Volume I, Number 83 2nd Waxing Day of Pyatho 1376 ME Monday, 22 December, 2014

Yangon, 21 Dec —Staff from local banks will get opportunity to level up their skills through banking courses that will begin next month at the

Local bank staff to get chance to pursue globally recognized financial courses

Myanmar Institute of Finance, according to the institute.

MIF, the first private professional institute in Myanmar, was founded in

October with the aim of enhancing the country’s fi-nancial industry by raising the standards of education in the area of economics. It is scheduled to con-duct both certificate and

(See page 2)

(From left to right) Principal of Myanmar Institute of Finance (MIF), official of a private bank and CEO of MIF are seen at a press conference of

MIF in Yangon.—Photo: Khaing thanda Lwin

naY PYi Taw, 21 Dec — President U Thein Sein left Don Muang Airport in Bangkok on Sunday after-noon after attending the 5th Greater Mekong Subregion Summit held in the Thai capital.

The President, wife and party were seen off at the airport by Thai Minis-ter of Commerce General Chatchai Sarikalya and offi-cials. They were welcomed back at Nay Pyi Taw Interna-tional Airport by Vice Presi-dents Dr Sai Mauk Kham and U Nyan Tun, Deputy Commander-in-Chief of Defence Services and Com-mander-in-Chief (Army) Vice-Senior General Soe Win, Union Ministers Lt-Gen Ko Ko, Lt-Gen Thet Naing Win, U Thein Nyunt, U Maung Myint, Dr Than Aung and U Win Shein.

Members of the dele-gation — Union Ministers U Wunna Maung Lwin, U Soe Maung, U Khin Maung Soe, Dr Kan Zaw, U Kyaw Lwin and U Ye Htut, Lt-Gen Khin Zaw Oo of the Office of the Command-er-in-Chief (Army) and of-ficials—also arrived back on the same flight.

(See page 3)

President U Thein Sein back from Bangkok, meets CP Chairman

Fifth GMS Summit issues joint declaration

naY PYi Taw, 21 Dec — Heads of States of Greater Mekong Sub-re-gion, President of the World Bank, ministers and senior officials from the countries of Greater Me-kong Subregion attended the Fifth GMS Summit in Bangkok, Thailand, on 20 December and issued a joint declaration.

The leaders committed to inclusive and sustainable development in the Greater Mekong Sub-region, ac-cording to the declaration.

In addition, the leaders placed an emphasis on de-velopments in the regional and global context and ac-knowledged that increasing regional and sub-regional cooperation has greatly ac-celerated connectivity and integration while recogniz-ing that the ASEAN mem-ber countries are making steady progress towards realization of the ASEAN Economic Community

with many measures of the AEC Blueprints now under implementation.

Similarly, the decla-ration also recognized that maturing trade and invest-ment frameworks between ASEAN and other key countries in the region in-cluding the Free Trade Area between ASEAN and the People’s Republic of China have led to substan-tial tariff reductions and increased flows of goods, investment and services across borders.

As for Myanmar, the declaration said that the opening up and integra-tion of Myanmar into the regional economy has ac-celerated since the Fourth GMS Summit in Nay Pyi Taw three years ago, pro-viding tremendous oppor-tunities for closer coopera-tion with the GMS and this cooperation can translate into increased cross-border

(See page 2)

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President U Thein Sein being welcomed back at Nay Pyi Taw International Airport by Vice Presidents Dr Sai Mauk Kham and U Nyan Tun.—mna

By Khaing Thanda LwinMinimum wage must set in line with agreement between employers and employees

Union Energy Minister on tour of Kyaukpyu Tsp

Religious Affairs Union Minister attends Christmas Dinner

Monday, 22 December, 20142n a t i o n a l

Local bank staff to get . . .

Kayin ethnics join New Year festival at Union National Races Village

(from page 1)diploma level of banking, insurance, finance and ac-counting courses.

U Zin Tun Win, the institute’s CEO, said it is now holding discussions with three foreign insti-tutes to open globally rec-ognized advanced financial courses for local youths, with Dr Hla Nyunt, Dep-uty Managing Director of Global Treasure Bank, ad-vising the body to include a financial risk management course in the future.

He welcomed the founding of the institute, saying it may become an important organization to promote country’s human resources, and urged youth

graduates to learn from the banking courses that may help them to get more job opportunities.

Nowadays, the coun-try sees a massive influx of foreign investment thanks to the government’s economic and political openings. Ex-perts estimated that youth graduates may flock to the banking sector in the future.

Local experts estimate that about 5,000 profes-sionals from local banks may move to the foreign banks which have got a green-light from the Cen-tral Bank of Myanmar. Now, local banks are seek-ing ways to prevent an ex-odus of skilled workers, he added.—GNLM

Yangon, 21 Dec —The 2nd Yangon East Kay-in New Year festival was held at the Pyidaungsu Hall in Union National Races Village in Thakayta Township, here, on Sun-

day, attended by Union Minister at the President Office U Aung Min and Yangon Region Chief Minister U Myint Swe.

The union minister and Region Minister for Kayin National Race Af-fairs U Saw Tun Aung Myint formally opened the festival.

Well-wishers includ-ing Union Minister U Aung Min donated cash to the festival. Vocalists and dance troupes presented traditional songs and danc-es to the audiences.

Traditional equipment

naY PYi Taw, 21 Dec — Union Minister for Re-ligious Affairs U Soe Win on 20 December attended a dinner jointly hosted by the Myanmar Catholic Bishops Association and the Myan-mar Council of Churches in commemoration of the birth of Jesus Christ, sourc-es said.

In his season’s greet-ings, the union minister said the world is cele-brating the birth of Jesus Christ, adding that Christ-

Religious Affairs Union Minister attends

Christmas Dinnermas recognizes the descent of Christ into the realm of human abode to save sin-ners.

Christianity values peace, stability, forgive-ness, forbearance, love, kindness, sympathy, com-passion, justice in all so-cial relationships, he not-ed, calling for followers of different religions to adhere to their religious instruction and maintain harmony.

MNA

Fifth GMS Summit issues joint . . .

(from page 1)connectivity, greater trade and investment, and a brighter future for the peo-ple of Myanmar as well as the people of the GMS.

Over the past three years, sustained coopera-tion at the sector level has also yielded significant results including the infra-structure connectivity, the declaration said, acknowl-edging and appreciating the versatile role that the ADB has played in the GMS Program while trusting that ADB and other devel-opment partners will heed the sub-region’s request for their continued support.

The leaders agreed to meet again at the Sixth GMS Summit to be held in Viet Nam in 2017.—MNA

President U Thein Sein and wife Daw Khin Khin Win present gifts to staff families of Myanmar Embassy and Military Attache Office in Bangkok. (News on page 1)—mna

Daw Tin Tin Htay from Nay Pyi Taw Directorate of Road Administration explains traffic safety and traffic rules enforcement at Aung San Hall in Tatkon on 13 and 14

December.—aye Than

Kayin national races perform Don dances at Kayin New Year Day at Union National Races Village in Thakayta.—mna

on history of Kayin ethnics were displayed at the festi-val for public observation. Over 2,000 Kayin ethnics from Yangon Region, Ay-eyawady Region and Kay-in State joined the Kayin New Year festival.—MNA

Union Minister for Religious Affairs U Soe Win delivers speech at Christmas Dinner.—mna

Monday, 22 December, 2014

N a t i o N a l3

Minimum wage must set in line with agreement between employers and employees

Yangon, 21 Dec — The minimum wage law as Pyidaungsu Hluttaw Law No. 7 was enacted on 22 March 2013, Union Min-ister for Labour, Employ-ment and Social Security U Aye Myint told employers at the office of Republic of the Union of Myanmar Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry in Lanmadaw Township, here on Sunday.

With the assistance of the Union government, the minimum wage rules were issued on 12 July 2013, he added.

The union minister said a national committee on minimum wage designa-tion has been formed with participation of 27 mem-bers. The minimum wage designation committees have been set up at the local level. Government organi-

zations have conducted the meetings and seminars with participation of employers and employees in regions and states. The Myanmar Development Research Institute and International Labour Organization joint-ly conducted surveys on basic needs for designating the minimum wage in Yan-gon, Mandalay and Bago regions.

He continued that in

Union Energy Minister on tour of Kyaukpyu TspnaY PYi Taw, 21

Dec — Union Minister for Energy U Zeyar Aung explained the project of the ministry, socio-eco-nomic development for the people and electrification tasks to the local people at the hall in Kyaukpyu, Rakhine State, on 20 De-cember.

Chief Minister of Rakhine State U Maung Maung Ohn urged the local people to join the public-centred system for implementation of devel-opment projects.

Deputy Minister U Aung Htoo discussed ex-ploitation tasks of Shwe offshore natural gas project, installation of

machinery, laying gas pipelines, safety of oil pipelines, and environ-mental conservation.

The union minister and party inspected the Shwe natural gas distribu-tion camp in Kyaukpyu. They viewed an oil port and tanks on Made Island.

SEA Oil and Natural Gas Pipeline Company donated US$ 420,000 for installation of 709 electric meter boxes and erection of a communication tower for development of Made island. The union minister and the chief minister also donated K1 million each to education and health sectors of the local people.

MNA

Plan underway to open polytechnic schools and institutes

naY PYi Taw, 21 Dec — Local people need to participate in undertaking reform process for devel-opment of respective town-ships, Union Minister at the President Office U Soe Thane told departmental of-ficials and bamboo and rat-tan producers at Saya San Hall in Thayawady, Bago Region, on 21 December.

The union minister ex-plained the government is increasing the budgets year by year for implementa-tion of rural development, education, health and re-

gion-wise prioritized tasks, adding that arrangements are being made for health-care service of government staff and people, education for children of staff and construction of housing projects.

Union Minister at the President Office U Tin Na-ing Thein said that local authorities are to submit development plans to the regional governments and Hluttaws. He stressed the need to make arrangements to create job opportuni-ties for growing number of

(from page 1)While in Bangkok, the

president received Dhanin Chearavanont, Chairman and CEO of Charoen Pok-phand (CP) Group, at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel at 9 am on Sunday.

They discussed agri-culture, livestock breeding and rural region develop-ment issues.

President U Thein Sein back from. . . Present at the call were

Union Ministers U Wun-na Maung Lwin, U Soe Maung, U Ohn Myint, U Khin Maung Soe, Dr Kan Zaw, U Kyaw Lwin and U Ye Htut, Lt-Gen Khin Zaw Oo, Myanmar Ambassador to Thailand U Win Maung and officials.

At 11.45 am, President U Thein Sein and wife Daw

Khin Khin Win, together with delegation members, met staff families of the Myanmar embassy and the military attaché office at the residence of the Myanmar Ambassador in Bangkok.

The president present-ed gifts to staff families of the two offices and Myan-mar students.

The ambassador hosted a luncheon in honor of the president.—MNA

population. He claimed that a plan is underway to open polytechnic schools and institutes for turning out technicians so as to meet the demand of skilled workers. The union minis-ter noted that Thayawady District needs to manage bamboo production for ris-ing income of local people and conserving the forests and bamboo groves in the region.

The union ministers fulfilled the requirements of township committees and townselders.—MNA

fact, the minimum wage must be designated in line with the agreement of em-ployers and employees, and the government will ap-prove their agreement. Con-ducting the survey in re-gions and states is no waste of time, for designation of the minimum wage should be in a win-win situation for employers and employees.

Entrepreneurs, Py-ithu Hluttaw representative Daw Tin Nwe Oo and ILO Liaison Officer Mr Steve Marshall discussed infra-structure requirements for the minimum wage, market situations, political stability and challenges.

