CapitaMalls Asia Q4 net profit dips 10% on-year






SINGAPORE: Shopping mall developer and operator CapitaMalls Asia announced on Thursday a 10 per cent on-year decline in its fourth-quarter net profit.

The company attributed the drop mainly to lower fair value gains from investment properties in China and Singapore, as well as impairment losses in India and higher finance costs.

Net profit for the quarter fell to S$184.8 million from S$205.4 million a year ago.

Revenue for Q4 rose 71.4 per cent to S$113.6 million from S$66.3 million the year before.

The company cited its acquisition of Olinas Mall in Tokyo, additional stakes in three malls in Japan and higher management fees for its revenue increase.

In addition, CapitaMalls posted a record profit of S$546 million for 2012 -- a 19.7 per cent jump from the S$456 million booked the year before.

The developer said more than 50 per cent of its malls in China started operations in 2012.

Besides opening seven malls in China, the company also opened two new malls in Singapore -- The Star Vista and JCube. It also enhanced existing properties like Bugis+ and The Atrium@Orchard.

The CEO of CapitaMalls Asia, Lim Beng Chee, said the firm will focus on opening five new malls in 2013 -- two in China, two in Singapore, and one in India.

He expects the company's key markets in Singapore, China and Malaysia to continue to grow this year, with robust growth in China.

"If you look at China, I think the growth is going to be strong, particularly because our business is focused on what we call 'middle-class shopping'... So mostly everyone can come to our mall to enjoy a meal (or) go to the supermarket... I think this is going to be very positive," said Mr Lim

The company has a pan-Asian portfolio of 102 shopping malls across 52 cities in five countries -- Singapore, China, Malaysia, Japan and India.

CapitaMalls stocks closed down more than 4 per cent at S$2.08 a share on Thursday on the Singapore Exchange.

- CNA/jc



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Those who threatened Kashmiri all-girl band won't be spared: Omar Abdullah

AJMER: Government will not spare those who issued threats to Kashmiri girl band, Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdulhah today said, but maintained there was no need for legal action against the grand mufti who issued fatwa terming singing as un-Islamic.

Abdullah, during a visit to dargah of Sufi saint Khawaja Moinuddin Chisiti here, expressed happiness over the arrests made in connection to the online abuse and threats to the all-girl rock band 'Pragaash' and said more arrests were likely.

He said some of those who had issued threats had left the valley and police were trying to nab them.

Referring to grand mufti Bashiruddin Ahmad, through a decree, terming singing as "un-Islamic" and asking the girl band to abandon it, Omar said there was no need to take legal action against him as he has not violated any law.

Omar had earlier posted on the micro-blogging site Twitter that he was glad that the police in Kashmir has identified and arrested those who had issued online threats.

"I'm told more arrests possible," he tweeted.

Three persons have been arrested from Ganderbal, Anantnag and Srinagar districts in J&K for posting threatening and abusive messages on the Facebook page of 'Pragaash'.

Police have started tracking down the internet protocol addresses of the 26 users whose comments, out of the total 900 posts on the band's Facebook page, were found abusive, officials said.

A case has been registered against them under Section 66A of IT Act and Section 506 RPC (criminal intimidation).

The band, consisting of base guitarist Aneeqa Khalid, singer Noma Nazir and drummer Farah Deeba, decided to call it quits in view of the grand mufti's decree.

The group had been the target of an online hate campaign ever since it won a "Battle of the Bands" contest in December.

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Humans Swap DNA More Readily Than They Swap Stories

Jane J. Lee


Once upon a time, someone in 14th-century Europe told a tale of two girls—a kind one who was rewarded for her manners and willingness to work hard, and an unkind girl who was punished for her greed and selfishness.

This version was part of a long line of variations that eventually spread throughout Europe, finding their way into the Brothers Grimm fairytales as Frau Holle, and even into Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. (Watch a video of the Frau Holle fairytale.)

