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TUESDAY 10 SEPTEMBER 2013 • [email protected] • www.thepeninsulaqatar.com • 4455 7741 HOSPITALITY RECIPE CONTEST HEALTH BOOKS TECHNOLOGY P | 5 P | 6 P | 7 P | 11 P | 12 • McDonald’s launches local breakfast flavours with Halloum Muffin Send in your best recipe and win a dinner voucher • Research renaissance offers new ways out of chronic depression • Daniel Woodrell tells a superbly textured story Why Nokia lost, and Samsung won Apps for the day inside Riddick unseats Butler at box office P | 11 Learn Arabic • Learn commonly used Arabic words and their meanings P | 13 Bright colours, funky textures and personalisation are coming to a smartphone near you as mobile phone makers turn to fashion to buoy sales in a crowded market. Smartphones Smartphones turn stylish turn stylish

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Page 1: Page 01 Sept 10 - The Peninsula · By Alexei Oreskovic & Poornima Gupta A pple Inc and Google Inc’s Motorola are among those trying to score style points as game-changing technological

TUESDAY 10 SEPTEMBER 2013 • [email protected] • www.thepeninsulaqatar.com • 4455 7741

HOSPITALITY

RECIPE CONTEST

HEALTH

BOOKS

TECHNOLOGY

P | 5

P | 6

P | 7

P | 11

P | 12

• McDonald’s launcheslocal breakfast flavourswith Halloum Muffin

• Send in your bestrecipe and win adinner voucher

• Research renaissance offers new ways out of chronic depression

• Daniel Woodrelltells a superblytextured story

• Why Nokia lost, and Samsung won

• Apps for the day

insideRiddick unseats Butler at box office

P | 11

Learn Arabic • Learn commonly

used Arabic wordsand their meanings

P | 13

Bright colours, funky textures and personalisation are coming to a smartphone near you as mobile phone makers turn to fashion to buoy sales in a crowded market.

Smartphones Smartphones turn stylishturn stylish

Page 2: Page 01 Sept 10 - The Peninsula · By Alexei Oreskovic & Poornima Gupta A pple Inc and Google Inc’s Motorola are among those trying to score style points as game-changing technological

2 COVER STORYPLUS | TUESDAY 10 SEPTEMBER 2013

By Alexei Oreskovic & Poornima Gupta

Apple Inc and Google Inc’s Motorola are among those trying to score style points as game-changing technological

innovation becomes harder to achieve in the maturing business.

Since the first touch-screen iPhone hit the market in 2007, software fea-tures have become easier to replicate and improvements in speed, weight, display size and resolution have

become routine. The explosion of me-too products is already hurting profit margins and nibbling at Apple and Samsung Electronic Co Ltd’s market share.

Time to bring out the paintbrush.Apple has invited reporters to an

event on Tuesday where it is expected to introduce new iPhones in a much broader palette of colours, perhaps even gold. One-time leader Motorola, now owned by Google, is trying to win back consumers with the Moto

X, relying partly on customized colors and, soon to come, engravings and unusual casing materials such as wood.

Robert Brunner, founder of design consultancy Ammunition and a former Apple industrial design chief, said personalization is a well-worn tactic employed when a product’s uniqueness fades.

“As something becomes embedded in lifestyle and as it starts to become commoditized, people look toward

more superficial design things to dif-ferentiate or at least reach more peo-ple,” said Brunner, whose clients have included Amazon.com Inc, Dell Inc and Nike Inc.

“And colours are the classic. If you do it at the right time, it will create a sig-nificant increase in sales every time.”

Much of the speculation around new iPhones this year has focused on colors and material, in marked contrast to previous years when hopes ran high for a breakthrough feature.

Smartphones

try fashion

makeovers

Page 3: Page 01 Sept 10 - The Peninsula · By Alexei Oreskovic & Poornima Gupta A pple Inc and Google Inc’s Motorola are among those trying to score style points as game-changing technological

3

Personalisation Is KeyThe consumer electronics industry

lives and dies by innovation, and resort-ing to aesthetics is at best a stop-gap measure until frequently talked about new technologies such as fingerprint identification, holographics or flexible displays become reality.

Smartphone shipments grew 52 per-cent in the second quarter, according to research firm IDC. But the mar-ket is getting crowded, with everyone from Alcatel Lucent to China’s Huawei producing an abundance of look-alike phones based on Google’s Android software.

Consumers face a sea of “rectangles that are black and white” that all use similar software and capabilities, said Carolina Milanesi, an analyst with research firm Gartner. “So you need that instant hook in the store to get people to pay attention, and that comes from the fashion and style.”

Nokia’s phone business, soon to be part of Microsoft Corp, was one of the first to try colour. Nokia’s Windows-powered Lumias came in a variety of shades from blue and red to yellow, helping boost shipments by 76 percent in the second quarter and outpacing the overall market’s growth rate.

“We have always believed technology is highly personal, highly individual,” said Yves Behar, the chief creative officer at Jawbone, who has designed a successful line of customisable gadg-ets including the Up wristband and Jambox wireless speakers. “We get more people wanting to customize their Jambox than we get people not wanting to.”

Making more stylish phones, how-ever, can increase production costs and make inventory management and demand forecasting more challenging. Also, taste varies from region to region. So success in the fashion game requires mastering new supply chain and manu-facturing skills.

“If you try to predict in advance

precise numbers, it is a sure way to over stock or under stock,” Behar warned.

Built To OrderIn 2010, Apple had to delay the

launch of the white iPhone 4 twice, cit-ing manufacturing challenges. While the company did not provide details, speculation ranged from colour-match-ing difficulties to an issue with the device’s back light.

More recently, Motorola delayed offering the personalized engravings it promised for the Moto X, and the special wood panels that consumers can choose for their phones will not be available until later this year.

To help with logistics, Motorola is using a Flextronics International Ltd contract facility near Dallas that can custom-build phones and ship within 6 days. Its long-term target is 4 days.

That kind of customisation requires a completely different supply chain system, said Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor David Simchi-Levi.

Instead of optimising for the low-est cost components, a build-to-order model needs to focus on speed, said Simchi-Levi, who has previously con-sulted for computer maker Dell, which popularised the model in the 1990s.

Done right, the build-to-order model can generate richer margins and pro-vide flexibility to respond to demand: maintaining stockpiles of components means lower cost and less risk than keeping inventory of finished goods, Simchi-Levi said.

Analysts have said the impact of Motorola’s new strategy on its profit margins is unclear. Mark Randall, the company’s senior vice president of supply chain and operations, said it knows a build-to-order model will not be easy but is convinced that is the right approach for today’s market.

“We decided on this approach our-selves, relying on some market research

but also our own instincts. We thought it was time to get away from just hav-ing a white or black phone.”

Tried And TestedIn the 1990s, cellphone makers relied

on aesthetics to stand out. Phone mak-ers pumped slider phones, flip phones and “candy bars” in the hope of getting a hit like the sleek Motorola Razr.

Some compared the industry’s evolu-tion to watches, which rely on 50-year-old quartz or centuries-old mechanical technology and are the epitome of a business that hinges on fashion.

“Mobile phone makers are going to some of the watch suppliers to get the kinds of finishes and the quality feel that have been in the luxury watch business,” said Gregor Berkowitz, a consultant who specializes in consumer electronics design.

Swatch Group, one of the world’s largest watchmakers, shows how lucra-tive fashion can be, analysts said.

“The company benefits from being vertically integrated,” Morningstar analyst Peter Wahlstrom said. “They have the designers in-house. They own the manufacturing, the distribution, they control the brands and pricing very well.”

Swatch, which owns Breguet, Omega, Flick Flack as well as its namesake brand, boasts operating profit mar-gins of 25 percent. While that is below Apple’s 35 percent-range on mobile devices, it is above those of Samsung and many other phone makers.

But while fashion can provide a nice way for phone-makers to buoy sales for now, smartphone companies ultimately need unique technology to maintain a long-term advantage.

“The way we think about technology companies is in terms of sustainable competitive advantages, or economic moats,” said Wahlstrom. “It’s not sus-tainable unless you have the intel-lectual property or patent support behind it that really creates a barrier to entry.” Reuters

PLUS | TUESDAY 10 SEPTEMBER 2013

While fashion can provide a nice way for phone-makers to buoy sales for now, smartphone companies ultimately need unique technology to maintain a long-term advantage.

Page 4: Page 01 Sept 10 - The Peninsula · By Alexei Oreskovic & Poornima Gupta A pple Inc and Google Inc’s Motorola are among those trying to score style points as game-changing technological

PLUS | TUESDAY 10 SEPTEMBER 20134 MARKETPLACE

International Bank of Qatar (ibq) recently received the Commerzbank “Straight Through Processing

(STP) - Best Bank in Qatar” award for the third year running in recognition of its outstanding performance in the execution of commercial and financial payments in euros.

The award is based on ibq’s in-house payments architecture and reflects the bank’s consistently high SWIFT standards, which facilitate automated processing throughout the payment chain. Accuracy in transactions was one of the key criteria for Commerzbank when selecting winners of the award.

Ralph Nitzgen, SEO and General

Manager, and Benjamin Duve, Relationship Manager for Financial Institutions at Commerzbank Dubai, presented the award to ibq and praised the bank’s operational services, and the international best practices the bank’s management and personnel have brought to the domestic market.

ibq is one of only a few banks in the region to receive recognition for oper-ational excellence in the field. James Nelson-Parker, AGM Operations and Information Technology at ibq, said: “Being awarded this honour for the third year running is a great testa-ment to our operational excellence and efficiency. STP is critical to customer

service, ensuring fast, accurate and reliable execution of payment instruc-tions and our continued investment into not only technology but also our

people has enabled us to provide our individual and institutional customers with first-rate payment services.”