In conclusion, the un-ion minister said that the minimum wage should not be a burden on either em-ployers or employees, and that the process is very im-portant for economic devel-opment of the nation.

The ministry, employ-ers and employees held the meetings 27 times in re-gions and states on designa-tion of minimum wage. The national committee has also organized five meetings on the same subject.—MNA

Photo shows oil port and tanks on Made Island in Rakhine State.—mna

Union Minister for Labour, Employment and Social Security U Aye Myint highlights designation of minimun wage.—mna

President U Thein Sein greets Dhanin Chearavanont, Chairman and

CEO of Charoen Pokphand (CP) Group

in Bangkok.—mna

Monday, 22 December, 20144n a t i o n a l

Nay Pyi Taw

Mandalay

Natogyi

Muse

PyinOoLwin

Mohnyin

Sittway

Yangon

MyeikToday’s

MyanMar news siTes

Today’s MyanMar news siTes

PyinOOLwin, 21 Dec — The midwife-ry course No. 1/2014, jointly conducted by Health Department and Maternal and Child Welfare Association, concluded at PyinOoLwin Township People’s Hospital (300-bed) on 19 December.

Head of Mandalay Region Health Department Dr Than Win, Chairperson of Mandalay Region Maternal and Child Wel-fare Supervisory Committee Daw Su Su Lwin and officials presented medicine kits, completion certificates and prizes to respec-tive trainees.

A total of 18 trainees from villages in PyinOoLwin Township attended the six-month course.—Tin Maung (Mandalay)

MandaLay, 21 Dec — Chief Minister of Mandalay Region U Ye Myint and wife joined a tra-ditional mass walk activity in the third week of December together with departmental officials, teach-ers, students, social organization members and local people, total-ling over 20,000 on 20 December.

They walked from the Min-gala Bridge at Mandalay royal city to 19th street.

Deputy Director U Wai Zin of Sports and Physical Education Department launched the walk. The participants walked along 26th, 66th and 19th streets.

Tin Maung (Mandalay)

PyinOoLwin Township Health Dept turns out midwives

Mandalarians participate in mass walk activity

Checkpoint at Muse trade zone should be expanded: trade director

Muse, 21 Dec — As the area of checkpoint at Muse 105th-Mile trade zone does not balance with the number of vehicles carry-ing exported products, the export and import check-point yard needs to be ex-panded, Director of the zone U Tin Ye Win told media recently.

He remarked that the existing export and import checkpoint should be des-ignated as an export check-point yard, and new import checkpoint should be built on the 92 acres of land near Asia World Toll Gate.

He continued to say that as the Union Highway between the trade zone and Muse urban area faces traf-fic congestion daily, a de-tour should be constructed.

Increasing volume of trade and trucks with commodities are in imbal-ance with the 48.56 acres checkpoint area. As a con-sequence, the Union High-way between the trade zone and Manwein gate faces traffic congestion daily.

About 1,400 trucks

and buses including motor-bikes pass the Union High-way daily. Therefore, the motorway is blocked with various sizes of vehicles.

Over 600 vehicles with the loads of fruits use an over 12-mile long road section from the trade zone

to Kyukok (Pangsai) to ex-port the products to China daily.

“Due to traffic con-gestion, vehicles take three hours to drive the road sec-tion from the trade zone to Kyukok-Pangsai,” said the director.

The muse trade zone’s trade volume reached US$3.609 billion from April 2013 to March 2014. From April to August in 2015, trade volume has reached US$2.061 billion.

Min Htet Aung (Man-dalay Sub-printing House)

Myanmar to host AFF Championship

(Suzuki Cup) 2016yangOn, 21 Dec —

President of Myanmar Football Federation U Zaw Zaw attended the 13th ASE-AN Football Federation (AFF) Council Meeting in Malaysia on 20 December

and discussed hosting the AFF Suzuki Cup 2016, sys-tematic activities of ASE-AN football arena, market-ing and financial issues.

The council approved Myanmar’s bid to host the AFF council meeting in Yangon on 27 February 2015. The MFF President pledged to host the meeting successfully.

The meeting agreed to designate Myanmar as the host for 2016 AFF Suzuki Cup. According the new rules and regulations of the cup, the football teams from the first to seventh po-sitions in the previous cup will have the opportunities to take part in the final stage of the coming cup together with one qualified team.

Cambodia will host the qualifier rounds for Cam-bodia, Brunei, Timor-Leste and Laos. Myanmar stood at the seventh position in the previous cup, so it will have the opportunity to take part in the final stage of the coming cup.—MFF

Monday, 22 December, 2014 5r e g i o n a l

Radioactive waste transportation in Fukushima to be delayed

Tokyo, 21 Dec — The government has given up on an earlier plan to start transporting in January radioactive soil and other waste from decontamina-tion work following the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster to nearby towns, sources close to the matter said on Sunday.

The move came as the decontamination work has been slow and negotiations with landowners in Futa-ba and Okuma towns in Fukushima Prefecture on the construction of inter-im waste storage facilities have been protracted, the sources said.

Under the government plan, contaminated waste to be kept in the interim fa-cilities will be permanently disposed of outside the pre-

Workers wipe water off a transport container for nuclear fuel rods after it is removed from the spent

fuel pool of the No 4 reactor building of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on 20 Dec,

2014. — Kyodo News

fecture within 30 years, as requested by the prefectur-al government in accepting the storage.

The site for final dis-posal of the radioactive waste has yet to be decided.

Kyodo News

Manila, 21 Dec — The Philippine government still faces challenges in job creation in the com-ing years despite a recent drop in the unemployment rate, the president of the Employers Confederation of the Philippines (ECOP) said on Sunday. The coun-try’s unemployment rate in October fell to 6 percent from 6.4 percent recorded in the same period a year ago, statistics from the Philippine Statistics Au-thority (PSA) showed.

The confederation is concerned that not enough jobs are created due to a slowdown of the coun-try’s economy, said Ed-gardo Lacson, president of ECOP. Philippines’ gross domestic product grew 5.3

Tremor felt in NE India as quake hits Myanmar-India bordernew Delhi, 21 Dec —

Tremor was felt in northeast India after a 4.8 magnitude quake hit the Myanmar-In-dia border on Sunday, said seismological officials. The earthquake occurred at 11:08 am local time (0538

Pakistan hangs 4 militants involved in attacking former presidentislaMabaD, 21 Dec —

Four militants involved in attacking former Pakistani president Pervez Mushar-raf were executed in the country’s east Faisalabad city on Sunday, local me-dia reported.

The militants, whose death penalties were signed by the country ‘s

Thailand looking to Japan for railways revamp

bangkok, 21 Dec — Thailand is talking to Japan with a view to building three rail routes in the Southeast Asian country, a Thai min-ister said on Saturday, the latest move by its military government to kick-start long-delayed plans to mod-ernise its aging rail network.

Thailand wants three new lines connecting the capital, Bangkok, with cit-ies in the east, west, north and northeast and Japan had expressed interest in under-taking the work, said Thai Transport Minister Air Chief Marshal Prajin Junthong.

His announcement comes a day after Thailand signed a memorandum of understanding with China to construct two separate lines of 867 km (542 miles) in the kingdom, starting in 2016.

“We’re still in the pro-cess of talks (with Japan). It will be clearer after the Jap-anese government has fin-

ished its election and discus-sion will be made with both sides,” Prajin told reporters on the sidelines of a regional summit in Bangkok.

An overhaul of Thai-land’s rail network was pro-posed long ago but has yet to materialize. The junta wants to start the ball rolling as part of its big infrastructure plans to try to revive an economy blighted by weak spending and exports.

Thailand has proposed Japan builds two separate east-west lines, one from Mae Sot at the Myanmar border to Mukdahan near the border with Laos and anoth-er connecting Kanchanaburi with the industrialised prov-ince of Rayong. A third route would run from Bangkok to the northern city of Chiang Mai, Prajin said. The three routes combined would cov-er roughly 1,500 km, accord-ing to Reuters calculations.

Thailand agreed to use

Chinese firms and technolo-gy to build a 734-km stand-ard-gauge dual track railway from Nong Khai on Thai-land’s border with Laos, to its ports and industrial zones in the east. Another line would link Bangkok with the central province of Saraburi about 108 km away.

A modern rail network would boost Thai trade and tourism and strengthen Chi-na’s strategic foothold in a

country with traditionally strong ties with Japan and the United States. Rela-tions with Washington have soured since a coup in May.

Japan has long been Thailand’s biggest investor, mainly in car manufactur-ing and high-tech industries. Like China, Japan has sub-stantial economic interests in the region, in particular, Vietnam, Myanmar and Thailand.—Reuters

A passenger waits for a skytrain during rush hour at a station in Bangkok on 8 July, 2013. — ReuteRs

percent year-on-year in the third quarter of 2014, slower than 6.4 percent in the second quarter of 2014 and 7.0 percent in the third quarter of 2013.

High electricity cost and higher income tax rate are among the factors that deter job-generating in-vestments in the country, Lacson added.

“What we need is (in-vestment in) manufacturing and agribusiness which are biggest generators of jobs. Tourism helps as well,” he said. In the 12 months to October, the economy has created around 1.05 million jobs, while the labor force increased by 1.072 million during the same period, ac-cording to the PSA.

Xinhua

GMT). There were no im-mediate reports of casualties or damage to property, said officials at the regional seis-mological centre in Shillong, the capital city of Megha-laya state in northeast India. The epicenter, with a depth

of 101.91 km, was initially determined to be at 24.2523 degrees north latitude and 94.757 degrees east longi-tude, the US Geological Sur-vey said in a bulletin earlier, while putting the magnitude of the quake at 5.1.—Xinhua

One member of the scenic spot staff, dressed like Santa Claus, climbs the cable car to send gift to visitors for celebrating the up-coming Christmas in China’s

Hunan Province.—XiNhua

Chief of Army Staff Gen-eral Raheel Sharif, were hanged to death in a prison in Faisalabad, a main city in the country’s east Punjab province. Musharraf, the then president, narrowly escaped when two suicide car bombers rammed their vehicle into his motorcade on 25 December, 2003, in

Rawalpindi.Fifteen people includ-

ing soldiers were killed in the attack which was the second attempt on Mushar-raf’s life that month.

Following the attack several militants including the four hanged Sunday were arrested.

The four militants were

sentenced to death earlier by the military court, how-ever, the government was keeping a moratorium on death penalty since 2008, due to which their execu-tion could not take place earlier.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Wednesday an-nounced the lifting of the

2008 moratorium on exe-cutions in Pakistan.

The decision came in the wake of a Taliban attack on an army school which killed 132 school-children and nine staff members. As Prime Minis-ter Nawaz Sharif approved implementation of the exe-cutions in terrorism-related

cases, the federal govern-ment has reportedly asked all provincial govern-ments to collect details of all convicts on death row.

Officials say that se-curity has also been tight-ened for jails across Paki-stan in view of the possible hanging of the convicted militants.—Xinhua

Monday, 22 December, 20146w o r l d

Two South Korea’s Navy ships have arrived in Russia’s port city Vladivostok on a four-day visit on 18 Dec, 2014.—Xinhua

China builds first high-speed railway through karst region

GuiyanG, 21 Dec— Construction of China’s first high-speed railway run-ning through the country’s southwest karst regions was completed on Sunday.

The 857-km railway linking Guiyang, capital of landlocked mountainous province of Guizhou, with south China’s economic powerhouse Guangzhou, is expected to become opera-tional on Friday.

Guizhou has the world’s most typical karst plateau landscape, which was inducted as a UNES-CO World Heritage Site in 2007. Karst topography is a

landscape formed from the dissolution of soluble rocks such as limestone.