In a new study, evolutionary psychologist Quentin Atkinson is using the popular tale of the kind and unkind girls to study how human culture differs within and between groups, and how easily the story moved from one group to another.

Atkinson, of the University of Auckland in New Zealand, and his co-authors employed tools normally used to study genetic variation within a species, such as people, to look at variations in this folktale throughout Europe.

The researchers found that there were significant differences in the folktale between ethnolinguistic groups—or groups bound together by language and ethnicity. From this, the scientists concluded that it's much harder for cultural information to move between groups than it is for genes.

The study, published February 5 in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, found that about 9 percent of the variation in the tale of the two girls occurred between ethnolinguistic groups. Previous studies looking at the genetic diversity across groups in Europe found levels of variation less than one percent.

For example, there's a part of the story in which the girls meet a witch who asks them to perform some chores. In different renditions of the tale, the meeting took place by a river, at the bottom of a well, or in a cave. Other versions had the girls meeting with three old men or the Virgin Mary, said Atkinson.

Conformity

Researchers have viewed human culture through the lens of genetics for decades, said Atkinson. "It's a fair comparison in the sense that it's just variation across human groups."

But unlike genes, which move into a population relatively easily and can propagate randomly, it's harder for new ideas to take hold in a group, he said. Even if a tale can bridge the "ethnolinguistic boundary," there are still forces that might work against a new cultural variation that wouldn't necessarily affect genes.

"Humans don't copy the ideas they hear randomly," Atkinson said. "We don't just choose ... the first story we hear and pass it on.

"We show what's called a conformist bias—we'll tend to aggregate across what we think everyone else in the population is doing," he explained. If someone comes along and tells a story a little differently, most likely, people will ignore those differences and tell the story like everyone else is telling it.

"That makes it more difficult for new ideas to come in," Atkinson said.

Cultural Boundaries

Atkinson and his colleagues found that if two versions of the folktale were found only six miles (ten kilometers) away from each other but came from different ethnolinguistic groups, such as the French and the Germans, then those versions were as different from each other as two versions taken from within the same group—say just the Germans—located 62 miles (100 kilometers) away from each other.

"To me, the take-home message is that cultural groups strongly constrain the flow of information, and this enables them to develop highly local cultural traditions and norms," said Mark Pagel, of the University of Reading in the U.K., who wasn't involved in the new study.

Pagel, who studies the evolution of human behavior, said by email that he views cultural groups almost like biological species. But these groups, which he calls "cultural survival vehicles," are more powerful in some ways than our genes.

That's because when immigrants from a particular cultural group move into a new one, they bring genetic diversity that, if the immigrants have children, get mixed around, changing the new population's gene pool. But the new population's culture doesn't necessarily change.

Atkinson plans to keep using the tools of the population-genetics trade to see if the patterns he found in the variations of the kind and unkind girls hold true for other folktale variants in Europe and around the world.

Humans do a lot of interesting things, Atkinson said. "[And] the most interesting things aren't coded in our DNA."


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Ex-Cop Sought in Killings Tied to Victim's Father













Police in Southern California say they suspect that a fired cop is behind the shooting death of an assistant woman's basketball coach at Cal State-Fullerton and her fiancé over the weekend in an act of revenge against the LAPD.


Former police officer Christopher Jordan Dorner, 33, who's a U.S. Navy reservist, has been publically named as a suspect in the killings of Monica Quan, 28, and her 27-year-old fiancé, Keith Lawrence, Irvine police Chief David L. Maggard said at a news conference Wednesday night.


Dorner is still being sought.


Lawrence was found slumped behind the wheel of his white Kia in the parking lot of their upscale apartment complex Sunday and Quan was in the passenger seat.


"A particular interest at this point in the investigation is a multi-page manifesto in which the suspect has implicated himself in the slayings," Maggard said.


Police said Dorner's manifesto included threats against members of the LAPD. Police say they are taking extra measures to ensure the safety of officers and their families.