The Peninsula

IBQ recognised with STP Award by Commerzbank

Michelin raffle draw

Nasser Bin Khaled and Sons picked the three lucky win-ners of the Michelin Summer

Campaign. The draw, supported by Michelin Tyres and Qatar Automobiles Company, took place at the Mitsubishi Showroom – Salwa Road. Shajeer Abdulla drove away with a brand new Mitsubishi Pajero, and Oliver Destacamento and Abdul Rahman each won a brand new Mitsubishi Lancer.

The Michelin raffle draw was part of the summer promotion which took place from May 15 to August 15.

Stefan Moench, General Manager, Nasser Bin Khaled & Sons, said: “This is yet another successful campaign that perfectly ties in with our objective to turn every customer purchase into an exciting experience. I am delighted for the winners and look forward to our upcoming promotions.”

The Peninsula

Vodafone announced the lucky winners of its World of Prizes SMS-based competition. The winners were welcomed by Mohammed Al Sada, Chief Administration Officer, and Hamad Al Hammadi, Government Relations Manager at Vodafone Qatar, for the prize ceremony at Vodafone’s headquarters office in Qatar Science and Technology Park. Launched on June 30, the World of Prizes gave customers the chance to bag daily valuable prizes. The competition ended on August 31 with the grand draw set to take place this month with all participating customers, who have any number of points, auto-matically entering into the draw for the chance to win QR100,000.

Page 5: Page 01 Sept 10 - The Peninsula · By Alexei Oreskovic & Poornima Gupta A pple Inc and Google Inc’s Motorola are among those trying to score style points as game-changing technological

5HOSPITALITY PLUS | TUESDAY 10 SEPTEMBER 2013

McDonald’s Qatar announced the launch of its newest breakfast offering — the

Halloum Muffin. A combination of grilled halloumi cheese, black olive paste, shredded lettuce and a slice of tomato on an English muffin.

“The Halloum Muffin represents McDonald’s commitment to balancing its breakfast menu with a combination of iconic favourites and familiar local flavours. The Halloum Muffin is avail-able in all McDonald’s Qatar restau-rants until stocks last. The McDonald’s breakfast menu provides convenient, delicious, affordable products, while maintaining its reputation for serving fresh, high quality ingredients,” a com-pany press release said.

Kamal Al Mana commented: “We recognise the value and importance

of a convenient, nourishing morning meal, and are proud to share our new Halloum Muffin with our customers in Qatar. This is an exciting addition to McDonald’s breakfast menu, and is one that offers a modern take on a traditional Arabic favourite. We are confident it will be well received by our customers.”

“As is the case with all McDonald’s products, our breakfasts are built using farm fresh ingredients sourced from our network of trusted suppliers,” explained Al Mana

Twenty-five McDonald’s outlets across the country serve breakfast daily until 11am.

McDonald’s restaurants in Qatar are owned and operated by Al Mana Restaurants and Food Company.

The Peninsula

McDonald’s launches local breakfast flavours with Halloum Muffin

Mövenpick Tower & Suites gets new executive chef

The kitchen at Mövenpick Tower & Suites Doha has a new chief after Ameer Al-Ali was

appointed as the hotel’s Executive Chef. The Jordanian national received

his culinary qualification from the International Management Institute of Switzerland and started his profes-sional career at the Full Moon Beach Resort in the Maldives. Over the past 22 years he has racked up invaluable experience in the hospitality industry from past employers like Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts in Malaysia and the Maldives, Kempinski Amman and Iberotel Palace in Egypt.

Prior to accepting his current role in Doha, he was the Executive Chef of Mövenpick Resort & Spa Karon Beach Phuket where he worked since 2007.

“I feel privileged to continue my career with Mövenpick Hotels & Resorts, with the added excitement and opportunity to lead a team in a new destination,” said Chef Ameer. “I can see great potential for the cuisine offer-ings at Mövenpick Tower & Suites Doha and I’m keen to use my international expertise to contribute in this respect.”

The Peninsula

Grand Heritage Doha creates chocolateswith flavours of Qatar

Grand Heritage Doha Hotel and Spa Assistant Pastry Chef Mourad Ait Balla and

Pastry Chef Mohammad Baz have created a range of chocolates that carry the tastes of the Gulf with specific attention to locally loved flavours.

Commenting on the chocolates that carry the Grand Heritage brand, Pierre Marie Vasseur, General Manager of the hotel, said: “This range of chocolates we have launched is an exciting new inno-vation in superior tasting chocolate based on the flavours of Qatar. Our Chocolatier is aware that each nation has its own preferred flavours and aromas and he challenged himself to create a range of chocolates that are uniquely Qatari. The local commu-nity not only has a love for chocolate but they are also constantly look-ing out for unusual gifts. The local

market has many chocolate options but nothing much to offer by way of Qatar’s flavours. So we felt it was time we came up with something that reflected the local culture. Our quest resulted in a 100 percent natu-ral chocolate with an unprecedented

harmony of pure tastes and rich aro-mas that we know people will rec-ognize as being from Qatar. We are proud of this achievement.”

The flavoured chocolates include Cardamom, saffron, rose flavour and much more. The Peninsula

Mövenpick Hotels & Resorts opens hotel in China

Mövenpick Hotels & Resorts announces the opening of the first international five-

star hotel in the city of Enshi, in cen-tral China’s Hubei province. The new 14-storey Mövenpick Hotel Enshi is located close to the convention centre in the city’s thriving business district, just a short drive from the train sta-tion, with fast connections to the stra-tegic cities of Wuhan and Chongqing, and the newly built airport.

“We are proud to become the first five-star hotel in the city of Enshi,” says Jean Gabriel Pérès, President and Chief Executive Officer of Mövenpick Hotels & Resorts.

The Peninsula

Page 6: Page 01 Sept 10 - The Peninsula · By Alexei Oreskovic & Poornima Gupta A pple Inc and Google Inc’s Motorola are among those trying to score style points as game-changing technological

PLUS | TUESDAY 10 SEPTEMBER 20136 RECIPE

Masala Prawns

Ingredients:• 1 kg, peeled and deveined Prawn • 2 tsp yogurt • 2 tsp tandoori masala • 1 tsp chilli powder • 1 tsp garlic powder • 1 tsp onion powder • 1 tsp cumin powder • 1 tsp coriander powder • ½ tsp black pepper powder • ½ tsp mango powder (Amm Chur) • ¼ tsp sugar • ½ cup chopped coriander leaves • Cooking oil – For deep frying

Method:Mix everything together, set aside in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.Heat oil in a frying pan and fry prawns on high heat. Transfer to a

serving dish. Garnish with coriander leaves and serve immediately. Havovi Rabadi

Prawn and Ginger Cakes

Ingredients:• 1 large potato, peeled, diced• 250g peeled green prawns• 3 shallots, finely diced• 2 tbsp coriander, chopped• 1/2 tsp grated fresh ginger• 1 tsp soy sauce• 2 tsp sweet chilli sauce• 2 tsp cornflour• 2 tbsp vegetable oil

Method:Place potato in a small saucepan, cover with cold water, bring

to the boil and cook for 8-10 minutes until tender. Drain and lay in a single layer on a plate or tray to cool.

Chop prawn meat finely and place in a large bowl with shallots, coriander, ginger, soy sauce and sweet chilli sauce. Season with salt and pepper, and mix well.

Use a fork to roughly mash potatoes then add them to the prawn mix with the cornflour. Combine well.

Heat half the oil in a large nonstick frying pan. Form 16 cakes from the prawn mix and cook in batches for 2 minutes each side until nicely brown, adding more oil as required. Remove to a plate lined with absorbent paper and keep warm. Serve with extra sweet chilli sauce for dipping.

Amna

Prawn and Watermelon Salad

Ingredients:• ¼kg seeded watermelon balls • ½kg cooked (small sized) prawns • 20ml fresh squeezed lime juice • 60gm chopped green onions • 1 small seeded and diced yellow bell pepper • 100gm toasted pecan pieces• 60gm chopped fresh parsley • Leaf lettuce Summer Dressing• 2.5ml plain low-fat yogurt • 1.25ml light mayonnaise • 40gm prepared mustard • 20ml lime juice • 1 clove crushed garlic• 2.5gm dried tarragon • 1.25gm salt

Method:Combine watermelon and prawns. Sprinkle with lime juice.

Add onions, bell pepper, pecans and parsley. Toss to combine. Line a bowl or individual serving plates with lettuce and mound

salad in center. Mix dressing ingredients and spoon over salad. Karen Kumar

Saucy Crunchy Prawns with Toasted Couscous

Ingredients: • 20 jumbo prawns, peeled and deveined (about 4 pound • 1 large egg white, lightly beaten • 1/2 cup panko (Japanese breadcrumbs) • 1 tsp chopped fresh cilantro • 1/2 tsp grated peeled fresh ginger • 1/8 tsp freshly ground black pepper • 1 tbsp canola oil • 2 cups trimmed watercress • 1 cup orange juice• 1 tbsp chopped fresh cilantro• 2 tbsp reduced-fat mayonnaise• 1 1/2 tbsp fat-free, less-sodium chicken broth• 1 tsp grated peeled fresh ginger• 1 tsp fresh lime juice• 1/2 tsp ground cumin• 1/4 tsp salt• 1/4 tsp ground red pepperCouscous: • 1 cup uncooked couscous• 1 1/2 cups fat-free, less-sodium broth• 1/2 cup orange juice• 1/2 tsp salt• 1/3 cup chopped green onions • 2 tbsp sliced almonds, toasted• 1 tbsp unsalted butter

Method:To prepare sauce, bring 1 cup orange juice to a boil in a small

saucepan over medium-high heat; cook until reduced to 1/4 cup (about 10 minutes). Remove from heat; cool completely. Stir in 1 tablespoon cilantro and next 7 ingredients (through red pepper); set aside.

