P20 . Asian shares fade, dollar on edge before Fed P30 . A second triumph for ROHM

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Sri Lanka cuts president’s term Healthcare crisis looms in Spain

Global press freedom hits decades low

Chief Executive OfficerDR IBRAHIM BIN AHMED AL KINDI

Editor-in-ChiefABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

Oman Establishment for Press, Publication and AdvertisingPO Box 974, Postal Code 100, Muscat, Sultanate of Oman

THURSDAY | APRIL 30, 2015 | RAJAB 11, 1436 AH VOL. 34 NO. 167 | PAGES 32 | BAISAS 200

P25 . The Phillipines’ Cinderella Man captivates the world

MUSCAT: His Majesty Sultan Qaboos has sent a cable of greetings to Prince Mohammed bin Naif bin Abdulaziz al Saud on the occasion of him being selected as Crown Prince and appointed as a Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Interior and Chairman of the Political and Security Affairs Council in Saudi Arabia, and a similar cable of greetings to Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz al Saud on the occasion of him being selected as Deputy Crown Prince and appointed as a Second Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Defence and Chairman of Economic and Development Affairs Council. His Majesty wished them success in their assignments and Saudi Arabia further progress and prosperity.

NEW YORK: Hillary Clinton, the Democratic front-runner in the 2016 race for the White House, called for the widespread use of police body cameras and an end to excessive prison sentences in the aftermath of the Baltimore riots. “We have to come to terms with some hard truths about race and justice in America,” Clinton said in a speech at New York’s Columbia University. “There is something wrong when a third of all black men face the prospect of prison during their lifetimes,” she said. REPORT ON P14

HM greetings to Saudi leaders

Something wrong in justice system

OMAN

AMERICAS

INSIDESTORIES

WEATHER TODAY

PRAYER TIMINGS

MUSCATMAX: 400CMIN: 300C

SALALAHMAX: 350CMIN: 270C

NIZWAMAX: 430CMIN: 270C

SUNRISE 05.32 AM

FAJR: 04:10DHUHR: 12:03ASR: 15:29MAGHRIB: 18:34ISHA: 20:04

INDONESIA EXECUTIONS SPARK GLOBAL ANGER

AFGHAN PRESIDENT THANKS INDIA FOR HELP

SETBACK FOR RUSSIAN SPACE PROGRAMME

P6

P10

P12

NO WHERE TO GO!

Displaced Yemeni children play in a man-made underground water tunnel where they are taking shelter after their houses were destroyed by air strikes carried in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, yesterday. — AFP REPORT ON P13

$220M FUND ESTABLISHEDVINOD NAIR MUSCAT

April 29: Oman’s State General Reserve Fund (SGRF) and Spain’s Compania Espanola de Financion del Desarollo (Confides SA) have signed an agreement to establish a joint fund with an initial capital of 200 million euros ($220 million) to finance Spanish firms, following talks between the Omani and Spanish governments.

Confides is a state- and private-owned firm that provides financial support to private direct investment projects in foreign countries where Spain has interests.

The MoU was signed on the sidelines of Investment and Trade Cooperation Forum between the Sultanate and Spain, held yesterday at Grand Hyatt Muscat Hotel. The MoU was signed on behalf of SGRF by Abdul Salam bin Mohammed al Murshidi, CEO of SGRF, and by Salvador Marin Hernandez, Chairman of COFIDES.

The joint fund (a 50-50 paid up capital by Oman and Spain) will finance Spanish companies planning to expand at international level and will work to attract these companies to Oman. It is expected that the new fund will start its operations by the end of the second quarter of this year, in order to provide an opportunity to attract the first investment by the end of 2015.

The joint fund will give Oman an opportunity to benefit from the technical expertise and technical knowhow of the Spanish companies through job generation for Omanis, knowledge transfer, localisation and investment return, export of the products of these projects to the markets in GCC, East Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia

by focusing on a number of important sectors, like infrastructure, building materials, energy, tourism, and food industries.

The new fund will focus on companies interested in doing business in Oman as well as other Gulf countries, East Africa, and South and Southeast Asia, the SGRF said. It will mainly look at the building materials, food, infrastructure, energy and tourism sectors.

Salvador Marin said: “This is going to be a specific and lasting relationship between Oman and Spain. This is an excellent opportunity for Spanish companies wishing to invest in new strategic markets as it will certainly strengthen their financial structure.”

Al Murshidi said: “This fund is founded on mutual interest. It couples with Spanish technologies with Oman’s attractive business environment, which in turns, will increase the competitiveness of the Spanish industries in global markets, and enhances the diversification of the Omani economy, utilises Oman’s raw materials and proximity to the targeted markets.” TURN TO P2

BOOSTING TIES: Spanish investors urged to tap logistics, manufacturing sectors

Reforms will be unveiled to make Oman’s real estate sector more

transparent to be attractive for investors from both within and outside Oman

DR ALI BIN MASOUD AL SUNAIDY Minister of Industry and Commerce

WASHINGTON: Prime Minister Shinzo Abe yesterday expressed “deep repentance” over Japan’s role in World War Two, even as he declared Tokyo’s emergence as a global security player in the face of China’s rising power in Asia.

