Features

SAN FRANCISCO — A new installment of blockbuster video game “Assassin’s Creed” made its worldwide debut this month, allowing players to wield deadly skills on the streets of Paris during the French Revolution.

“Assassin’s Creed: Unity” is the latest installment of the annual, history-based action franchise from French gaming developer Ubisoft.

“I was surprised how realistic it could be,” Ubisoft chief and co-founder Yves Guillemot told AFP at a major E3 video game trade show earlier this year.

“From the street names to how it was before compared to how it is now, you are really more into the details when it is your own city,” he said.

“From the street names to how it was before compared to how it is now, you are really more into the details when it is your own city,” he said

Billed as the most “dense and immersive” version of the hit franchise ever created, “Assassin’s Creed: Unity” casts players in the role of a young man who grows into a master assassin and helps shape the fate of France.

“We have been working with lots of people to try to get the spirit of the French Revolution — what happened and why it happened,” Guillemot said.

Top-seller globally

Initially launched in 2007, “Assassin’s Creed” has sold more than 78 million units worldwide, making it one of the top-selling video game lines worldwide.

It is Ubisoft’s most popular franchise, with a new installment released each year.

“’Assassin’s Creed’ is certainly one of the annual powerhouse franchises, and it has quite a following,” said game industry analyst Scott Steinberg of technology consulting firm TechSavvy.

“Partly because it manages to capture the imagination.”

Admittedly, putting out a new version of the game each year stretches the overarching storyline, which features modern-day descendants of assassins whose genetic memory is being mined to solve a bigger mystery.

“That is one of the challenges with an annual franchise, you are constantly pushed to one-up yourself,” Steinberg said.

“It is similar to what happens with sequels to movies or television shows. Sometimes the story isn’t that successful, but there is always next year.”

Steinberg credited “Assassin’s Creed” with inspiring other games, such as “Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor”, recently released by Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment.

Mobile play

The analyst referred to “Assassin’s Creed” as a “tent-pole” franchise for Ubisoft when it comes to revenue.

The company reported last month that sales topped expectations in the first half of its fiscal year, bolstered by success of its new “Watch Dogs” game and a “firm back catalogue”, including “Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag” released a year ago.

The prior version of “Assassin’s Creed” put players in the boots of a bold pirate and tapped into mobile devices to expand play.

The new installment of the game also lets people expand play to smartphones or tablets using “companion apps”.

“Ubisoft is one of the more forward thinking publishers when it comes to pushing things in new directions, like mobile,” Steinberg said.

“Assassin’s Creed” protagonists have included a Renaissance Italian, a 12th century Syrian and a Native American during the colonial period.

The franchise has grown to include novels, comic books, mobile games and films.

It immerses players in a believable experience inspired by historical events and has set its games in Italy, Constantinople and even colonial America.

“Assassin’s Creed: Unity” is tailored for play on Xbox One, PlayStation 4 or personal computers powered by Windows software and will sell for $60.

SYDNEY — The Pacific bluefin tuna, a fish used in sushi and sashimi dishes, is at risk of extinction as the global food marketplaces “unsustainable pressure” on the species and others, a conservation body recently warned.

The bluefin tuna joined the Chinese pufferfish, American eel, Chinese cobra and Australian black grass-dart butterfly on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) “red list” of threatened species.

The updated list was released by the IUCN at its once-a-decade World Parks Congress in Sydney as it called for better management of protected areas, where some of the decline in species levels has taken place.

“Each update of the IUCN ‘red list’ makes us realise that our planet is constantly losing its incredible diversity of life, largely due to our destructive actions to satisfy our growing appetite for resources,” IUCN Director General Julia Marton-Lefevre said.

“But we have scientific evidence that protected areas can play a central role in reversing this trend,” she added.

For this year’s list, the IUCN assessed 76,199 species, with 22,413 judged to be under threat.

The Pacific bluefin tuna moved from the “least concern” threat category to “vulnerable” as the species is threatened with extinction due to its use in Asia’s sushi and sashimi markets, the Swiss-based group said.

As most of the fish caught are juveniles that have not yet reproduced, the population has dropped by 19-33 per cent over the past 22 years.

It called for fisheries to implement conservation and management measures for the Western and Central Pacific Ocean.

Chinese pufferfish ‘critically endangered’

The Chinese pufferfish, a Japanese delicacy and one of the world’s most poisonous vertebrates, was listed as “critically endangered” and its population was estimated to have plunged by 99 per cent over the past four decades from over-exploitation.

The American eel is reeling from the impact of climate change, parasites, pollution, habitat loss and commercial harvesting, as well as having been hit by the high levels of consumption of its counterpart, the Japanese eel.

