Features

Watching pictures of the arrival of little princess of Cambridge this week, I was reminded of my own childhood. Thankfully the youngest British royal baby’s month of birth did not coincide with that of her sibling. 

When I was younger, I thought it was one of the worst things that could ever happen to me. I had to share my birth month with that of my older brother, who was born exactly nine days before my arrival. So I could not claim the month entirely as my own special one because it was also his. Special month, that is. 

It was no fair, especially since he did not care much about the matching party dresses or the doll shaped cake that was prepared. Our mother cut our clothes from the same cloth, quite literally also. If I wore a chequered frilly frock, my brother’s sailor suit was handmade in a similar print too. We looked like two frowning peas, forcibly stuck together in the same pod. 

Since throwing two birthday parties within the span of a few days was terribly expensive, my parents would combine them into one and invite our common friends. I was given the option of selecting the birthday cake while my brother got the choice of organising the party games. Therefore throughout our pre-teen years our photographs show both of us either cutting girly cakes in the shape of pink hearts, or playing a rough boyish sport-like cops and robbers.

With the passage of time our parents became wiser and decided to allow us to have individual celebratory parties, or none at all, if we so wished. But it took them a long time to reach that stage. By then we had gone our separate ways and moved to different cities for higher education. 

I thought I had seen the last of common birthday parties till I met my husband. As luck would have it, he shared not only the birth month but also the birth date with, of all people, my own mother. Only their year of birth was a little more than two decades apart. 

My mom could not stop beaming when she learned about this bit of coincidence. Her son-in-law suddenly gained in stature and could do no wrong in her eyes after that. I could forget about any support from her if we ever had an argument because she would always take his side.

On their birthday they would call each other up in the morning. 

“Birthday greetings, son,” my mother would greet. 

“Thank you Aunty, same to you,” my spouse would respond. 

If they were in the same town, they rejoiced in having a combined celebration. Quite unlike my brother and my childhood angst over a joint party, this mother and son pair-in-law would spread happiness with their shared merriment. 

When I lost my mum 12 years ago my husband felt her loss deeply too, especially around the time of their birthday. I was so cooped up in my own misery that it took me quite a while to notice this but when I did, I decided to make amends. On this weekend we were up early with the cake. 

“Happy birthday Dad,” our daughter announced. 

“Thank you little one,” my spouse answered. 

“Happy birthday Mom,” I said. 

“Many thanks, on behalf of Nani,” our daughter giggled. 

“Happy birthday Aunty,” my husband took the cue. 

“Same to you son, on behalf of Nani,” we chorused together.

NEW YORK — On a recent morning, Roger Tarazon and several friends gathered a few blocks from their Queens, New York high school. Some smoked traditional cigarettes, but Tarazon and a few others puffed on electronic vaping devices.

“Sometimes I use it to relax,” the 18-year-old senior said of the device. He also uses it to perform tricks with the vapour, blowing smoke rings or creating funnels of smoke that look like miniature tornadoes.

“I don’t do it to show off,” he said. “I just do them because I’m bored.”

Tarazon’s embrace of such tricks reflects a growing trend among US teenagers, whose use of e-cigarettes tripled in the last year alone. New research provided to Reuters has found that performing tricks is one of the top two reasons young users say they consider the devices cool.

Public health officials have warned for several years of the attraction of flavoured nicotine liquid to teens and tweens, and have urged regulators to ban them. Consumers have a wide range of flavour choices, including menthol, single-malt scotch, cappuccino and pomegranate.

But the role of tricks in enticing young people to use e-cigarettes has not previously been explored. Now researchers are asking whether they could help hook a new generation who otherwise would not have used nicotine.

“We expected the flavours were attractive,” said Suchitra Krishnan-Sarin, a psychiatry professor at the Yale School of Medicine. “But smoke tricks were a surprise to us.”

Krishnan-Sarin and her team, with funding from the National Institutes of Health, asked 5,400 Connecticut teens to identify what they found “cool about e-cigarettes?”

The top two answers were: the flavours of the vaping liquids, and the “ability to do tricks”.

Electronic devices produce much more vapour, especially when adjusted to operate at high temperatures, than conventional cigarettes, which helps facilitate the vapour tricks. Teen interest in performing them comes as “cloud competitions”, are increasing in popularity.

The contests, in which adult vapers, as they call themselves, compete to perform the best tricks and create the biggest and densest vapour clouds, are becoming a regular feature at local vale shops. Some regional competitions offer thousands of dollars in prize money.