The document, allegedly posted on an Internet message board this week, blames Quan's father, retired LAPD Capt. Randy Quan, for his firing from the department.






AP Photo/Irvine Police Department via The Orange County Register













One passage from the manifesto reads, "I will bring unconventional and asymmetrical warfare to those in LAPD uniform whether on or off duty."


"I never had the opportunity to have a family of my own," Dorner allegedly writes. "I'm terminating yours."


Dorner was with the department from 2005 until 2008, when he was fired for making false statements.


Randy Quan, who became a lawyer in retirement, represented Dorner in front of the Board of Rights, a tribunal that ruled against Dorner at the time of his dismissal, LAPD Capt. William Hayes told The Associated Press Wednesday night.


According to documents from a court of appeals hearing in October 2011, Dorner was fired from the LAPD after he made a complaint against his field-training officer, Sgt. Teresa Evans, saying in the course of an arrest she had kicked a suspect who was a schizophrenic with severe dementia.


After an investigation, Dorner was fired for making false statements.


"We have strong cause to believe Dorner is armed and dangerous," Maggard said.


Police say Dorner is 6-feet tall, and weighs 270 pounds. He has black hair and brown eyes.


Meanwhile, Cal State Fullerton is still mourning the loss of their beloved assistant coach.


"There are really no words to convey the sadness that our program feels, that the young women who have had the privilege of working with such a bright and passionate woman," head coach Marcia Foster said earlier this week. "I want to especially send out condolences to Randal and Sylvia Quan, and her brother Ryan."


After college, Quan coached at Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks and has spent the past two years as an assistant coach at Cal State-Fullerton. The university has posted a memorial page on its sports website dedicated to Quan.


Lawrence was a business graduate who recently started working as a public-safety officer at USC.


The Associated Press contributed to this report.



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Thousands of Indonesian workers protest for better conditions






JAKARTA : In Indonesia, thousands of workers took to the streets in five major cities including the nation's capital Jakarta on Wednesday.

Those in Jakarta, who were mostly from the Federation of Metal Workers' Union, made several demands including having universal healthcare and their right to protest.

They are demanding that President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono issue a presidential decree that would lead to universal health insurance for all Indonesians by 2019.

This health insurance programme has been approved and will start as of 2014 but the Presidential decree required has yet to be issued.

Said Iqbal, President, Federation of Indonesian Metal Workers' Union, said: "If a government regulation and Presidential decree, which was supposed to be issued last November, is not introduced then steps for universal healthcare cannot begin. That's why the government is obliged to introduce the necessary regulations by late February, which includes guaranteeing that employers pay for their workers' insurance premium fees and that the poor will be able to receive government's healthcare."

One of the other demands made is a guarantee for a pension fund for labour workers from 2015

The workers are also calling for the provincial government to raise the number of components in the reasonable cost index from around 60 to 80 components.

This index is used as a benchmark to determine minimum wage increases for next year.

The workers are also objecting to two bills on national security and social organisation being deliberated in Parliament

They claim that if these two bills are passed then it will curb their right to protest in the streets citing security reasons.

If their demands are not met, the next major rally will be on 26 February by the Indonesian Labour Workers Association, the biggest labour union in Indonesia.

The union has warned that if its demands are not met by the end of April, then there will be an all out labour rally across the nation on Labour Day, 1st May.

- CNA/ch



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Women don't feel safe in Delhi: Sheila

NEW DELHI: Women do not feel safe in Delhi, chief minister Sheila Dikshit admitted Wednesday.

"Women don't feel safe in Delhi. Fears have risen. I'm shocked to learn about the Lajpat Nagar attempted rape case. It's a big setback for us," she said referring to the rape bid on a 19-year-old woman Tuesday.

The Class IX student fought off the rape bid in her own house by an electricity contractor, who thrust an iron rod into her throat to quell her cries for help. The accused has been arrested.

However, the chief minister promised to do everything possible to provide safety to women.

