Exotic Foods

Stage set for Purebred Arabian final

Rand0417 — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 23:02:29 +0000

Dubai: The Shaikh Hamdan Bin Rashid Al Maktoum UAE Breeders Society Challenge reaches its finale on Friday, when the fifth and final race in the series for Purebred Arabians bred in the UAE is staged at the Jebel Ali Racecourse.

The popular event continues to enjoy the support of its long-standing patron Shaikh Hamdan Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Deputy Ruler of Dubai and UAE Minister of Finance, through the Emirates Horse Breeders Society (EHBS).

Dr Hussain Habib Al Reda, Chairman of the EHBS, thanked Shaikh Hamdan for supporting the series, which is aimed at encouraging interest in, and the breeding of, Purebred Arabian horses.

"This year the UAE Breeders Society Challenge has produced some very exciting and high quality races," Al Reda told a press conference at the Jebel Ali Racecourse yesterday.

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Eye on the Far Horizon

Rand0417 — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 20:02:29 +0000

Oliver Bell has a big challenge on his hands. T. Rowe Price hired the 42-year-old Briton in October from the asset-management arm of Pictet, a Swiss bank, to see if he could get the struggling T. Rowe Price Africa & Middle East Fund (ticker: TRAMX) back on track. Bell is the frontier fund’s third portfolio manager since its ill-timed September 2007 launch, on the eve of the world financial crisis. It’s lost an average of 5.82% a year since, and assets have slid to $135 million from $235 million at their peak; outflows have totaled $106 million since the beginning of 2009.

Despite the market’s recent abandonment of risky emerging-markets stocks, numbers suggest Bell can accomplish his task. He topped his benchmark by about 200 basis points a year managing an institutional strategy for Pictet that covered North Africa and Middle Eastern stocks from late 2008 through May of 2010, and he had similar success running a retail fund for the firm more recently.

Bell, who joined Pictet in the late 1990s to build its database of emerging-markets stocks, has accumulated a lot of deep-value plays. After the Arab Spring revolts decimated stock markets through the Arabian Peninsula and across the continent last year, Bell saw a chance to create a low-priced portfolio for his new employer. “No one is invested in this region. That is the huge opportunity. This will be the fastest-growing area in the world for the next 10 years. I am sure of it,” he says.

Enlarge Image

Chris Gloag for Barron’s

“No one is invested in this region. That is the huge opportunity,” says Bell.

Once the global economy starts to heal, African countries will see more investment money flow back in as buyers feel more comfortable with risk again. In general, African economies are already well positioned, with low debt levels relative to gross domestic product—about 20% on average. Yet only die-hard long-term investors like pension funds, foundations and endowments—and Bell—stayed behind after hedge funds and retail stockpickers fled last year. He’s now holding many stocks trading at all-time lows and boasting better corporate governance than ever, thanks to improved management. Bell estimates earnings could rise 20% this year, which would justify healthier prices barring “a real crisis somewhere.”

Like Franklin Templeton’s Mark Mobius, Bell figures frontier markets like Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa have evolved to where Brazil, Russia, India and China were two decades ago. Investors shunned the original emerging-markets stocks because the companies weren’t shareholder friendly, and their stocks weren’t liquid or easily accessible through brokers. What’s more, local governments were often corrupt and changed rules on foreign investment to suit their own needs.

Continued trouble in Egypt and Syria is worrisome, but Bell notes there’s enough liquidity in the whole region to avoid hot spots and put money into unaffected areas. Still, “you’ve got to accept that these are frontier markets that, like emerging markets did in the 1990s, go from crisis to crisis,” he says.

Bell, who spent some of his childhood in Saudi Arabia, where his father imported goods from Britain to the Middle East and Africa, generally spreads his risk by investing in two regions where the local economies are driven by different forces. About 60% of the fund’s assets are in Africa, where an emerging middle class is facilitating growth, just as it is in China and India. And 40% is invested in the Middle East, where oil and gas predominate. He further diversifies risk by spreading investments out across 11 countries, ranging in size from South Africa and Saudi Arabia to Ghana and Zambia.