Thousands of videos demonstrating expert vaping and how to perform tricks have been posted on YouTube and Instagram. “Even if [teenagers] don’t attend these events they are exposed to a lot of these issues,” Krishnan-Sarin said.

Alarm over teen use

E-cigarette use by US tweens and teens tripled in 2014 to 13.4 per cent from 4.5 per cent in 2013, according to data released in April by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. Overall tobacco use during that period dropped to 9.2 per cent from 12.7 per cent. 

The data prompted new alarm among public health advocates, who urged the Obama administration to quickly finalise proposed rules that will allow the Food and Drug Administration to regulate e-cigarettes for the first time.

Using e-cigarettes is considered less risky than smoking traditional tobacco cigarettes, which increase the likelihood of lung cancer and other disease. But several studies have found that heating the liquids used in electronic devices to very high temperatures could release formaldehyde, a carcinogen.

“If you don’t smoke, if you don’t use tobacco products, there is no reason to experiment with electronic cigarettes,” said Maciej L. Goniewicz, a professor at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute, who has done some of the formaldehyde research.

Tarazon and other teens said their favourite tricks include something called the “dragon”, in which vapour is exhaled from both nostrils and sides of their mouth. They learn the tricks from each other or by watching online videos with demonstrations set to popular music.

Many are of cloud competitions, which started on the West Coast a few years ago but are now popular nationwide. The majority are low-key events at vape shops where winners typically are awarded devices or gift cards.

But there are also beginning to be far more serious competitions. The Vape Capitol Cloud Championship, for example, will offer $10,000 for the Biggest Cloud and the best Vape Tricks.

The competitors — mostly men in their 20s and 30s — train to increase their lung capacity by blowing up balloons and by using diving equipment and plastic breathing devices typically used after surgery. The events bar minors from competing, and often from attending, too, though there is no law prohibiting them from being part of the audience.

“We’re aware that there is a niche group that enjoys participating in vaper competitions,” said Phil Daman, president of the Smoke-Free Alternative Trade Association. “Any use of these products should be strictly limited to adults.”

Chris Esker, at Fogwind Vapour in Effingham, Illinois, said he’d rather not have minors attend the store’s events, but he can’t prevent parents from bringing their kids.

Esker converted his T-shirt store into a vale shop about a year ago. Sales have been so strong that he hopes to open this year two more stores.

“There are kids doing back flips on dirt bikes,” said Esker, who began smoking at age 12 but now vapes. “There are way worse things they can be doing.”

Washington — The latest iPhones have helped Apple gain smartphone market share in Europe and China, with a large number of customers switching from Android devices, a market tracker said Wednesday.

Kantar Worldpanel also said that in the United States, the market for "phablets", or large-screen smartphones, has quadrupled over the past year, also helping Apple with its iPhone 6 Plus.

The newest data showed that in urban China, Apple boosted its share to 26.1 per cent in the first quarter, up from 17.9 per cent for the same period in 2014. Android's market share in China, meanwhile, slipped 8 points to 72 per cent.

China is now driving more volume for Apple than the US, Kantar said.

Kantar found that Apple lifted its smartphone share in Europe's five largest markets by 1.8 points to 20.3 per cent in the quarter. One-third of Apple's new customers switched from Android in these markets — Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

"The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus continued to attract consumers across Europe, including users who previously owned an Android smartphone," reported Carolina Milanesi, chief of research at Kantar.

Android's market share in the big EU markets share declined by 3.1 percentage points compared to last year, to 68.4 per cent, Kantar said.But the free Google Android operating system is still dominant due to a price advantage.

"In Great Britain, while 25.6 per cent of new iOS buyers switched from Android during the quarter, Android's leadership remains strong, thanks to the price options consumers have in both the contract and pre-pay market," said Dominic Sunnebo, business unit director at Kantar.

"Thirty-five per cent of consumers who bought an Android smartphone in the first quarter said their decision was driven by receiving a good price on the phone. Another 29 per cent said that getting a good deal on the tariff/contract was a factor in their purchase."

In the US, Android's market share made a modest 0.2 per cent gain in market share to 58.1 per cent while Apple lost the same amount to 36.5 per cent, losing a bit of momentum after a big surge in late 2014.

The survey found US customers are increasingly opting for bigger phones or "phablets" with displays of 5.5 inches or bigger. This segment represented 21 per cent of all US smartphone sales in the first quarter, from a 6 per cent share a year ago.

Apple's iPhone 6 Plus took 44 per cent of this segment, according to Kantar.

"Apple's iPhone 6 and 6 Plus already represent 18 per cent of all iPhones in use in the US, and 64 per cent of the iPhone installed base uses an iPhone 5 or newer — good news for the Apple Watch that interacts only with these newer models," Milanesi said.

