdul Fatah
Mohd Noor Co, Al
Hajiry Group and Tile
Marine and supported
by Pocari Sweat,
The Body Shop,
Palm Restaurant
and Red Bull
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SPORTST U E S DAY, O CTO B E R 2 9, 2 0 1 3
SMARTEN UPDRIVE SAFE
A TIMES OF OMAN HANDS-FREE DRIVING INITIATIVE
WMS’ young drivers shine in UAE series
MUSCAT: The Wahaibi Mot-orsport (WMS) backed trio of Shihab Al Habsi, Khalid Al Wa-haibi and Waheeb Al Kharusi, aspiring to be the next generation of national and international mo-torsports champions, have shown their mettle at the Round 2 and 3 of the UAE Rotax Max challenge Kart series at the Dubai Auto-drome recently.
Guided by Oman rally legend Hamed Al Wahaibi, with sup-port from WMS technical man-ager Chris Hodgson, the boys are indeed proving to be the Omani champions in the making.
Ten-year-old Shihab Al Habsi built on his win from round 1, by winning every race he participat-ed in – be it the heats, pre-fi nals or fi nals in round 2 and 3 races. His exemplary performance belies the fact that the UAE Rotax Max Challenge 2013-14 is his fi rst ever competitive season.
The win fi rst time round, sur-prised his more experienced com-petitors, but this time double em-phasised the fact that his natural talent is indisputable.
Khalid Al Wahaibi, aged 13, qualifi ed third and fi nished fourth overall in his category. Waheeb Al Kharusi, 16, is the oldest among the emerging trio.
All three boys in the WMS team did an exhaustive 12-hour pre-event testing at the racing track. That helped the race team clock re-ally fast laps during the actual race.
Nine more rounds remain in the UAE Rotax Max Challenge over the 2013-14 season, so there is plenty of action to be seen from this emerging team.
Be it Shihab or teammates Khalid and Waheeb, who all on their racing overalls proudly sport a ‘Safety First’ badge, are keenly looking forward to further wins. The making of the next Omani champions has begun quite well.
Ten-year-old Shihab
Al Habsi’s exemplary
performance belies
the fact that the UAE
Rotax Max Challenge
is his fi rst ever
competitive season
THUMBS UP: Ten-year-old Shihab Al Habsi perched on Hamed Al
Wahaibi’s shoulders celebrate the great performance. – Supplied photo
Armaan lifts under-15 titleMUSCAT: Armaan Sattikar cap-tured the boys’ under-15 singles title at the New Makha Enter-prises-sponsored second Junior Table Tennis Tournament at the Indian Social Club (ISC) Muscat.
In the fi nal, Armaan who has been in tremendous form took on the other in-form player, Subash Pillai and the duo did not disap-point. After winning the fi rst two games, Armaan had to pull up his socks more due to Subash’s bril-liant off ensive ploy.
Subash made some astonishing returns and attacked on all cylin-ders before Armaan edged past to win the third game. Subash pulled back the fourth game but Armaan played with more purpose to wrap up the match with fi nal scores of 11-7, 11-5, 13-11, 11-13, 11-5.
Armaan is eyeing a double crown having qualifi ed to play in the fi nal of the boys’ under-17 sin-gles against the same opponent, Subash Pillai.
Subash defeated Avinash Mukund in a thrilling semi-fi nal
match to enter the fi nal. Subash showed doggedness and played with confi dence to down Avi-nash 12-10, 8-11, 8-11, 11-9, 11-8, 12-10 to line-up a repeat clash against Armaan Sattikar in the under-17 fi nal.
I S C T T
U-15 FINALISTS: Champion Armaan Sattikar, rightm abd Subash.
WWW.TIMESOFOMAN.COMSECTIONC T U E S DAY, O CTO B E R 2 9, 2 0 1 3LIFE & STYLE
G
erm
any
fairytale tra
il
We are standing backstage at the puppet theatre in Steinau, central Germany. It’s the town where the Brothers Grimm grew up and heard their fi rst fairy stories. Even today, it’s a magical place of half-timbered houses, with a stone foun-tain in the cobbled square carved with fairytale fi gures. I am here — with my two children — to enter that world of childhood stories on which we all grew up, in the places where they were found.
This year the region of Hesse is celebrating the 150th anniversary of the death of Jacob Grimm, the elder of the two remarkable brothers who collected German folktales and pub-
lished them in a series of books from 1812 to 1857. Steinau is the start of Hesse’s Fairytale Route, which follows the places where Jacob and Wilhelm lived, and where the tales were set.
Their journey, and ours, starts here, at their childhood home — a half-timbered manor house where they lived in the 1790s. Inside, it shows displays on their lives, and the garden has a
wooden cage with Hansel trapped inside. My daughter Sarah, aged 11, pokes a stick through the bars to see if he’s fat enough to eat. Benjamin, 12, shakes an apple out of the tree above — luckily it is not poisoned.