Stretching through the complicated karst clusters, the railway had half of its length run through 238 tun-nels, two of which are more than 14 km long, said Zhang Jianbo, general manager of the Guiyang-Guangzhou High-Speed Railway Co.

It took builders four years to drill through the two longest tunnels. Con-struction was often dis-rupted by breaking rocks, rupture of strata and water infiltration, Zhang said.

The construction

company applied for six national patents covering their shockproof technol-ogy which was adopted to reduce the vibration that occurs when a train trav-elling at 250 km/hour runs through mountain tunnels.

Wang Mengshu, a tun-nel expert with the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said the technology and machinery engineering de-veloped for building the Guiyang-Guangzhou high-speed railway represents the country’s new-generation innovation in tunnel engi-neering.

Xinhua

Rice firms seek new sales strategies to counter drop in consumption

Tokyo, 21 Dec — Rice producers and suppliers are turning to unconventional sales strategies that are less dependent on long-estab-lished brand names or re-gions in an effort to boost rice consumption, which has been decreasing over recent years.

An online shop operat-ed by a Tokyo-based com-pany lets buyers choose lesser-known rice brands from across Japan based on ratings by “rice somme-liers.”

“Products from this shop are assessed based on objective figures and it is easy to choose,” said Takashi Koizumi, a 38-year-old tax accountant from Sakai, Osaka Prefec-ture. Koizumi, who refused to reveal his real name, said he loves rice so much that he eats it at every meal.

He used to buy famous brands at grocery stores, but started looking for even higher quality rice with bet-ter taste and came across the online shop called “Maifudo.”

“I mainly choose brands whose scores are in the upper 80 even without trying to look at what the brand is or where it was produced,” he said, refer-ring to the 100-point rating system employed by Mai-fudo.

“I was amazed to dis-cover that there are a lot of rice brands that are sweet and shiny even though they are not produced in popular rice production sites like the Hokuriku region or Nii-gata Prefecture,” Koizumi said.

Upfarm Solutions Co

Photo taken on 24 Oct 2014 shows Kitoku Shinryo Co.’s rice product lineups including series of small-amount packages such as 900-gram ones.

Kyodo news

started operating the online shop in the fall of 2014.

The company sells rice brands that have received certain scores at a contest for newly harvested rice organized every year by an Osaka-based association of rice sommeliers.

The scores are decided by measuring the amount of four ingredients — wa-ter, protein, amylose and fatty acid, which are said to determine the quality of rice, with special evaluation equipment.

The score, the name of the variety and that of the producer, as well as the cultivation method are labeled on the package of each product. Maifudo currently sells brands pro-duced by some 40 produc-ers across Japan. The price is set based on the ratings. Products that were cultivat-ed in a special method and won 85 or higher scores, for

instance, carry a suggested retail price of 2,160 yen for 2 kilograms regardless of the brand or production site, with the exception of award-winning brands.

Upfarm Solutions President Ryuzo Takahashi said, “We aim to enable consumers to judge on their own the value of rice based on objective figures.”

“Fair evaluations also help boost the enthusiasm among rice farmers to im-prove the quality of their rice,” Takahashi said.

In the meantime, some companies let customers buy rice in small portions at a time when the number of single and elderly house-holds is increasing.

Kitoku Shinryo Co, a major wholesaler based in Tokyo, sells a 900-gram package of rice for less than 500 yen in four different brands including “Koshi-hikari” produced in Niigata

Prefecture. The company also sells 450-gram pack-ages.

Each package has a zipper to keep the rice fresh and can be stored in a fridge.

Iris Ohyama Inc based in Sendai, Miyagi Prefec-ture, northeastern Japan, also deals with 450-gram packages of fresh rice.

In July, the company started operating a rice mill-ing plant in the prefecture with an annual production capacity of 100,000 tons, using six top-quality brands from such places as the To-hoku region and Hokkaido.

At the factory, all the operations from storing to milling and packaging are controlled at 15 C or low-er temperature to preserve freshness. A deoxidizer is also contained in each package to prevent the rice inside from oxidizing.

Kyodo News

Australian PM Abbott reshuffles cabinet to focus

on jobs, familiesSydney, 21 Dec —

Australian Prime Minis-ter Tony Abbott, battling a slide in public support, reshuffled his cabinet on Sunday, promoting the overseer of a tough im-migration programme and throwing out his gaffe-prone defence minister.

Abbott said the shake-up was for jobs and fam-ilies and stressed a focus on financial issues as he deals with the fallout of an unpopular belt-tightening budget.

“It is a sign that this government wants the economy to be front and center in the coming year,” he told reporters in Can-berra.

Abbott is nearing the end of his first full year in office hobbled by missteps and a souring economy that have dragged his ap-proval ratings to historic lows.

Faced with a collapse in commodity prices and an unruly upper house Senate, that has held Ab-bott’s first budget hostage since May, voters have abandoned his conserv-ative government more quickly than any other in three decades.

The elevation of Im-migration Minister Scott Morrison to social servic-es minister underscored the shift in priorities away from the secretive pro-gramme of “turning back the boats” of thousands of asylum seekers that helped it win power a year ago.

That policy has been criticized by the United Nations, but Abbott laud-

Australian Defence Minister David Johnston

ed Morrison as “the mas-ter of difficult policy and administration” for almost entirely stemming the flow of boats over the past year.

“He is a very tough and competent political operator,” Abbott said of Morrison. “He’s also a very decent human being.”

Defence Minister David Johnston lost his job in the reshuffle which came a month after he embarrassed the govern-ment with comments crit-ical of government-owned ship-builder ASC, saying he did not trust it to “build a canoe”.

The comment fueled expectations that most of the work in an A$40 bil-lion submarine programme will go offshore.

Reuters reported in September that Australia was leaning toward buy-ing up to 12 off-the-shelf stealth submarines from Japan.

Morrison will be re-placed by Peter Dutton, a former police detective, in the new portfolio as Min-ister for Immigration and Border Protection. John-ston will be replaced by Kevin Andrews.

Reuters

Monday, 22 December, 2014 7w o r l d

Cuba’s President Raul Castro (L) speaks with his first vice-president Miguel Diaz Canel during a session of the National Assembly in Havana, on 20 Dec, 2014.

ReuteRs

Cuba says US must respect its communist system

Havana, 21 Dec — President Raul Castro de-manded on Saturday that the United States respect Cuba’s communist rule as the two countries work to restore diplomatic ties, and warned that Cuban-Ameri-can exiles might try to sab-otage the rapprochement.

US President Barack Obama this week reset Washington’s Cold War-era policy on Cuba and the two countries swapped prisoners in a historic deal after 18 months of secret talks. Cubans have treated the end of open US hos-tility as a triumph, espe-cially the release of three

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon

UN’s Ban hails Obama for ‘courageous’ Cuba move

Bamako, 21 Dec — UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon praised US Pres-ident Barack Obama on Saturday for what he called courage and vision in re-newing ties with Cuba and said he had asked Washing-ton to pursue such a course.

Cuban President Raul Castro also demonstrated leadership in reciprocating the opening, Ban said.

Obama announced on Wednesday that the United States would renew diplo-matic relations it severed 50 years ago, and expand commercial ties with the communist-ruled island. The move has been criti-

cized by a string of Repub-lican lawmakers but wel-comed abroad, including by the European Union.

“I highly commend President Obama’s very courageous visionary deci-sion to address this issue. At the same time I really appreciate President Raul Castro. He has shown great humanity and leadership this time,” Ban told Reu-ters.

Ban visited Cuba earli-er this year and said he had been trying to advocate for an opening with Cuba to authorities in Washington over the issue.

“I am very glad that they have finally decided to agree,” said Ban.

He also praised Cuba’s humanity in sending hun-dreds of healthcare workers to West Africa to fight the worst outbreak of the Ebola virus on record.

The UN chief was speaking in Mali during a trip to West Africa aimed at thanking healthcare workers of the countries at the heart of the epidem-ic.—Reuters

Russian truck convoy with relief aid for Donbas heading for Russian border

moscow, 21 Dec — A Russian relief convoy bound for Donbas is head-ing for the Russian border with Ukraine, a Russian Emergencies Ministry source told TASS.

“A relief convoy con-sisting of more than 180 trucks left the Donskoye rescue centre of the Rus-sian Emergencies Ministry /Russia’s southern/ Rostov region and is heading for the Russian border,” the ministry’s representative said.

The relief cargo in-cludes New Year presents, building materials for reno-vation of damaged socially significant buildings, in-cluding schools and kinder-gartens, as well as food and medical supplies for people suffering from cardio-vas-cular diseases and diabetes as well as anti-influenza drugs.

“Dozens of public or-ganizations and thousands of Russians who are not indifferent to other people’s trouble had collected the

Russia had notified the Ukrainian side and international organizations in advance of its intention to dispatch the 10th relief cargo to Donbas.—ItaR-tass

person said.A day earlier, jour-

nalists had been shown the trucks’ content. They could choose and inspect any ve-hicles. According to TASS, the journalists found Christ-mas trees lapped in fabric, cedars, sweets and ruberoid.

“All the trucks have undergone maintenance and repairs. All the drivers have been instructed how to drive in extreme conditions.

Art student Arthur Butka, 15, takes a nap at his home beside his painting of Cuba’s former president Fidel Castro, in downtown Havana on 28 Nov, 2014. From bus

drivers to bartenders and ballet dancers, many Cubans are already imagining a more prosperous future after the United States said it will put an end to 50 years of conflict

with the communist-run island. Picture taken on 28 Nov, 2014.—ReuteRs

Cuban intelligence agents who served long US prison terms for spying on Cuban exile groups in Florida.

US officials will visit Havana in January to start talks on normalizing rela-tions and Obama has said his government will push Cuba on issues of human and political rights as they negotiate over the coming months.

Castro said he is open to discussing a wide range of issues but that they should also cover the Unit-ed States and he insisted Cuba would not give up its socialist principles.

“In the same way that

we have never demand-ed that the United States change its political system, we will demand respect for ours,” Castro told the Na-tional Assembly.

He again praised Oba-ma for the policy change in a speech that became a partly defiant, partly cele-bratory show of pride for resisting five decades of US aggression.

Despite the marked-ly improved tone in rela-tions, Castro said Cuba faces a “long and difficult struggle” before the Unit-ed States removes a dec-ades-old economic embar-go against the Caribbean island, in part because in-fluential Cuban-American exiles will attempt to “sab-otage the process”.

Obama has pledged to remove economic sanc-tions against Cuba but he still needs the Republi-can-controlled Congress to lift the embargo.

Castro confirmed he will take part in a Summit of the Americas in Panama in April, potentially set-ting up a first meeting with Obama since they shook hands at Nelson Mandela’s funeral a year ago.

That brief encounter

drew wide attention. Un-beknownst to the world at the time, the United States and Cuba were already six month into secret talks set up with the help Pope Fran-cis and the Canadian gov-ernment.

Castro’s older broth-er and retired leader Fidel Castro, 88, has not been seen or heard from since Obama’s announcement and he was not at the Na-

tional Assembly on Satur-day. Raul Castro ended his speech with an energetic “Viva Fidel!”

The Assembly gave a long standing ovation to Cuba’s five “anti-terrorist heroes,” intelligence agents who spent between 14 and 16 years in US prison for spying on Cuban exiles.

Two had been released after serving their terms and the United States freed

the final three on Wednes-day as part of a prisoner swap.

In return, Cuba freed US aid subcontractor Alan Gross, who had been held for five years for bringing in banned telecommunica-tions equipment, plus a Cu-ban who had spied for the United States and dozens of other unidentified pris-oners.