NEW YORK — Patients with type-2 diabetes who are overweight but not obese outlive diabetics of normal weight, scientists reported on Monday, in another example of the “obesity paradox”.

Although public health officials issue dire warnings about the consequences of overweight, and employers are pressuring workers to slim down via “wellness programmes”, the relationship between weight and longevity is paradoxical: Studies show that although obesity increases the risk of developing cardiovascular disease (CVD), overweight patients with CVD live longer than patients of normal weight.

Similarly, obesity increases the chances of developing type-2 diabetes. But it wasn’t clear if overweight confers a survival advantage in diabetics.

Sixteen previous studies got conflicting answers: Some found overweight diabetics had lower mortality; others didn’t. But many were hobbled by methodological problems including few patients, short follow-up, or using questionnaires rather than clinic records.

The new study tried to do better. Researchers led by doctors Stephen Atkin and Pierluigi Costanzo of Britain’s University of Hull followed 10,568 patients with type-2 diabetes for an average of nearly 11 years.

Although overweight and obese patients had an increased risk of heart attacks and strokes, they were more likely to stay alive than normal-weight diabetics, the researchers reported in Annals of Internal Medicine.

(Overweight is defined as a body mass index of 25 to 29.9, which would be 66 to 77kg for someone 1.63 metres. Normal weight means a BMI of 18.5 to 24.9, or 108 to 145 pounds at that height.)

Underweight diabetics had the highest risk of dying during the study, with nearly three times the mortality of normal-weight patients. Overweight patients had the best survival, being 13 per cent less likely to die than normal-weight or obese diabetics.

That result was at odds with a 2014 study in the New England Journal of Medicine that found no survival advantage with extra weight. That study, however, used the upper end of normal weight as the comparison. If it had used the full range of 18.5 to 24.9, Costanzo said, “it’s likely” the results “would have been similar to ours”.

One way extra weight might keep diabetics alive longer is if overweight protects against frailty and osteoporosis, which can kill. Alternatively, diabetes in lean people might take an especially lethal form.

“It’s likely those diabetic patients with normal weight have a more aggressive form of type-2 diabetes compared to those who are overweight and obese,” Costanzo said.

Los Angeles Times (TNS)

One of the greatest mysteries of how stars behave has been right in our own backyard: the sun’s corona. Scientists have long wondered what heats this thin, ethereal shell of particles to roughly 300 times the temperature of the surface of the sun itself.

Now, after combining evidence from a sounding rocket and a black-hole-hunting telescope and computer modelling, researchers say they’ve found the cause: nanoflares.

“We have for the first time direct proof that nanoflares exist and heat the corona,” said Jim Klimchuk, a solar scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre in Greenbelt, Md. “This proof takes the form of superhot plasma... it’s a real breakthrough.”

The findings, described at the first Triennial Earth-Sun Summit meeting underway in Indianapolis, may help solve the decades-old mystery of what powers the corona and help scientists better predict the effects of space weather on Earth.

The solar corona, the sun’s outer atmosphere, is so incredibly faint that it can only be seen with the naked eye during a solar eclipse, when the moon completely blocks out the sun’s bright body, leaving only the corona’s ghostly glow.

While the sun’s surface is around 10,340 degrees Fahrenheit, the corona, which extends high above the sun’s surface and into space, sports temperatures of around 4 million degrees, and can even hit 18 million degrees in some spots. Scientists have been stumped when it comes to explaining how this wispy shell of gas so far away from the sun’s blazing core can get superheated to such extremes.

Researchers have long suspected that nanoflares exist and might account for the corona’s mysterious heating source, but they haven’t been able to prove it. Nanoflares, so called because they’re one-billionth the size of typical solar flares, are still powerful, packing the equivalent energy of a 10-megaton hydrogen bomb. While they’re small by the sun’s standards, there are so many of them — millions going off each second on the sun’s surface — that they have the potential to heat the corona to its incredible temperatures.

The problem for researchers is that nanoflares are so small and brief that they’re hard to pick out against the overwhelming brightness of the sun. But now, researchers working on different lines of inquiry each say they’ve found strong evidence that nanoflares exist.

To get a better look at the sun, scientists flew a sounding rocket equipped with an instrument called the Extreme Ultraviolet Normal Incidence Spectrograph for 15 minutes, looking for signs of super-heated gas (around 9.9 million degrees Celsius). Using this instrument, lead scientist Adrian Daw, a solar scientist at Goddard, was able to find those bits of gas, which scientists say are heated to those extreme temperatures by the nanoflares.