Fairytale worldWe enter the fairytale world more formally next day, 60 miles north, at the Märchenhaus in Alsfeld. A cathedral bell clangs above a tangle of 16th-century lanes. The Haus has ‘1628’ etched above its wooden door and a well with a frog perched on its rim. Its white walls and brown timbers look like icing sugar and gingerbread. We tiptoe in.
We leave fairly hastily and head for the safety of Snow White’s cottage. It’s an hour’s drive away, across rolling hills and woods, in a village called Bergfreiheit. The cottage fails to impress Benjamin, who says it is a fake. But Sarah is amused by its seven bunk beds, the seven chairs around its kitchen table and the photo we take of ourselves in dwarvish hoods.
But on the edge of the village is a piece of real folklore. The Kupferbergwerk mine is all that’s left of an industry that may explain those seven dwarves. Off to work they went, with picks and shovels to dig copper and gold in the wooded hillside here, which is rid-dled with copper mines from the 16th-century. These were often worked by children, whose short stature gained them a local nickname: “dwarves”.
You can go inside a disused shaft that dates back to 1552, with a hard hat and a guide. Wooden pitprops frame rough walls as you descend its long dark tunnel. “This is copper,” says the guide, pointing at a smear of green, “and this is Fool’s Gold,” by a wall of glittering crystals.
Miners here were given special freedoms and the village became a haven for out-laws and runaways. Bergfreiheit translates as “freedom mountain”. It’s the perfect setting for a tale of escape and transformation, such as Snow White’s.
Margarete’s castle of Waldeck is nearby, and that is where we’ll stay tonight. These days it’s an elegant hotel, a far cry from the humble village. Its towers and
battlements rise above a glittering lake and we enter through a Gothic hall. This is the world of princesses and kings, which fairytale fi gures might tame
through marriage or success, but which also oppress them – like Snow White or Cinderella. The heroes of the tales are seldom grand — more often they
are woodcutters, peasants, fi shermen and their fates impart the wisdom of the common folk.
To get a fi rmer grip on our history, we drive north to the city of Kas-sel, where the Grimm brothers moved from Steinau in 1798. They seem
always to have lived and worked close to each other, sharing a mission in life. In Kassel, they worked as librarians and published their classic
book of Kinder-und Hausmärchen — tales for children and house-holds — in 1812.
The city houses an elegant museum to the brothers and a spe-cial exhibition to mark Jacob’s anniversary year. We ramble
through the latter, past manuscripts and portraits and fi rst edi-tions of their books. Then we head to the edge of town, looking
for an 18th-century roadside inn, the Brauhaus-Knallhütte. Here Jacob and Wilhelm gathered stories from the inn-
keeper’s daughter, Dorothea Viehmann, who heard them from travellers.
Sleeping Beauty’s castleOur fi nal stop may or may not have a Grimm connec-
tion. But if it doesn’t, it should. Sababurg claims to be Sleeping Beauty’s castle. Its pepperpot towers from 1334 are surrounded by thickets of roses and magnifi cent beech woods that would deter many a prince. Inside the ruined great hall, we catch the daily performance of Sleeping Beauty. A young man in red velvet is woo-ing a pretty blonde, pink roses woven in her waist-length hair.
Walking onto the battlements, I spot a herd of deer on the slope below, like the strangely met animals of myths. Then we unlock a little door at the foot of a tower and clamber up a spiral stair. On a landing is a spinning wheel. At the top are our rooms for the night, each with a four-poster bed. For the castle has been transformed into a wildly romantic hotel.
But that night, as we hop into the great carved beds, the children are spooked by the ruins and the moonlight. We have stepped too far into the imaginative power of the tales.— Jonathan Lorie/The Inde-
pendent
Uncover the inspiration for Sleeping Beauty, Snow Whiteand Rumpelstiltskin on a family holiday in the land of the Brothers Grimm
C8
EXTRAT U E S DAY, O CTO B E R 2 9, 2 0 1 3
Hugely infl uential singer-songwriter Lou Reed who found fame with the ‘Velvet Underground’ dies aged 71 after liver transplant.
“Was it too quiet for you?” Lou Reed asked with acidic contempt, when I saw him play for the last time, at London’s Royal Festival Hall two summers ago. An unwary fan had just ironically shouted “Louder!” as he fi n-ished a brutally heavy version of “Branden-burg Gate”, from his typically reputation-abusing last album, Lulu.
That suite of songs immortalised by Lou-ise Brooks in the 1928 Weimar German fi lm Pandora’s Box, drawled by Reed over Metal-lica’s wildly inappropriate, uncompromised heavy metal, was despised in a way the latest releases by Paul McCartney and Neil Young never were.
The response was closer to when Reed fi rst announced himself, in the Velvet Under-ground’s Warhol-sponsored, 1967 debut album The Velvet Undergound and Nico. His deadpan voice, striking out from Dylan’s example into a Sinatra-murdering morgue for traditional vo-cal requirements, was one innovation.