To prepare couscous: Place couscous in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat; cook 3 minutes or until toasted, stirring constantly. Add 1 1/2 cups broth, 1/2 cup orange juice, and 1/2 teaspoon salt; bring to a boil. Remove from heat; cover and let stand 5 minutes.

Fluff with a fork; add onions, almonds, and butter, stirring until butter melts. Keep warm.

To prepare prawns: Combine prawns and egg white in a large bowl, tossing to coat. Combine the panko, 1 teaspoon cilantro, 1/2 teaspoon ginger, and black pepper in a large zip-top plastic bag. Add prawns to the bag, and seal and shake to coat.

Heat oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat; arrange prawns in a single layer in pan. Cook 2 minutes on each side or until done.

Place 3/4 cup couscous on each of 4 plates; top each with 1/2 cup watercress and 5 prawns. Drizzle each with 1 1/2 table-spoons sauce.

Aisha Mohammed Rafiq

WINNER

Coriander Lemon Prawns

Ingredients• 250g prawns (medium), shelled and deveined• 1 cup fresh coriander leaves• 6-7 cloves garlic• 1 inch piece ginger• 2 lemons• 1/2 tsp crushed black peppercorns• 3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil• Green olives, seeded stuffed with pimentos, a few

Method:Put coriander leaves, garlic and ginger in a mixer jar. Grate

the rind of one lemon directly into the jar. Squeeze the juice of 2 lemons into the jar and add salt. Grind everything together to a fine paste.

Transfer the paste into a bowl, add prawns and mix. Add crushed black peppercorns and mix. (If you like it spicier you can grind green chillies with the coriander leaves.)Set the prawns aside to marinate for 15-20 minutes.

Heat extra virgin olive oil in a non stick pan. Place a green olive in the curve of each prawn and secure the two ends of the prawn with a toothpick. Put the prawns in the pan and cook till they are completely cooked. Take care not to over cook them. Serve hot.

Laxman Banjade

RECIPE CONTEST

Theme Nights:

Sundays - Surf Seafood Night dinner buffet@ QR 260Tuesdays - Asian Flavours dinner buffet @ QR 225Thursdays - Phoenician Night dinner buffet@ QR 235Saturdays - Turf Steak Night dinner buffet@ QR 250Mondays, Wednesdays & FridaysInternational buffet dinner @ QR 195Friday Brunch: 12:30pm - 4pm at QR 275 ORQR 250 with soft drinksSaturday Brunch: 12:30pm - 3:30pm at QR 250 OR QR 225 with soft drinks

Peninsula PlusPO BOX 3488, Doha,

[email protected],

[email protected]

The theme for this

week is Egg.

(Send in your recipe with

ingredients in metric

measurements). Winner will

receive a dinner voucher.

To claim your prize

call 44557837.

People share a traditional seafood dish known as “ceviche” during the Mistura International Gastronomic Fair in Lima. The dish is typically made from fresh raw fish marinated in citrus juices, such as lemon or lime, and spiced with ají or chili pep-pers. Additional seasonings, such as chopped onions, salt, and coriander, may also be added. Ceviche is usually accompa-nied by side dishes that complement its flavors, such as sweet potato, lettuce, corn, avocado or plantain.The fair seeks to promote Peruvian cuisine by showcasing food and products from all over the country. Exponents of Peruvian cuisine and foreign chefs are also participating in the fair, which runs till September 15.

Peru food fair

Page 7: Page 01 Sept 10 - The Peninsula · By Alexei Oreskovic & Poornima Gupta A pple Inc and Google Inc’s Motorola are among those trying to score style points as game-changing technological

FITNESS/HEALTH 7PLUS | TUESDAY 10 SEPTEMBER 2013

By Kate Kelland

As Susan sits chatting to a nurse in a London clinic, a light tapping sound by her head signals that parts of her

brain are being zapped by thousands of tiny electro-magnetic pulses from a machine plugged into the wall.

The 50 year-old doctor is among growing ranks of people with so-called treatment-resistant depression, and after 21 years fighting a disorder that destroyed her ability to work and at times made her want to “opt out of life”, this is a last resort.

Until recently, Susan and others like her had effectively reached the end of the road with depression treatments, having tied the best drugs medical sci-ence had to offer, engaged in hours of therapy, and tried cocktails of both.

But a renaissance in research into depression prompted by some remark-able results with highly experimen-tal treatments has changed the way neuroscientists see the disorder and is offering hope for patients who had feared there was nowhere left to go.

Their drive to find an answer has taken neuroscientists to uncharted waters — researching everything from psychedelic magic mushrooms, to the veterinary tranquilizer ketamine, to magnetic stimulation through the skull, to using electrical implants – a bit like a pacemaker for the brain — to try and reset this complex organ’s wiring and engender a more positive outlook.

Their sometimes surprising find-ings have in turn taught them more about depression — leading to a view of it not as a single mental illness but a range of disorders each with distinct mechanisms, yet all producing simi-larly debilitating symptoms.

“The thinking about depression has been revitalised,” said Helen Mayberg, a neurologist at Emory University in Atlanta in the United States.

“We have a new model for thinking about psychiatric diseases not just as chemical imbalance - that your brain is a just big vat of soup where you can just add a chemical and stir - but where we ask different questions - what’s wrong with brain chemistry and what’s wrong with brain circuits.”

Add A Chemical And Stir?There’s little doubt that until this

new breath of hope, depression had

been going through a bad patch.Affecting more than 350 million

people, depression is ranked by the World Health Organization as the lead-ing cause of disability worldwide. In extreme cases, depressed people kill themselves. Around a million people commit suicide every year, the major-ity due to unidentified or untreated depression.

Treatment for depression involves either medication or psychotherapy - and often a combination of both. Yet as things stand, as many as half of patients fail to recover on their first medication, and around a third find no lasting benefit from any medication or talking therapy currently available.

High hopes for “wonder” drugs like Prozac, Seroxat and others in their class of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) in the 1980s and 1990s were dimmed by studies in the 2000s that showed they helped a pro-portion of people, but left at least 30 percent of patients little or no better than before.

And as chronically depressed patients move from trying one drug to the next, or one type of therapy to another, their hopes too dim as it becomes clear that failing to get better with each depressive bout in turn also ups their chances of relapse.

For Susan, the battle seemed never ending.

When she was at her lowest, she dreaded each day, says she was “fright-ened of everything” and overwhelmed even by straightforward tasks like making a meal for her two children.

“I was taking double doses of anti-depressants - two types at once - and because I was also very agitated I was on (the sedative) chloral hydrate to help me sleep,” she said.

“So I was on this massive amount of medication, but with no effect what-soever on my depression. Nothing was working.”

Desperate to help patients like Susan, and alarmed by news of some pharma-ceutical firms such as GlaxoSmithKline abandoning research and development in depression because it was proving too hard to find new drugs that could turn a profit, doctors began looking for new approaches.

“We often encounter patients who say ‘I’ve tried a million things and nothing seems to be working’,” said Rafael Euba, a consultant psychia-trist at the London Psychiatry Centre

(LPC)where Susan was treated. “We want to instill a feeling of hope.”

Electro-therapyIn Susan’s case, past experience

with a controversial electrical inter-vention - electro convulsion therapy (ECT) - which she says was what eventually clawed her back from her severe depression 17 years ago, lead her to investigate the latest in electri-cal treatments - so-called repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation, or rTMS

Approved by medicines regulators in the United States and in Europe it is a painless treatment that uses electro-magnetic induction to activate an area of the brain that psychiatrists know is involved in the regulation of mood.

Unlike ECT, which gained notori-ety in the 1975 American drama film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, rTMS it does not induce “shock”, but is far more targeted, delivering a pulse to neurons in the brain and that makes them fire again.

At the LPC a treatment course can be anything from 3 to 6 weeks of half an hour a day, five days a week.

Patients put on a white fabric cap and the electro-magnetic coil is posi-tioned over the part of the brain that needs help - normally the left dorso-lateral prefrontal cortex, which is a few inches above the temple beneath the skull.

“Unlike with other psychiatric treat-ments, patients tend to find this expe-rience quite pleasant,” said Euba. “All you get is a slight tingling on the scalp - and some people like that because it’s a physical sensation that something is happening.”

Although they are from a controlled trial and show only a snapshot of the couple of dozen patients treated and monitored at one clinic, Euba’s results so far have been striking.

Of 24 patients with depression rang-ing from mild to severe who received rTMS at the LPC, 18 of them - or 75 percent - got completely well and were classed as being in remission. Two more responded to treatment but did not get completely well, and only four - 17 percent - did not respond.

Deep Brain StimulationMayberg and her colleagues in the

United States had also been intrigued by the potential for electrical stimula-tion to ease severe depression, but they

went in deeper.After the success of using deep brain

stimulation (DBS) devices made by firms such as Medtronic to treat trem-ors in patients with Parkinson’s dis-ease, her team conducted a trial using them in a small number of patients who’d had depression for decades and had not been helped by numerous dif-ferent drugs.

Electrical stimulation devices were implanted into the brains of patients with severe depression and bipolar disorder.

“In this treatment the stimulation continues all the time - they implant the “pacemaker” and leave it switched on for years - and only sometimes they have to change the battery,” said Jonathan Roiser, a reader in cognitive neuroscience at University College London.

According to study results published in the Archives of General Psychiatry

journal last year, the number of patients who had responded to treat-ment after two years was very high - at 92 percent - and the proportion who were completely well and in remission from their depression was 58 percent.