"My government will do everything possible to provide a conducive atmosphere for the women in the city," Dikshit said.

But CPM leader Brinda Karat criticized Dikshit.

"It is clear that women in Delhi are insecure. The chief minister is speaking the truth. But it is surely not enough. What is her responsibility as chief minister?

"Women's security issues have become political football between central and state government. Chief minister blames Delhi Police; central government defends police. It's a shame."

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The Real Richard III


It's a question that actors from Laurence Olivier to Kevin Spacey have grappled with: What did Richard III, the villainous protagonist of Shakespeare's famous historical drama, really look and sound like?

In the wake of this week's announcement by the University of Leicester that archaeologists have discovered the 15th-century British king's lost skeleton beneath a parking lot, news continues to unfold that helps flesh out the real Richard III.

The Richard III Society unveiled a 3D reconstruction today of the late king's head and shoulders, based on computer analysis of his skull combined with an artist's interpretation of details from historical portraits. (Related: "Shakespeare's Coined Words Now Common Currency.")

"We received the skull data before DNA analysis confirmed that the remains were Richard III, and we treated it like a forensic case," said Caroline Wilkinson, the University of Dundee facial anthropologist who led the reconstruction project. "We were very pleasantly surprised by the results."

Though Shakespeare describes the king as an "elvish-marked, abortive, rooting hog," the reconstructed Richard has a pleasant, almost feminine face, with youthful skin and thoughtful eyes. His right shoulder is slightly higher than the left, a consequence of scoliosis, but the difference is barely visible, said Wilkinson.

"I think the whole Shakespearean view of him as being sort of monster-like was based more on his personality than his physical features," she reflected.

Look back at 125 years of National Geographic history

People are naturally fascinated by faces, especially of historical figures, said Wilkinson, who has also worked on reconstructions of J.S. Bach, the real Saint Nicholas, the poet Robert Burns, and Cleopatra's sister.

"We make judgments about people all the time from looking at their appearance," she said. "In Richard's case, up to now his image has been quite negative. This offers a new context for considering him from the point of view of his anatomical structure rather than his actions. He had quite an interesting face."

A Voice From the Past

Most people's impression of Richard's personality comes from Shakespeare's play, in which the maligned ruler utters such memorable lines as "Now is the winter of our discontent/Made glorious summer by this son of York," and "A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!"

But how would the real Richard III have expressed himself? Did he have an accent? Was there any sense of personality or passion in his choice of words?

To find out more about the mysterious monarch, Philip Shaw, a historical linguist at University of Leicester's School of English, analyzed the only two known examples of Richard III's own writing. Both are postscripts on letters otherwise composed by secretaries—one in 1469, before Richard became king, and one from 1483, the first year of his brief reign.

Shaw identified a quirk of spelling that suggests that Richard may have spent time in the West Midlands, or perhaps had a tutor who hailed from there.

"I was looking to compare the way he spells things with the way his secretaries spell things, working on the assumption that he would have been schooled to a fairly high level," Shaw explained.

Read about National Geographic explorers on our Explorers Journal blog

In the 1469 letter, Richard spells the word "will" as "wule," a variation associated with the West Midlands. But Shaw also notes that by 1483, when Richard wrote the second letter's postscript, he had changed his spelling to the more standard "wyll" (the letters 'i' and 'y' were largely interchangeable during that period of Middle English).

"That could suggest something about him brushing up over the years, or moving toward what would have been the educated standard," Shaw said, noting that the handwriting in the second example also appears a bit more polished. "One wonders what sort of practice and teaching he'd had in the interim."

Although it's hard to infer tone of voice from written letters, there is certainly emotion in the words penned by Richard III.

In the 1469 letter, the 17-year-old seeks a loan of 100 pounds from the king's undertreasurer. Although the request is clearly stated in the body of the letter, Richard adds an urgent P.S.: "I pray you that you fail me not now at this time in my great need, as you will that I show you my good lordship in that matter that you labour to me for."