His lyrics on I’m Waiting for the Man and Heroin were truly vital — literate reportage from the depths of drug addiction and sado-masochism, inspired by his association with New York writers Wallace Stegner, Hubert Selby Jr. and Nelson Algren. “Rock’n’roll had been treated as such a mutant idiot child me-dium, it made it easy for someone with even half a mind to just walk in and dominate that end of it,” he sneered to Cut magazine in 1989, when New York gave him his last wholly liked hit.
Sinatra had played Algren’s novel’s taboo-smashing junkie in the fi lm of The Man With the Golden Arm. Reed became him. A middle-class intellectual by background, too much parentally-approved ECT voltage meant to cure his rebel streak as a teenager in-stead carved an unsealable, bleeding scar of resentment. The trademark black leather jacket he rehabilitated from Marlon Brando’s 1950s rebel to the softer streets of Greenwich Village showed that his heart always had room for the original promise of rock’n’roll,
if nothing else.Metal Machine Music, 1975’s double-
album feedback screech of abuse at his major-label employers RCA, was one more, career-exploding atom bomb. Reed fan Da-vid Bowie’s prettifying production on 1972’s Transformer, with its further gorgeous standards. Perfect Day and Walk on the Wild Side, had made the label think they had a star. 1973’s follow-up, Berlin, confi rmed Reed was a black hole. Its portrait of a doomed rela-tionship included children weeping at their parents’ behaviour. Anyone else would have broken “both her arms”, Reed sang provoca-tively of his partner in the gruelling song-suite’s gorgeous, depraved Sad Song. Berlin came to stand for any personal apocalypse, and any rock musician’s refusal to bow to his label’s authority.
Reed didn’t seem happy for a day of his life; except when he was wrecking someone else’s day by being too entirely himself, which was rarely a likeable proposition. When I met him, his disdain for me was completed by the wet-fi sh hand he held out when we fi n-ished. No doubt he wiped it afterwards. The rock journalists who adored him were always treated as vermin, typically because, beneath the impeccably abusive surface, he cared too much. “He was heartbroken,” Melody Mak-er’s Allan Jones recalled of Reed’s attitude to Berlin’s journalistic dismissal. “He never forgave them.”
The anger I felt at his rudeness was any-way wiped away the next time I saw him, at that Royal Festival Hall gig. He could seem humourless, needlessly vicious, unforgiv-able. But that was the upside. He clung to rock’n’roll as a life-raft for his damaged soul, and threw out his literary brand of it for those who, similarly affl icted, needed such musical shock therapy. His last few records — 2000’s raging break-up album Ecstasy, 2003’s The Raven, another tauntingly ag-gravating double-album, adapted from Edgar Allen Poe, and that Metallica record — were not farewells. The outpouring of reverence and sorrow which will follow Reed’s death is deserved. It would also make him howl with hollow laughter. —Nick Hasted/THE INDEPENDENT
LIFE CAPSULE
MARCH 2, 1942 Lewis Allan Reed born in Brooklyn, New York
1961 - 1964 Studies journalism, fi lm, creative writing at Syracuse University
1964 Forms 'Velvet Underground' with John Cale, Sterling Morrison and Maureen Tucker. Artist Andy Warhol becomes producer
1967 The Velvet Underground with Nico released. Album opens rock music to avant-garde — Punk, New Wave and alternative rock. Velvets become house band at Warhol’s seminal Factory studio
1972 Moves to UK. Releases debut solo album, Lou Reed. Second album, Transformer, co-produced with David Bowie, contains classic tracks Walk on
the Wild Side, Satellite of Love and Perfect
Day. Career continues until 2011
MAY 2013 After long battle with drink and drugs Reed suff ers liver failure, receives transplant
JEFF Foxworthy, famous for his redneck jokes, said, “The designated-driver program is not a desirable job. But if you ever get sucked into doing it, have fun with it. At the end of the night, drop them off at the wrong house.”
Bridge players drop tricks with wrong plays, both as declarer and — much more often — on defence. Also, key-cards can drop. For example, you have nine cards missing only the queen. The percentage play (just) is to cash the ace and king, hoping the queen will drop.
In this deal, where is the drop? South is in three no-trump. West leads the heart queen. What should declarer do?
North used Stayman to try to fi nd a 4-4 spade fi t, then settled for three no-trump.
South starts with six top tricks: one spade, one heart, two diamonds and two clubs. But since the heart ace will have been dislodged by trick two, declarer must take the next eight tricks after that. He is faced with three fi nesses — in spades, diamonds and clubs. Which should he take?
The typical deal has only two fi nesses. Then you should play for the drop in the suit with the greater number of cards (or more top tricks). If the missing honour appears, fi ne; if not, fi nesse in the other suit. Here, South has even more chances. He should cash the four minor-suit tops ending in his hand. If either queen drops, the contract is home. Here, though, neither appears. So South fi nesses in spades, running the 10, then running the queen, then playing low to dummy’s jack. Finally, something works.
— By Phillip Alder
C9
ENTERTAINMENT
Two chances; did the card drop?