For psychiatrists more used to see-ing patients fail again and again to get better on any kind of treatment, these results were unheard-of. “It was a remarkable finding,” says Roiser.

Yet it’s not just the brain’s wir-ing that is getting more attention. Chemistry, too has thrown up some exciting results.

Researchers who looked, for exam-ple, at the veterinary tranquilizer keta-mine - or “Special K” as it is called as a party drug - found that in some patients with depression it dramati-cally reduced their symptoms, some-times within hours - and kept their mood stable for several weeks after treatment.

Inspired by these uplifting findings, several drug firms, including Roche, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen unit, are in the early or mid stages of developing ketamine deriva-tives into what they hope will become successful new antidepressants.

Far from being defeated by the emer-gence of depression as a more complex a disorder than first assumed, scien-tists say the renaissance in research is based in confidence that deeper knowl-edge will ensure new and better treat-ments can be found.

Reuters

Research renaissance offers new ways out of chronic depression

Page 8: Page 01 Sept 10 - The Peninsula · By Alexei Oreskovic & Poornima Gupta A pple Inc and Google Inc’s Motorola are among those trying to score style points as game-changing technological

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LLY

WO

OD

NE

WS

By

Lis

a R

ich

win

e a

nd

Ch

ris

Mic

hau

d

Vin

Die

sel’s

retu

rn a

s glo

win

g-

eyed s

pace t

raveller R

idd

ick

won t

he w

eekend m

ovie

race,

rin

gin

g u

p $

18.7

m in U

S a

nd

Can

adia

n t

icket

sale

s a

nd k

nockin

g

three-t

ime box offi

ce queen

O

prah

Win

frey t

o s

econd p

lace.

Civ

il r

ights

dram

a L

ee D

an

iels

’ T

he

Bu

tler,

sta

rrin

g O

scar w

inn

er F

orest

W

hit

aker a

nd m

edia

mogul

Win

frey,

sl

ipped t

o s

econ

d,

brin

gin

g i

n $

8.9

m

from

Frid

ay t

hrough S

unday.

Inst

ruct

ion

s N

ot

Incl

ud

ed”

a S

panis

h-

lan

guage fi

lm s

tarrin

g a

nd d

irecte

d

by M

exic

an

te

levis

ion

sta

r E

ugen

io

Derbez,

was t

hir

d w

ith $

8.1

m i

n i

ts

secon

d w

eek

in

rele

ase in

U

S an

d

Canadia

n t

heatr

es.

Th

e m

ovie

double

d it

s reach

to

m

ore t

han 7

00 t

heate

rs

aft

er i

ts l

im-

ited d

ebut

a w

eek a

go s

et

records

for

a S

panis

h fi

lm o

penin

g i

n t

he U

nit

ed

Sta

tes.

The fi

lm s

tars D

erbez

as a

n

Acapulc

o p

layboy forced t

o r

ais

e a

baby

gir

l le

ft o

n h

is d

oorst

ep.

Jennif

er A

nis

ton c

om

edy W

e’r

e t

he

Mil

lers

took i

n $

7.9m

for f

ourth

pla

ce,

foll

ow

ed

by

an

imate

d

Dis

ney

film

P

lan

es

wit

h $

4.3

m.

Concert

film

On

e D

irect

ion

: T

his

is

Us,

about

the p

opula

r B

rit

ish b

oy b

and, fe

ll

to t

he N

o. 6 s

lot

wit

h $

4.1

m, accordin

g

to s

tudio

est

imate

s.

While R

idd

ick f

ell s

hort

of

indust

ry

forecast

s fo

r a

sta

rt

betw

een $

21m

and

$24m

at

dom

est

ic t

heatr

es,

dis

trib

uto

r

Univ

ersa

l P

ictu

res,

a u

nit

of

Com

cast

C

orp,

had p

redic

ted a

low

er o

pen

ing

betw

een $

18m

and $

20m

.“W

e’r

e v

ery c

om

forta

ble

wit

h t

hat

(tota

l),”

said

Nik

ki

Rocco,

presi

den

t of

dis

trib

uti

on f

or U

niv

ersa

l P

ictu

res.

“W

e

were

reali

sti

c

abou

t th

is

proje

ct,”

she n

ote

d,

addin

g t

hat

“the

fan b

ase

is

here f

or (

Die

sel)

, so

we’r

e

hopin

g i

t hangs

in t

here”

in t

he c

om

-in

g w

eeks.

Th

e

movie

w

as

the

on

ly

new

nati

onw

ide r

ele

ase

on t

he p

ost

-Labour

Day w

eeken

d,

usually on

e of

year’

s sl

ow

est

at

theatr

es

as

sum

mer b

lock-

bust

er s

easo

n e

nds

and k

ids

retu

rn t

o

school.

Die

sel prom

ote

d R

idd

ick t

o t

he h

uge

fan b

ase

on h

is F

acebook p

age, w

hic

h

has

scored m

ore t

han 4

6 m

illion “

likes.

” T

he a

cto

r is

best

know

n for h

is r

ole

in

the p

opula

r F

ast

& F

uri

ou

s car-c

hase

fr

anchis

e.

Fa

st &

Fu

riou

s 6, rele

ase

d in

May,

raced t

o n

early

$790m

in g

lobal

sale

s, r

ankin

g a

s one o

f th

e y

ear’s

big

-gest

blo

ckbust

ers.

Rid

dic

k i

s a s

equel

to 2

000 r

ele

ase

P

itch

Bla

ck a

nd 2

004’s

Th

e C

hro

nic

les

of

Rid

dic

k.

In th

e n

ew

in

sta

llm

en

t, R

iddic

k,

an

ex-c

on

who c

an

see i

n t

he d

ark,

leaves

his

com

forta

ble

world

as

leader

of

the N

ecrom

onger r

ace t

o s

eek o

ut

his

h

om

ela

nd.

On

ce double

-crossed

an

d le

ft fo

r dead,

he batt

les beasts

and b

ounty

hunte

rs

while h

e w

ork

s to

rebuild h

imse

lf p

hysi

cally a

nd m

orally.

Rid

dic

k w

as

independentl

y fi

nanced

for $

38m

. T

he B

utl

er,

rele

ase

d o

n A

ugust

16,

brought

its

cum

ula

tive s

ale

s to

$91.

9m

. T

he m

ovie

sta

rrin

g W

hit

aker as a

long-s

ervin

g W

hit

e H

ouse

butl

er a

nd

Win

frey as h

is h

ard-d

rin

kin

g w

ife,

topped b

ox o

ffice r

ankin

gs

in i

ts fi

rst

tw

o w

eekends

and a

gain

over t

he four-

day L

abor D

ay p

erio

d.

Univ

ersa

l P

ictu

res

rele

ase

d R

idd

ick

in

the

Un

ited

Sta

tes,

an

d

eO

ne

Ente

rta

inm

ent

dis

trib

ute

d t

he fi

lm in

Canada. T

he p

riv

ate

ly h

eld

Wein

stein

C

om

pany d

istr

ibute

d T

he B

utl

er.

Sony

Corp’s

m

ovie

stu

dio

rele

ased

On

e

Dir

ect

ion.

Inst

ructi

on

s N

ot

Inclu

ded w

as dis

-tr

ibute

d by P

an

teli

on

, a jo

int

ven

-tu

re o

f H

ollyw

ood s

tudio

Lio

ns

Gate

E

nte

rta

inm

en

t an

d M

exic

an

m

edia

gia

nt

Tele

vis

a.

Warner B

ros,

a u

nit

of T

ime W

arner

Inc, rele

ase

d W

e’r

e t

he M

ille

rs.

Reu

ters

HO

LLY

WO

OD

NE

WS

Sin

ger P

ink, know

n f

or h

er f

earle

ss h

igh w

ire a

cts

durin

g h

er c

oncerts

, adm

its

she is

afr

aid

of

shark

s and s

pid

ers,

reports

people

.com

.“I

’m a

fraid

of

spid

ers.

I a

m a

fraid

of

shark

s,”

Pin

k s

aid

.“I

’m a

fraid

of th

e w

orl

d r

unnin

g o

ut

of cheese

cake, esp

ecia

lly C

heese

cake

Facto

ry. A

nd t

hen I

would

als

o h

ave t

o b

e a

fraid

of

the w

orld

runnin

g o

ut

of

key l

imes,

because

key l

ime c

heese

cake i

s th

e b

est

kin

d o

f cheese

cake

there is,

” sh

e a

dded.

The 3

4-y

ear-o

ld is

preparin

g for h

er T

ruth

About

Love w

orl

d t

our in t

he

US

in O

cto

ber,

and s

he w

ill do a

crobati

cs

wit

hout

a s

afe

ty n

et.

“On

e o

f th

e m

ost

darin

g t

hin

gs

I’ve e

ver d

on

e i

s sk

ydiv

e,

an

d t

hat’s

because

Carey H

art

(her h

usb

and, a m

oto

cross

cham

p)

surpris

ed m

e w

ith

it a

nd I

had n

o c

hoic

e. B

ut

then I

did

it

twic

e; th

e s

econd t

ime is

much m

ore

enjo

yable

. A

noth

er d

arin

g t

hin

g I

did

was

marryin

g C

arey H

art,”

Pin

k s

aid

.

Koc

hada

iyaa

n to

rel

ease

on

Raj

ini’s

b’d

ay?

If all g

oes

as

pla

nned,

then

R

aji

nik

an

th-

starrer T

am

il p

erio

d-

dram

a

Koch

ad

aiy

aa

n

will m

ost

lik

ely

rele

ase

on

h

is

bir

thday

on

Decem

ber

12

world

-w

ide,

says

a

source

clo

se t

o t

he fi

lm’s

unit

.“T

he m

akers

want

it

to b

e R

ajini si

r’s

bir

th-

day g

ift

and i

n t

urn a

tr

eat

for h

is f

ans.