The IUCN categorised the Chinese cobra as “vulnerable” with the population falling 30-50 per cent over the past two decades — another species hurt by its popularity as a food source.

“The growing food market is putting unsustainable pressure on these and other species,” the IUCN’s biodiversity head Jane Smart said.

“We urgently need to impose strict limits on harvesting and take appropriate measures to protect habitats.”

Another species added to the list was the Malaysian snail Charopa lafargei — named after the French construction giant Lafarge, which has agreed to try and limit its quarrying activities in the snails’ habitat — the report said.

Two species, the Malaysian mollusc plectostoma sciaphilum and the St Helena Giant Earwig, were declared extinct due to habitat destruction.

But there was good news for two amphibians in Colombia’s Ranita Dorada Reserve — both members of the poison dart frogs family — which improved in status and are now categorised as “vulnerable” due to conservation efforts.

The World Parks Congress, which will outline a global agenda for protected areas for the next decade before closing on November 19, comes a month after the member nations of the UN’s Convention of Biological Diversity met in South Korea to lay out a roadmap to halt species extinction by 2020.

The World Wildlife Fund said in its Living Planet Report published in September that there has been a 52 per cent decline in mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish overall from 1970 to 2010.

WASHINGTON — The Internet generation doesn’t actually know much about how it works.

A new Pew Research Centre survey released Tuesday found most people can recognise Microsoft founder Bill Gates and know that hashtags belong in tweets, but are confused about whether having a privacy policy means that a company actually keeps consumer information confidential.

The results underscore what many techies say is a growing problem for the US: a generation reliant on the convenience that technology brings, but with little understanding of the risks of conducting nearly every transaction digitally.

Aaron Smith, senior researcher at Pew and author of the report, said he thought it would be interesting for policy makers and tech designers to find what knowledge gaps existed in modern life.

“Just because people use these gadgets a lot doesn’t necessarily mean they know everything about how they work and where they came from,” he said.

The 17-question quiz is available online at www.pewinternet.org/quiz/web-iq-quiz/ .

Not surprisingly, people under 30 seemed to do better on some of the questions than older Internet users, such as knowing what a “Wiki” or “captcha” is. But young or old, only about 6 in 10 Internet users understood that “net neutrality” refers to the equal treatment of digital content by service providers. The Federal Communications Commission is considering whether it should regulate the broadband industry more aggressively to prevent providers from playing favourites among content sites like Google, YouTube, Amazon or Netflix.

Another area where age didn’t seem to matter was the false assumption that the existence of a privacy policy means that a company keeps the data it collects on consumers confidential. More than half — 52 per cent — of Internet users thought that was the case, whereas privacy policies often explain that a company reserves the right to sell a person’s information to advertisers or other third parties.

Three-fourths of people surveyed thought the “Internet” was the same thing as the “World Wide Web”. The Internet refers to the infrastructure that uses specific protocols to connect various networks; the web built upon that architecture to share information using web pages.

The online survey was conducted September 12-18 among a sample of 1,066 adult Internet users 18 years of age or older. The survey was conducted by the GfK Group using KnowledgePanel. Sampling error was plus or minus 3.2 percentage points at the 95 per cent level of confidence.

SAN FRANCISCO — After two years of popping up at high-profile events sporting Google Glass, the gadget that transforms eyeglasses into spy-movie worthy technology, Google co-founder Sergey Brin recently sauntered bare-faced into a Silicon Valley red-carpet event.

He’d left his pair in the car, Brin told a reporter. The Googler, who heads up the top-secret lab which developed Glass, has hardly given up on the product — he recently wore his pair to the beach.

But Brin’s timing is not propitious, coming as many developers and early Glass users are losing interest in the much-hyped, $1,500 test version of the product: a camera, processor and stamp-sized computer screen mounted to the edge of eyeglass frames. Google Inc. itself has pushed back the Glass roll out to the mass market.

While Glass may find some specialised, even lucrative, uses in the workplace, its prospects of becoming a consumer hit in the near future are slim, many developers say.

Of 16 Glass app makers contacted by Reuters, nine said that they had stopped work on their projects or abandoned them, mostly because of the lack of customers or limitations of the device. Three more have switched to developing for business, leaving behind consumer projects.

Plenty of larger developers remain with Glass. The nearly 100 apps on the official website include Facebook and OpenTable, although one major player recently defected: Twitter.

“If there was 200 million Google Glasses sold, it would be a different perspective. There’s no market at this point,” said Tom Frencel, the chief executive of Little Guy Games, which put development of a Glass game on hold this year and is looking at other platforms, including the Facebook Inc.-owned virtual-reality goggles Oculus Rift.