B I G N A T E
B O R N L O S E R
M A R M A D U K E
A C E S O N B R I D G E
C I N E M A S C H E D U L E
K I D S P O T H E A L T H C A P S U L EC R O S S W O R D
ACROSS 1 Mid-Atlantic st. 4 Emerald or topaz 7 The original Stoic11 Sherpa’s sighting12 Pitcher’s stat13 Suffi cient, in verse14 Luau strummers16 They let you bank
on Sun.17 Change colours18 Wire20 Half a dangerous
fl y21 Math fi gure23 Signal one’s
consent26 Samples soup27 House timber28 Mollycoddle31 Pub brews33 Comply with a
command34 Fissure35 Cave, perhaps36 Conform38 For shame!41 Rome’s river43 Jazz pianist —
Blake
45 Geishas’ sashes47 Very alarming49 Gloom’s partner50 PC key51 Familiar auth.52 Oxbridge
academics53 Rural addr.54 Wetland
DOWN 1 Fakes out, on the
rink 2 Chopin piece 3 Floating fl ower 4 Toothpaste type 5 Puts up 6 African tribe 7 Enthusiasm, plus 8 Political alliance 9 — de plume10 Startled cries11 Nomad dwelling15 Like “The
Twilight Zone”19 “10” actress22 Spring mo.24 Not just my25 Tooth pro’s deg.26 Mole, sometimes
27 Pfc. boss28 Bean hull29 Vigoda or Fortas30 Bring up31 Teacup rim32 Last word in fairy
tales34 Most unusual36 Tummy muscle37 Table
38 Steakhouse order (hyph.)
39 Pop’s Carly or Paul
40 Lament loudly42 Dogmas44 Mil. branch45 Peculiar46 Opposite of cheer48 Poker card
Ans
wer
to p
revi
ous
puzz
le
WITH LOVE 4 6
9 5 2 3
7 8 2 1
7
6 8 2 3
8 4 6 1
6 4 3 1 9 5
9 6 4 1 7
7 1 9 4 2
7 6 3 2 9 1 8 4 5
1 5 4 3 6 8 7 2 9
8 2 9 5 7 4 3 6 1
4 9 8 7 5 6 1 3 2
6 3 2 8 1 9 5 7 4
5 7 1 4 2 3 9 8 6
3 8 6 9 4 5 2 1 7
9 1 7 6 3 2 4 5 8
2 4 5 1 8 7 6 9 3
Previous puzzle Solution
HOW TO PLAY Fill the empty cells with the numbers 1 to 9, so that each number appears once in each row, column and area. — Seven Galaxies
S U D O K U
T U E S DAY, O CTO B E R 2 9, 2 0 1 3
BAHJA CINEMA
STARS CINEMA
Film Information - 24540856 / Advance Booking - 24540855
Website: www.albahjacinema.net
For More Information 24789032, 24786776
Website: www.isurf.co.om
Film information 24791641 / 24786776
1911 Revolution (Action/Adv/Drama)Cast: Jackie Chan, Winston Chao and Bingbing Li8:00, 10:00 & 11:55pm; CP No: 1199 (12+)The Fourth State (Thriller) Cast: Moritz Bleibtreu, Kasia Smutniak, Max Riemelt4:00, 10:00 & 11:55pm; CP No: 1214 (12+)Gravity (Drama/Sci-fi /Thriller)Cast: Sandra Bullock and George Clooney,6:00pm; CP No: 1174 (12+)Escape Plan (Action /Thriller) (12+)Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Shwarzenegger, 50 Cent 2:00 & 8:00pm; CP No: 1175 (12+)Upside Down (Drama/Fantasy/Romance)Cast: Jim Sturgess, Kirsten Dunst and Timothy Spall2:00 & 6:00pm; CP No: 1215 (PG)Switch (III) (Action) Cast: Andy Lau and Chiling Lin4:00pm; CP No: 1182 (12+)
PHARMACIESRound the clockAl Hashar Pharmacy, Ruwi: 24783334; Appolo Medical Centre, Hamriya: 24782666; Muscat Pharmacy, Ruwi: 24702542, Salalah: 23291635; Atlas Pharmacy, Ghubra: 24503585; Ruwi 24811715 Muscat RegionApollo, Al Hamriya. Tel: 24787766Muscat, A Seeb Market. Tel: 24421691Muscat, Al Khuwair. Tel: 24485740Muscat, Al Hail South. Tel: 24537080Dhofar RegionMuscat, Al Nahdha Road, Salalah. Tel: 23291635
HOSPITALSAl Amal Medical & Health Care Centre: 24485052Atlas Hospital: Ruwi: 24811743/ Ghubra: 24504000Al Musafi r Specialised Medical Clinic: 24706453Hatat Polyclinic LLC,Ruwi: 24563641, Azaiba: 24499269, Sohar: 2683006Al Raff ah Hospital: 24618900/1/2Al Massaraat Clinic & Laboratory: 24566435Al Makook Medical Coordinance Centre: 24499434Apollo Medical Centre, Hamriya: 24787766, 24787780Capital Polyclinic: 24707549Badr Al Samaa Polyclinic, Ruwi: 24799760/1/2Capital Clinic, Seeb: 24420740Ceregem National Raak: 24485633Dr Harub’s Clinic: 24563217Elixir Health Centre: 24565802Emirates Medical Centre: 246045401st Chiropractic Centre: 24472274Hamdan Hospital: 23212340International Medical Centre LLC: 24794501/2/3/4/5Kims Oman Hospital: 24760100