The

idea i

s to

rele

ase

it

on

his

bir

thday p

rovid

ed e

veryth

ing g

oes

as

smooth

ly a

s pla

nned. W

e a

re c

ur-

rentl

y b

usy

wit

h t

he p

ost

-producti

on w

ork

,” t

he s

ource s

aid

.T

he fi

rst

teaser of

Koch

ad

aiy

aa

n,

wh

ich

is

dir

ecte

d by S

oun

darya

Rajinik

anth

Ash

win

, w

as

rele

ase

d o

nline y

est

erday. It

has

receiv

ed m

ixed

resp

onse

from

fans

so f

ar.

While t

rue ‘R

ajinia

ns’

loved it,

som

e p

anned it

for its

poor v

isual eff

ects

.T

oute

d t

o b

e m

ade o

n a

budget

of

over `

1bn,

Koch

ad

aiy

aa

n is

reporte

dly

In

dia

’s fi

rst

moti

on c

aptu

re 3

D fi

lm w

hic

h w

ill be r

ele

ase

d e

ven in f

oreig

n

languages

such a

s It

alian, S

panis

h a

nd e

ven J

apanese

.T

he fi

lm a

lso featu

res

Deepik

a P

adukone, R

Sarath

Kum

ar,

Jackie

Shroff

, S

hobana a

nd A

adi

Pin

isett

y i

n i

mporta

nt

role

s. I

t is

join

tly p

roduced b

y

Eros

Inte

rnati

onal and M

edia

one G

lobal E

nte

rta

inm

ent.

Double

Osc

ar-w

innin

g c

om

pose

r A

R R

ahm

an i

s com

posi

ng t

he t

unes

for t

he fi

lm w

hic

h h

as

its

audio

rele

ase

in O

cto

ber.

I to

o use

d t

o th

ink a

bou

t m

y big

pos

ters

: S

hah

id K

apoo

r

Acto

r S

hahid

Kapoor,

who w

ill

be s

een

ess

ayin

g t

he c

haracte

r o

f an

asp

irin

g a

cto

r i

n u

pcom

ing a

cti

on-c

om

edy P

ha

ta P

ost

er

Nik

hla

Hero

, sa

ys

like h

is c

haracte

r, h

e t

oo,

use

d t

o d

ream

and t

hin

k o

f becom

ing a

n

acto

r a

nd h

avin

g h

uge p

ost

ers

and h

oardin

gs.

In t

he fi

lm, S

hahid

’s c

haracte

r V

ishw

as

Rao a

lways

asp

ires

and d

ream

s of

becom

ing a

n a

cto

r.“J

ust

lik

e m

y c

haracte

r V

ishw

as

Rao s

ays

in t

he fi

lm, ‘e

k d

in m

ere b

hi

bade b

ade p

ost

er lagengey’, I

als

o u

sed t

o h

ave s

uch d

ream

s befo

re b

ecom

-in

g a

n a

cto

r a

nd m

e t

oo u

sed t

o t

hin

k ‘

me t

oo w

ill

have s

uch h

uge h

uge

post

ers’

,” S

hahid

said

here in a

n inte

rvie

w.

Befo

re forayin

g into

acti

ng in 2

003, th

e 3

2-y

ear-o

ld w

ork

ed in q

uit

e a

few

m

usi

c v

ideos

and c

om

mercia

ls. L

ate

r h

e join

ed S

hia

mak D

avar I

nst

itute

for

the P

erfo

rm

ing A

rts

and w

as

seen a

s a d

ancer in 1

999 r

ele

ase

d fi

lm T

aa

l.“I

sti

ll r

em

em

ber w

hen I

use

d t

o s

tand b

eneath

the h

oardin

gs

and t

hin

k

‘wheth

er I

will

have s

uch h

uge p

ost

ers

or n

ot’

. S

o,

defin

itely

I t

oo h

ave

been t

hrough t

hose

mom

ents

. I

too h

ave g

one for t

he a

udit

ions,

” he a

dded.

Dir

ecte

d b

y R

ajk

um

ar S

anto

shi, P

ha

ta P

ost

er

Nik

hla

Hero

featu

res

Ileana

D’C

ruz

and h

it t

he s

creens

on S

epte

mber 2

0.

SR

K l

oves

the

soli

tude

on fl

ights

Superst

ar S

hah R

ukh K

han loves

the c

alm

and ‘alo

ne-t

ime’ th

at

he g

ets

to

experie

nce w

hile fl

yin

g.

“Love t

he s

olitu

de i

n a

pla

ne c

abin

. M

akes

me f

eel

extr

em

ely

cosy

and

rest

ful. N

eed t

o c

atc

h u

p o

n s

om

e m

uch n

eeded s

leep. L

ove y

ou a

ll,” S

RK

post

ed o

n T

wit

ter.

How

ever,

he w

as

late

r s

urpris

ed w

hen h

is H

ap

py

New

Yea

r co-s

tar B

om

an

Irani dis

appeared o

n t

he p

lane.

“My e

xtr

em

ely

dis

tinguis

hed f

rie

nd B

om

an i

s a c

lass

act.

It’s

the fi

rst

ti

me I

have l

ost

som

eone o

n a

pla

ne.

Nobody c

ould

find h

im!!!

How

?” h

e

post

ed o

n t

he m

icro-b

loggin

g s

ite.

Shah R

ukh d

id n

ot

ela

borate

where B

om

an h

ad d

isappeared t

o.

Dir

ecte

d b

y F

arah K

han,

Ha

pp

y N

ew

Yea

r als

o s

tars

Deepik

a P

adukone

and A

bhis

hek B

achchan.

Sim

on C

owel

l’s c

hil

d w

ill

be

Bri

tish

Musi

c m

ogul S

imon C

ow

ell’s p

artn

er L

auren S

ilverm

an w

ill giv

e b

irth

to

their

child in t

he U

K b

ecause

it

fits

their

schedule

. S

ince t

he d

elivery

will be h

ere, th

e b

aby w

ill be c

om

ple

tely

Brit

ish.

Silverm

an is

base

d in N

ew

York

, but

will st

ay in E

ngla

nd d

urin

g d

elivery

because

Cow

ell w

ill

be h

ere b

usy

shooti

ng f

or B

rita

in’s

Got

Ta

len

t (B

GT

),

reports

Su

nd

ay

Peop

le n

ew

spaper.

“He is

thrille

d t

hat

the b

aby w

ill be b

orn in E

ngla

nd. H

e a

nd L

auren h

ave

taken t

he d

ecis

ion b

ase

d o

n w

hat

is b

est

for t

he b

aby a

nd t

hey’v

e c

hose

n

the U

K,” a

source s

aid

.“B

ecause

Sim

on h

as

to b

e in t

he U

K for ‘B

GT

’ at

the t

ime, it

is

the o

nly

opti

on. H

e w

ants

to b

e a

t L

auren’s

sid

e w

hen s

he g

ives

bir

th a

nd w

ants

to

be w

ith h

is s

on a

fter h

e’s

born,” t

he s

ource a

dded.

Afr

aid o

f sp

ider

s an

d s

har

ks,

say

s P

ink

PLU

S |

TU

ES

DA

Y 1

0 S

EP

TE

MB

ER

2013

Mil

ey C

yrus

lose

s Vo

gue

cove

r

Pop s

inger M

iley C

yrus

lost

the c

hance t

o a

ppear o

n t

he c

over o

f D

ecem

ber

issu

e o

f fa

shio

n m

agazi

ne V

ogu

e b

ecause

of her r

aunchy p

erfo

rm

ance a

t M

TV

Vid

eo M

usi

c A

wards

recentl

y.

The 2

0-y

ear-o

ld w

as

photo

graphed f

or t

he D

ecem

ber i

ssue a

s edit

or-

in-c

hie

f A

nna W

into

ur w

as

eager t

o p

rese

nt

her a

s a n

ew

fash

ion i

con,

but

Win

tour c

hanged h

er m

ind a

fter w

itness

ing t

he s

inger’s

perfo

rm

ance,

reports

show

biz

spy.c

om

.“A

nna f

ound t

he w

hole

thin

g d

ista

stefu

l,”

said

a s

ource.

“She d

ecid

ed, base

d o

n M

iley’s

perfo

rm

ance, to

take t

he c

over i

n a

dif

-fe

rent

dir

ecti

on,” t

he s

ource a

dded.

Even C

yrus’

acto

r-fi

ance L

iam

Hem

sworth

wants

to s

plit

from

her a

fter

her a

ct

at

the a

wards

nig

ht.

“The V

MA

s is

the s

traw

that

will break h

im. H

e w

ants

out

of

the r

ela

-ti

onsh

ip. A

ll o

f his

fam

ily a

nd m

anagem

ent

are b

eggin

g h

im t

o b

reak it

off

and p

ublicly

move o

n,” s

aid

a s

ource.

The c

ouple

was

last

seen p

ublicly

at

the p

rem

iere o

f H

em

sworth

’s m

ovie

P

ara

noia

on A

ugust

8.