“That superhot plasma emission that we’re seeing there is the smoking gun of nanoflares,” Daw said.

Scientists also used NASA’s NuSTAR telescope to look for evidence of nanoflares. NuSTAR is used to study the X-rays coming from black holes, among other high-energy phenomena, but it can also be used to study X-ray emissions coming from regions of the sun where normal-sized flares could not be detected. These regions were popping with X-ray energy, a sign that nanoflares were at work, Iain Hannah, an astrophysicist at the University of Glasgow in Scotland, said in a media briefing in Indianapolis.

The scientists think these nanoflares are caused by the twisting and breaking of magnetic field lines around the sun, Klimchuk said, though it will be a while before they can probe exactly how the nanoflares work.

Tracking how nanoflares might contribute to the space weather that reaches Earth is very important, he added, because such solar radiation can disrupt terrestrial technology, including weapons guidance systems, navigation systems and anything that involves radio transmissions.

“We need to understand how these hot plasmas are created and produce these X-rays and UV radiation so we can better understand and prepare for their effects here on Earth,” Klimchuk said.

LOS ANGELES — The Los Angeles art scene is exploding thanks to a wave of artists and galleries escaping New York, which has become over-crowded and too expensive for young creative types.

“An enormous number of artists are coming to set up in LA,” said Philippe Vergne, director of the West Coast city’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), citing exorbitant real estate costs in the Big Apple in particular.

“In art, it is like in real estate: you have to follow the artists, that’s where it’s going to develop,” he said, asserting that LA is “the city with the highest density of artists in the world”.

Martha Kirszenbaum, director and curator of the Fahrenheit Arts Centre, which opened just over a year ago in a booming area of downtown LA, added: “LA’s strength is the artists, and the schools which have trained generations of artists.”

The City of Angels is known for some of the most prestigious art schools in the country, including CalArts, the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and the University of Southern California (USC).

It is also already home to leading contemporary artists including John Baldessari, Catherine Opie, James Turrell, Chris Burden, Barbara Kruger, Paul McCarthy, Ed Ruscha and the late Mike Kelley.

Galleries, even if their number remains tiny compared to the hundreds which crowd New York, are popping up in increasing numbers in Los Angeles, with its year-round blue skies and wide open spaces.

“New York is so saturated, we’d be the 700th little gallery, versus in LA it is in a very interesting state of flux,” said Karolina Dankow, director of Zurich-based Karma, which has just opened a gallery in Los Angeles.

“Everybody knows the very big galleries are moving here,” she added, pointing to figures such as Larry Gagosian, one of the world’s biggest art dealers, or Michele Maccarone, Gavin Brown and Matthew Marks, who have moved from New York.

That is without mentioning the new art fairs which flourish beneath the palm trees: Paramount Ranch or Paris Photo Los Angeles, whose third edition wrapped up on Sunday.

Even the Foire Internationale d’Art Contemporain (FIAC), one of the biggest contemporary art fairs in the world, has been talking about organising a Los Angeles version.

The New York Times wrote about the trend over the weekend, noting the irony of creative types including musician Moby moving to a city long sneered at by East Coast types.

“Chased out by rising rents, punishing winters and general malaise, New Yorkers [are heading] west to the city they once poked fun at,” it wrote. 

The East Coast’s arts calendar can be overcrowded with events like the Armory Show in New York or Art Basel Miami.

For this reason, “it makes sense to come to the West Coast,” said Jean-Daniel Compain of Reed, which organises FIAC and Paris Photo.

Admittedly, in terms of institutions, it is difficult to go up against New York with its Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Met, the Whitney, Guggenheim, Dia Art Foundation and New Museum, to mention only a few.

“We don’t have the ‘Demoiselles d’Avignon’ in a permanent collection here,” said Vergne, referring to Picasso’s famous 1907 painting hung at the MoMA.

Catching up with East Coast

“We are sometimes 100 years late compared to some institutions on the East Coast,” said Michael Govan, director of the LA County Museum of Art (LACMA), which is celebrating its 50th anniversary.

“We have a wonderful collection, but in many ways we’re still catching up,” he said, adding that it has received donations of works by Edgar Degas, Andy Warhol and Claude Monet for its “50 for 50” exhibition.

“There’s a little less of the traditional blockbuster big names here,” he said. 

“But... we enjoy our status of a little bit off-centre, and for me it’s much more fun to enjoy new topics, projects.”

In terms of visitors, LACMA, which welcomes 1.2 million people annually, is way behind MoMA, which opens its doors to 2.5 million people every year. But the Los Angeles museum’s numbers have doubled in eight years.