24 Hrs Emergency: 24760123Lama Polyclinic, Sohar: 26751128, MBD: 24799077, Al Khuwair: 24478818Magrabi Eye and Ear Hospital: 24568870Muscat Private Hospital: 24583600Welcare Diagnostic and Treatment Centre, Al Khuwair: 24477666Al-Hayat Polyclinc LLC: 22004000
ROYAL OMAN POLICEEmergencies and inquiries: 9999General Directorate of Passport and Residence: 24569603Directorate General of Customs: 24521109Traffi c violations inquiries: 24510228Public Relations Admin: 24560099
ACCOMMODATIONAl Bahjah Hotel: 24424400Al Bustan Palace: 24764000 Al Khuwair Hotel Apartments: 24478171Al Madina Holiday Inn: 24596400Al Maha International Hotel: 24494949Al Fanar Hotel: 24712385Al Falaj Hotel: 24702311Al Qurum Resort: 24605945Azaiba Hotel Apartments: 24490979Beach Hotel: 24696601Bowshar Hotel: 24491105Coral Hotel Muscat: 24692121Crowne Plaza Muscat: 24660660Crystal Suites: 24826100Golden Tulip Seeb: 24510300Grand Hyatt Muscat: 24641234Haff a House Hotel: 24707207Hotel Muscat Holiday: 24487123InterContinental Muscat: 24680000Majan Continental Hotel: 24592900Marina Hotel: 24711711Midan Hotel Suites: 24499565Mina Hotel: 24711828Muttrah Hotel: 24798401
Nuzha Hotel Apartments: 24789199Oman Dive Centre: 24824240Park Inn: 24507888Qurum Beach House Hotel: 24564070Radisson Blu Hotel: 24487777Ramee Dream Resort Seeb: 24453399Ramee Guestline Hotel: 24564443Ruwi Hotel: 24704244Safeer Hotel Suites: 24691200Sheraton Oman Hotel: 24772772Shangri-La’s Barr Al Jissah Resort and Spa: 24776666The Chedi Muscat: 24524400The Treasurebox Muscat Hotel: 24502570
AIRLINE OFFICESMuscat Airport Flight information (24 hours): 24519456/24519223Aerofl ot: 24704455, Air Arabia: 24700828, Air France: 24562153, Air India: 24799801, Air New Zealand: 24700732, Biman Bangladesh Airlines: 24701128, British Airways: 24568777, Cathay Pacifi c: 24789818, Egypt Air: 24794113, Emirates Air: 24404400, Ethiopian Airlines: 24660313, Gulf Air: 80072424, Indian: 24791914, Iran Air: 24787423, Japan Airlines: 24704455, Jazeera Airways: 23294848, Jet Airways: 24787248, Kenya Airways: 24660300, KML Royal Dutch Airlines: 24566737, Kuwait Airways: 24701262, LOT Polish Airlines: 24796387, Lufthansa: 24796692, Malaysian Airlines: 24560796, Middle East Airlines: 24796680, Oman Air: 24531111, Pakistan International Airlines: 24792471, Qatar Airways: 24771900, Qantas: 24559941, Royal Jordanian: 24796693, Saudi Arabian Airlines: 24789485, Singapore Airlines: 24791233, Shaheen Air: 24816565, SriLankan Airlines:
MUSEUMSBait Al Baranda: Corniche (seafront opp fi sh market), Open from Saturday to Thursday 9am to 1pm and 4 to 6pmNatural History Museum: Al Khuwair, Tel: 24604957, Open from Saturday to Wednesday: 8am to 1:30pm; Thursday: 9am to 1pmMuseum of Omani Heritage: (former Omani Museum), Madinat Al Alam, Sat-Wed 8am to 1:30pm, Thursday - 9am to 1pm, Tel: 24600946Armed Forces Museum: Bait Al Falaj, Tel: 24312651, Open from Sat to Wed: 8am to 1:30pm; Thurs 9-12pm and 3-6pm; Fri 9-11am and 3-6pm. Al Hoota Caves 24498258; Turtle Beach 96550606/96550707Children’s Science Museum: Shatti Al Qurum, Tel: 24605368, Open from Saturday to Wednesday: 8am to 1:30pm, Thursday: 9am to 1pmOman-French Museum: near Muscat Police Station, Tel: 24736613, Open from Sat to Wed: 8am to 1:30pm, Thurs: 9am to 1pmBait Al Zubair, Muscat: Tel: 24736688, Al Saidiya St., [email protected] from Sat to Thurs: 9:30am to 6pm.National Museum Ruwi: Tel: 24701289, Open from Saturday to Wednesday: 8am to 1:30pm, Thursday: 9am to 1pmSohar Fort Museum: Tel: 26844758, Open from Saturday to Wed: 8 to 1:30pm Thurs: 9am to 1pmMuscat Gate Museum: at Al Bahri Road, Muscat open from Sat to Wed 8am to 2pm