Several key Google employees instrumental to developing Glass have left the company in the last six months, including lead developer Babak Parviz, electrical engineering chief Adrian Wong, and Ossama Alami, director of developer relations.

And a Glass funding consortium created by Google Ventures and two of Silicon Valley’s biggest venture capitalists, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Andreessen Horowitz, quietly deleted its website, routing users to the main Glass site.

Google insists it is committed to Glass, with hundreds of engineers and executives working on it, as well as new fashionista boss Ivy Ross, a former Calvin Klein executive. Tens of thousands use Glass in the pilot consumer programme.

“We are completely energised and as energised as ever about the opportunity that wearables and Glass in particular represent,” said Glass head of Business Operations Chris O’Neill.

Glass was the first project to emerge from Google’s X division, the secretive group tasked with developing “moonshot” products such as self-driving cars. Glass and wearable devices overall amount to a new technology, as smartphones once were, that will likely take time to evolve into a product that clicks with consumers.

“We are as committed as ever to a consumer launch. That is going to take time and we are not going to launch this product until it’s absolutely ready,” O’Neill said.

Glass selling... on eBay

After an initial burst of enthusiasm, signs that consumers are giving up on Glass have been building.

Google dubbed the first set of several thousand Glass users as “Explorers”. But as the Explorers hit the streets, they drew stares and jokes. Some people viewed the device, capable of surreptitious video recording, as an obnoxious privacy intrusion, deriding the once-proud Explorers as “Glassholes”.

“It looks super nerdy,” said Shvetank Shah, a Washington, DC-based consultant, whose Google Glass now gathers dust in a drawer. “I’m a card carrying nerd, but this was one card too many.”

Glass now sells on eBay for as little as half list price.

Some developers recently have felt unsupported by investors and, at times, Google itself.

The Glass Collective, the funding consortium co-run by Google Ventures, invested in only three or four small start ups by the beginning of this year, a person familiar with the statistics said.

A Google Ventures spokeswoman declined to comment on the number of investments and said the website was closed for simplicity. “We just found it’s easier for entrepreneurs to come to us directly,” she said.

The lack of a launch date has given some developers the impression that Google still treats Glass as an experiment.

“It’s not a big enough platform to play on seriously,” said Matthew Milan, founder of Toronto-based software firm Normative Design, which put on hold a Glass app for logging exercise and biking.

Mobile game company Glu Mobile, known for its popular “Kim Kardashian: Hollywood” title, was one of the first to launch a game on Glass. Spellista is still available, but Glu has discontinued work on it, a spokesman for the company said.

Another developer, Sean McCracken, won $10,000 in a contest last year for creating an aliens-themed video game for Glass, Psyclops, but Google never put it on the official hub for Glass apps, making it tougher to find. He has quit working on updates.

Still, there are some enthusiastic developers. Cycling and running app Strava finds Glass well-suited for its users, who want real-time data on their workouts, said David Lorsch, vice president of business development. And entrepreneur Jake Steinerman said it is ideal for his company, DriveSafe, which detects if people are falling asleep at the wheel.

Pivoting away

In April, Google launched the Glass at Work programme to help make the device useful for specific industries, such as healthcare and manufacturing. So far the effort has resulted in apps that are being tested or used at companies such as Boeing and Yum Brands’ Taco Bell.

Alex Foster began See Through, a Glass advertising analytics firm for business, after a venture firm earlier this year withdrew its offer to back his consumer-oriented Glass fitness company when it became clear no big consumer Glass release was imminent.

“It was devastating,” he said. “All of the consumer glass startups are either completely dead or have pivoted”, to enterprise products or rival wearables.

Marking Maserati’s 100th anniversary, the GranCabrio MC Centennial also arrives in the same year the seductive Italian brand officially enters the Jordanian market.

A special edition version of Maserati’s lusty, long and low four-seat grand touring convertible the GranCabrio MC Centennial features new rich three-layer paint and new interior and exterior colours, including fiery Magma red and sophisticated Inchiostro blue, to reflect the Maserati badge’s traditional palates.

A luxurious 4933mm long grand tourer with dramatic design and charisma, the GranCabrio MC is more than just a boulevardier, but is a buttoned-down, agile, exacting and responsive high performance sports car, with adaptive magnetic dampers providing both forgiving comfort and taut composure, as needed.