As a further precaution, Bell occasionally buys depositary receipts for a few African companies on the London Stock Exchange.

For all the frustration, Bell’s two predecessors didn’t do badly; the markets did. The T. Rowe Price fund’s loss of 16.10% last year beat 83% of the 429 emerging- and frontier-market equity funds that Lipper tracks. Since inception in September 2007, the fund’s annualized decline of 5.82% easily tops the MSCI Frontier Markets Index, which was down 11.09% a year on average, according to Lipper.

Bell has revamped the portfolio. He has put about 30% of the fund in South Africa, where corporate governance is strong and many companies derive their growth from investments in African countries that might otherwise be off-limits to foreign investors.

In November, the onetime chemistry major at England’s Exeter University bought Sasol (SOL.South Africa), a petrochemical outfit that converts coal into gasoline and has invested in several African countries. Because the technological process that Sasol employs is similar to that used to convert shale gas into liquid, he expects interest in Sasol to grow. The company has agreed to buy a share in shale-gas deposits in Canada.

He’s also picked up stocks that he discovered years ago at Pictet. One is Orascom Construction Industries (OCIC.Egypt), a fast-growing contractor and fertilizer maker. He first bought in February 2003 after the Egyptian pound was devalued, making its stock market very cheap. By the end of 2007, Orascom’s stock price had multiplied by 60 times. More recently, it has fallen, but he still sees tremendous potential. He expects the embattled Egyptian currency to be devalued by anywhere from 20% to 60% this year, and he’s waiting to buy more stock once it is.

Banks in oil-rich Nigeria are another favorite. He expects both loan growth and returns on investment to grow at about a 20% clip this year, thanks to financial reforms. The T. Rowe Price fund has bought Zenith Bank (ZENITHBA.Nigeria), which, like most Nigerian banks, is trading at book value, or what Bell says is about a quarter of their historical level.

Bell invests in some markets, like Saudi Arabia, where foreigners can’t, strictly speaking. There he bought Jarir Marketing (JARIR.Saudi Arabia) through a local bank that owns the shares on T. Rowe’s behalf. He was attracted to the book chain because it sells textbooks, iPhones and iPads on the same floor to appeal to young Arabs who are eager readers and avid technology users.

The money manager wants to invest directly in the stocks he likes and thinks the fund ultimately will profit from that approach. “We are transitioning from everyone believing the emerging markets are the risky trade and developing markets are the safe trade. That will play out over a number of years,” he says. And Bell intends to be on right side of the trade when it does.

T. Rowe Price Africa & Middle East

1-800-638-5660

	Total Returns¹
	1-Yr	3-Yr	5-Yr
TRAMX	-7.60%	15.52%	-5.82%*
MSCI Frontier	-17.02	11.96	-11.09**

		% Of
Top 10 Holdings	Ticker	Portfolio***
AngloGold Ashanti	ANG.South Africa	4.57%
Sasol	SOL.South Africa	4.41
Al Rajhi Bank	RJHI.Saudi Arabia	4.20
Qatar Natl Bank	QNBK.Qatar	3.86
Samba Financial	SAMBA. Saudi Arabia	3.85
Jarir Marketing	JARIR.Saudi Arabia	3.52
Saudi Arabian M	MAADEN.Saudi Arabia	3.28
Guarantee Trust	GUARANTY.Neth.	3.27
BankMuscat	BKMB.Oman	3.23
Saudi Basic Ind	SABIC.Saudi Arabia	3.12
Total:		37.31%
¹Returns are as of 2/12/2012; three- and five-year returns are annualized. Since inception 9/4/2007. Returns from 9/04/07 to 2/12/12. Source: Lipper; Company reports*

E-mail:
editors@barrons.com

Australian airline runs out of money, stranding thousands

Rand0417 — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 17:02:29 +0000

CNN’s Jethro Mullen contributed to this report.

African viewpoint: A year of great leaps forward?

Rand0417 — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 14:02:29 +0000

In our series of viewpoints from African journalists, film-maker and columnist Farai Sevenzo asks what kind of continent awaits the soon-to-be-crowned new Africa Cup of Nations champions.