PRAYER TIMINGS
Dhuhr 11.56pm
Asr 3.10pm
Maghrib 5.35pm
Isha 6.47pm Fajr (Tomorrow) 4.55am
Sunset 5.37pm
Sunrise (Tomorrow) 6.11am
High tide 11:32pm 10:38am
Low tide 4:52pm 5:20am
W E A T H E R
OMAN
Max 38Min 28
Max 34Min 29
Max 35Min 28
Max 42Min 29
Max 36Min 29Max 41
Min 26
Max 41Min 26
Max 28 Min 25
Mainly clear skies over most of the Sultanate with chance of cloud developments over Al-Hajar mountains and
adjoining areas during afternoon. And chances of early morning low level clouds or fog patches over the coastal areas of southeastern coast and Al-Wusta governorate.EXPECTED WIND: Along the coastal areas of Oman sea wind will be northeasterly light to moderate during day becoming variable light at night, and southeasterly light to moderate over the rest of the Sultanate.
SEA STATE: Slight over the most of Oman’s coasts with maximum wave height of 1.0 metre.HORIZONTAL VISIBILITY: Good over most of the Sultanate.THE NEXT 48 HOURS OUTLOOK: Mainly clear skies over most of the Sultanate. Chances of early morning low level clouds or fog patches over the coastal areas of southeastern coast and Al-Wusta governorate.
LONG DISTANCE BUS TIMINGS (OMAN NATIONAL TRANSPORT COMPANY SAOC) *SUBJECT TO CHANGE
QURIYAT - SUR - JAALAN (Route 36)Dept Destination Arrival Operating Time Time Days 15:00 Quriyat 16:30 Daily15:00 Sur 18:00 Daily15:00 Jaalan 19:30 Daily
FROM JAALAN-SUR-QURIYAT (Route 36)Dept Destination Arrival Operating Time Time Days 05:30 Sur 06:45 Daily05:30 Quriyat 08:30 Daily05:30 Ruwi 10:00 Daily
TO AL BURAIMI (Route 41)06:30 Sohar 08:50 Daily06:30 Buraimi 11:00 Daily08:00 Buraimi 14:30 Daily via Ibri13:00 Sohar 15:45 Daily13:00 Buraimi 17:40 Daily16.00 Sohar 18.35 Daily16.00 Buraimi 20:20 Daily
TO AL BURAIMI (Route 41)07:00 Sohar 08:55 Daily07:00 Ruwi 11:40 Daily13:30 Ruwi 20:20 Daily via Ibri13:00 Sohar 14:55 Daily13:00 Ruwi 17:40 Daily13:00 Sohar 19:20 Daily17:00 Ruwi 22:15 Daily
TO SINAW (Route 52)17:30 Sinaw 20:50 Daily
TO SINAW (Route 52)07:00 Ruwi 10:25 Daily
To Yanqul (Route 54)14:30 Nizwa 16:50 Daily14:30 Yanqul 19:30 Daily
To Yanqul (Route 54)06:00 Nizwa 08:40 Daily06:00 Ruwi 11:00 Daily
TO IBRI (ARAQI) (Route 54)08:00 Nizwa 10:20 Daily08:00 Al Araqi 12:30 Daily
SALALAH TO DUBAI (Route 102)15:00 Dubai 07:00 Daily
TO MARMUL (Route 101)06:00 Marmul 16:30 Daily
DUBAI TO SALALAH (Route 102)15:00 Salalah 07:00 Daily
TO DUBAI VIA FUJIRAH & SHARJAH (Route 204)Dept Destination Arrival Operating Time Time Days 07:00 Fujairah 11.45 Daily07:00 Sharjah 13.30 Daily07:00 Dubai 14.00 Daily
FROM DUBAI VIA FUJIRAH & SHARJAH (Route 204)Dept Destination Arrival Operating Time Time Days 16:00 Sharjah 16:30 Daily16.00 Fujairah 18.15 Daily16.00 Ruwi 23.00 Daily
BORN today, you are not always wise enough to keep your mouth shut when you are supposed to, nor are you the kind to keep mum when your feelings or opinions are bubbling the surface, begging to be let free into the world. While this may cause you some trouble in life, the truth is that your honesty — called “bluntness” by many — will be one of your single greatest tools in life, and you can maximise your chances of success simply by remaining true to your nature and voicing your opinions at nearly every opportunity. You cling to your instincts at all times, and trust them always.