Ridd

ick

unse

ats

Butle

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Page 9: Page 01 Sept 10 - The Peninsula · By Alexei Oreskovic & Poornima Gupta A pple Inc and Google Inc’s Motorola are among those trying to score style points as game-changing technological

PLUS | TUESDAY 10 SEPTEMBER 2013 MOTORING610BM

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Page 10: Page 01 Sept 10 - The Peninsula · By Alexei Oreskovic & Poornima Gupta A pple Inc and Google Inc’s Motorola are among those trying to score style points as game-changing technological

11BOOKS PLUS | TUESDAY 10 SEPTEMBER 2013

By Bruce Desilva

The Maid’s Versionby Daniel Woodrell(Little, Brown and Company)

It’s been several years since the publication of Daniel Woodrell’s (pictured) slim, harrowing and much-celebrated Winter’s Bone. Now The Maid’s Version has

finally hit the bookstores, and it’s even slimmer — just 164 pages. But don’t let that fool you. Woodrell can pack more story, truth and human emotion in that space than most writers can in three times the pages.

The new novel was inspired by a real event, an explosion that destroyed a dance hall in West Plains, Montana, in the 1920s, killing dozens of young people. Growing up in the Ozarks, Woodrell heard the back-porch stories — whispers that the tragedy was no accident and that someone a member of his family once worked for might have somehow been to blame.

The author chose to tell his highly fictionalised version of a story through the memories of Alma DeGeer Dunahew as she gradually reveals facts, rumours and suspicions to her grandson.

Alma — bitter, vengeful and some-what dotty — thinks the rich banker she once worked for as a maid deliber-ately caused the explosion that killed, among others, her promiscuous sister. But other characters, including mob-sters from St Louis, local gypsies and a preacher who saw the dance hall as a den of iniquity, provide a host of plau-sible suspects.

The book’s first line introduces Alma from the grandson’s point of view in Woodrell’s typically stark fashion: “She frightened me every dawn the summer I stayed with her.”

On one level, the story is a who-dun-nit, but it is much more than that. The

Maid’s Version is a superbly textured novel about a community coping with tragedy and poisoned by suspicions and festering anger. It is a novel about memory and about growing old. And it is also an exploration of the nature of storytelling itself.

Woodrell tells his story partly through the colloquial voices of its Ozark characters and partly through narration that manages to be both hard-boiled and richly poetic. Readers will be reminded once again why crit-ics so often compare him to William Faulkner and Cormac McCarthy.

AP

Daniel Woodrell tells a superbly textured story

By Hillel Italie

The book world is finally honouring Maya Angelou. The poet and author of I Know Why

the Caged Bird Sings will be this year’s recipi-ent of the Literarian Award, an honorary National Book Award for contributions to the literary com-munity, the US National Book Foundation announced. It is the first major literary prize for the 85-year-old Angelou, who has been celebrated everywhere from the Grammy Awards to the White House. She has received three Grammys for best spoken word album, a National Medal of Arts and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country’s highest civilian honour.

Angelou said she couldn’t wait to be in the same room as “some very big names in the literary world” and that the Literarian prize made her feel that she was “picking in high cotton.”

“Dr Angelou’s body of work transcends the words on the page,” the book foundation’s executive direc-tor, Harold Augenbraum, said in a statement. “She has been on the front lines of history and the fight for social justice and decade after decade remains a symbol of the redemptive power of literature in the

contemporary world.”E L Doctorow, a familiar name among prize judges,

will receive an honorary medal for “contributions to American letters.” Doctorow, 82, won the National Book Award in 1986 for World’s Fair and was a final-ist three other times. A native of New York City, he is best known for the million-selling historical novel Ragtime, which has been adapted into a feature film and a Broadway musical.

“Doctorow is a master of historical fiction who has brought the events of the past to people all over the world in an extraordinary fashion. It is also a special opportunity to give tribute to a native New Yorker in his hometown,” Augenbraum said.

“Any serious award such as this of the National Book Foundation has to be gratifying,” Doctorow said, adding that he believed literary awards did not only benefit the writers. “There is a communal value — they affirm the continuity of our literary culture.”

Previous winners of the National Book Award medal being given to Doctorow include Philip Roth, Arthur Miller and Elmore Leonard. Dave Eggers, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and NPR’s Terry Gross are among those who have received the Literarian Award.

Angelou, besides being a dancer, actress, filmmaker, singer and activist, has made historic contributions to reading and writing. Caged Bird is among the most widely read and widely taught memoirs of the past half-century, memorably documenting her rise from the rural, segregated South to international fame. Her poem On the Pulse of the Morning, which she recited in 1993 at President Bill Clinton’s first inaugural, quickly sold hundreds of thousands of copies.

“What I have always wanted is to be of use,” Angelou said. “I will not be abused. I will not be misused — not willingly. But I will be of use. Anybody who is not of use is useless.” AP

Maya Angelou to receive honorary award

Page 11: Page 01 Sept 10 - The Peninsula · By Alexei Oreskovic & Poornima Gupta A pple Inc and Google Inc’s Motorola are among those trying to score style points as game-changing technological

TECHNOLOGYPLUS | TUESDAY 10 SEPTEMBER 201312

By Lydia DePillis

How’s this for a reversal of fortune: Nokia was once the world’s biggest cell-phone manufacturer, hav-

ing introduced the first mass-market mobile handset. Last week, it sold its devices division to Microsoft for $7.2bn — a fraction of the $250bn it was worth at the turn of the century. What went wrong?

Disruption happens, of course. Incredibly innovative companies score smash hits, and then sink to noth-ing when they fail to see the next big thing coming. See Kodak, Research in Motion, Friendster, Netscape, Motorola, Newsweek... the list goes on. That didn’t need to happen with Nokia. It could have brought its design sensibility and precise engineering to a wide range of products, just like another company that’s closely inter-twined with its home country: South Korea’s Samsung. Instead, like so many first movers before it, the Finnish phe-nom clung to the source of its great-est success and couldn’t adapt when the competition moved beyond it. For Nokia, becoming laser-focused on mak-ing great cell phones blinded the com-pany to consumers’ desire for a mobile device that could do much more than let them talk to friends.

Here’s the confusing thing about Nokia’s fall: It had already executed one of the nimblest pivots in corporate history. As recounted in a corporate history, Nokia started as a paper mill in 1865. Over the next 100 years, it expanded into rubber production, cable and electronics, personal computers and televisions.

In the early 1990s, Finland went into an economic slump. Nokia’s for-estry and rubber divisions were losing money, so the company made a stra-tegic decision to throw itself into the fast-growing mobile phone business.

Over the next decade, Nokia became Finland’s single most important busi-ness, contributing a quarter of national economic growth between 1998 and 2007.

Unlike some businesses that ride a cash cow until it collapses, Nokia seemed determined not to get out-innovated. It spent billions of dollars a year on research and development. It was aided by Finland’s national

technology agency, Tekes, and worked closely with the country’s universities, in a benevolent technology ecosystem that spun off other ideas and skilled workers. Many smaller companies relied on Nokia as a buyer for their products and a route to the global market.

At the peak of its profitability, around 2000, Nokia was a case study of a dynamic, market-leading corporation with both a sophisticated manufactur-ing process and an endless pipeline of valuable intellectual property. James Utterback, a professor of strategic management at MIT, took a class of 150 business school students there and to Sweden’s Ericsson in the late 1990s. Nokia not only had dozens of phones at different price points on the same operating system-it was also working on futuristic ideas like videoconferenc-ing and mobile location-sharing that the market wouldn’t see for years.

“We went to Nokia and they were clearly superb at platform strategy,” Utterback said, remembering his stu-dents’ reactions: “They were predicting that Nokia would be a big success and Ericsson would fail.”

They were wrong. Ericsson ended up pushing from mobile phones into wire-less networking, and survived the tele-com crash of the early 2000s. Nokia, by

contrast, seemed unwilling to harvest the fruits of all its research, develop-ing a stash of patents that were never used. It even came up with a tablet in the late 1990s, the Wall Street Journal

reported last year, but decided to stick with its core mobile phone business.

Ironically, it may also have been too focused on low-end competition to see other competitors coming in the fer-tile mid-market for phones with more features. Only after the iPhone proved that being a pocket computer is more important than simply a voice commu-nication device did Nokia team up with Microsoft to produce the kind of rich experience that consumers now expect.

But there was another path available to Nokia: Leveraging its talent and its importance to the Finnish economy to move into parallel industries, so that falling behind in one of them wouldn’t doom it to be sold for scrap.

In that counterfactual future, the example of Samsung is instructive. The company operates everything from hotels and amusement parks to road builders and oil rigs at home in South Korea, while selling a diverse range of electronics abroad. Companies that large can also get siloed and compla-cent, but Samsung has stayed ahead of its global competition on several fronts. Its chief executive tells its employees to

operate in a state of perpetual crisis. “The positions we currently hold will be obsolete and untenable 10 years from now,” reads its 2011 corporate profile. “Across global business, attachment to laurels is folly. Staying comfortable and motionless is not an affordable luxury.”

Sure, it’s true that Samsung arose under the chaebol system, under which giant companies were given favoured treatment by the state. There are plenty of criticisms of such mega-cor-porations, which tend to have insidious power over governments, and also dis-courage entrepreneurs from starting their own competitors. But if you’re going to anchor your economy with one big company, it might as well be one that’s diversified, and therefore less vulnerable to a bad strategic call or two.

It’s tempting to imagine what Nokia would have looked like had it taken a similar route. Now, Finland is reel-ing from lost tax revenue, and unsure where to look for the kind of economic anchor that Nokia provided. Though Rovio’s Angry Birds might be a global phenomenon, it’s harder to structure an economy around a video game com-pany than the global electronics power-house Nokia once was, and could have remained.