And while my friends claim I often read too much into the meaning of sporting events, I have been beaming with the rest of southern Africa at the emergence of Zambia as a fully fledged African gladiator on the football field.

Would southern Africans have switched allegiances had the final pitted Ivory Coast with Tunisia?

What of a Zambia vs Mali final? Would that split the African audience along colonial allegiances?

Did South Sudan support their neighbour Sudan even as border disputes simmer between the old and new nations?

Has the year that has gone by seen the north take strident steps towards a new identity – that of being more Arab than African?

Is it the Arab League more than the African Union that now holds sway over our northern neighbours?

The events in sunny Gabon and rain-soaked Equatorial Guinea these past weeks did not answer these questions – and while the footballers took our attention, the politicians were meeting in a brand new headquarters in Ethiopia's capital for an ordinary session of the African Union.

These headquarters had been built by our new friends, the Chinese – who splashed out an intriguing $200m (Â£127m) on a building for an African Union at a time when such a union has never looked less likely.

It was left to the likes of President Robert Mugabe to call the African Union a "toothless bulldog" that had done nothing to prevent the murder of civilians in Libya and the killing of his friend Muammar Gaddafi – and to warn the gathered Africans yet again that "the West are after our resources".

It is said the recognition of Libya's National Transitional Council by the African Union had irked the veteran leader into this combative position.

The Chinese building in Addis Ababa, however, was the star of this ordinary meeting of African leadership.

It spoke plainly that while talk is of safeguarding resources, Gabon, Angola and Zimbabwe will already have been offering their oil and minerals to the new global power that builds buildings, erects cities and football stadia – all in the name of business and nothing else.

The revolutions will linger and allegiances change and by the time the final is played and won in the coming days, Africa's champions may well be reigning over a very different union of African nations – one seeking a new purpose, direction and a new set of teeth.

If you would like to comment on Farai Sevenzo's column, please do so below.

Dog eats dog as Britain’s tabloids bare all

Rand0417 — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 11:02:29 +0000

By Michael Stott

LONDON |
Thu Oct 6, 2011 1:57pm EDT

LONDON Oct 6 (Reuters) – Fleet Street’s finest jostled
furiously at the start on Thursday of a government inquiry,
trying to grab public attention with tales of shock and horror.

But this time about their own industry.

Prime Minister David Cameron has asked a judge, Lord Brian
Leveson, to hold an inquiry into the oft-feared British press
and make recommendations for a new regulatory regime.

This followed allegations that the News of the World, a
best-selling newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News
Corporation, had hacked the mobile phones of a string of
personalities in the news including a murdered schoolgirl and
paid money to the police for stories.

One of Cameron’s predecessors, Tony Blair, famously attacked
Britain’s media as a “feral beast tearing people and reputations
to bits,” and some contrition was offered at the inquiry’s
opening debate.

“We’ve been up to pretty bad behaviour throughout history.
It was fun” said Roy Greenslade, a former Daily Mirror editor
who now lectures on journalism at London’s City University.

But less than an hour into the proceedings, it was Richard
Peppiatt, a tously-haired former reporter with one of Britain’s
most downmarket papers, the Daily Star, who stole the show with
a withering denunciation of tabloid journalism.

In more than 900 stories for British popular papers, he told
the debate on the competitive pressures facing journalists: “I
can probably count on fingers and toes the number of times I was
genuinely telling the truth”.

Peppiatt’s dramatic accusations, which were quickly tweeted
over the Internet, shattered the carefully crafted picture of
improved press standards painted by previous speaker Phil Hall,
who edited the News of the World from 1995 to 2000.

“The publish-and-be-damned attitude has long since been
confined to the history books of Fleet Street,” Hall said
reassuringly, as some participants quietly muttered disbelief.

Peppiatt was having none of it.

Tabloid stories, he said, were ordered up from cowering
reporters by bullying editors to fit the newspaper’s
preconceived prejudices, regardless of the facts, under an
unwritten pact best described as “you tell us what we want to
hear and we won’t question too much your sources”.