Reuters

relief aid. They brought in New Year presents, food products and building mate-rials,” Drobyshevsky said.

Russia had notified the Ukrainian side and inter-national organizations in advance of its intention to dispatch the 10th relief cargo to Donbas.

“We invited them to in-spect the cargoes at border crossing points,” the Emer-gencies Ministry spokes-

Almost all of them have already delivered re-lief cargoes to the Donetsk and Lugansk regions,” the Russian Emergencies Min-istry said.

Nine Russian relief convoys have delivered about 12,000 tonnes of re-lief cargos, predominantly medical supplies and build-ing materials, to Donetsk and Lugansk since 11 Au-gust.—Itar-Tass

Monday, 22 December, 20148o p i n i o n

Monday, 22 December, 2014

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The first entails taking into account workers’ needs, standards of living and the income gap. The second is about productivity, competitive-ness and job creation. No doubt both present a dilemma, with one side preferring to increase the minimum wage while the other preferring to keep it at a low level. Either way, setting the minimum wage is a delicate balancing act.

It is worth noting that raising the minimum wage is largely irrelevant to reducing poverty in part because it is not totally focused on the poor. Instead, it should be viewed as an effective tool to ensure fair distribution of wages. Clearly, there is no universal rule as to the ‘right’ level of the min-imum wage, given socioeconomic conditions spe-cific to countries across the world.

A World Bank report in July 2003 stated two basic mechanisms for setting the minimum wage. According to the report, one is concerned with a statutory minimum wage that is set by govern-ment through consultations with trade unions

employers. The other is a sectoral minimum wage that is set through collective negotiations by groups involved.

On the one hand, the minimum wage hike is likely to be followed by employment reduction, thereby triggering unemployment. On the oth-er hand, the low minimum wage is a different story. Either way, minimum wages should guarantee a socially acceptable standard of liv-ing for low-paid workers.By Kyaw Thura

Minimum wages should be a cure rather than a curse

The establishment of minimum wages is aimed at preventing employees from be-ing exploited by employers, enabling

them to secure a socially acceptable standard of living and alleviating poverty, according to a re-port published by the International Labour Or-ganization in 1992.

Experts have suggested two kinds of consid-erations — social and economic — should be borne in mind when setting minimum wages.

Legend or HistoryMost people of our

generation knew or heard of the “Death Railway”. The number of those who knew or ever heard of that name will gradually de-crease among those who were born a few decades later. As for me, I came to learn about that notorious railway line since I was in my pre-teen years, near the end of the Second World War. It was like a legend-ary tale when I first heard of it from some adults of my small native town in Upper Burma (Myanmar), who claimed they escaped from the construction site of that rail line.They were among the few survivors of the hardships---deadly dis-eases, malnutritions, star-vations, harsh weather con-ditions, laborious works and brutality of the con-querors. They were from the dreadful labour forces, the notorious “Chway Tats” as they were called in Burmese (Myanmar), which is “Sweat Armies” in English. They were forced by the conquering Imperial Japanese Army, into hard-labourers to assist in the building of a railway line passing through dense rain forest, over rugged mountains of the Tanin-thayi Range between Siam (Thailand) and Burma (Myanmar). The god-for-saken places along the routes were infested with malaria and rampant with cholera, dysentery and di-arrhea diseases, where

Let’s Revive the “Death Railway”By Khin Maung Myint

many Allied prisoners of war (POWs) and the Asian civilian forced labourers perished.

However, the stories they told were not always of hardships, distresses, diseases, tortures or deaths.There were many interest-ing accounts of their daring and adventurous escapes, interspersed with the sto-ries of finding discarded or hidden treasures, which they hid in caves some-where. Of how they drew up sketchy maps of those hidden treasures and how they split the map into piec-es and kept a piece each among those who escaped together, with promises of going back to that place when the situations permit-ted. Those were the stories we cherished and never tired of listening as young-ster, that made us forget the horrors of the war and the nightly bombing raids.The Bridge on the River Kwai

After the war, when normalcy returned, schools reopened and the fears and worries were things of the past, so did those interest-ing stories, too, were for-gotten. Though, the memo-ries of the interesting accounts of the railway line were rekindled in nineteen fifty seven by the epic Hol-lywood movie “ The Bridge on the River Kwai”. The backbone story of that movie was built around the construction of a wooden bridge across a river, along the route where the rail line

passed through Thailand. The movie was an Oscar award winner and was ..one of the best war adventure movies of that time and I had watched it again and again whenever it was screened. Even today I was never tired of watching whenever it was reran on the satellite televisions. That movie made the bridge on the River Kwai and the railway line, which it was part of, became world-known. Until I had seen that movie, I had thought that the stories of that rail-way line, which I had heard as a child were just legends.

In 1997, I had an op-portunity to go on a sight-seeing tour of that bridge and part of the rail-way line, which was dubbed the “Death Rail-way” by the surviving Al-lied (POWs), who had toiled laboriously to build it. Many of their comrades and many civilian Bamar, Mon, Kayin, Thai, Indone-sian, Malaysian, Chinese, Indo-Chinese and Indian who were forced into la-bour, perished. According to one record about 90,000 Asian labourers and 12,399 Allied soldiers died. The trip was quite interesting and worthwhile as I had a chance to visit the museum and the war cemetery at Kanchanaburi, where the POWS who died during the construction of the bridge and the railway lines were laid to rest. During that trip I did not have time to go around seeing everything and reading the gist histori-cal accounts displayed at

the museum and at the sig-nificant places.

Many years had passed since then and I had almost forgotten about the River Kwai Bridge, however, my interests were reignited re-cently. As I had started to try my hand at writing arti-cles and as some of them found their way into a newspaper, my elder broth-er urged me to write trave-logues for a certain journal. He suggested that, as a starter, I should write about the River Kwai Bridge as I had been to that place. I gave a serious thought to his suggestions and came up with the idea of writing about the famed bridge and the railway line, not as a travelogue but from anoth-er perspective.The Death Railway

During the Second World War, as the advance of the Japanese Imperial Army was gaining momen-tum, they were urgently in need of a reliable and fast line of support to maintain their advancing army, which was already inside Burma (Myanmar). They were planning for an as-sault on India, the Head Quarters of the Command-er in Chief Far East (C-in-C Far East) of the allied forc-es. The Commander was no other than Admiral Lord Mountbatten of Burma. The sea route from Japan to Burma (Myanmar) took many days to travel and had to pass through the Malacca Straits and the Andaman Sea, where their ships were vulnerable to submarine at-tacks. Thus their strategic plan was to build a railway line to connect Bangkok and Rangoon (Yangon) .

The constructions started in 1942 and com-pleted in 1943. Most of the materials used were those brought from their occu-pied areas, such as Malaya (Malaysia) and Indonesia, which they dismantled from the existing railway lines. It was constructed by using forced labour, in-cluding 180,000 Asian ci-vilians from Myanmar, Thailand, Singapore, Ma-laya, Indo-China (now Vi-etnam, Laos and Cambo-dia) and Indonesia and 60,000 Allied prisoners of war (POWs). The railway link was 419 kilometers long, stretching from near Bangkok across the rough and difficult terrains of the Taninthayi Yoma, crossed the Myanmar border at the “Three Pagoda Pass” and up to Thanbyuzayat to link with the existing Myanmar Railway network. 111•5 kilometers of the track was inside Myanmar. As there was no bridge over the Thanlwin River at Motta-ma, it was not completely connected to the Burma Railway. It was not an easy job, however, the Japanese managed to accomplish it at the expanse of many lives of the POWS and Asian civilians. That rail-way link was used until 1947, when it was put out of service by the British, dismantling a stretch of the rail that lied inside Burma, as it was unsafe to use due to shoddy constructions. Thailand revived the ser-vice in 1957, up to a place

close to the border. The train service targets the throngs of tourists, both lo-cal and foreign who arrived every-day at Kanchnaburi, home of famous “The Bridge on the River Kwai”.Reviving the “Death Rail-way”

As the East-West Eco-nomic Corridor and the South Economic Corridor of the Greater Mekhong Subregion (GMS) are in the process of being estab-lished, we should study the feasibility of reviving the “Death Railway” that once connected Myanmar and Thailand. It would play an important role in the East-West Economic Corridor and also it would help our country to benefit from the South Economic Corridor. That would greatly contrib-ute to our economy and de-velopment. It could attract more tourists, enhance not only the cross border trades, but also the interre-gional trades and thus cre-ate more job opportunities for our citizens. At present, Thailand is making a lucra-tive business in tourist trade by taking advantage of the fame of the Bridge on the River Kwai, which lies on that railway line. Now is also the opportune moment to jump onto the bandwag-on, to get a share of the lu-crative tourism trade that Thailand had been enjoying for years.

Looking forward to a bright and prosperous future.

The author is Retired Deputy General Manager,

Admin: Dept; Myanmar Posts and

Telecommunications

Monday, 22 December, 2014

L o c a L N e w s9

Mandalay, 21 Dec—As summer will come in a few months, transform-ers are to be installed at the sub-power stations in Mandalay District and its townships, Mandalay Region Minister for Electric Power and Industry U Kyaw Myint told a coordination meeting at the office of the region electrical engineer on 20 December.

The minister stressed the need to sup-ply electricity at full capacity to the resi-dent.

Plans are under way to install trans-

Mandalay, 21 Dec—Mandalay City Develop-ment Committee held its 22nd anniversary celebra-tion at Maha Nwesin sports ground in Mahaaungmye Township on 20 December.

Mandalay Region Min-ister for Development Af-fairs Mayor U Aung Moung and MCDC members at-tended the celebration.

Sanitation Department

natogyi, 21 Dec —Production of petrified wood is on the decrease in Natogyi, Mandalay Re-gion, freezing market de-mand.

Three of over 20 com-panies in Natogyi contin-ue to export of petrified wood. Recently, entrepre-neurs and merchants held

Mandalay, 21 Dec—Directorate of Road Ad-ministration in Mandalay Region issues driver li-cences to government and company staff on Sundays in the second and fourth weeks every month.

The directorate issued licences to the government staff on 14 December and will issue the them to com-

Mandalay District to install new transformers, power lines

formers at Taiktaw, Bagaya, 65th street and Nyaungkwe sub-power station and to add one more transformer each at Htunton and Thinpangon sub-power stations.

The region minister urged the officials to substitute wooden lampposts with con-crete ones in Mandalay, Meiktila, Kyaukse and Myingyan districts.

According to the electrical officials, the authorities will spend K139.236 mil-lion on installation of transformers and power lines in Mandalay District.

Thiha Ko Ko (Mandalay)

Staff families’ sports meet marks 22nd anniversary of MCDCwon over Factories and Ve-hicles Department while Parks and Playgrounds De-partment beat Markets and Slaughters Department in the semifinal matches of men’s tug-of-war contest.

In the women’s event, Markets and Slaughters Department and Parks and Playgrounds Department cruised to the final match.Maung Pyi Thu (Mandalay)

Production of petrified wood on decrease, freezing market

a meeting on prospects of petrified wood trading in Mandalay. Production of the wood is also down due to shortage of workers.

An entrepreneur said the Ministry of Mines en-quired as to the root cause of declining exports of pet-rified wood in Natogyi.

Htay Myint Maung

Rakhine State conducts workshop on human rights for government staff

Sittway, 21 Dec —Chief Minister of Rakhine State U Maung Maung Ohn delivered a speech at the opening ceremony of the workshop on human rights for government staff in Ra-khine State at U Ottama Hall in Sittway, the capital of Rakhine State, on 17 De-cember.