That could either be a veiled threat (If you don't lend me the money, I won't do that thing you asked me to do) or friendly cajoling (Come on, I'm helping you out with something, so help me out with this loan).

"His decision to take the pen himself shows you how important that personal touch must have been in getting people to do something," Shaw said.

The second letter, written to King Richard's chancellor in 1483, also conveys a sense of urgency. He had just learned that the Duke of Buckingham—once a close ally—was leading a rebellion against him.

"He's asking for his Great Seal to be sent to him so that he can use it to give out orders to suppress the rebellion," Shaw said. "He calls the Duke 'the most untrue creature living. You get a sense of how personally let down and betrayed he feels."

Shaw said he hopes his analysis—in combination with the new facial reconstruction—will help humanize Richard III.

"He probably wasn't quite the villain that Shakespeare portrays, though I suspect he was quite ruthless," he said. "But you probably couldn't afford to be a very nice man if you wanted to survive as a king in those days."


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Lance Armstrong Under Criminal Investigation













Federal investigators are in the midst of an active criminal investigation of disgraced former Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong, ABC News has learned.


The revelation comes in stark contrast to statements made by the U.S. Attorney for Southern California, Andre Birotte, who addressed his own criminal inquiry of Armstrong for the first time publicly on Tuesday. Birotte's office spent nearly two years investigating Armstrong for crimes reportedly including drug distribution, fraud and conspiracy -- only to suddenly drop the case on the Friday before the Super Bowl last year.


Sources at the time said that agents had recommended an indictment and could not understand why the case was suddenly dropped.


Today, a high level source told ABC News, "Birotte does not speak for the federal government as a whole."


According to the source, who agreed to speak on the condition that his name and position were not used because of the sensitivity of the matter, "Agents are actively investigating Armstrong for obstruction, witness tampering and intimidation."


An email to an attorney for Armstrong was not immediately returned.


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AP Photo/Bas Czerwinski, File











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Earlier Tuesday, during a Department of Justice news conference on another matter, Birotte was confronted with the Armstrong question unexpectedly. The following is a transcript of that exchange:


Q: Mr. Birotte, given the confession of Lance Armstrong to all the things --


Birotte: (Off mic.)


Q: -- to all thethings that you, in the end, decided you couldn't bring a case about, can you give us your thoughts on that case now and whether you might take another look at it?


Birotte: We made a decision on that case, I believe, a little over a year ago. Obviously we've been well-aware of the statements that have been made by Mr. Armstrong and other media reports. That has not changed my view at this time. Obviously, we'll consider, we'll continue to look at the situation, but that hasn't changed our view as I stand here today.


The source said that Birotte is not in the loop on the current criminal inquiry, which is being run out of another office.


Armstrong confessed to lying and using performance-enhancing drugs throughout his career in an interview with Oprah Winfrey.


READ MORE: Armstrong Admits to Doping


WATCH: Armstrong's Many Denials Caught on Tape


READ MORE: 10 Scandalous Public Confessions


Investigators are not concerned with the drug use, but Armstrong's behavior in trying to maintain his secret by allegedly threatening and interfering with potential witnesses.


Armstrong is currently serving a lifetime ban in sport handed down by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency. He has been given a Feb. 6 deadline to tell all under oath to investigators or lose his last chance at a possible break on the lifetime ban.


PHOTOS: Olympic Doping Scandals: Past and Present


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Strengthening security at the nation’s airports



In pursuit of safeguarding the public, Liddell, a federal security director based in Syracuse, has written a book that is now used to train TSOs. It’s called the “National Standardization Guide to Improving Security Effectiveness.” Tasks at each duty area have been inventoried and cataloged, and the “knowledge, values and skills” associated with the airport security jobs have been identified under what Liddell describes as a systems approach to training.


As important as it is to use X-ray machines and explosive trace-detection equipment and to have the correct rules and procedures in place, Liddell said transportation security relies on the skills of the people responsible for it.