Editors of Britain’s best-selling newspapers, who fear the
Leveson inquiry heralds new press regulation which will cramp
their free-wheeling ways, struck back.

Peppiatt’s “florid diatribe” was a “grotesque caricature of
the newspaper world”, fumed the former political editor of the
top-selling Sun newspaper, Trevor Kavanagh. A lawyer for the
Daily Express said the atmosphere described by Peppiatt was “not
a newsroom culture I recognise”.

Earlier, Kavanagh admitted the popular press occasionally
erred but added: “You should see the stories we don’t print.”

“MEA CULPA”

In a dramatic clash between editors that appeared to
reinforce concerns about tabloid standards, Greenslade
challenged former News of the World editor Hall to tell the
inquiry why Rupert Murdoch had sacked him from the paper.

“Maybe Roy can tell us first how he fixed the spot-the-ball
competition when he edited the Daily Mirror,” retorted Hall, to
gasps from the audience.

“It is an episode of journalism I feel absolutely terribly
sorry about….mea culpa, mea culpa,” bemoaned Greenslade,
admitting the lapse which critics said made it impossible for
anyone to win the 1 million pound prize on offer.

The debate touched repeatedly on Fleet Street’s growing
obsession with the private lives of celebrities, ranging from
the late Princess Diana to adulterous footballers. The trend is
blamed by some press observers for a decline in standards but
seen by some editors as a good way to boost sales.

“When Michael Jackson died, the Sun’s circulation went up by
326,000 copies in one day,” said Sun editor Dominic Mohan, who
is the paper’s former showbusiness reporter. “There is a public
appetite for celebrity journalism.”

The noisy debate over tabloid ethics almost drowned out some
of the more sober voices calling for serious debate on the risks
to press freedom posed by over-intrusive regulation or the hard
financial numbers showing newspapers are a fast-dying industry.

Alan Rusbridger, editor of Britain’s leading liberal daily
newspaper The Guardian, made an eloquent plea in a speech laden
with references to great political thinkers of the past like
Locke and Wilkes for Britain’s rulers not to forget free speech.

“A free press is part of a larger right of free expression,”
said Rusbridger, whose newspaper exposed the phone-hacking
scandal, “- something to be jealously preserved and guarded,
regardless of the abuses of those freedoms by, or on behalf of,
a small number of people calling themselves journalists.”

Veteran tabloid types, who grew up on Fleet Street mantras
such as “It’s never wrong for long” or “This story is too good
to check” muttered that all the fuss over tabloids was not new.

Try the website gentlemenranters.com, one speaker suggested,
and you will see that not much has changed since the 1950s.

The site features tales from the hard-drinking past of the
British newspaper trade, including a tale of one photographer
who died – shock horror – from a fall while going INTO a pub.

(Editing by Jon Boyle)

Cure in sight

Rand0417 — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 08:03:37 +0000

As she walked down the hall of the suburban Maryland federal building where she works as a medical researcher, Silvia Bacot would say, "Hi, how are you?" to everyone she passed, worried that if she didn’t she might inadvertently snub someone she knew but couldn’t see. She always sat in the front row at lectures and close to the screen in theatres. At crowded scientific meetings she tried to seem unwaveringly approachable, peering and squinting at name tags when their wearers got close enough.

"I would feel like an idiot," she said, referring to her practice of universal greeting. "At scientific conferences you want to make connections, and if you can’t see people, it’s bad." Luckily her work was unaffected by her inability to see at a distance because as a bench scientist she focused on objects at close range. Bacot was frustrated that her ophthalmologist had been unable to correct her severe nearsightedness and the distortion known as astigmatism which often accompanies it. She assumed that her deteriorating eyesight was an inevitable result of ageing; her eye doctor offered no other explanation. It wasn’t until the summer of 2010, while undergoing a work-up for laser eye surgery, that Bacot, now 38, learnt that her visual problems were not caused by the normal progression of myopia but in fact indicated something far more serious. "I turned white as a sheet of paper," Bacot recalled, after corneal specialist Roy Rubinfeld told her that lasik was out of the question.