The chief minister ex-plained the brief history of Myanmar National Human Rights Commission and Myanmar’s becoming a sig-natory to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Convention on the Elimi-nation of All Forms of Dis-crimination against Women, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the Optional Protocol on the Sale of Children, Child

Prostitution and Child Por-nography.

Chairman of the com-mission U Win Mra ex-plained the disciplines for the workshop. A total of 50 trainees from departments in

Rakhine State attended the workshop from 17 to 19 De-cember.

On 17 December, the chief minister received Dep-uty Chief of Mission Mr Matthew Hedges of the Brit-

ish Embassy and discussed victims at relief camps, the action plan of the state, bor-der region security affairs, and peace and stability and development of Rakhine State.—Rakhine State IPRD

Government, company staff to get driver licences

pany staff on 28 December.Those wishing to at-

tend the driving course are to enlist at the directorate from 8 am to 9 am. The directorate admits 400 trainees per course batch. The staff must show the recommendations of de-partmental officials and staff IDs.

Thiha Ko Ko (Mandalay)

Mandalay Region Hluttaw came to an end on 18 Decem-ber. It started

on 1 December, with approval of eight laws.

MPs submitted two proposals and officials

replied to 263 questions.

Maung Pyi Thu (Mandalay)

Monday, 22 December, 201410w o r l d

US sends four Guantanamo prisoners home to Afghanistan

The frontier road parallels the security fence leading to the Northeast gate at Guantanamo Bay US Naval Base, on 8 March, 2013.—ReuteRs

Washington, 21 Dec — Four Afghans held for over a decade at the US military prison at Guantan-amo Bay, Cuba, have been sent home, the Pentagon said on Saturday, the latest step in a gradual push by the Obama administration to close the jail.

The men were flown to Kabul overnight aboard a US military plane and released to Afghan author-ities, the first such transfer of its kind to the war-torn country since 2009.

With the repatriation of the four Afghans, Guantan-amo’s detainee population has been whittled down to 132. Several more prisoners of “various nationalities” are expected to be trans-ferred before the end of the year and a further unspeci-fied number in succeeding weeks, according to a sen-ior US official.

Obama promised to shut the internationally condemned prison when he took office nearly six years ago, citing the damage it in-flicted on America’s image around the world. But he has been unable to do so, partly because of obstacles

posed by Congress.The repatriation of the

four Afghans, identified as “low-level detainees” who were cleared for transfer long ago and are not con-sidered security risks in their homeland, had been in the pipeline for months.

But in what one senior

US official described as an expression of growing con-fidence in the new Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, who took over from Ha-mid Karzai in September, Washington pressed ahead with the transfer after he formally requested it.

The continued deten-

tion of Afghans at Guanta-namo — eight remain there — has long been deeply un-popular across the ideolog-ical spectrum in Afghani-stan. The release comes at a time when most US troops are due to leave Afghani-stan by year-end, even as Taleban insurgents are

intensifying their bloody campaign to re-establish their hardline Islamist re-gime that was toppled in a US-backed military inter-vention in 2001.

All four men — iden-tified as Shawali Khan, Khi Ali Gul, Abdul Ghani and Mohammed Zahir — were

originally detained on sus-picion of being members of the Taleban or affiliated groups. But a second US official said: “Most if not all of these accusations have been discarded and each of these individuals at worst could be described as low-level, if even that.”

The Afghan govern-ment gave the United States “security assurances” for the treatment of the former prisoners and was expected to reunite them with their families, the official said. Guantanamo was opened by Obama’s predecessor, George W Bush, after the 11 September, 2001, at-tacks on the United States, to house terrorism suspects rounded up overseas, with Afghans originally the larg-est group. Most of the de-tainees have been held for a decade or more without being charged or tried.

Two weeks ago a US Senate report delivered a scathing indictment of the harsh Bush-era interroga-tion programme used on terrorism suspects. Oba-ma banned the techniques when he took office in 2009.— Reuters

Saudi says security forces kill four militants in Shi’ite villageDoha, 21 Dec — Secu-

rity forces killed four mili-tants in eastern Saudi Ara-bia on Saturday in a raid on a hideout used by gunmen who killed a policeman in the area last week, the inte-rior ministry said.

The shootout was the deadliest incident in recent years in Awamiya, a vil-lage that has been the fo-cal point of unrest among Saudi Shi’ite Muslims since mass protests in ear-ly 2011 calling for an end to discrimination and for democratic reforms in the absolute Sunni monarchy.

State news agency SPA quoted the interior ministry spokesman as saying the

gunmen initiated shooting when security forces began the raid early on Saturday.

“The situation was dealt with in the appropriate manner and as a result four of the terrorists were killed, including the main person responsible for opening fire on the soldier Abdelaziz bin Ahmed al-Assiri,” the spokesman said, referring to the 14 December attack.

Activists said a fifth person died of his wounds and that one of the dead was a 12-year-old boy and another a passerby.

More than 20 other people were wounded, they said. It was not possible to verify either version of

events.Activists posted pic-

tures of the aftermath of the raid, in which armoured ve-hicles were used, showing shattered shop windows, smashed car windshields, walls with bullet holes and a plate full of spent bullet casings collected by locals.

More than 20 people have been killed in the un-rest since 2011, most of them local people shot in incidents that police have described as exchanges of fire. Shi’ite rights activists say some of those killed were shot dead while peace-fully protesting, which the government denies.

Reuters

Yazidis cheer Kurds on Iraqi mountain for breaking Islamic State siege

sinjar Mountain, (Iraq), 21 Dec — Iraqi Kurdish fighters flashed victory signs as they swept across the northern side of Sinjar mountain on Satur-day, two days after break-ing through to free hun-dreds of Yazidis trapped there for months by Islamic State fighters.

A Reuters correspond-ent, who arrived on the mountain late Saturday, witnessed Kurdish and Yazidi fighters celebrating their gains after launching their offensive on Wednes-day with heavy US air sup-

A Kurdish Peshmerga fighter stands guard in Zumar, Nineveh Province on 18 Dec, 2014. — ReuteRs

port. The Iraqi Kurdish flag fluttered, with its yellow sun, and celebratory gun-fire rang out. Little children cheered “Barzani’s party”, in reference to the Kurdish region’s president, Mas-soud Barzani. “We have been surrounded the last three months. We were liv-ing off of raw wheat and barley,” said Yazidi fighter Haso Mishko Haso.

It was the plight of those trapped on the moun-tain, together with Islamic State’s advance towards the Kurdish capital Arbil, that prompted US President

Barack Obama to order air strikes against IS in Iraq in August. Thousands of members of the Yazidi re-ligious minority were killed or captured by the militants.

Since then, Kurdish peshmerga forces in north-ern Iraq have regained most of the ground they had lost. But the war grinds on, as a weakened Iraqi army and Shi’ite militia volunteers battle back and forth with Islamic State across central and western Iraq. The Unit-ed States is also carrying out air strikes on IS in Syr-ia. —Reuters

Iraqi forces repel IS attacks in western Iraq

raMaDi, (Iraq), 21 Dec — Iraqi security forces and allied tribesmen on Satur-day repelled attacks by the Islamic State (IS) militant group in a military airbase housing US advisors, in Iraq’s western province of Anbar, a provincial security source said. Iraqi security forces backed by Iraqi and

US-led coalition aircraft repelled an attack by the IS militants on a major military airbase housing US military advisors, near the town of al-Baghdadi, some 200 km northwest of the Iraqi capi-tal of Baghdad, a provincial security source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

The fierce battles

which broke out in the ear-ly hours of the day resulted in the killing of numerous IS militants and destroy-ing of their vehicles, the source said. The IS mili-tants also attacked the town of al-Baghdadi and after hours of clashes, they were forced to retreat, the source added.—Xinhua

Monday, 22 December, 2014

b u s i n e s s & h e a l t h11

Tokyo, 21 Dec — While limited mobility pos-es several challenges to the elderly and people with dis-abilities, the impact on their clothing choices is often overlooked.

“The desire to go out in particular clothes can be a key to get motivated,” said Kimiyo Iwanami, 66, who develops clothes that allow elderly people and those with disabilities to dress themselves. One person she has helped is Gentaro Shii-hashi, a 49-year-old dentist in Tokyo. In 2004, Shiihashi underwent emergency sur-gery after he began to bleed from the brain while prepar-ing to treat a patient at his clinic.

Five months later, Shii-hashi was discharged from hospital. But he still suffers paralysis on the left side of his body, including his dom-inant left hand, and needs a cane to walk outside. For Shiihashi, who had always been a stylish dresser, hav-ing to leave his home in functional yet unfashionable sweatshirts or loose pants was truly a pain. But he also knew that if he goes out in

Bamako, 21 Dec — The United Nations mis-sion to fight Ebola should be wound down quickly once the battle is won, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said on Saturday dur-ing his first tour of coun-tries stricken with the virus.

The UN emergency Ebola response mission, or UNMEER, was set up in September to coordinate policy and logistics for a campaign that includes governments, charities and healthcare workers from affected countries.

Ban said UNMEER differed from peacekeeping missions and should not outlive its immediate pur-pose. “There’s a tendency that missions go on be-cause of continuing politi-cal instability and conflict. Ebola is a very urgent and unprecedented epidemic, therefore we cannot take too long in eliminating it,” he told Reuters.

“That is why I am send-ing a political message. It is not because we have made any decision on when UN-MEER should end, but it should be a short-term mis-sion,” he said.

More than 7,300 peo-ple have died of Ebola in the three worst-affected countries, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. Ban de-clined to name a target date for ending the outbreak, but said he was encouraged that the rate of new cases is declining.

ChiCago / New york, 21 Dec — Shoppers filled up malls and department stores on the last weekend before Christmas, as the weather cooperated to help raise the prospect of a solid finish to a holiday season that has so far produced mixed results.

Crowds were building at stores in and around New York, Philadelphia, Chi-cago and Los Angeles by midday on Saturday. Some shoppers said they were drawn by the discounts, which have been deeper and lasted longer this year. Others said they felt more inclined to spend because of lower prices at the gas pumps. Alexis Layne, a 53-year-old retired school-teacher shopping at a mall in downtown Chicago, said she usually buys only “fun stuff like accessories” the weekend before Christmas but had made a few im-pulse buys like two Lacoste

Brussels, 21 Dec — The European Central Bank should start buying government bonds to tack-le poor investor confidence and low inflation in the euro zone, governing coun-cil member Luc Coene said in an interview published

ECB’s Coene supports government bond purchases

on Saturday. The Belgian central bank chief said the bank had already waited too long, and that this could be one tool to spur econom-ic activity in the 18-country euro zone and fight off de-flationary pressures.

“In this context, the

purchase of sovereign bonds could prove to be an effective tool,” he told La Libre Belgique.

“Since the beginning of 2014, we have system-atically underestimated deflationary effects...if we were to find ourselves at

the beginning of next year with negative inflation and fall into a deflationary spi-ral, the effects on the be-haviour of households and businesses could be very negative.”

Inflation in the single currency area was 0.3 per-

cent year-on-year in No-vember, well below the ECB’s headline target of inflation below, but close to 2 percent.

The ECB Governing Council will hold its next policy meeting on 22 January.—Reuters

UN’s Ebola mission should be closed once battle won

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has his temperature checked upon arrival at the Roberts

International airport in Liberia’s capital Monrovia on 19 Dec, 2014.—ReuteRs

He visited treatment centers in the countries at the heart of the epidem-ic during a 36-hour tour to raise the profile of the struggle against the virus and encourage healthcare workers.

On Saturday, he also met Ibrahim Boubacar Kei-ta, the president of Mali, a country that recently saw the last of eight Ebola cases released from hospital.