You don’t always say things that are inappropriate, however. Often you share not only what others want to hear, but what they need to hear as well. You have a knack for identifying the central issue in almost any situation, and you can instruct others accordingly.
Also born on this date are: Winona Ryder, actress; Finola Hughes, actress; Fanny Brice, comedian; Melba Moore, singer; Kate Jackson, actress; Richard Dreyfuss, actor; Bill Mauldin, political and military cartoonist.
You will want to have an alternative plan ready to go, just in case your primary plan of attack goes awry for any reason.
Your endeavors are sure to be compared with those of someone very much like you, especially when they begin to yield results.
You want something that has been denied you in the past, but things change. Today you have a feeling the odds are in your favour.
You have the feeling that someone near you can teach you a great deal about something that could prove quite lucrative.
Something new begins in a way that has you wondering why you haven’t been doing this all along! Prospects are bright and bounteous.
You may have to hide one or two personal facts until you have won someone else’s trust and confi dence. Then you can let it all out.
You’ll be asked to do more than you had originally agreed to, but your involvement is sure to be rewarding for all.
You may not feel as though you are playing up to par, but in fact you are doing better than most others expected under the circumstances.
You are able to communicate quite well with someone whom others fi nd rather distant and mysterious. You have a great deal in common!
PISCES [Feb. 19-March 20]
You may fi nd it diffi cult to support someone whose methods are so diff erent from your own, even though your motives are identical.
GEMINI [MAY 21-JUNE 20]
CANCER [JUNE 21-JULY 22]
LEO [JULY 23-AUG. 22]
CAPRICORN [DEC. 22-JAN 19]
Y O U R B I R T H D A Y
ARIES [March 21-APRIL 19]
TAURUS [APRIL 20-MAY 20]
You must be honest and straightforward if you expect others to trust you and join in a communal eff ort you are leading.
You may have a long drive ahead of you. There’s no reason, however, you can’t take the scenic route.
It is the dinosaur version of grave robbing — fossil poachers plundering a pal-aeontological dig, frequently smashing ancient skulls
and stealing valuable teeth, claws and feet. Often, all that remain are shards of fossilised bone and a wrecked, irreplaceable scientifi c record. And in cases where poachers excavate an entire skeleton and spir-it it away to illicit entrepreneurs or collectors, it is as if the bones, buried for millions of years, were being dug up only to be hidden away again in private collections.
“This is huge,” said Catherine A. Forster, a palaeontologist at George Washington University who is president of the Society of Vertebrate Palaeontology. “It isn’t just one or two specimens. A fair proportion of very good fossils just disappear from knowledge, and few are ever seen again.”
And while some scientists hoped that a high-profi le legal case in New York last year over the $ 1 million sale of a rare Mon-golian dinosaur would curb the il-legal digging, that does not appear to have happened. Mark A. Norell, chairman of paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, said a visit to the Gobi Desert over the summer made clear that poaching contin-ues “in a big way.”
Philip J. Currie, a palaeontologist at the University of Alberta, says he has determined that 98 skeletons of the dinosaur Tarbosaurus bataar (sometimes called Tyrannosaurus bataar) were destroyed or removed by poachers in Mongolia. Fewer than a dozen are in scientifi c hands,
he says. And he has counted many other plundered fossil skeletons from the Gobi, including 86 ostrich-like dinosaurs. (It has been illegal to remove fossils from Mongolia since the 1920s.)
Although the age of the dino-saurs lasted about 165 million years, their skeletons are relative-ly uncommon: only about 3,000 are known to exist. About 1,300 dinosaur species have been iden-tifi ed, Norell said. Palaeontologists say they are not taking aim at pro-fessional fossil fi nders, who work within the law and dig carefully. They are calling for the patchwork of laws on dinosaur stealing and smuggling to be enforced and tight-ened around the world, and they are pleading with private collectors to demand proof of a fossil’s origins before they buy — just as they would question the pedigree of a painting or an antique.
Otherwise, the scientists say, valuable entries in the Earth’s
book of life will be lost forever, in-cluding information about exactly where the fossils were found, what geological formation the creatures were in, how they were lying in the ground, how they were discovered and precisely when they lived, not to mention what surrounded them at death. “I’m saying, ‘Ask for prov-enance’,” Norell said.
The Association of Applied Pal-aeontological Sciences, a profes-sional group representing private commercial fossil collectors and dealers, is also encouraging its members to educate themselves and the public on the legality of the specimens. The modern-day fossil rush began in earnest after the Field Museum in Chicago paid $ 8.36 million in 1997 for Sue, the most complete T. rex skeleton ever found, said Kenshu Shimada, a professor at DePaul University in Chicago who is chairman of government aff airs at the palae-ontology society. Shortly after, the phenomenon of online buying and selling through sites like eBay took off , opening up global mar-kets for fossils.
Shimada said the society be-came so concerned about the ex-tent of the illegal dinosaur trade that it made a survey of “palaeo hot spots,” gathering information from 20 countries about where fossils are, what laws govern them and how the laws are enforced.