"I didn’t even know I had anything wrong with me." The first time her eyesight caused problems, Bacot was 6 and had just started school in her native Costa Rica. She could not see the blackboard and began suffering from severe headaches, which her grandmother dismissed as fiction, saying that "children do not get headaches". But after the pain persisted, Bacot was taken to a doctor, who determined she was nearsighted and prescribed her first pair of eyeglasses.

The headaches disappeared and for years she saw well with glasses. In 2004, Bacot noticed that the vision in her left eye seemed unaccountably blurry. Her eye doctor strengthened her prescription but she soon noticed that her vision was fuzzy again. "I figured it was the best they could do," she said, noting that the pattern of visits to the eye doctor occurred every six months or so for six years, as her vision deteriorated and her prescription got progressively stronger.

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"I settled for it because of my own ignorance." She tried wearing contact lenses but they were uncomfortable and her vision was poorer than with glasses. Driving, especially at night, became more difficult. At times her eyes felt swollen and Bacot developed headaches, just as she had as a child. Bacot thought laser eye surgery might be the answer. She was impressed by the experience of co-workers who had undergone lasik, which uses a laser to reshape the cornea, sharpening vision.

In July 2010, she met Rubinfeld. "He told me, ‘I have good news and bad news’," Bacot recalled. The bad news, she remembers him saying, was that she would not be having lasik. "If I do it," he told her, "you could lose your eyesight." The good news, he continued, was that her problem had a name — keratoconus — and he had a treatment, although it was experimental and therefore not covered by insurance.

Keratoconus, a progressive thinning of the cornea caused by a defect in the collagen, affects about one in every 2,000 Americans, according to the National Eye Institute.

The cause of the disorder is unknown, but the condition can be hereditary. In some cases, keratoconus, which causes normally rounded corneas to become cone-shaped, progressively distorting vision, results from years of wearing hard contact lenses or excessive eye rubbing.

"It used to be we’d say to patients, ‘Boy, I hope you don’t get worse’," Rubinfeld said, noting that corneal transplants have a long and sometimes difficult recovery period.

For the past three years, however, eye surgeons in the United States, Rubinfeld among them, have been conducting clinical trials of a procedure widely used in Europe called corneal crosslinking. A report in the American Journal of Ophthalmology in 2010 by Italian surgeons found "long-term stability … without relevant side-effects" in patients assessed four years after crosslinking was performed.

"I decided to do it," said Bacot, who paid $3,200 (Dh11,744) for the procedure, which was performed in August 2010. Bacot was back at work the following day; she said procedure and recovery were painless. In the past 16 months, she said, her vision has improved. "I can see so much more clearly with my glasses, including who I’m actually talking to," she said.

Symptoms and signs

Keratoconus is a progressive eye disease in which the
normally round cornea thins and begins to bulge into
a cone-like shape. This cone shape deflects light as it
enters the eye on its way to the light-sensitive retina,
causing distorted vision. Keratoconus can occur in one
or both eyes and often begins during a person’s teens
or early 20s. As the cornea becomes more irregular
in shape, it causes progressive nearsightedness and
irregular astigmatism to develop, creating additional
problems with distorted and blurred vision. Glare and
light sensitivity also may occur.

–www.allaboutvision.com

Japanese Whalers Lose Bid To Block U.S.-Based ‘Sea Shepherd’ Activists

Rand0417 — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 05:03:37 +0000

Story By: by Bill Chappell

The Japanese whaling vessel Yushin Maru No. 2 shoots its water cannons at a Sea Shepherd craft during an altercation on Feb. 12, 2012. The photo was released by the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.

A group of Japanese whalers has failed to win an injunction against U.S. anti-whaling activists, as a federal judge refused their request for protections from boats owned by the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.

The ruling was made in Seattle, where the whalers’ group, the Institute for Cetacean Research, had filed suit. In addition to restraints on Sea Shepherd, the whalers were hoping the judge would impose a freeze on the activists’ finances.

From the Northwest News Network, Tom Banse reports:

“U.S. federal district court judge Richard Jones did not give a reason for denying the request for a preliminary injunction. It would have prevented the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society from interfering with the Japanese whaling fleet.”