At every stop, health authorities took his tem-perature and ensured he washed his hands with chlorinated water in a sign that nobody is exempt from protection measures. In Guinea on Saturday, Ban urged countries to avoid discriminating against healthcare workers fighting the virus.

His comments fol-lowed a meeting at a treat-ment centre in Sierra Leone on Friday in which Rebec-ca Johnson, a nurse treating virus patients, recounted how she fell ill, recovered and is now back treating Ebola patients.

Ban publicly embraced Johnson and repeatedly cited her as an example of heroism, not least because she said she still faced stig-ma as a survivor.

“There should be no discrimination for those who have been working or helping with Ebola. Those people are giving all of themselves,” Ban said.

Reuters

Modified clothing helps disabled people keep up with fashion

elderly people at the Tokyo metropolitan government and now works at a private research center on welfare tools. Iwanami suggested that Shiihashi attached an elasticized belt to the inside of the waist of his pants to prevent them from slipping.

“It enabled me to go out in my favourite pants with-out worries,” Shiihashi said, adding that he even started traveling abroad with his family. Iwanami said, “Un-

like Mr Shiihashi, most men won’t say but looking cool could be a huge motivation.”

This year, he even helped Motherhouse Co, a Tokyo-based bag maker, develop a waist bag for peo-ple who became paralyzed on one side of their bodies, after Iwanami introduced him to the company. Unlike conventional waist bags, Motherhouse’s product al-lows users to pull them over their heads and adjust the length of belt at waist with one hand.

Motherhouse, who started selling the product at the end of October, said it has incorporated opinions from Shiihashi into the bag, such as adding a pocket in which users can easily ac-cess their mobile phones.

“With this bag, going out alone is no longer a prob-lem for me,” said Shiihashi, who needed help from his family to wear a convention-al waist bag. “I rode on a bus alone for the first time since I suffered a stroke,” he said. “I used to get exhausted in 10 minutes, but can now walk for nearly one hour.”

Kyodo News

Last US holiday shopping weekend off to solid startT-shirts for her husband because the deals were too good to pass up.

Ramesh Swamy, a re-tail analyst at Deloitte, said retailers were anticipating a strong weekend of sales. One of the malls he visited in the Los Angeles area was preparing overflow parking spaces, and he saw some retailers restocking shelves.

“I think folks are will-ing to open up their purse a little bit more this year,” he said, pointing to lower gas prices and solid corporate profits as supporting fac-tors. “It should be a pretty good day.”

Retailers are banking on big sales this weekend to help make up for a spotty performance so far, includ-ing a disappointing “Black Friday,” the day after Thanksgiving that typically ranks as the busiest shop-ping day of the year.

ShopperTrak, which surveys traffic at bricks-

and-mortar stores, expects today — called “Super Sat-urday” by retailers because of its importance to sales —to surpass Black Friday as the top revenue-generating day of 2014.

According to the Na-tional Retail Federation, re-tail sales rose an unadjusted 3.2 percent in November, trending below its holiday forecast for 4.1 percent during November and De-cember combined. Its chief economist said the forecast was still achievable, with a strong December to pick up the slack.

Aside from pockets of rain in Georgia and South Carolina and parts of the Pacific Northwest, weather conditions were general-ly good with temperatures cold enough in the East to spur sales of sweaters and other winter goods, said Evan Gold, a senior vice president at Planalytics, which advises companies

on how weather conditions impact business.

“I think it should be a strong day,” he said.

JC Penney’s flag-ship store in Manhattan was starting to fill up by midday, after a slow start. Annette Rozzo was one of three shoppers waiting when the doors opened at 7 am. With a coupon for 60 percent off clothing, she purchased six sets of paja-mas and said she was plan-ning to pick up toys from the Disney movie “Frozen” for the kids. The deals were better than 2013, she said, and she would “definitely” spend more than last year.

Some analysts have warned that retailers are pushing sales at the expense of margins. Many launched deep discounts right after Halloween and have kept them all the way through. Price cuts for apparel have been especially steep.

Reuters

Gentaro Shiihashi, who has hemiplegia on the left side of his body, says he can easily go out by bus thanks to elasticized slip-on type pants. A special

waist bag he is wearing is a prototype.

Kyodo News

Kimiyo Iwanami, who has been studying nursing

care wear for many years in Tokyo, shows

pants with an elasticized waistband which she developed to enable

disabled persons to put on off with one hand, a boon

to the disabled.Kyodo News

his favourite pants, he would have trouble pulling them down in a public bathroom.

“They could slip down if I try with one hand,” he said. “I was worried that the pants could touch dirty floors.” Shiihashi had given up on dining out and tended to seclude himself at home.

But things changed sev-eral years ago when he met Iwanami, who long engaged in development of clothing and shoes for disabled and

Monday, 22 December, 201412w o r l d

A Christmas tree is lit up at St Peter’s Square

in Vatican City on 19 Dec, 2014.

Kyodo News

New Year countdown will be launched at Moscow’s Ostankino TV

Moscow, 21 Dec — A New Year countdown will start at Moscow’s Ostank-ino tower, Europe’s tallest TV tower, on Sunday. Far-ther Frost, who will pay a special visit to the tower on Sunday, will set a clock mechanism, whose param-eters have so far been kept secret, in motion.

Father Frost’s appear-ance is supposed to come as a real surprise for the tower’s visitors.

Father Frost and his guests will rise at an alti-tude of 337 metres to the TV tower’s observation platform shortly after the timer has been set in mo-tion.

According to the event’s organizers, mil-lions of Muscovites and guests of the capital will be able to count down days,

hours, minutes and seconds remaining till the New Year.

New Year countdowns are traditionally launched at most famous architectur-al buildings in Europe and Asia during the last few days of an outdoing year. Such events usually attract millions of people from various parts of the globe.

But the Kremlin’s Spasskaya tower remains the main symbol announc-ing the arrival of the New Year in Russia. Though the tower itself is current-ly being renovated and is surrounded by scaffolding, the renovators will leave the clock mechanism un-touched so that the Rus-sians could hear the famil-iar chime at midnight on 31 December.

Itar-TassFather Frost’s appearance is supposed to come as a real surprise for the tower’s visitors. — Itar-tass

Gunman with possible revenge in mind kills two NYC police officers

New York, 21 Dec — A gunman ambushed and fatally shot two New York City police officers on Sat-urday and then killed him-self, police said, and a so-cial media post indicated it may have been in revenge for the police chokehold death of an unarmed black man.

If the killings do turn out to have been motivated by the death of Eric Garner, they could inflame tension over race and law enforce-ment that have dogged New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, sparked protests around the country and drawn in President Barack Obama and his attorney general, Eric Holder.

The officers were killed without warning and at close range as they sat in their squad car in the Bed-ford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, Police Com-missioner William Bratton told a news conference, flanked by de Blasio.

“Although we’re still learning the details, it’s clear that this was an assas-sination, that these officers were shot execution style,” said de Blasio.

New York police have

come under intense pres-sure in recent weeks. Pro-tests erupted after a grand jury declined this month to charge a white police of-ficer involved in Garner’s chokehold death during an arrest attempt in July in Staten Island borough.

Bratton identified the gunman in Saturday’s shooting as Ismaaiyl Brin-sley, 28, and said he took a shooter’s stance on the

passenger side of the squad car, opening fire with a sil-ver semi-automatic hand-gun. He then fled into a nearby subway station and died there from a self-in-flicted gunshot wound to the head, Bratton said. The police chief identified the slain officers as Rafael Ramos, 40, and Wenji-an Liu, 32. Liu had been married for two months. Ramos had a 13-year-old

son.The killings were the

first time New York City police officers have been killed by gunfire since 2011 and sparked bitter anger among some police against de Blasio, who they see as not supportive enough in the face of pub-lic anger. The mayor has had a prickly relationship with law enforcement as he tries to balance regard for

Police are pictured at the scene of a shooting where two New York Police officers were shot dead in the Brooklyn borough of New York, on 20 Dec, 2014.

reuters

New Delhi, 21 Dec — Three labourers were killed and four others seriously injured in a powerful im-provised explosive device (IED), or home-made bomb blast on Sunday morning in Imphal, the capital of the northeast Indian state of Ma-nipur, said local media.

The IED was planted by the roadside near Imphal market, said Press Trust of India. An earlier TV report said the blast took place at a bus station. Some separatist groups are waging a small scale insurgency against the Indian government in the restive northeast region of the country.—Xinhua

civil liberties with police concerns.

Patrick Lynch, head of the Patrolmen’s Benev-olent Association that is the country’s largest mu-nicipal police union, said, “There’s blood on many hands tonight.”

“Those that incited vi-olence on the street under the guise of protest, that tried to tear down what New York City police officers did every day,” Lynch told a news confer-ence. “That blood on the hands starts on the steps of City Hall in the office of the mayor.”

Demonstrations over Garner’s death came on top of protests around the country over another grand jury’s decision in Novem-ber not to indict a white po-lice officer who fatally shot an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri.

Obama was briefed on the killings while on va-cation in Hawaii. He later said in a statement he un-conditionally condemned the shootings, adding that police officers “deserve our respect and gratitude every single day.”

Reuters

Three killed in bomb blast in

NE India

Monday, 22 December, 2014

a d v e r t i s e m e n t & g e n e r a l13

Flood-caused damage to economy estimated at EUR 1.6 bln

Belgrade, 21 Dec — The damage to the Serbi-an economy caused by the May floods is officially es-timated at EUR 1.6 billion according to the Recovery Needs Assessment Report of the Serbian government, compiled with assistance from the EU, the World Bank and the United Na-tions, the European Bank for Reconstruction and De-velopment (EBRD), which will also provide support for addressing infrastruc-ture recovery needs, has said in a statement.

The EBRD is restruc-turing several financial

commitments with the city of Belgrade that are worth up to EUR 78 million.

“We are grateful for the support provided to us by the EBRD, which al-lows us to prioritise our interventions to repair the flood damage. This con-firms the strength of our longstanding partnership with the Bank,” said Bel-grade Mayor Sinisa Mali.

“It is of paramount im-portance for Serbia’s eco-nomic recovery after the devastation of the floods. The damage caused to the city of Belgrade is very serious and this is why

the EBRD is stepping in to help the administration with its flood-recovery plan,” EBRD Director for Serbia Matteo Patrone said.

Since the start of its

activities in Serbia, the EBRD has invested more than EUR 3.8 billion in 182 projects across the country, the statement said.—Tanjug

Paris, 21 Dec — French police on Saturday shot dead a man shouting “Allahu Akbar” (“God is the greatest”) who stabbed and wounded three officers in a police sta-tion, authorities said.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, who rushed to the scene, said the man was killed after he attacked the policemen with a knife in a station in Joue-les-Tours, a suburb of the city of Tours in central France.

Cazeneuve confirmed the attacker had shouted “Alla-hu Akbar” during the attack, which he said was “extreme-ly violent”.

The counter-terrorism section of the Public Prosecu-tor’s office has opened a probe for “attempted murder and criminal conspiracy in connection with a terrorist organi-zation”, the Paris Prosecutor’s office said.

“There are grounds to probe whether he acted alone, whether he followed orders, or whether it was a mindless action,” Public Prosecutor Jean-Luc Beck told BFM-TV.

The man was known to police for common crimes but was not on any watch list of the French intelligence servic-es, Cazeneuve said, adding: “The probe is only starting.”

