Examiner Staff

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 Tourism

Vienna palace offers Hapsburg flat at princely price

VIENNA: Vienna’s opulent Schoenbrunn Palace, the former summer residence of the imperial Habsburg family, will open its doors to tourists looking to spend the night like Emperor Franz Josef and Empress Sisi.

An apartment – once reserved for close relatives of the court – can be booked from April 30 at a starting price of 699 euros ($960) per person per night. The two-bedroom flat with kitchen and dining room sleeps four.

Those looking to experience full imperial grandeur – and who have the cash to spare – can reserve such amenities as a personal butler, a horse-drawn carriage and a chef.

The late 17th-century rococo palace was once the secondary residence of the Habsburg monarchy, which ruled the Austro-Hungarian Empire until 1918.

It is one of Austria’s top tourist attractions and registered 2.9 million visitors last year. In 1996, UNESCO listed Schoenbrunn and its gardens as a world heritage site, calling it a remarkable example of Baroque synthesis of the arts.

Austria Trend Parkhotel – which will operate the hotel suite – hopes to capitalize on this charm and sees the apartment as attractive to foreign tourists from East Asia and Europe.

“Making the apartment feel like a part of Schoenbrunn without making it a copy of other rooms was important to the architect,” a spokeswoman for Austria Trend said. “We looked for furniture that was in the style, but still making it modern enough for a hotel.”

A 400,000-euro revamp updated the apartment to palatial opulence, with Maria Theresa chandeliers, gold accents, moire wallpaper and “pineapple damask” motifs.

The red silk damask fabric, mistakenly named after its semblance to a stylized pineapple, was used exclusively for the Viennese Court at Schoenbrunn and the Hofburg – the main Habsburg residence in Vienna.

The views of the gardens and the hilltop Gloriette pavilion complete the imperial ambience.

“It is probable that even Elizabeth Petznek, the daughter of Crown Prince Rudolf and famous as the ‘Red Duchess,’ lived in these rooms toward the end of the monarchy,” said Franz Sattlecker, managing director of the Schoenbrunn Palace Company.

Petznek, the favorite granddaughter of Emperor Franz Joseph, rocked the House of Habsburg when she became a committed Socialist party member.

Immediately before its renovation, the hotel suite had been used as a normal flat, one of around 135 such apartments rented out on the palace grounds. Prospective tenants apply to join a waiting list and pay neighborhood market prices.

Following the downfall of the monarchy, the newly founded Austrian Republic became the owner of Schoenbrunn and preserved its rooms as a museum. British forces used the palace as offices during the postwar Allied occupation of Austria.
The Daily Star

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 Lifestyle

Electronic cigarettes may not help people stop smoking

NEW YORK: A small U.S. study raises new questions about whether using electronic cigarettes will lead people to quit smoking, adding to the debate over how tightly the products should be regulated.

The study, which looked at the habits of 88 smokers who also used e-cigarettes, was published as a research letter in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine on Monday. It found that smokers who also used e-cigarettes were no more likely to quit smoking after a year, compared to smokers who didn’t use the devices.

Outside experts say the small number of respondents, and a lack of data on whether they intentionally used e-cigarettes to help them quit smoking, mean the findings from the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at the University of California, San Francisco can’t take the place of much more rigorous study on the subject.

E-cigarettes were first introduced in China in 2004 and have since grown into a $2 billion industry. The battery-powered devices let users inhale nicotine-infused vapors, which don’t contain the harmful tar and carbon monoxide in tobacco.

At issue is how strictly U.S. health regulators should control the products. Advocates say e-cigarettes can help smokers quit. Public health experts fear they can serve as a gateway to smoking for the uninitiated, particularly teenagers. Leading U.S. brands include blu by Lorillard Inc and products from privately-held NJOY and Logic Technology.

A previous report from the UK found that people who use e-cigarettes primarily want to replace traditional cigarettes (see Reuters Health story here: http://reut.rs/1ceF7nT).

“We did not find a relationship between using an e-cigarette and reducing cigarette consumption,” Rachel Grana, the lead researcher on the new study, told Reuters Health.

Grana and colleagues at the University of California, San Francisco analyzed 2011 survey data collected from 949 smokers. Of those, 88 reported using e-cigarettes.

When the researchers looked at those smokers’ responses a year later, they found that the people who reported using e-cigarettes in the 2011 survey were no more likely to quit smoking than the people who didn’t use e-cigarettes.

For those who were still smoking in 2012, using e-cigarettes also didn’t appear to change how many traditional cigarettes people smoked per day.

The researchers note that the small number of participants who reported using e-cigarettes may have limited their ability to detect a link between quitting smoking and using the device.

Dr. Michael Siegel, who was not involved with the new research, told Reuters Health that the new study had several design flaws, including that the researchers did not know why some of the participants tried e-cigarettes or how long they had used them. Siegel is an expert on community health at Boston University School of Public Health and has studied e-cigarette research.