Swooping and dramatic

A sultry and swooping design with voluptuous curves over the front wing and around the rear haunches, the GranCabrio MC strikes an indulgent, luxurious yet assertively dynamic shark-like figure. Hungry, aggressive and menacingly moody, the GranCabrio MC, wide gaping grille sits low to the ground, with the brand’s iconic Neptune’s trident badge set in the middle of a row of dramatic vertical concave slats.

With low ground hugging air splitter, big honeycomb side intakes, bonnet-top air scoop, triple side ports, horizontal side vents, aggressive sills, high-set dual exhaust pipes and swathes of carbon-fibre accents, the MC Centennial’s performance potential is clearly and proudly hinted at.

A striking and athletically elegant GT convertible, the near 5-metre long and 1.9-metre wide GranCabrio MC has a big footprint on the road, occupying a similar space as a large saloon car, but is stands rakishly low at 1343mm.

With a front-mid engine layout, the GranCabrio MC’s sensual V8 engine sits far back and low in its long frame, which provide for excellent within wheelbase 49:51 weight distribution — which alters to 48:52 when the rag-top roof is folded back behind the rear seats. Flush folding between rear seats and boot, the GranCabrio MC’s features and elegantly clean waistline in convertible mode, but consequently reduces boot space to 173 litres.

Vicious and vocal

The GranCabrio MC’s 4.7-litre is a more conventional derivative cross-plane crankshaft version of Ferrari’s V8 engine, but like Ferrari-brand flat-plane V8s, is charismatic and finger-snap responsive engine in how quickly and progressively it accumulates power and swiftly it winds down on lift-off.

Tearing through revs to a soulful staccato tune that rises to more assertive growl and before coalescing to an urgent higher pitched howl, the GranCabrio MC is eager and viciously progressive in delivery as it reaches towards 454BHP at 7000rpm.

With a full-bodied soundtrack best enjoyed with the top down, the the GranCabrio MC delivers muscular and tractable low- and mid-range ability, and a ferociously urgent top-end.

Visceral and theatrical, the GranCabrio MC addictive Ferrari-built V8’s tune changes with every twitch of the driver’s foot, with its bass-heavy mid-range warble tinged by a rising and seductive tremble.

Though crisp and high-revving engine with 7200rpm redline, the MC’s naturally aspirated V8 nevertheless still delivers accumulatively muscular and hard-pulling low to mid-range torque, which peaks at 438lb/ft at 4750rpm.

Well up to the task of shifting its 1973kg mass, the MC’s punchy engine allows for a 4.9-second 0-100km/h time and 289km/h top speed. But given the MC’s aggressive high revving nature, weight and top down aerodynamic penalty, it is somewhat thirsty, with 14.5l/100km combined fuel consumption and 337g/km carbon dioxide emissions.

Tenacious and tidy

A full-sized convertible version of the GranTurismo coupe — which itself is based on a shortened previous generation Quattroporte luxury saloon — the large GranCabrio MC gains some 180kg over the coupe version, because of the necessary structural reinforcement in the absence of a fixed-head roof.

On road however, the GranCabrio MC masks and handles its near two-ton kerb weight with panache. The GranCabrio MC’s body rigidity proved good or convertible of this length, with its’ adaptive Skyhook damping taking the edge off of rough road imperfections, with a forgiving suppleness that belies the its’ firm and grippy front 245/35ZR20 and 285/35ZR20 low profile tire and alloy wheels.

With its dampers fluidly adapting to conditions, the GranCabrio MC pounces through corners with eager agility and with buttoned down composure in terms of later all body lean and settled vertical rebound over sudden dips and crests, but is confidently planted at speed.

Reassuringly tenacious through coirners, the GranCabrion MC’s high grip levels are complemented by double wishbone suspension and balanced chassis with neutral and predictable handling.

A limited-slip rear differential also provides excellent traction when launching aggressively from standstill, while through tight hard corners, it reapportions more power to the driven rear wheel that can best put it down on tarmac. The GranCabrio MC’s quick and precise steering feels intuitive through snaking corners and tidy on turn-in.

Alfresco accommodation

Swathed in lush leathers, futuristic carbon-fibre, elegant Alcantara and supple textures, the MC Centennial’s cabin is a comfortable, stylish and driver-focused with ideal driving position and good front visibility aided by the curvy scalloped front wings serving as markers for turning into corners. Large and fixed on the steering column, the GranCabrio MC’s gearbox paddle shifters control the swift shifting 6-speed automatic gearbox shifts.

Well-spaced gearbox ratios well utilise the engine’s tall rev range and are complemented by exact throttle response. Smooth in automatic mode, the MC’s gearbox can be used in a dedicated manual mode, while automatic shifts can be temporarily over-ridden by the paddle shifters.