The three wounded officers were hospitalized but were out of danger, he added.—Reuters

French police shoot dead knife-wielding man in police station

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Weather reportWeather reportFORECAST VALID UNTIL EVENING OF THE 22nd December, 2014: Weather will be generally fair in Sagaing Region, Shan and Chin States and partly cloudy in the remaining Regions and States. STATE OF THE SEA: Strong easterly winds with moderate to rough sea are likely at times Deltaic, Gulf of Motama, off and along Mon-Taninthayi Coasts. Surface wind speed in strong wind may reach (35) m.p.h. Seas will be moderate elsewhere in Myanmar waters.

Announcement

Farmers Development Public Bank limited

We are glad to announce the incorpo-ration of our Farmers Development Public Bank Limited is permitted in Myanmar with the Certificate of Incor-poration No. 4401, of 2014-2015 on 5th December 2014, under the Myanmar Companies Act by the Directorate of Investment and Company Administra-tion, the Ministry of National Planning and Economic Development.

Board of Director Farmers Development Public Bank Limited No.147(1st)Floor, Anawyathar Road, Botataung Township, Yangon.

TRADEMARK CAUTION

SHARP KABUSHIKI KAISHA (also trading as SHARP CORPORATION), a company incorporated in Japan and having its registered office at 22-22, Nagaike-cho, Abeno-ku, Osaka 545-8522, Japan is the owner and proprietor of the following Trademarks:

Plasmacluster Reg. No.4/17289/2014 (19.11.2014)

Reg. No.4/17291/2014 (19.11.2014) Reg. No.4/17290/2014 (19.11.2014)

In respect of “electric vacuum cleaners; electric automatic vacuum cleaners (self-propelled), namely, robots for household maintenance; electric automatic vacuum cleaners (self-propelled), namely, robots for commercial use; electric automatic vacuum cleaners (self-propelled), namely, robots for cleaning solar cell modules; electric washing machines; elevators; electric mixers for household use; electric blenders for household use; low speed juicing machines for household use; electric fruit presses for household purposes; dishwashers for household use and commercial use; electric food processors; electric food choppers; meat choppers; meat mincers” in Class 7; and

“microwave ovens; electric ovens; air conditioners for household use, commercial use and car use; electric fans; electric ventilation fans; electric heaters; air purifiers; refrigerators; freezers; refrigerator-freezers; range hoods; electric ranges; super heated steam ovens; super heated steam ovens having a function of microwave ovens; electric toasters; electric oven toasters; electric grills; induction heating cooking heaters; cook top and microwave drawer; electric warming drawers; electric rice cookers; ion generators for household use, commercial use and car use; electric automatic ion generating apparatus (self-propelled); ion generators for helmets, helmet cleaners; hair dryers; hair dryers having ion generating functions; electrical steam facial apparatus having ion generating functions; electrical facial apparatus having ion generating functions; light emitting diodes lighting apparatuses and instruments; lighting apparatuses and instruments; street lights; street lights having solar cell modules; dehumidifiers; humidifiers; water purifiers; electric water dispensers; electric jar pots; refrigerating and/or freezing showcases; electric kettles; electric water heaters; electric shower apparatus consisting of a water heater and a shower head; electric shower apparatus consisting of a water heater, a shower head and a pump; shower toilets; electric heating and drying apparatus for bathrooms; electric drying apparatus for bathrooms; gas heating and drying apparatus for bathrooms; gas drying apparatus for bathrooms; electric steamers; electric coffee makers; electric hot sandwich makers; electric fryers; electric appliances for making soup; electric appliances for making yogurt; bread making machine s; electric tea makers; electric urns, small ion generating for beauty purposes; desktop type humidifiers for beauty purposes; ion and steam generating apparatus having LED lighting systems for bedside; ion and mist generating apparatus for beauty purposes; ion and steam generating apparatus for beauty purposes; electric clothes/bedding drying machines for household purposes; drying apparatus and installations having ion generating functions ” in Class 11.

Fraudulent or unauthorised use or actual or colourable imitation of the Marks shall be dealt with according to law.

U Than Maung, Advocate For SHARP KABUSHIKI KAISHA (also trading as SHARP CORPORATION),

C/o Kelvin Chia Yangon Ltd., #1505-1508-1509, 15th Floor Sakura Tower,

339 Bogyoke Aung San Road, Kyauktada Township, Yangon, The Republic of the Union of Myanmar.

Dated 22 December 2014 utm@kcyangon.com 9” x 3 column x US$ 100 = US$ 2700

Monday, 22 December, 201414 e n t e r t a i n m e n t

Aamir Khan’s ‘PK’ earns over Rs 26 crore on first day

Rajkumar Hirani’s ‘PK’ bagged the second highest non-holiday opening after Aamir’s last Christmas

outing ‘Dhoom 3’.—PTI

MuMbai, 21 Dec — Bollywood superstar Aamir Khan‘s comedy-drama ‘PK’ has earned Rs 26.63 crore on its first day at the box-office.

The film, directed by ‘3 Idiots’ director Rajku-mar Hirani and also star-ring Anushka Sharma, bagged the second highest non-holiday opening after Aamir’s last Christmas out-ing ‘Dhoom 3’.

‘PK’, which released on Friday (19th December) in around 6000 screens all over including 5200 in In-dia, got positive response from the audience and crit-ics for its gripping storyline and powerful performanc-es.

Produced by Vidhu Vinod Chopra, the film stars Sanjay Dutt and Su-shant Singh Rajput in piv-otal roles. —PTI

DIFF 2014 opens here, Subhash Ghai gets lifetime achievement award

“Thanks to DIFF for honouring me with this award which is also known as Qutab Minar award. Thanks to all the guests present here,” Subhash Ghai said.—PTI

New Delhi, 21 Dec — With director Subhash Ghai being given the pres-tigious lifetime achieve-ment award, the third edition of Delhi Interna-tional Film Festival (DIFF) opened here today amid much fanfare.

The eight-day long festival was inaugurated by Delhi BJP chief Satish Upadhyay among other dignitaries at the NDMC convention centre.

An audio-visual pres-entation of the ace film-maker’s more than three decades of work was shown at the ceremony be-fore Upadhyay gave away the award to Ghai.

“Thanks to DIFF for honouring me with this award which is also known as Qutab Minar award. Thanks to all the guests present here.

“I went to Mumbai to become an actor but ended

up making the movie ‘Kali-charan’ which was appre-ciated by the masses and from there I went on to pro-duce films… Films are not about only entertainment but play an important role in creating awareness,” Ghai said after receiving the honour.

Upadhyay feels cin-ema should promote our culture.

“DIFF is an attempt to promote cinema, art and culture. Films are most im-portant for everyone of us and it should be promoted in events like DIFF. We don’t need language to understand a movie. Films should promote our cul-ture,” Upadhyay said in his speech.

The other guests who made it to the event are Noida Film City founder Sandeep Marwah, NDMC chairman Jalaj Srivasta-

va, festival president Ram Kishore Parcha and com-missioner of Income Tax Sangeeta Gupta.

Naghmeh Shirkhan’s ‘The Neighbour, which chronicles the Iranian women’s life in migration, was screened this evening as the opening film.

With Pakistan, Bang-ladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh being the focus countries, the film festival boasts an interest-ing line up of 250 films films across 45 nations.

Last year’s Pakistan’s official entry to Oscars ‘Zinda Bhaag’, co-directed by Meenu Gaur and Farjad Nabi and starring Indian actor Naseeruddin Shah in lead, will bring the curtains down on the film festival.

The festival will pay homage to departed talents Abdur Rashid Kardar and Chetan Anand.—PTI

Kim Kardashian becomes the most followed person on Instagram

Kim Kardashian lost around 1.3 million followers after the purge, closing the day at 22.2 million followers.

PTI

loNDoN, 21 Dec — Reality star Kim Kardashi-an has become the most fol-lowed person on Instagram by surpassing Justin Bie-ber, after he lost more than 3.5 million followers in a fake follower purge. Bie-ber, 20, originally had 23.8 million followers, which went down to 20.3 million losing his first place to the ‘Keeping Up With the Kar-dashian’ star and is now on third place after the singer Beyonce Knowles, report-ed Ace Showbiz.

Kardashian, 34, also lost around 1.3 million followers after the purge, closing the day at 22.2 mil-lion followers. Knowles

also lost around 866,000 followers and is currently on second place with 21.4 million followers.

Other celebrities who has a large number of fol-lowers on Instagram in-cludes Akon, Tyga, Ariana

Grande, Rihanna, Selena Gomez and P Diddy. Fa-mous 90s rapper Mase has reportedly deleted his Ins-tagram account after losing 1.5 million followers in a short while.

PTI

Based on ‘American

Sniper:

The Autobiography

of the Most Lethal

Sniper in US Military

History’, the war movie

is directed by Clint

Eastwood.PTI

Bradley Cooper’s ‘American Sniper’ new trailer releasedlos aNgeles, 21

Dec — A new trailer of Bradley Cooper-starring film ‘American Sniper’ has landed online, high-lighting his character as he juggles his roles as a sniper and a family man with a young child. The two-minute video sees Cooper’s character, US Navy SEAL Chris Kyle,

‘Game of Thrones’ star Pedro Pascal in ‘Great Wall’

los aNgeles, 21 Dec — Actor Pedro Pascal, who played Prince Oberyn Mar-tell on ‘Game of Thrones’, is in talks to join Matt Da-mon starrer ‘The Great Wall’. The historical pro-ject will be directed by famed Chinese director Zhang Yimou, reported the Wrap. The film, set in Chi-na, will mark Yimou’s Eng-lish-language debut.

The story revolves around an elite force mak-ing a last stand for humanity on the world’s most iconic structure. Damon remains in negotiations to star in the Great Wall movie, which is expected to be the largest

Pedro Pascal will next play Pontius Pilate in ‘Ben-Hur’.—PTI

getting emotional, reported Ace Showbiz.

The trailer starts with someone interviewing Kyle about his record as the most lethal sniper in US mili-tary. Scenes of his wed-ding, his days with family, his service in Iraq and him making difficult decision when a boy takes a grenade launcher and aims it at the

US troops are also shown.Based on ‘American

Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in US Military History’, the war movie directed by Clint Eastwood also stars Luke Grimes, Kyle Gall-ner and Jake McDorman among others. The film hits US theatres on Christmas Day.—PTI

film ever shot entirely in China. Production is set to begin in the early next year for a late 2016 release.

Pascal’s stars have risen since his breakout

performance in the hit fan-tasy drama. He’ll next play Pontius Pilate in ‘Ben-Hur’ besides horror-comedy ‘Bloodsucking Bastards’.

PTI

Monday, 22 December, 2014

g e n e r a l15

* Local News

* Tumbling Doll,

Pyit Tine Htaung

* World News

* Writer

* Local News

* Made of Jade

* World News

* Cosplayer

* Local News

* Fried Flat Noodle

* World News

* Entrepreneur “Kalayar

Pyi Wai Shan”

* Local News

*Young with Colour

(Toe Wai)

* World News

* Lucrative Myanma

Rattan Industry

* Local News

* Booming Garment

Industry

* World News

* Kayin Child Boxer

* Local News

* Lacquareware Making

* World News

* Orphanage

* Local News

* A Day Tour on A Cart

(Bagan Trip)

* World News

* Creations of a Designer

* Local News

* A Trend of Chin

Traditional Dress

* World News

* Tea

(22-12-14 07:00 am~ 23-12-14 07:00 am) MST

MITVMITVMYANMAR INTERNATIONAL

Real Madrid beat San Lorenzo to lift Club World CupMarrakech, (Moroc-

co) 21 Dec — Real Madrid won the Club World Cup for the first time by beating San Lorenzo 2-0 on Satur-day with goals from Sergio Ramos and Gareth Bale af-ter being forced into a scrap by the feisty South Ameri-cans. Real scored in each half to clock up a 22nd suc-cessive win in all competi-tions in a bruising encounter which Guatemalan referee Walter Lopez just managed to keep under control. The Marrakech crowd gave the European champions fer-vent support and were ex-pecting a gala exhibition, which San Lorenzo were not going to allow despite the obvious gulf in class.