WP-Bloomberg

2K Drive (£4.99)This week’s other big iOS gaming franchise

alongside Call of Duty. 2K Drive is the work of 2K Sports: a racing game that sees you driving a host of licensed cars around the world, and a strong emphasis on social features for competition with friends. As with the new Call of Duty game, this uses a “paymium” model (yes, a real word) in its use of in-app purchases on top of an initial download fee.

iPhone / iPad

DK Peekaboo! Read-along stories (Free)The first of two new iOS children’s apps from

book publisher DK this week, it offers digital ver-sions of the company’s Peekaboo! pop-up books for babies and toddlers, with virtual flaps to lift up, and mini-games sitting alongside the stories. Said

stories — Peekaboo! Farm, Peekaboo! Things That Go and Peekaboo! Playtime — are available as £1.99 in-app purchases, with more to follow. iPad

Star Wars Force Collection (Free)It was only a matter of time before someone

turned Star Wars into a card-battling game, given the genre’s popularity and the plentiful universe of characters in LucasFilm’s epic. Published by games firm Konami, this draws on all six Star Wars films, as you collect and battle with your favourite and not-so-favourite characters. iPhone / iPad

KakaoGroup (Free)Messaging app KakaoTalk is huge, with more than

100m users. It has also spun off a number of sepa-rate apps, with this being the latest. KakaoGroup is a way to chat more privately with groups of people, from friends and family members to colleagues. It also ties in with the main KakaoTalk app, enabling you to invite people in a group chatroom from that to join you in KakaoGroup. iPhone

Giant Boulder of Death (Free)If you’ve ever played the Katamari games on con-

sole or mobile, you’ll find some familiar features in this new game from Adult Swim, which runs (well, rolls) with the “great big ball squashing things” formula. Here, you’re trying to roll over animals, cars and entire villages, with more than 70 objects to smash and 60 goals to achieve. iPhone / iPad

Stuart Dredge / The Guardian

iOS apps for the day

Why Nokia lost, Why Nokia lost, and Samsung wonand Samsung won

Page 12: Page 01 Sept 10 - The Peninsula · By Alexei Oreskovic & Poornima Gupta A pple Inc and Google Inc’s Motorola are among those trying to score style points as game-changing technological

COMICS & MORE 13

Hoy en la HistoriaSeptember 10, 2003

1823: Simon Bolivar became president of Peru1981: Picasso’s Spanish Civil War painting Guernica was transferred to Madrid after 42 years in New York. Picasso vowed it would not enter Spain until democracy was restored1998: Free Willy movie star Keiko was released back into Icelandic waters1998: Stocks in Brazil fell 15 percent amid fears of devaluation as turmoil on the world markets continued

Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh was fatally stabbed at a Stockholm department store. The popular politician had been tipped as a likely future Prime Minister

Picture: Associated Press © GRAPHIC NEWS

ALL IN THE MIND Can you find the hidden words? They may be horizontal,vertical, diagonal, forwards or backwards.

BAY, BILLABONG, BREAKER, BRINY, BROOK, CANAL, CHANNEL,COVE, CREEK, ESTUARY, FOUNTAIN, GULF, INLET, LAGOON,LAKE, LOCH, MAIN, OASIS, OCEAN, POND, POOL, PUDDLE,RAPIDS, RESERVOIR, RILL, RIVER, RIVULET, ROLLER, RUNNEL,SEA, SHALLOWS, SOUND, SPRING, STRAIT, STREAM, SURF,TIDE, TRIBUTARY, WADI, WASH, WATER, WATERCOURSE,WATERFALL, WATER HOLE, WATERWAY, WAVE, WEIR, WELL.

LEARN ARABIC

Baby Blues by Jerry Scott and Rick Kirkman

Zits by Dennis Young and Denis Lebrun

Hagar The Horrible by Chris Browne

Words and Expressions that are often used

To declare You�arri�

To agree Youwa�q

To dance Yarqou�

To help Yousaçid

To decorate Youza�rif

To arrive Ya�il

To cut Yaq�aç

To see Yara

To sleep Yanam

To beat Ya�rib

To control Yousay�ir

To leave Yatrouk

To collect Ya�maç

Note: = ç = ‘a’ in ‘agh’ when surprised � = ‘j’ as in adjective

PLUS | TUESDAY 10 SEPTEMBER 2013

Page 13: Page 01 Sept 10 - The Peninsula · By Alexei Oreskovic & Poornima Gupta A pple Inc and Google Inc’s Motorola are among those trying to score style points as game-changing technological

PLUS | TUESDAY 10 SEPTEMBER 2013

HYPER SUDOKU

CROSSWORD

CROSSWORDS

YESTERDAY’S ANSWER

How to play Hyper Sudoku:A Hyper Sudoku

Puzzle is solved

by filling the

numbers from 1

to 9 into the blank

cells. A Hyper

Sudoku has

unlike Sudoku

13 regions

(four regions

overlap with the

nine standard

regions). In all

regions the numbers from 1 to 9 can appear

only once. Otherwise, a Hyper Sudoku is

solved like a normal Sudoku.

ACROSS 1 Potential misfit

10 Darken

15 Iranian export

16 Actress Hubbard of “Akeelah and the Bee”

17 Abbot’s attribute

18 Goliath’s master of old TV

19 Showiness

20 Private chat

22 Ref’s call

23 Secret rival

24 Santa Maria’s chain

25 Number retired for Steve Largent and Jerry Rice

28 One hanging in una iglesia

30 Truncated parlor piece?

31 Some costume cutouts

33 Figure in red

35 Sitcom mom of Cheyenne and Kyra

36 There’s nothing in it

38 “I have had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn’t it” speaker

40 Kewpie doll features

44 What a brat might throw

45 Display some guns

47 Fen frequenters

49 Painting the town red

51 Crack at a contract

53 It can be felt on felt

54 Things placed during a political campaign

56 Two-time Italian prime minister Giuliano

58 Filler of some cavities

59 Short, curly hairdo

61 Eye: Prefix

62 Heyday

63 Four-bagger

64 Ready to be posted, say

DOWN 1 Home to Tropicana

Field, familiarly

2 Rush job

3 Detrol prescriber’s field

4 Relative of cerulean

5 Body shop concern

6 Big stretch

7 Passion portrayal

8 Spirit

9 Tale of derring-do

10 Really brilliant

11 Lyre holder of myth

12 Shifts

13 Lemons are often squeezed into them

14 Shakespearean might

21 ___ de Lourdes

23 Abbr. often preceding 29-Down

26 Many a Berliner

27 Competition TV series with versions in over 30 countries

29 Abbr. often following 23-Down

32 Fashionable, some say

34 Radon’s lack

37 Let pass

38 Mahon is its largest city

39 When it’s approximately

41 Dark reddish brown

42 Some bridge holdings

43 Reputation

44 Left behind

46 N.Y.C. luggage tag letters

48 Thing placed during a political campaign

50 Work measure

52 “… despise not thy mother when she ___”: Proverbs 23:22

55 Green org. for women?

56 Out of harm’s way, in a way

57 ___ Journal (magazine)

60 E. Germany, before 1990

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

15 16

17 18

19 20 21

22 23 24

25 26 27 28 29 30

31 32 33 34

35 36 37

38 39 40 41 42 43

44 45 46 47 48

49 50 51 52 53

54 55 56 57

58 59 60

61 62

63 64

T Y P E A B B U T G P SO E U V R E A S H O R TD O N O T L E T T H E N O MA M T S I S T E R E T AT E E D L A Y R E A D E RE N D N O T E S T A C K

A I R E S S M A R T SF A L L I N G B L O C K S

F I G A R O T R U R OI L L B E O R E S T E SG L I S S A N D O T E N TT M S E N E S C O E V AR O T R E A C H T H E T O PE R E V E T T U S H I EE E N E L O O B S E S S

How to play Kakuro:The kakuro grid, unlike in sudoku, can be of any size. It has rows and columns, and dark cells like in a crossword. And, just like in a crossword, some of the dark cells will contain numbers. Some cells will contain two numbers.However, in a crossword the numbers reference clues. In a kakuro, the numbers are all you get! They denote the total of the digits in the row or column referenced by the number.Within each collection of cells - called a run

- any of the numbers 1 to 9 may be used but, like sudoku, each number may only be used once.

YESTERDAY’S ANSWER

14

EASY SUDOKUCartoon Arts International / The New York Times Syndicate

Easy Sudoku PuzzlesPlace a digit from 1 to 9 in each empty cell so everyrow, every column and every 3x3 box contains allthe digits 1 to 9.

Page 14: Page 01 Sept 10 - The Peninsula · By Alexei Oreskovic & Poornima Gupta A pple Inc and Google Inc’s Motorola are among those trying to score style points as game-changing technological