Govan also highlights that his museum hosted a Tim Burton show which was previously at the MoMA, and a retrospective of US artist James Turrell which went on to Asia.

“I’ve made it a high priority that our shows travel because I think Los Angeles, California has a lot to say,” he said.

Meanwhile Los Angeles’ artist expansion continues apace: philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad will open a museum in September to house their collection of 2,000 art works including pieces by Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Roy Lichtenstein and Cindy Sherman.

The French-Moroccan fashion designer Maurice and Paul Marciano, brothers who made their fortune with the Guess brand, are working on a museum project to showcase their own collection.

AMSTERDAM  — Dutch navigation company TomTom aims to become a main provider of technology for self-driving cars as it charts its way back to success after seven lean years, CEO Harold Goddijn said.

Goddijn told Reuters that an overhaul of TomTom’s digital mapping architecture lies behind a renaissance that has seen its automotive division win big contracts in recent months, prompting analyst upgrades and a 40 per cent surge in its shares.

He said carmakers are now betting on TomTom as one of the few companies besides Google capable of providing location data good enough and fast enough to meet the safety requirements for computer assisted driving — and ultimately, self-driving cars.

“We are seen by our customers as the guys with the right ideas on how you do those things,” he said in a interview, relishing the company’s comeback story.

A rare example of a global consumer electronics brand to come out of Europe in the 2000s, TomTom went into a tailspin after overpaying for digital map-maker TeleAtlas in 2008.

The market for its main product, personal navigation devices, entered a brutal decline. Prices fell and margins were crushed as cheaper competitors entered an increasingly saturated market for dashboard-mounted GPS systems, and smartphone navigation apps offered an even cheaper substitute.

With the PND market stabilising, Goddijn thinks TomTom’s other business lines are poised for a new cycle of growth.

Analysts’ enthusiasm has been fired by contract wins with carmakers, including two with Volkswagen this year as well as deals with Fiat , Hyundai and Kia.

Diversification

But TomTom’s revenue base has also diversified. Its consumer product offerings have expanded to include fitness watches and a line of ‘GoPro’-style action cameras launched this week.

It also licenses its digital maps to tech giants. One of TomTom’s few bright moments during the dark years came in 2012, when Apple, seeking to end its reliance on Google , choose TomTom’s maps to use in its own navigation app, starting with the iPhone 6.

And finally, TomTom has been quietly building up a “telematics” business, providing the telecommunications systems used in car fleet management, which has become the largest of its kind in Europe’s fragmented market.

In the interview, Goddijn said the unit, which reported sales of 110 million euros ($124 million) in 2014, has the potential to grow sales at more than 20 per cent per year for the coming five years without acquisitions.

But TomTom’s mapping technology is at the core of investor demand that has given the company a 1.8 billion euro market capitalisation despite 2014 profits of just 22.7 million euros.

The company’s maps can now be redrawn on the fly, integrating feedback from cars on the road, and then shared immediately with other drivers.

“No one else has that,” Goddijn said, flatly.

‘Exciting and scary’

Cars are increasingly equipped with multiple sensors, not only GPS positioning and mobile phone connections but radars, cameras and driver heart-rate monitoring systems. Lidar (reflected laser imaging) may also be added in future.

Goddijn said the overhaul of TomTom’s digital mapping architecture “gives us a lot of confidence” this proliferation of data can be processed in a way that ensures users’ safety.

“It’s exciting and it’s scary, because millions of cars will come and there’s tonnes of data going to be produced,” he said.

The biggest question mark hanging over TomTom’s strategic future is Nokia’s plan, announced this month, to sell its map-making arm HERE, which has US roots. Google, TomTom and HERE are the three major digital map-makers with the potential for use in self-driving cars.

Though TomTom has won almost all major automaker contracts renewed in the past year, HERE still has more than 70 per cent of the automotive market.

Potential buyers include tech giants Apple and Uber, or less realistically, Microsoft, which could have taken HERE when it bought Nokia’s smart phone operations. Google is also mentioned although it already has its own technology.

A consortium of automakers who view Google as an undesirable rival is also seen as a realistic possible buyer of HERE, as are private equity buyers who could build the business up — or wind it down. The worst case scenario for TomTom would probably be a takeover of HERE by navigation arch-rival Garmin Ltd.

What does Goddijn think will happen?

“That question is too complex to handle,” he said. “Even if I wanted to I couldn’t give you the answers, because a lot of it depends on who it is and how they want to handle it.”