“It’s a special day and this is a reward for all the effort and work that we have put in as a team,” said Ramos. Real nearly scored on their first attack when

Karim Benzema just failed to connect with Ronaldo’s low cross from the right.

After that, San Lorenzo did well to restrict Real to a couple of chances in the

opening half hour only for their resistance to be bro-ken at a corner when Ramos outjumped the defence in the 37th minute to break the deadlock.

Ramos had already been booked and could have been sent off for an ugly face-to-face rant at the referee as the game, which featured 40 fouls and nu-merous confrontations be-tween players, threatened to get out of control.

Bale increased Real’s lead in the 51st minute when he was left unmarked to col-lect Isco’s pass and diving keeper Sebastian Torrico allowed the Welshman’s weak shot to slip under his arm.

Real stopper Iker Casillas had to wait until the 65th minute to be tested for the first time when he saved a low diagonal effort from Emanuel Mas. He then made more difficult stops to deny Juan Mercier and Enzo Kalinski, although Real also missed several chances to score a third on the break.—Reuters

Real Madrid’s Cristiano Ronaldo (L) celebrates with team mates after their team scored their second goal

during their Club World Cup final football match against San Lorenzo at the Marrakech stadium,

on 20 Dec, 2014.—ReuteRs

US swimmer Phelps

sentenced to 18 months

probation for drunken driving

BaltiMore, 21 Dec — American swimmer Michael Phelps, the most decorated Olympian of all time, plead-ed guilty on Friday to driving under the influence of alco-hol and received 18 months of supervised probation and a one-year suspended jail sentence.

The 18-time Olympic gold medalist was arrested for drunken driving early on 30 September after speeding and then crossing the double yellow lines inside a Balti-more tunnel, police said.

“The last three months of my life have been some of the hardest times I’ve ever gone through, some of the biggest learning experiences I’ve ever had,” Phelps, wear-ing a dark suit, white shirt and blue tie, told reporters.

“I’m happy to be mov-ing forward. I’ll continue to grow from this.”

Phelps, 29, was clocked by radar at around 1:40 am travelling 84 miles per hour (135 kph) in a 45-mph (72-kph) zone, police said, add-ing that he blew a .14 on a Breathalyzer, nearly twice the legal limit of .08 in Mar-yland.

He faced up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine.

“I hope we don’t have this conversation again and I’m optimistic that we won’t have this conversa-tion again,” Judge Nathan Braverman told Phelps dur-ing his sentencing.

Reuters

Barcelona’s players celebrate a goal against Cordoba during their Spanish First division soccer match at Camp Nou stadium in Barcelona

on 20 Dec, 2014. —ReuteRs

Messi double, Suarez hits first La Liga goal in Barca rout

Barcelona, 21 Dec — Lionel Messi scored twice and Luis Suarez struck his first La Liga goal as Bar-celona crushed struggling Cordoba 5-0 on Saturday to finish the year a point be-hind Real Madrid at the top of the table.

In-form Pedro put Bar-ca ahead after just 71 sec-onds, the second quickest in La Liga this season, with a clinical finish from a ball over the top of the defence by Ivan Rakitic.

The signs were omi-nous for Cordoba as they found themselves en-camped in their own half, although Barca did not add to their lead until the start

of the second half through Suarez.

The Uruguayan re-turned from a four-month ban for biting at the end of October and claimed his first goal in La Liga when he slotted the ball home from a Pedro pass.

“I am more relaxed now having got the goal. Perhaps we had something to prove going into the match as the draw (last weekend) against Getafe was a blow,” Suarez told reporters.

“We are candidates for La Liga and we want to turn things around at the top. For me personally to get a goal in the league is impor-tant but I knew with all the

support I was getting that it would come soon.”

With the Cordoba players’ heads going down, Gerard Pique nodded in Barca’s third and then Mes-si fired in a late double.

Xavi came on as a second-half substitute in his 741st match for Barca, equalling the record of Re-al’s Raul for the number of games for a single club in Spanish football.

Barca have moved on to the shoulders of Real who are playing the Club World Cup final on Satur-day against San Lorenzo and have played a game less then their arch-rivals.

Reuters

Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro (R) greets former Argentine soccer star Diego Maradona during

a ceremony at the national pantheon in Caracas in this 9 Dec, 2014 handout photo provided by

Miraflores Palace.—ReuteRs

Maradona renews contract with Venezuela’s Telesur network

caracas, 21 Dec — Argentine soccer great Diego Maradona renewed his contract with Venezuelan televi-sion station Telesur, which in April had invited him to be a commentator during the World Cup in Brazil, the station said on its website.

Maradona will also star in a movie that Telesur is pre-paring about the show “De Zurda” or “From the Left”, which he hosted in collaboration with Uruguayan jour-nalist Victor Hugo Morales during this year’s soccer championship. Maradona visited Venezuela last week and appeared at an official event alongside President Nicolas Maduro, who replaced late socialist leader Hugo Chavez after the latter’s death in 2013. Chavez and Maradona, who shared leftist politics and opposition to US foreign policy, were friends.

Maradona was a star of the Argentine Boca Juniors team, and later a prominent player for Barcelona in Spain and Napoli in Italy. He led the Argentine national team to victory in the 1986 World Cup in Mexico.

Before becoming a commentator on Telesur, Mara-dona had been the coach of Argentina’s national squad and had a television show in Argentina.

Telesur is a regional station based in Caracas that was created by the late Chavez.—Reuters

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Silva gives Man City win over Palace, United heldLondon, 21 Dec — David

Silva sparkled for Manchester City with two goals in a 3-0 win over Crystal Palace that wiped out Chelsea’s lead at the top of the Premier League table on Sat-urday and added festive spice to the title race.

Manchester United’s pur-suit of the table-toppers stalled with a 1-1 draw at Aston Villa, their first dropped points in seven games, as local rivals City came through an encounter with Palace that threatened to turn into a frus-trating occasion.

Silva eased an increasing-ly tense atmosphere at the Eti-had Stadium when he broke the deadlock shortly after halftime and then put an efficient victory to bed with his second goal soon after. Yaya Toure emphatically smashed home a late third.

The victory for City, who are having to cope without all their main strikers through in-jury, moved them level on 39 points with Chelsea, who vis-it Stoke City on Monday, and ignited a title battle that had looked to be a one-horse pa-rade.

Champions City trailed Chelsea by eight points in No-vember, but have cranked into gear heading into the busy fes-tive period, taking 22 points from a possible 24 in their last eight games.

United are seven points adrift and one in front of a West Ham United side who will oc-cupy a coveted top-four spot at

Christmas after a 2-0 home win over bottom club Leicester City.

For Manchester City’s bil-lionaire owners, who have lav-ished funds on the team since their arrival, the sight of work-horse midfielder James Milner playing up front on his own in the face of an injury crisis may have prompted quizzical looks. It seemed a largely fruitless tactic in a first half when the nearest City came to breaking the dead-lock was a scooped effort from Pablo Zabaleta that bobbled wide, but the mounting tension was eased four minutes into the second half.

Zabaleta made a powerful burst into the area and cut the

ball back for Silva, whose shot took a big deflection off a Pal-ace defender before looping into the net. City, who failed to have a shot on target in the first half, then looked a completely differ-ent animal and found a second goal 12 minutes later as Silva arrived at the near post to finish sharply with his left foot. After Palace had a goal wrongly disal-lowed for offside, Toure ensured there would be no more nervy moments when he walloped in a powerful finish.

That left City boss Manuel Pellegrini to sing the praises of a team stripped of strikers Sergio Aguero, Edin Dzeko and Ste-van Jovetic. “It was a very good

win,” he told BT Sport. “A very good performance. I enjoyed the way the team worked the whole week, to work in a different way without strikers.” Rivals United had their recent charge halted at Villa Park, where Christian Benteke combined his wrecking ball power with a refined finish, holding off Jonny Evans to curl a stunning shot past David De Gea to give the hosts the lead after 18 minutes.

United boss Louis van Gaal, who described the result as “very frustrating”, had handed striker Radamel Falcao a rare start and was rewarded eight minutes into the second half.

The on-loan Colombian headed home an Ashley Young

Manchester City’s David Silva celebrates after scoring his second goal against Crystal Palace during their English Premier League

soccer match at the Etihad Stadium in Manchester, northern England on 20 Dec, 2014.—ReuteRs

Manchester United’s Radamel Falcao celebrates after scoring a goal during their English Premier League soccer match against

Aston Villa at Villa Park in Birming ham, central England on 20 Dec, 2014. —ReuteRs

cross, but Villa held the visitors at bay despite having Gabri-el Agbonlahor sent off with 25 minutes to play.

Southampton beat Everton 3-0 to end a run of four succes-sive league defeats, while Tot-tenham Hotspur kept up their pursuit of a top-four spot with a 2-1 home win against Burnley to move above Arsenal, who visit Liverpool on Sunday.

Queens Park Rangers striker Charlie Austin scored a superb hat-trick as they fought back from 2-0 down to win 3-2 at home to West Bromwich Albion, but second-bottom Hull City’s troubles continued with a 1-0 home defeat by Swansea City.

Reuters

Boxing great Muhammad Ali hospitalized with pneumoniaLouisviLLe, (Kentucky) 21

Dec — Boxing legend Muham-mad Ali has been hospitalized with pneumonia and is expect-ed to recover because the illness was caught early, a spokesman said on Saturday.

Ali, 72, was admitted to a hospital in an undisclosed loca-tion on Saturday morning and is being treated by a team of doc-tors and remains in stable con-dition, spokesman Bob Gunnell said. “Because the pneumonia was caught early, his progno-sis is good with a short hospital stay expected,” Gunnell said in a

Referee Tony Perez is shown

as he orders Muhammad

Ali (formerly Cassius Clay)

and Joe Frazier to their

corners during the latter

part of round two of their

heavyweight bout in New

York in 1974.

Xinhua

Former heavyweight

boxing champion

Muhammad Ali, pictured

here in 2012 when he was

crowned ‘King of Boxing,’

has been hospitalized for a

minor case of pneumonia.

Xinhua

Kobe, 21 Dec — Japan Foot-ball Association President Kuniya Daini said on Saturday he has sent a fact-finding mission to Spain following national team coach Javier Aguirre’s alleged involve-ment in a match-fixing scandal. “I have sent (a mission) to Spain and from now on we will have information coming in,” Daini told reporters in Kobe. Aguirre is one of more than 40 individuals named in a report into the alleged rigging of a Spanish La Liga clash between Levante and his former club Zaragoza in May 2011.

Aguirre was manager of Zaragoza and the team won the match 2-1, avoiding relegation to the second tier as a result.

The Mexican could be asked to appear in Spain if the complaint is accepted by a Valencia court and a full-scale investigation is opened. The JFA on Thursday de-cided that Aguirre would remain in charge for the 9-31 January Asian Cup despite him becoming engulfed in the scandal.

Kyodo News

JFA sends mission to Spain to gather

info on match-fixing scandal

statement.He declined to give any fur-

ther details of the boxer’s con-dition and said Ali’s family was asking for privacy.

The boxing great, who suf-fers from Parkinson’s disease, made a public appearance in September to attend a ceremony in Louisville, Kentucky, for the Muhammad Ali Humanitarian Awards.

A three-time world heav-yweight champion, Ali was di-agnosed with Parkinson’s about three years after he retired from boxing in 1981. —Reuters