“People performance is the cornerstone,” he said. “When I set out to improve things, I look at the people. I look at their proficiency, their skill in doing something and how well they’re doing that job.”

Even when people have the skills to do their jobs, they don’t necessarily do them well each time, especially when conditions can vary with each day and every passenger. To keep performance high, TSOs are tested covertly at unexpected times. A banned item will be sent through a checkpoint and the reaction and activities that take place are monitored.

Whether or not TSOs spot contraband, everyone at that checkpoint during the test participates in an “after-action” review. “It’s the learning experience that’s relevant,” Liddell said. “We’re doing a review of actual performance and you can always improve.”

Liddell is sensitive to the pressure that airport security personnel face. TSOs have the tough of performing multiple tasks under constant camera surveillance and public scrutiny, often interacting with tired or irritated travelers. The testing and training helps them continually up their game.

Thirty airports around the country that helped test the training system and now use a version of it. Paul Armes, federal security director at Nashville International Airport, was interested in creating such a system with a colleague when they both worked in Arizona, but it “never got traction.”

When he learned about what Liddell was doing, he was eager to participate. “Typical of Dan, he built it himself and practiced it so he had hard metric results, and then he started reaching out to some of us, working with his counterparts around the country to get a good representative sample,” Armes said. “He sees things others don’t see sometimes and he has the capability to drill down into the details.”

Liddell began the “pretty long process” of analyzing how people were performing at checkpoints in 2009. He sat down with subject-matter experts to produce the task inventory he now uses. In 2010, he improved the review and reporting process that occurs after covert tests events and instituted the security practices he refined at the other New York airports he oversees, including Greater Binghamton, Ithaca and four others. “I love breaking it down,” he said. “I’ve got a quest for improvement.”

In a less sneaky version of the television show, “Undercover Boss,” Liddell went through the new-hire training program for his employees to understand as much as he could about the jobs and the training provided for them, he said.

If pursuing knowledge is in Liddell’s genes, it may be because his parents were both in education. His father was a high school principal and his mother was a fifth-grade teacher. His teaching manifested itself instead in the training realm, where he strives to educate security employees as effectively as possible, inside the classroom and out.

“It’s always a challenge to meet that right balance of really great effectiveness and really great efficiency,” he said. “There are always challenges. It’s what gets me up in the morning, trying to improve.”



This article was jointly prepared by the Partnership for Public Service, a group seeking to enhance the performance of the federal government, and washingtonpost.com. Go to http://washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/fedpage/players/ to read about other federal workers who are making a difference.

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Ahmadinejad starts historic Egypt visit






CAIRO: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrived in Cairo on Tuesday, marking the first visit to Egypt by an Iranian president since Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution, Egyptian television footage showed.

Egypt's Islamist President Mohamed Morsi welcomed Ahmadinejad at Cairo airport as he disembarked from the plane, the footage showed.

Ahmadinejad, who is on a three-day visit, will attend an Organisation of Islamic Cooperation conference in Cairo and will hold talks with Egyptian officials, Iranian media said ahead of the trip.

Before leaving Tehran, Ahmadinejad told reporters that during his visit he would work towards strengthening bilateral ties with Cairo.

"I will try to pave the ground for developing cooperation between Iran and Egypt," Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying by Iran's official IRNA news agency.

Without elaborating, he said the visit would "definitely influence the bilateral ties" between Tehran and Cairo.

Tehran severed ties with Cairo in 1980 in protest at a peace agreement between Egypt and Israel by then Egyptian president Anwar Sadat.

But Egypt has responded cautiously to Iranian efforts to revive ties since Morsi took power in 2012, with the two nations adopting opposing positions on the Syrian conflict.

Iran supports the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, while Egypt has been a leading voice in urging his departure -- along with regional heavyweights Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar.

"If Tehran and Cairo see more eye to eye on regional and international issues, many (issues) will change," IRNA quoted Ahmadinejad as saying.

- AFP/fa



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