He said his focus for now is on continuing TomTom’s winning streak with automakers.

“Let’s face it, our market share is not where it should be. There is an incumbent and we need to take market share away.”

A tough act to follow, the previous 2003-2012 generation Maserati Quattroporte was one of the standout designs of its milieu. An authentic sports car in spirit, the previous generation Quattroporte boasted a high-revving naturally-aspirated Ferrari V8 engine and rear-mounted transaxle gearbox beneath its layers of sumptuous luxury.

And successful as it was, the old Quattroporte was however very much a niche alternative to the German-dominated luxury car segment. Picking up where its predecessor left off, the latest incarnation of Maserati’s long-standing luxury saloon is a larger, more spacious, comfortable and technologically-advanced car with a wider range of more efficient engines, including the brutally powerful 523BHP Quattroporte GTS, featured here.

Swooping and sophisticated

Part of a two-pronged Italian assault on the premium saloon market, along with its smaller sporty Ghibli executive saloon sister, the latest Quattroporte is a decidedly more dedicated take on the full-size luxury car segment. Reminiscent of its
1979-90 third generation predecessor in terms of size and stateliness, the new Quattroporte’s position as the larger of two four-door models allows it to place greater emphasis on the luxurious refinement, size and equipment that define the segment. 

If slightly less exotic than its immediate predecessor, the new Quattroporte is however a more competitive luxury car that is — along with the Ghibli — set to exponentially improve Maserati sales.

A handsome full-size luxury car, the current Quattroporte’s Pininfarina-designed predecessor set the bar high, but this is nevertheless a glamorously indulgent, assertively menacing and swoopingly sophisticated design in its own right. With broad hungry grille, evocative Neptune’s trident badge, long twin-bulge bonnet, side ports, quad tailpipes, curvy Coke-bottle hips and athletic stance, the Quattroporte is exotic and elegant.

With its squinting headlights’ upturned kink trailing off to a seductive front wing curvarure, the Quattroporte’s flowingly wavy side character line leads to wide rear haunches and towards the tip of its rear lights. Meanwhile, its long roofline rises and descends gracefully towards its boot and a subtle built-in spoiler ridge.

Mid-range muscle, top-end thrills

Offered with three twin-turbocharged engine options including amply-powered 3-litre V6 versions including 325BHP entry-level and 404BHP in Quattroporte S and four-wheel drive S Q4 versions, the Italian luxury car is however at most powerful in GTS guise. Downsized and more efficient it may be, but the Quattroporte GTS is nonetheless a fire-breathing Autostrade-storming luxury super-saloon.

With its Ferrari-developed 3.8-litre twin-turbo V8 developing 523BHP at 6500-6800rpm and 524lb/ft throughout 2250-3500rpm, the GTS tears through the 0-100km/h acceleration benchmark in 4.7-seconds and can continue onto an unrestricted 307km/h top speed. With a lighter right foot, the GTS can — on combined cycle — return relatively modest 11.8l/100km fuel efficiency and 274g/km CO2 emissions.

Gaining 89BHP over the most powerful of its 4.7-litre naturally-aspirated V8 predecessors, the current Quattroporte’s aggressively tuned twin-turbos allow it to cover ground at an exhilarating pace. With quick-spooling turbos providing meaningful low-end responses and little by way of lag, the GTS benefits from broad mid-range avalanche of torque, through which it pulls decisively hard and is effortlessly brisk when overtaking or at high load on inclines.

However, and unlike many modern low-revving turbocharged cars, the Quattroporte retains much of the heady high-revving top-end thrills associated with its sweet naturally-aspirated predecessor, as its vast mid-range reserves underwrite and give way to an urgently intense top-end power surge.

Fast and fluent

Quick and comfortable, the Quattroporte is a natural high speed long distance continent-shrinking luxury car. Riding on standard-fit two-mode adaptive electromagnetic Skyhook damper suspension, the GTS adapts to road textures and driving style with imperceptible fluency, and would be well-suited for lumpier and imperfect road textures.

Forgivingly supple over bumps and cracks, the GTS’ Skyhook suspension compensates for sportily low profile 245/40R20 front and 285/35R20 rear tyres, and seamlessly firms up the dampers for taut lateral body control and weight transfer through corners. Poised, smooth and refined, the GTS’s highway ride is alert to and fluent over imperfections, and dispatches vertical rebound with a settled and sure-footed manner.