Sporty and sophisticated, the MC Centennial’s interior has distinctly Italian sense of chic, with soft cream leather upholstery contrasted with blue accents — including trident logo on each headrest — and a liberal use of carbon-fibre dashboard and console trim and seatbacks. 

Supportive body-hugging sports seats and contoured steering wheel are accommodatingly adjustable, while instrumentation is clear and Satnav, USB and Bluetooth infotainment not difficult to learn. Ergonomic inside, the GranCabrio’s door mirror controller is however positioned somewhat close to the driver’s left leg. Spacious in front, rear headroom is somewhat less that the GranCabrio’s GranTurismo coupe sister when the roof is up, while top down driving is refined and wind-buffeting minimal.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Engine: 4.7-litre, 32-valve, in-line, V8 cylinders

Bore x Stroke: 94 x 84.5mm

Compression: 11.25:1

Gearbox: 6-speed, automatic, RWD, limited-slip differential

Power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 454 (460) [338] @ 7000rpm

Power-to-weight: 230BHP/ton

Torque lb/ft (Nm): 384 (520) @ 4750rpm

Redline: 7200rpm

0-100km/h: 4.9 seconds

Top speed: 289km/h

Fuel consumption, combined: 14.5 litres/100km

CO2 emissions, combined: 337g/km

Fuel capacity: 75 litres

Length: 4933mm

Width: 1915mm

Height: 1343mm

Wheelbase: 2942mm

Track, F/R: 1586/1590mm

Overhang, F/R: 925/1066mm

Kerb weight: 1973kg

Weight distribution, F/R: 49 per cent/51 per cent

Luggage volume: 173-litres

Suspension: Double wishbone, adaptive magnetic dampers, anti-roll bars

Steering: Power-assisted rack and pinion

Turning circle: 12.3-metres

Brakes, F/R: Ventilated, perforated discs, 6-/4-piston

Stopping distance, 100-0km/h: 35-metres

Tyres F/R: 245/35ZR20/ 285/35ZR20

LONDON — Electronic cigarette makers are racing to design and buy variations of a technology that has lit a billion-dollar boom, created a new vocabulary, and prompted a backlash from health officials worried about the impact of the new smokeless devices.

Research by Thomson Reuters shows that China — with over 300 million smokers — is the front runner in the manufacture and development of so-called e-cigarette technology, while new versions being patented include a "pay as you go" computer-assisted device and others that can deliver caffeine instead.

In 2005 just eight e-cigarette inventions were described in published patents. By 2012 the figure had jumped to 220 and by last year there were over 500 inventions, according to an analysis by the IP & Science business of Thomson Reuters. So far this year the total has reached 650. [A single invention may be covered by several patents.]

The original technology, involving battery-powered heating systems that vaporise nicotine-laced liquid, is credited to Hon Lik, a Chinese medical researcher with a 20-a-day habit, in 2003.

His invention has since become so popular that the market is now estimated to be worth $3.5 billion. Both big tobacco firms and small entrepreneurs are falling over themselves to find new ways to "vape" — a verb suddenly so mainstream the Oxford English Dictionary named it 2014's Word of the Year.

Imperial Tobacco last year snapped up the patents owned by the company Hon co-founded in a deal worth $75 million, and is suing rivals for a range of alleged patent infringements.

Part of the rush to create new devices can be explained by the prospect of stiffer regulation on existing ones after the World Health Organisation said it wanted to see this, along with bans on indoor use, advertising and sales to minors.

While proponents see e-cigarettes as important tools for harm reduction, critics fear the devices may instead fuel a new wave of nicotine addiction and cite a lack of long-term scientific evidence to support their safety.

Pay as you go

Of more than 2,000 e-cigarette inventions tracked by Thomson Reuters, 64 per cent originate in China, where over half of men smoke. In second place is the United States, with 14 per cent, followed by South Korea with 9 per cent.

Some patented suggestions target smokers looking to regulate their nicotine intake and their spending. While offerings already on the market include thousands of e-liquid flavours from menthol to marshmallow, and even a smartphone app to show how much you are using, new patents go a step further.

Tobacco giant Philip Morris International describes an e-cigarette that would allow users to "pay as you go" by buying a certain number of doses via computer application connected to their e-cigarette. Customers could also programme the device to shut off after a certain number of puffs per use to help limit intake.

Other smaller players aim to deliver doses of caffeine and other additives instead of nicotine.

A unit of mCig Inc. sells VitaCigs containing vitamins and supplements such as valerian and collagen, while a company called Energy Shisha sells a caffeinated vaping stick. Patents filed by others, including Fuma International, mention tetrahydrocannabinol, the active chemical in cannabis.