Currie said the Nemegt Basin, in the Gobi Desert, is a particular concern. It is one of the two best dinosaur sites on the planet, he said, with a diverse range of fossils and thousands of footprints. The 70 million-year-old T. bataar, for
example, was an Asian relative of Tyrannosaurus rex, and was one of the last dinosaurs to evolve, one of the most sophisticated and one of the most dangerous — yet much of its life cycle remains unknown.
“One of the most spectacular sites for understanding dinosaurs in the world is now being de-stroyed by poachers,” Currie said. The dream, he said, is to explore the basin as an ancient ecosystem, learning how dinosaurs interacted with one another and their envi-ronment. Many puzzles remain. For example, scientists would ex-pect to fi nd far more plant-eating dinosaurs than meat eaters in one layer of the basin, yet the remains of carnivores predominate. Why?
While the Mongolian govern-ment’s successful lawsuit over the T. bataar skeleton did not end poaching, it has had other eff ects. The sale was voided, and the smug-gler, Eric Prokopi, a fossil dealer from Gainesville, Florida, pleaded guilty in a criminal proceeding and awaits sentencing. The skeleton was returned to Mongolia in May.
As a result, the country has set up its fi rst dinosaur museum, in the capital, Ulan Bator, with the repatri-ated skeleton as the starring attrac-tion, said Minjin Bolortsetseg, its new chief palaeontologist. Twenty-two more Mongolian fossils are due to be repatriated soon.
But Bolortsetseg said that un-til the Mongolian government protects fossil sites, involves lo-cal governments in policing them and educates the public about the historical value of the fossils, the looting is unlikely to stop. —ALANNA
MITCHELL/The New York Times News Service
C12
EXTRAT U E S DAY, O CTO B E R 2 9, 2 0 1 3
PLUNDERING SCIENCE, BONE BY BONE
At 71, Bachchan hits the gym everyday
AMITABH BACHCHAN does not associate himself with lethargy and the exhaustion that comes with age. He still makes it a point to workout at the gym every day. In a post on his blog Sunday, Big B talked about the strug-gle behind him going to the gym and how he tries not to miss it. “Despite the pain, despite the inconsistency, despite the ‘aalasya’ — the lethargy of human, despite all else — the push to gym, come what may,” Bachchan
posted late Sunday night. “Bear it, struggle with it, allow it to tear into the body, scream out the music with eff ort —and conclude with that something satisfaction of fi ghting an odd-ity,” the 71-year-old added. The pain and the struggle of going to the gym motivates him to go back the next day as well. “Be that as it may, the following day there shall be eff ort again. Stubbornness — yes! At least in some respects, but the ulti-mate gain shall remain - of having continued even when there was no evidence of any prescribed continuity,” he said. On the work front, Bachchan is currently hosting the seventh season of quiz show Kaun Banega Crorepati that comes on Sony.
‘Neecha Nagar’ ignored, Kamini Kaushal upsetVETERAN ACTRESS Kamini Kaushal is deeply disturbed by the fact that despite Neecha Nagar being the fi rst Indian fi lm to get the Palme d’Or at the Cannes fi lm festival, it was not mentioned in the 100 years celebrations of Indian cinema pre-sented at the prestigious fi lm fest in French Riviera this year. “My fi rst Film Neecha Nagar is India’s fi rst fi lm to get awarded at Cannes fi lm festival but I really felt bad when Bollywood celebrated its 100 golden years and didn’t even mention its name,” Kamini said Sunday at an event organised to pay trib-ute to late singer Manna Dey. Director Chetan Anand’s Neecha Nagar won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1946. The actress claims that Bollywood seems to have forgotten the veterans and their contribution to cinema. “If Bollywood has forgotten its base, which contributed in the making of this golden era, it’s regretful,” the 86-year-old said. With almost 90 fi lms in her fi lmography, the actress teamed up with top actors like Raj Kapoor and Dilip Kumar in her heydays and featured in fi lms like Shaheed, Nadiya Ke Paar, and Biraj Bahu. She was last seen in Rohit Shetty’s Chennai Express.
No honour befi tting for SRK: Karan JoharFILMMAKER Karan Johar says his friend and colleague Shah Rukh Khan is such a dynamic personality that no matter how many honours he gets, they will never be enough. Shah Rukh was recently named India’s Most Attractive Personality in a survey carried out by the Trust Research Advisory. “He is dynamic, attractive and he is one of the fi nest actors this coun-try has seen. No matter how many honours he receives, they are less,” the 41-year-old said at the launch of Mandira Bedi’s sari store. Having completed 25 years in the industry, Shah Rukh will celebrate his 48th birthday on November 2. “He has reached the pinnacle and I think his love (love of his fans) just continues to grow with every passing year,” said the fi lmmaker. —IANS
BOLLYWOOD
Palaeontologists are calling for the patchwork of laws on dinosaur stealing
and smuggling to be enforced and tightened around the world