Using the high-profile platform of a landmark speech to the US Congress, Abe insisted that Japan must not avert its eyes from the suffering of Asian peoples from its wartime behavior but he stopped short of issuing his own apology, instead upholding statements by his predecessors.

With Abe’s comments on Japan’s

war record unlikely to satisfy critics who had demanded he go further, the conservative premier chose to focus more on the future of the US-Japan military alliance and press skeptical lawmakers to back a long-delayed Pacific free-trade pact.

“We now hold high a new banner that is a ‘proactive contribution to peace based on the principle of international cooperation,’” Abe said a day after he and President Barack Obama cemented new guidelines for Japan’s military to support US forces beyond its waters.

REPORT ON P15

STAFF REPORTERMUSCAT

April 29: There is need for the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries to control oil production and this entails a long-term study as there is no strong appetite for rise in oil production.

This was stated by Abdullah bin Hamad Al Attiyah, former deputy prime minister and minister of energy and industry of the State of Qatar, when he was hosted by the External Relations Committee of the Omani Journalists Association (OJA) on Tuesday.

Speaking on the occasion, he said a special attention should be paid to oil fields if “we want the oil resources to last longer.”

Al Attiyah said that when the price of oil hit $110, Goldman Sachs forecast that the price will reach $200, but “we in the Opec din’t want to see that happen as we are willing to deal with anemic customers. At that time I stated that high international oil prices have increased both inflation and the cost of production significantly.

“In 2009 the American financial market crashed due to high oil prices and from that point the economic policy in China and India has changed and the two countries decided to build oil reserves for emergency use which caused oil prices to rise.

“I always stressed on the importance of economic diversification in the region. Dependence on agriculture is limited as our countries lack water resources. Tourism is also unreliable because it is seasonal and the sector lacks proper infrastructure. In fact we need to diversity our economy within the available resources such as oil and gas. “In Qatar we managed to convert dry gas into diesel which is a clean energy and we raised our production from 350,000 bpd to 700,000 bpd of oil,” he added.

Abe ‘repents’ for war role

GCC countries should diversify resources

LONG-TERM PLAN

KABEER YOUSUF MUSCAT

April 29: The Royal Oman Police (ROP) have registered a case of unnatural death of two expatriate workers and are probing the death of the two workers who were engaged in the pipeline laying work at Qurum as the body of the second victim was extricated from the huge pile of rocks last night.

“We recovered the body of the second victim of the accident and it is in bad shape,” an official of the Public Authority for Civil Defence and Ambulance (PACDA) at the accident site told the Observer.

The three workers, two of whom from the Indian state of Gujarat — one a worker and the other a supervisor, and a Bangladesh worker were involved in the digging and tunneling works beside the Muscat Expressway near Qurum for laying a pipe for water distribution from Ghubra to Al Bustan area when a huge chunk of rocks collapsed on them at around 4.30 pm on April 27 crushing all of them underneath.

The PACDA brigades and the National Search and Rescue Team (NSRT) members were able to pull

out the body of Suresh Patel by late night after hours of efforts, followed by Jehangir Alam who was saved as his colleague’s body shielded him from the falling sharp rocks.

Search for the second body was on for the past 48 hours and later in the evening a post on PACDA Twitter said they managed to take out the body of Punn Patel, the second victim.

Jehangir Alam (pictured) holds a resident permit from elsewhere, while the resident status of others is yet to be known. Alam was contracted by Gulf Petrochemicals Services and Contracting Company on a monthly salary of RO 120 and has applied for an outpass at the Bangladeshi Embassy for the forthcoming amnesty for undocumented workers, the embassy sources confirmed.

Jehangir Alam, who is recovering at the Khoula Hospital’s critical care unit, said he doesn’t know what the future holds for him but the thoughts of his ailing mother were haunting him.

TURN TO P4

Safety of workers in question after incident

LAKSHMI KOTHANETHMUSCAT

April 29: For the workers at the Express Highway site it was yet another day of trying to lay the water pipes. But once in a while they cannot help looking towards the direction of the accident. It was an event they never expected. It is dusty and they have the face covered to protect themselves from the mud in the air. The eyes search for answers for no one had expected an accident on that day of tragedy. They must have resumed work after the lunch break just like any other day.

For the drivers passing by it was a typical scene of construction that has been witnessed in the last few years in Oman but for the men in uniform it was a fight against time trying to retrieve the workers who went into earth with the landslide. TURN TO P4

WHAT’S IN A NAME?

ROP LAUNCHES PROBE