In general, e-cigarette patents relate to systems for heating and vaporising liquids, as well as for charging the electronic systems, whether in a "cigalike" device or a larger "tank" system, which doesn't resemble a cigarette but gives a better "vaping" experience.

China's domination of the market reflects not only its huge number of smokers but also a wider drive by the Chinese government to forge a knowledge economy. By maximising patents it hopes to replace the ubiquitous "Made in China" label by "Designed in China."

Since 2011, China has been the world's top patent filer for all inventions, according to the World Intellectual Property Office. Its scientists and companies now lay claim to intellectual property rights on everything from telecoms to medicine.

"Patenting globally is rising significantly year on year, driven by Chinese patenting generally," said Bob Stembridge, senior patent analyst at Thomson Reuters IP & Science.

"But I would say the e-cigarette field is growing faster than the general trend, and the bias toward China is greater than in global patenting."

Captive Revolution: Palestinian Women’s Anti-Colonial Struggle within the Israeli Prison System

Nahla Abdo

London: Pluto Press, 2014

Pp. 250

In “Captive Revolution”, Nahla Abdo aims “at making audible the hidden voices… of women political detainees while simultaneously raising international awareness of the plight of over 5,000 Palestinian political prisoners who currently suffer torture and inhumane treatment in Israeli prisons.” (p. 1)

For Palestinian female detainees from the 1960s to 1980s, the period the book focuses on, the silencing was double. Not only were women’s struggles largely lost in official, nationalist histories; even feminist writing mainly ignored Palestinian women militants turned detainees until the First Intifada. 

Abdo’s valuable contribution towards reversing this silencing is based on research she conducted in 2007-2009, including in-depth interviews with 17 Palestinian women political ex-detainees and a focus group with 14 women participants, from different parts of the West Bank. By bringing their stories of struggle and torture to light, the book challenges Israel’s image as a democracy and Western perceptions of anti-colonial fighters as terrorists and misfits. 

The world situation was quite different when these women took the decision to engage in armed struggle. In the 1960s, there was an international revolutionary current which influenced the Palestinian resistance movement along with other national liberation movements.

The international community, embodied in the United Nations, recognised the right of oppressed peoples to struggle against colonialism. However, imperialism has changed tactics, and especially after September 11th, Orientalist stereotypes and the “terrorist” label have been increasingly applied to those resisting colonialism and oppression, and most particularly to Arabs and Muslims. 

Some prominent Western feminists, having previously ignored Palestinian female militants, began to derive distorted theories about their struggle, focusing on suicide bombers. It was claimed that these women engaged in struggle in order to reverse their subjugation in a conservative society, or to cleanse their family honour, or that they were manipulated by men. In the same vein, liberal Western feminists “suddenly discovered Afghani and Iraqi women during the imperialist wars against these two countries and began to talk about the need to ‘emancipate’ or ‘save’ them”. (p. 51)

Not without reason, Abdo argues that this type of feminism moved beyond Orientalism to being full-blown imperialist feminists, justifying imperial wars and plunder — and, on the other hand, denying women’s agency which should be at the heart of feminism. 

In contrast, Abdo’s interviews reveal a group of women who took an independent, conscious, political decision to struggle against Israel due to their attachment to Palestine, and their experience of Israel’s destruction of Palestinian homes and lives. Almost all the detainees interviewed had excellent relations with their families, including the male members, and felt that their families had been supportive of their political commitment.

Most all of them were well-educated, secular leftists, motivated by a desire for freedom and greatly influenced by the prevailing resistance culture to which Abdo devotes a whole chapter, focusing on Ghassan Kanafani, Mahmoud Darwish and Tawfiq Zayyad.

Extensive quotes from the ex-detainees themselves document the racist treatment and torture, including sexual torture, to which they were subjected, as well as how they resisted breaking down.

One gets first-hand insight into what motivated these women, how they organised themselves in prison, supported each other, carried out educational programmes and engaged in acts of individual and collective resistance, such as work stoppages and hunger strikes, as well as the disappointments they faced upon release. “Women in prison increased their gender and even feminist consciousness and considered themselves more free and liberated than most other Palestinian women, yet when released they found life outside to have hardly changed in its traditional and patriarchal orientation.” (p. 197) 

Nahla Abdo is an Arab feminist activist and Professor of Sociology at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, who was once herself a political detainee. In this book, she offers a useful analysis of imperialism today, as well as much information about the Palestinian national movement and the culture of resistance.