With sophisticated double wishbone suspension, Skyhook dampers, ideal 50:50 weight distribution and stiffer and lighter body than its predecessor owing to greater aluminium content, the GTS proved capable through fast winding mountain routes during test drive in Oman. Tidy into brisk corners, the GTS’ light steering provides good road feel for such a sizeable car. Expected for its segment, an instinct for slight understeer if pushed too hard into tight narrow corners is curbed by effective stability controls.

However, the GTS’ chassis set-up and long wheelbase however provide huge levels of rear grip, and through corners can faithfully deploy its immense power to tarmac and confidently pounce out. Meanwhile, huge ventilated disc brakes provide good pedal feel and stopping ability.

Sumptuously spacious

Sumptuously comfortable, luxuriously refined, and reassuringly stable at speed, the Quattroporte GTS is ever poised on highways and indulgently luxurious inside.

Swathed in quality leathers, fine woods, brushed aluminium and soft suede rooflining, the GTS is elegantly designed and luxuriously appointed, and provides excellent cabin refinement from noise vibrations and harshness. Subtly sporty and contoured, the GTS’ steering wheel is complemented by big round dials and fixed steering column-mounted metal gearbox paddle shifters.

From these one can actuate fire off gear changes in the GTS’ smooth and swift shifting 8-speed automatic gearbox’ sequential manual shift mode, or simple set to operate automatically in its sport or comfort and efficiency modes.

With a tastefully elegant Italian flair for design and a warm and welcoming ambiance, the Quattroporte is sumptuously spacious. Generously accommodating front and rear passengers, the Quattroporte’s front seats and steering are highly adjustable, while rear passengers are treated to good headroom and long legroom.

Highly well-equipped with standard and optional entertainment, safety and convenience features, the GTS’ 8.4-inch infotainment touchscreen is particularly noteworthy, with user-friendly and intuitively simple menus and operation, while rear screens and a 15-speaker 1280-Watt Bowers & Wilikins sound system are included among numerous other equipment options.

The Quattroporte also allows for extensive personalisation, including exterior and interior colours, alloy wheels and cabin materials and trim.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Engine: 3.8-litre, in-line, twin-turbocharged V8-cylinder

Bore x stroke: 86.5 x 80.8mm

Compression ratio: 9.5:1

Valve-train: 24-valve, direct injection, variable valve timing

Gearbox: 8-speed automatic, RWD

Top gear: 0.67:1

Final drive: 2.93:1

Power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 523 (530) [390] @ 6500-6800rpm

Power-to-weight: 275.2BHP/tonne

Torque lb/ft (Nm): 524 (710) @ 2250-3500rpm

Torque-to-weight: 373.7Nm/tonne

Redline: 7200rpm

0-100km/h: 4.7 seconds

Top speed: 307km/h

Fuel consumption, combined: 11.8 litres/100km

CO2 emissions, combined: 274g/km

Fuel capacity: 80 litres

Length: 5262mm

Width: 1948mm

Height: 1481mm

Wheelbase: 3172mm

Track, F/R: 1634/1647mm

Overhang, F/R: 968/1123mm

Kerb weight: 1900kg

Weight distribution F/R: 50:50

Luggage volume: 530 litres

Suspension, F/R: Double wishbone/multi-link, 

Dampers: Adaptive electro-magnetic

Brakes, F/R: Ventilated discs, 380/350mm, 6-/4-piston

Stopping distance, 100-0km/h: 34 metres

Steering: Power-assisted rack & pinion

Tyres, F/R: 245/40R20/285/35R20

MUMBAI — Facebook Inc. opened up its Internet.org platform to new websites and applications from developers on Monday, a move the social media giant said would boost efforts to get people online in low-income and rural areas in emerging markets.

However, the decision drew criticism from some online activists in India who expressed concern over Facebook's control over all data accessed on the service and said it violated the principles of an open web.

Internet.org offers free access via mobile phones to pared-down web services, focused on job listings, agricultural information, healthcare and education, as well as Facebook's own social network and messaging services.

It has been launched in nine countries in Africa, Latin America and Asia, including India, bringing over 8 million people online, said Chris Daniels, vice president of product for Internet.org, who was in New Delhi to speak with partners and operators.

The platform will be open to all developers who meet certain guidelines, including that they produce content that can be browsed on both basic mobile phones as well as smartphones and is accessible in limited bandwidth situations, Facebook said.

The US company partnered with Reliance Communications to launch Internet.org in India in February.

But a number of e-commerce firms and content developers pulled out of the service after activists claimed it violated principles of net neutrality — the concept that all websites on the internet are treated equally.

Nikhil Pahwa, volunteer with pro-net neutrality campaign group savetheinternet.in, said the service would cause a permanent shift in the way the internet works.