CINEMA / TV LISTINGS 15

TEL: 444933989 444517001SHOWING AT VILLAGGIO & CITY CENTER

05:00 Tennis US Open

07:30 Cycling - La

Vuelta

09:30 Omni Sport

10:00 Newcastle vs

Bath

11:45 The Football

League Show

12:15 Jamaica vs

Costa Rica

14:00 Sports News

14:15 Honduras vs

Panama

16:00 Liverpool Tv

19:00 The Football

League Show

19:30 Athletics - Iaaf

World Challenge

League Italy

21:45 Wales vs Serbia

00:00 Roma Tv

01:00 Uruguay vs

Columbia

03:00 Inter Tv

04:00 Ac Milan

Magazine

08:00 News

09:00 Al Jazeera

World

10:00 News

10:30 Inside Story

11:00 News

11:30 The Stream

12:00 News

12:30 Witness

13:00 NEWSHOUR

14:00 News

14:30 Inside Story

15:00 Black France

16:00 NEWSHOUR

17:00 News

17:30 The Stream

18:00 NEWSHOUR

19:00 News

19:30 The Cure

20:00 News

20:30 Inside Story

21:00 NEWSHOUR

22:00 News

22:30 The Stream

23:00 Al Jazeera

World

13:45 Austin Stevens

Adventures

16:00 Monkey Life

16:30 The Most

Extreme

17:25 Dogs v Cats

20:35 Lion Man: One

World African

Safari

21:05 Natural World

22:00 Bondi Vet

22:55 ER Vets

23:50 Animal Cops

Houston

13:00 Do Dil Bandhe

Ek Dori Se

14:00 Punar Vivah

14:30 Jodha Akbar

19:30 Jodha Akbar

20:00 Pavitra Rishta

20:30 Sapne Suhane

Ladakpan Ke

21:30 Connected

Hum Tum

22:00 Punar Vivah

22:30 Do Dil Bandhe

Ek Dori Se

13:00 Austin And Ally

14:10 Shake It Up

15:00 That's So

Raven

17:00 A.N.T. Farm

18:30 That's So

Raven

21:15 Austin And Ally

22:00 Jessie

22:25 A.N.T. Farm

22:50 Good Luck

Charlie

14:00 My Dog's

Christmas

Miracle

16:00 Mr. Destiny

18:00 Decoy Bride-

20:00 Friends With

Benefits

22:00 Girl Walks Into

A Bar

13:00 Junk Men

13:25 Junk Men

13:50 Food Factory

14:45 The Tech Show

15:10 Scrapheap

Challenge

16:00 Ecopolis

19:30 Scrapheap

Challenge

20:20 Junk Men

20:45 Junk Men

21:35 How Tech

Works

22:00 Scrapheap

Challenge

13:00 Ellen DeGeneres

Show

14:00 Necessary

Roughness

15:00 24

16:30 Coronation

Street

19:00 Royal Pains

20:00 Franklin & Bash

21:00 Top Gear

Specials

22:00 Breaking Bad

23:00 Smash

13:00 American Girl:

McKenna Shoots

For The Stars

14:45 Underground:

The Julian

Assange Story

16:45 Brave

18:30 The Avengers

21:00 Wrath Of The

Titans

23:00 Chernobyl

Diaries

13:00 A Cat In Paris

16:00 Alvin And The

Chipmunks:

Chipwrecked

18:00 Tom & Jerry:

Robin Hood And

His Merry Mouse

22:00 Fantastic

Adventure

QF RADIO 91.7 FM ENGLISH PROGRAMME BRIEF

LIVE SHOWS Airing Time Programme Briefs

SPIRITUAL HOUR

6:00 - 7:00 AM A time of reflection, a deeper understanding of the teachings of Islam.

RISE 7:00 – 9:00 AM A LIVE 2-hour morning show hosted by Scott Boyes. It focuses on a wide array of topics from Weather, News, Health tips, Sports News and interactive bits with the callers.

INTERNATIO-NAL NEWS

1:00 PM The latest news and events from around the world.

DRIVE 3:00 – 4:00 PM A daily afternoon show broadcast at peak travel time. It is a lighthearted show, filled with news and information ranging from film, sports, music, books and the latest events and happenings. Hosted by Nabil Al Nashar.

INNOVATIONS 6:00 – 7:00 PM A LIVE weekly show hosted and produced by Scott Boyes. The show talks about all the newest and exciting advancements in the world of science and technology.

Repeat Shows

FASHION 10:00 – 11:00 AM A weekly show hosted and produced by Laura Finnerty. The show brings together the latest fashion trends along with exciting interviews with local and international designers.

STRAIGHT TALK

7:00 – 8:00 PM A 1-hour Political show hosted by Nabil Al Nashar. The show will host discussions and debates about the latest world political news/world issues/events on air.

MALL

1

The Smurfs 2 (3D/Animation) – 3.00 & 5.00pm

2 Guns (2D/Action) – 7.00pm

Riddick 2 (2D/Thriller) – 9.15 & 11.30pm

2

Shuddi Desi Romance (2D/Hindi) – 2.30pm

Neelakasham Pachakadal Bhoomi (2D/Malayalam) – 5.00pm

Nazareyet Amity (2D/Arabic) – 8.00pm

Zanjeer (2D/Hindi) – 11.00pm

3

Peeples (2D/Comedy) – 2.15 & 4.00pm

Turbo (3D/Animation) – 5.45pm

Kick-Ass 2 (2D/Comedy) – 7.30pm

We Are The Millers (2D/Comedy – 9.30 & 11.30pm

LANDMARK

1

Shuddi Desi Romance (2D/Hindi) – 2.30 & 11.00pm

Neelakasham Pachakadal Bhoomi (2D/Malayalam) – 5.00 & 8.00pm

2

The Smurfs 2 (3D/Animation) – 3.00pm

Nazareyet Amity (2D/Arabic) – 7.00pm

2 Guns (2D/Action) – 5.00pm

Riddick 2 (2D/Thriller) – 9.15 & 11.30pm

3

Peeples (2D/Comedy) – 2.15 & 4.00pm

Turbo (3D/Animation) – 5.45pm

Kick-Ass 2 (2D/Comedy) – 7.30pm

We Are The Millers (2D/Comedy – 9.30 & 11.30pm

ROYAL

PLAZA

1

Shuddi Desi Romance (2D/Hindi) – 2.30pm

The Smurfs 2 (3D/Animation) – 5.00pm

2 Guns (2D/Action) – 7.15pm

Riddick 2 (2D/Thriller) – 9.15 & 11.30pm

2

Turbo (3D/Animation) – 2.30 & 4.15pm

Varutha Padatha Valibar Sangam(2D/Tamil) – 6.00pm

We Are The Millers (2D/Comedy) – 9.00pm

Zanjeer (2D/Hindi) – 11.00pm

3

Nazareyet Amity (2D/Arabic) – 2.30pm

Neelakasham Pachakadal Bhoomi (2D/Malayalam) – 4.30pm

Peeples (2D/Comedy) – 7.00pm

Kick-Ass 2 (2D/Comedy) – 9.00pm

We Are The Millers (2D/Comedy) – 11.15pm

PLUS | TUESDAY 10 SEPTEMBER 2013

Page 15: Page 01 Sept 10 - The Peninsula · By Alexei Oreskovic & Poornima Gupta A pple Inc and Google Inc’s Motorola are among those trying to score style points as game-changing technological

PLUS | TUESDAY 10 SEPTEMBER 2013 POTPOURRI16

Editor-In-Chief Khalid Al Sayed Acting Managing Editor Hussain Ahmad Editorial Office The Peninsula Tel: 4455 7741, E-mail: [email protected] / [email protected]

IN FOCUS

Two kittens taking a nap in Souq Waqif.

by Kakarla Manish

Send your photos to [email protected]. Mention where the photo was taken.

MEDIA SCAN A summary ofissues of the daydiscussed by the Qatari communityin the media.

• Discussion continues on the new procedures formulated by the national medical committee for medical treatment for Qataris abroad.

• There is talk about Al Ijarah Holding Company launching a 24-hour limousine service for women and families with women drivers.

• There is discussion in social media about a local newspaper reporting financial and administrative corruption in Al Shafallah Center.

• There is talk about inclusion of three hospitals -- Al Wakra Hospital, Al Khor Hospital and Cuban Hospital -- in the health and social insurance system.

• A number of citizens have demanded that construction companies inform people of the time frame for their projects on a board put up at the construction site, so that people can know when excavation works in their area will end.

• Visitors to the Evaluation Institute

of the Supreme Education Council (SEC) have complained of delays, crowding, shortage of employees and complications in authentication of certificates.

• People are demanding that the authorities ensure uniform foreign exchange rates at money transfer agencies as there are notable differences in the prices of sale and purchase of foreign currency among them.

• Some people have urged the SEC to implement the new regulation regarding incentives for workers and administrative staff in Independent schools. Teachers and school operators got a 15 percent incentive last year.

• People have demanded that the authorities monitor construction companies, especially those building residential units, because many new buildings are showing cracks.

Minister of Education and Higher EducationH E Mohammed Abdul Wahed Ali Al Hammadi

He was appointed Minister of Education and Higher Education on June 26,

2013. He was a Deputy Rector of the University for Planning and Institutional Development. He was a demonstrator at the University of Qatar and also Dean of Faculty of Engineering. He has also worked as the Director of Qatar Technical College and Director of the Office of Research and Institutional Planning.

Who’s who

If you want your events featured here, mail details to [email protected]

A Selection of Objects from Sotheby’s ‘Arts of the IslamicWorld’ Auction When: September 12-14; 10am-10pmWhere: Katara–Building 19 What: An exhibition featuring a selection of 24 highlights from the forthcoming ‘Arts of the Islamic World’ sale – exquisite objects exemplifying the broad artistic traditions of the Muslim world, including ceramics, metalwork, manuscripts, jewellery, weapons and paintings.Entry: Free, open to all

Tom Jones live in QatarWhen: September 17, 9pm Where: InterContinental Hotel - Doha

What: The Legendary superstar with over 100 million records sold live in Qatar for the very first time. Tickets: QR250-QR500. Available at Intercontinental Hotel Doha or Virgin Megastore

Qatar National LibraryHeritage Collection When: Public tours on Sundays and Tuesdays from 10am until 11.30am. Where: Qatar National Library’s Heritage Collection What: Qatar National Library’s remarkable Heritage Collection is a rare trove of manuscripts, books, and artefacts documenting a wealth of Arab-Islamic civilization and human thought. Among its more than thousands of works, the collection contains an edition of Ptolemy’s Geographia, which was printed in Rome in 1478 and is the oldest printed map showing the name of Qatar or referred to in Latin as ‘Catara’. Free Entry

Omar Khalifa – “Infinite”When: Until Dec 15; 10am-10pmWhere: Katara Cultural Village What: This outdoor photography installation examines ‘the nature of being’. Using digital multiple exposure techniques, an image is crafted that gives us a sense of other-worldliness and depth of perspective through the human form. Free Entry

Events in Qatar