Most of all, she fulfils her aim to restore the “histories of women militant fighters turned political detainees by reintegrating them into their proper ‘public’ space as participants, agents, and makers of history”. (p. 3)

VICTORIA, Seychelles — Under cover of darkness in the steamy jungles of the Seychelles thieves creep out to harvest the sizeable and valuable nuts of the famous coco de mer palm, but their activities are threatening its long-term survival.

Nicknamed “coco bottom” on the Indian Ocean archipelago for its curves like a woman’s buttocks, some 40 of the giant nuts have been stolen since the beginning of the year on the island of Praslin.

The trees survive, but slashing with knives means the rare palms produce fewer fruit each year, while the seeds themselves are taken off for sale rather than producing new plants.

It is a worrying problem for the Seychelles, which features the coco de mer on its coat of arms. Conservationists fear the illegal trade threatens the future of nut, the biggest in the world and endemic to just two of the country’s islands.

“Shock and horror”, the headline of a Seychelles news agency story read after a raid last month in which 10 nuts were stolen.

With some 17,000 trees counted on Praslin and 10,000 on neighbouring Curieuse Island, the tree is now on the warning “red list” of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, IUCN.

It says numbers have dropped by almost a third within three generations of trees, warning that the harvesting and illegal sale of the nuts poses a significant threat.

“Before we’d see about 75 coconuts on a tree, now there are just 25,” said Victorin Laboudallon of the Seychelles Islands Foundation (SIF), which helps conserve the palm-filled Vallee de Mai National Park, a UNESCO-listed World Heritage Site.

“Trees do not give as much fruit as before when a coconut is cut.”

Alleged aphrodisiac

The nut is a fertility symbol for some and in Asia, particularly in China, it has a reputation as an alleged aphrodisiac.

Thousands of tourists who visit the white sand beaches of the Seychelles eye them as ornaments.

Britain’s Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge were given a nut by the government at the end of their honeymoon on the Seychelles in 2011.

Protected by law, nuts can only be taken out of the country in accordance with strict regulations.

A nut, which can weigh as much as 35 kilogrammes, can reportedly sell for as much as $450 per kilogramme on the black market, meaning a single nut can sell for thousands of dollars.

In an attempt to curb the thefts and protect the 19 hectares of forest where the palms are found SIF has boosted the number of guards, but the rugged terrain and lack of fences complicate that task.

The bizarre “double” nut has an ancient history: traded far from the archipelago to the Middle East, Asia and Europe, earning legends of its healing powers.

For centuries, its origin was a mystery: nuts were found only adrift at sea or washed up on the white sand beaches of the Indian Ocean. Never having been seen growing on land, sailors thought that they came from the sea bed itself — giving the name, the “coconut of the sea”.

Demand grew after the country’s independence from Britain in 1976 and the boom in its tourism industry, said Laboudallon.

The government was forced to step in to control the trade, with the legal export of nuts highly regulated and only four companies having a licence to sell.

But the illegal smuggling continues.

Laboudallon fears the tree could suffer the same fate as the Dodo, the extinct bird that disappeared nearly 400 years ago on the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius.

The environment ministry insists they are in control of the situation, installing x-ray machines at the airport to scan for the nut, said top official Ronley Fanchet.

But environmental activists were shocked when a recent culinary festival, organised by the culture ministry, featured the famous nut.

For the first time, coco de mer dishes — including ice cream, pies and bread — were available for tasting at the one-off festival.

Defenders of the fruit warned that could create a new demand that would put the nuts under even greater pressure.

“If tomorrow there are menus with coco de mer in all restaurants, what do we do?” said SIF chief Frauke Dogley.

“It is not the one-off use of the kernel which is the issue here, but creating a demand, where the side-effects have the full potential to lead to an unsustainable exploitation.”

ITHACA, New York — Richard Johnson can see right through the masterpieces of Rembrandt and Van Gogh.

The Cornell University electrical and computer engineering professor is a digital art detective, able to unlock the mysteries of a work’s age and authenticity by analysing its underlying canvas or paper.

Using high-resolution X-ray images, the 64-year-old academic can actually determine if paintings came from the same bolt of hand-loomed canvas, each of which has a varying thread density pattern that can be as unique as a fingerprint. Linking multiple pieces of canvas to the same bolt can shore up arguments for authenticity and even put works in chronological order.

It’s a valuable service to world-class museums that comes through the unlikely cross-pollinating of traditional art history and contemporary computer science.

“By mixing the two groups we’ve been able to do more than either group had been able to do separately studying the paintings,” Johnson said in a room full of Dutch paintings at Cornell’s Johnson Museum. “We’re not trying to replace the art historian, we’re trying to extend their reach.”