“Outside the courthouse, a spokesman for the whalers, Gavin Carter, expressed disappointment.”

“‘At the end of the day, you can’t have lawlessness on the high seas. You can’t have anarchy on the high seas,’ he said. ‘There has to be some structure under which ships can go about their legal business.’”

Sea Shepherd attorney Dan Harris tells Banse that his group, based in northwest Washington state, doesn’t believe whaling is a legal business.

“If a heroin dealer came to federal court and sought an injunction to be able to continue to sell their heroin in a particular neighborhood without interference from anyone,” he says, “I have no doubt that the court would turn them down.”

The group of Japanese whalers insists that its crew members have come under dangerous attacks, by smoke bombs and projectiles filled with either paint or butyric acid. It maintains a webpage listing the alleged attacks.

Clashes between the two groups are also documented on the TV show Whale Wars â including one incident in early 2010, when a collision between two ships resulted in a Sea Shepherd vessel’s bow being sheared off.

The AP reports, “Japan’s whaling fleet kills up to 1,000 whales a year, an allowed exception under a ruling by the International Whaling Commission. Japan is permitted to hunt the animals as long as they are caught for research and not commercial purposes. Whale meat not used for study is sold as food in Japan, which critics say is the real reason for the hunts.”

Japan’s whaling season runs from November or December to February or March. Last year, the country ordered an early halt to the Antarctic season, citing potentially dangerous interference by Sea Shepherd.

Blazers’ Oden lost for season after knee surgery

Rand0417 — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 02:03:37 +0000

Mon Feb 20, 2012 7:53pm EST

Steve Keating in Toronto; Editing by Ian Ransom)

A Digital Night at the Opera

Rand0417 — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 23:03:37 +0000

By ELLEN GAMERMAN

Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera

The Rhinemaidens at a rehearsal for ‘Das Rheingold’ at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

When the Rhinemaidens sing from their underwater realm at the start of the Metropolitan Opera’s new production of “Das Rheingold,” bubbles seem to stream from their mouths. The louder they sing, the more the bubbles flow, following the nymphs as they undulate across a deep-blue backdrop.

What is meant to be a poetic moment has a more technical description: “It’s all a bunch of pixels waiting to be animated by live performance,” says Robert Lepage, the 52-year-old Canadian who is directing the opera in New York.

In its perpetual quest for the biggest, splashiest and most ambitious sets and special effects, the opera world is increasingly borrowing gadgetry from the movie industry. Digital imagery and computer graphics are migrating to the stage, appearing in operas and other live performances with growing regularity.

The Los Angeles Opera’s new “Il Postino,” opening next Thursday, uses a combination of digitally manipulated images and streaming video. Computer-edited pictures of birds fly across the stage. The moon and clouds are projections as well.

This week at an “Il Postino” rehearsal, Plácido Domingo practiced his first live-video scene in opera. Mr. Domingo, playing Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, is interviewed in Paris about his life in exile on an Italian island. To achieve the effect, Mr. Domingo must hustle to a room off stage, where he sings in Spanish into a live camera. The audience will watch a him on an onstage screen as he sings. “I always like to experience new and different things,” Mr. Domingo said through a spokesman.

Christopher Koelsch, the L.A. Opera’s vice president of artistic planning, says the scene needed a documentary feel, but the opera wanted to use live singing rather than archival film footage of Mr. Neruda. “We’re going for a magical realism,” he says.

In New York, those Rhinemaiden bubbles are the result of three years of work by Mr. Lepage’s team. The stage is bathed in infrared light that enables the bubble images to appear near the nymphs as they’re swimming, while voice-sensitive technology can increase the volume of bubbles as they sing, mimicking what happens in real life when a person exhales underwater.

The set, which lacks painted scenery, consists of 24 large gray planks that move independently and as a unit, rotating 360 degrees on their own or twisting collectively like a giant spine. The projections, which appear to stick to this hard surface, comprise the backdrop for most scenes.