"Did we give unlimited free calls to people so that more people start making calls? So why this almost patronising approach to the Internet. You're effectively disadvantaging other companies and broader usage of the web," said Pahwa, who is also the founder of Medianama.com, a New Delhi-based digital media publication.

But Daniels said Internet.org was open to mobile operators and involved no payments, either to or from the developers.

"The principles of neutrality must co-exist with programs that also encourage bringing people online," he told Reuters.

Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said in a video post: "Access equals opportunity. Net neutrality should not prevent access. We need both, it's not an equal Internet if the majority of people can't participate." 

Jerusalem Interrupted: Modernity and Colonial Transformation 1917-Present

Edited by Lena Jayyusi

US: Olive Branch Press/Interlink, 2015

Pp. 500

Focusing on the city which many consider to lie at the heart of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, this book presents a panorama of real life in Arab Jerusalem, particularly during the British Mandate years — and how it abruptly changed in 1948. Comprising essays by 19 different scholars, “Jerusalem Interrupted” has in-depth coverage of a broad range of fields and issues, reflecting the diversity and development that was once a hallmark of the city. High-quality, historical and current photos and maps complement the well-researched essays. Taken as a whole, the book provides a comprehensive picture with a good balance between detail and general observation.

The first roughly two-thirds of the book addresses socio-cultural life in pre-1948 Jerusalem, with essays covering art, photography, music, radio, the press, attire, popular festivals, education, health, the women’s movement and childhood memories. Together, they present a nuanced picture of the complex demographic reality evolving in the city and its relations to the wider world. While the focus is on Palestinian development, due credit is accorded to foreign input in Jerusalem’s evolving modernisation; on the other hand, there is frequent critique of British colonial policy. 

Many essays highlight the intersection — or collision — of cultural life and politics, in the highly charged situation created by the Mandate authorities’ support to the Zionist project. In one example, Awad Halabi traces how the traditional Nabi Musa festival changed as Palestinian resistance to British policy and Zionist encroachments grew; and how the celebration figured into Al Haj Amin Al Husayni’s leadership strategy. Equally fascinating is Ellen Fleischmann’s piece on Jerusalem Arab women’s politicisation. Tracing the sustained activities of the early women’s movement, which “transcended the more traditional fissures of class, religion and class”, she argues that their involvement was very political even when they worked under the banner of charity groups. (p. 154)

No matter the topic addressed, the essays depict Arab Jerusalem as a cosmopolitan city on the move, whose residents were open to diversity and aspired to advancement. It was also a regional crossroads: As pointed out by Samia Halaby, until the division of the area and the imposition of mandates, “Beirut, Jerusalem and Damascus had all been part of one country”. (p. 30)

Writing about childhood memories from that time, Rochelle Davis dubs Jerusalem “a city open to all”, where there was much mixing among different religious and ethnic communities
(p. 207)

The picture of social mixing is substantiated in a number of other essays, such as that by Elias Sahhab, recalling joint performances by musicians from different religious backgrounds. Diversity was also reflected in attire as Widad Kawar writes: “The material heritage of Jerusalem during the Mandate period is an expression of multiple coexisting worlds.” (p. 169)

The contrast could not be greater in the final portion of the book, which covers how these “multiple coexisting worlds” were severed from each other and the city closed off from its Arab environment by Israeli occupation policy. Based on interviews and oral histories, Thomas writes about how Palestinians and Israelis, respectively, remember their pre-1948 relations, highlighting the many mixed neighbourhoods that defied the British authorities’ delineations into strictly bounded communities. Nadia Abu El-Haj explores the physical impact of how archaeology is practised to “rearrange reality”. 

Writing on “The Israeli Redefinition of Jerusalem”, Ahmad Jamil Azem analyses how Israeli policies since 1967, “and most sharply since the Oslo Accords… created the bizarre image of a city partitioned and crisscrossed by snaking walls and roads”, so that it is “impossible to describe Jerusalem now as a normal city”.
(pp. 326-7)

To redress the current situation where Palestinians are largely cut off from each other and from their capital, Nasser Abourahme contributes an essay entitled “Imagining a Just Jerusalem: Citizenship and the Right to the City”, concluding that “walls will not guarantee anyone a ‘quality of life’ — much less for Israelis who will end up ghettoising themselves in the shadows of overflowing Palestinian slums”.
(p. 365)

While there are many accounts of Palestine’s modern political history, it is only in recent times that the country’s social and cultural history has been properly addressed in English-language books. “Jerusalem Interrupted” is a substantial, new contribution to this latter type of history, which has rich political implications for understanding the past and working to chart a different future.