Johnson is a tech whiz and an art lover — the rare person able to speak with authority about Rembrandt’s brush strokes and adaptive feedback systems theory.

Although he didn’t make his first visit to an art museum until he was a student on fellowship in Germany, the rooms full of Rembrandts left him thunderstruck.

Johnson melded the two worlds in 2007 with a stint as an adjunct research fellow at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. He began examining high-resolution X-ray images of the canvases used by the 19th century master.

Eventually, Johnson and Rice University Professor Don Johnson (no relation) developed digital “weave density maps” of canvases that added computational power to what had been a painstaking process that required scholars to study small samples with magnifying glasses.

“It turns out with the eye, you make mistakes,” said Louis van Tilborgh, senior researcher at the Van Gogh Museum.

Van Tilborgh sees the weave maps as an important tool in the ongoing work of precisely dating and ordering all of Vincent Van Gogh’s paintings.

The technique has also provided evidence to date Diego Velazquez’s “Sebastian de Morra”. A separate analysis of 24 Johannes Vermeer canvases supported the sometimes doubted attribution of one painting and provided fresh evidence to link two paintings at the National Gallery in London as complementary works.

“It’s one more technical tool in the box of studying pictures,” said Walter Liedtke, curator of European paintings at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan, who worked with Johnson on the Vermeers.

“You take this added evidence and you join it with — in the case of the two Vermeers in London — pigment analysis, the iconography of the pictures, whether they were together in their history at earlier dates. “

Researchers have been conducting science-based analyses of artworks for some time. But it has become more common to use computers to analyse large amounts of digital data. It’s sometimes called computational art history and also includes assessing brushstrokes for distinctive patterns.

Johnson in recent years has left the canvas to other researchers as he focuses on paper. He’s been analysing the old-fashioned paper used by Rembrandt for his prints, which was made by laying pulp on screens. Scholars know the dates when Rembrandt etched the copper plates to make the prints, but they are often less sure when an individual print was made. Was it one of the initial prints or did it come years later after the artist’s death?

Johnson is using high-resolution digital images of Rembrandt prints owned by Cornell’s museum to try to discern patterns that the screens impressed on the back of the prints. Separate prints cut from the same larger sheet of paper could be matched to provide the same sort of contextual information revealed by studying canvas.

The details are different, but the idea of searching for useful patterns is the same, as is the idea of bridging the gap between art and tech.

“My philosophy all along has been to convince both sides that this is worth doing and they should be talking to each other,” Johnson said.

WASHINGTON — A bare 0.004 per cent of the world’s adult population controls nearly $30 trillion in assets, 13 per cent of the world’s total wealth, according to a new study released Thursday.

And perhaps unsurprisingly, the study by the Swiss bank UBS and luxury industry consultant Wealth-X said the concentration of money in the hands of the ultra-rich is growing.

The report said 211,275 people qualify as “ultra-high net worth” (UHNW) — those with assets above $30 million. Of them, 2,325 have more than $1 billion.

Their numbers grew 6 per cent over the past year, but their wealth grew 7 per cent, as asset markets like stocks and property soared in many places around the world.

The fastest growth, indeed, came in the “demi-billionaire” group worth a half-billion to a billion dollars apiece, the study said.

“Even amidst geopolitical conflicts, socioeconomic strife, and volatile currency markets, the world’s equity markets displayed strong performances, thereby enabling UHNW individuals’ wealth to increase and their influence across industries and sectors to grow — from their importance in wealth management to their consumption of luxury goods,” it said.

“Such a large concentration of wealth in the hands of these few individuals means that they tend to have a large degree of influence, whether on global equity markets or specific industries.”

Of the nearly $30 trillion this elite group controls, just over one-third is in the hands of tycoons in North America, more than one-quarter in Europe, and 23 per cent in Asia.

Of them, 87 per cent are men, of the average age of 59, and nearly one quarter of them were in banking. Of them, 68 per cent were “self-made” rich, 13 per cent rich by inheritance, and the rest a combination of the two.

The average ultra-rich woman was 57, and more likely to be involved in nonprofit and social organisations (19 per cent) than any other sector. Nearly half became wealthy through inheritance, while one-third were self-made wealthy.

As F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, the rich are different. The average UHNW-er spends $1 million a year on luxury goods and services.

Yet, the study points out, luxury items can be “part and parcel of their lifestyle and are not necessarily considered a ‘luxury’.”

“For example, UHNW individuals with private jets use their aircraft not only for leisure, but also for business purposes. On the other hand, while yachts, and particularly superyachts, are usually a non-necessity, many UHNW individuals lead very public lives, and the privacy of a family holiday on a yacht is a very special treat.”