The video is interactive, increasing or diminishing in intensity based on sound and movement coming from the stage. When the nymphs disturb the Rhine riverbed with their gauzy fan-tails, pebbles seem to fall underneath them. Loge, the fire god, is followed by a halo of flames. A hidden camera captures shadowy images of inhabitants of the underground realm of Nibelheim which are then projected onto the set. Actors seem to displace an image of mist—what the creative team calls “sfumato,” after the Renaissance painting technique—as they move in front of it.

Mr. Lepage wants the technology to enhance, not upstage, the theatrical experience. “It should have the invisibility and the see-throughness of music,” he says. The director will helm all four of Richard Wagner’s Ring operas for the Met over the next two years, starting with “Das Rheingold,” opening the Met’s season on Sept. 27 (and transmitted in high-definition to movie theaters on Oct. 9).

Two floors below the stage, behind a gray door marked “video bunker,” sits the nerve center for the production—a cinder-block room filled with 19 whirring computers that support the 9 projectors and three cameras creating the onstage effects. The room, once a storage space, was repurposed for “Das Rheingold,” a production that represents the most extensive use of computer projections in the Met’s history, says general manager Peter Gelb.

“Lepage is to me sort of what Spielberg is to moviemaking,” Mr. Gelb says.

Write to Ellen Gamerman at ellen.gamerman@wsj.com

Readers’ issues addressed

Rand0417 — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 20:03:37 +0000

Expired credit card
I have been using Mashreq’s credit card for more than three years. In December 2010, I cancelled my visa from a Sharjah company and went to India. Since January 2011, my cousin in Dubai paid the minimum payment every month until I came back to the UAE in October 2011. Everything was fine.
My card expired in March 2011 when I was in India. Upon returning, I called Mashreq to get my card reactivated. They said: “Sir, we have sent you a new card already. Since you were not here, the card was returned to Mashreq, and as per the new rule we cannot re-send the card. The only thing you can do now is to please settle the dues completely and the card will automatically be cancelled. Then you have to apply for a new one.”
Is this fair? I have seen Gulf News help people in such cases, therefore I request Gulf News to look into this matter.
From Mr Rajeev Sreedharan
Ajman

The management of Mashreq responds:
We would like to thank Gulf News for sharing Mr Rajeev Sreedharan’s letter.
We have initiated an investigation and it reveals that Mr Sreedharan travelled out of the UAE in December 2010 and returned in October 2011. While Mr Sreedharan arranged for monthly payments to be made against his Mashreq credit card, the card expiry was due in March 2011 and we had arranged for a new card to be delivered to him but it was returned to the bank as undelivered, as he was not reachable.
As per bank policy, we are unable to reinstate the card, as the customer was out of the country at the time we dispatched the new card. The same has been communicated to Mr Sreedharan. We would like to thank Gulf News for seeking clarification.

Mr Sreedharan responds:
Even though the bank’s reply did not favour me, Gulf News’ prompt action regarding this matter is appreciated.

Customer service
I spoke to Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank’s (ADCB) customer service executive on October 18 on the toll free number 8002030. The previous month, ADCB sent me my statement two days late and they charged interest on the outstanding amount.
I explained to the customer service executive that it was not my fault, as I received my statement late so why should I pay the interest and finance charges? He was extremely rude on the phone and at times told me a straight “no” that the charges would not be reversed. When I asked to speak to someone senior, instead of treating my request, he said that even a senior representative would tell me the same thing. He also said that the bank will never refund finance charges.
He told me that I should call the bank and ask when they will send me the statement. I deposit my money in a bank to get a service from the bank. Why should I have to call them up and ask them to send my statement?
On two occasions, he mentioned the amount of Dh5 as the finance charges, probably to make me realise the money involved is a very small amount. I do not mind paying anything as far as the amount is justified.
Had he behaved a little less rudely I would have also complied. But trying to make me realise my responsibility of calling the bank and asking for the statement is very bad customer service.
I would like to ask Gulf News to assist in this matter as I would like a senior representative to liaise with me. I have placed a complaint with ADCB as well and I am awaiting their reply.
Thank you for your help.
From Mr Kunal Bhatia
Dubai

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