By comparing people who smoked regular cigarettes and those who smoked e-cigarettes, the researchers are assuming “that the groups are exactly equivalent in terms of their motivations and their levels of addiction to cigarettes,” Siegel said. “You can’t make those assumptions. You’re not dealing with comparable groups.”

In an emailed statement, Grana and fellow researchers acknowledged that they did not have information on the participants’ motivations to use e-cigarettes, but said their analysis took into account other factors known to be linked to quitting smoking, such as their stated intention to quit and how many cigarettes they already smoked each day.

“These factors may also reflect motivations to use e-cigarettes, as e-cigarettes are frequently marketed and perceived as cessation aids,” they wrote. “While these factors predicted quitting as expected, we found that e-cigarette use did not predict quitting.

Siegel also pointed out that only about eight percent of the people surveyed said they had any intention to quit smoking within the next month. He hopes people will reserve judgment on e-cigarettes until randomized controlled studies – considered the “gold standard” of medical research – are published.

“We need solid data that’s based on solid science before we make decisions,” he said. “I hope no one would take this research letter and make any conclusion based on it.”

 

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1bW7SpA JAMA Internal Medicine, online March 24, 2014.

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 News

Court rules contract to install cameras across Beirut is illegal

BEIRUT: A Lebanese court Tuesday rejected a plan to install surveillance cameras around the capital, ruling that the $40 million contract awarded by the Municipality of Beirut for the project was illegal.

“The Court of Accounts has decided not to agree to awarding a project to install surveillance cameras in the streets of the city of Beirut because the file of the case is not legal,” the court said in a statement.

The decision was made by Judge Abdel-Rida Nasser, chief of the Court of Accounts, and judges Ramzi Nahra and Lynan Hayek, the National News Agency reported.

However, Beirut Mayor Bilal Hamad defended the municipality’s decision to award the contract to Guardia Systems.

He said the municipality received five bids from qualified companies and chose Guardia because it was the least expensive.

“Guardia Systems is a legal company. We selected this company because it offered the lowest price and is more qualified among the five companies,” Hamad told The Daily Star. “The awarding of the contract was made by consent.”

After the court decision was made, the Municipal Council met to discuss the situation, Hamad said, adding that the case had been referred to Interior Minister Nouhad Machnouk “who has the final say in this matter.”

Following a wave of deadly car bombings and suicide attacks that swept Beirut and its southern suburbs in the past two years, the government of former Prime Minister Najib Mikati proposed the installation of the CCTV cameras across the capital in an attempt to prevent further incidents.

In its statement, the Court of Accounts questioned why the Beirut Municipality had temporarily awarded the contract to install 1,500-2000 surveillance cameras around the city to Guardia Systems. It also questioned municipality’s motivation for excluding other qualified companies from involvement in the project.

“The nomination of companies in the way it was done does not conform with the rules applied in the mentioned tender,” the court said.

After reviewing the stages in which the bidding companies were selected, the court said: “It appears that the awarding [of the contract] as it was done does not conform with the measures that should be followed in the case of the restricted tender.

“The municipal council named the accepted bidders without studying their qualifications in advance.”

The court added, “Since this measure has also led to limiting the competition to the five invited companies and subsequently excluded other companies that have qualifications and material and technical capabilities to carry out this kind of deals … this deal lacks the right legal basis and therefore, it needs not to be accepted.”

 
The Daily Star

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 Business

EDL staff threaten to pull the plug

BEIRUT: Part-time Electricite du Liban staff blocked the road and doors to the company’s Beirut headquarters Monday to demand full-time employment.

The protesters also burned tires to shut down access to the state-run power company in the Mar Mikhael neighborhood, preventing full-time employees from entering.

The protesters, who have staged similar demonstrations over the past few months, want Parliament to amend and approve a draft law that would grant them full-time work.

The workers called off their sit-in at midday but warned that they would escalate their movement if Parliament failed to amend the bill which requires them to pass exams before they are considered eligible for full-time work.

The staff also threatened to cut power across Lebanon if Parliament ignored their demand and “approved the bill as is.”

The Daily Star

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 Business

BankMed confirms strong growth in 2013

BEIRUT: BankMed maintained double-digit growth in deposits and total assets in 2013 despite an overall economic slowdown that saw net profit almost flatten due to the conservative management strategy of allocating an additional $35 million in general provisions.

Customer deposits increased by 12 percent to reach $10.3 billion at of the end of December 2013, and the customer loan portfolio expanded by 7 percent to $4.3 billion, while consolidated net profit grew year on year by 1 percent to $128.1 million.

In line with its conservative management strategy, BankMed decided to increase its general provisions by $35 million to $140 million rather than post higher profits, a BankMed statement said.

The loan loss provision coverage ratio stood at 203 percent.

“Despite tough economic conditions and a year that witnessed numerous challenges, the bank maintained healthy activities in 2013 that resulted in continued growth in deposits and assets,” the statement added.

By the end of December 2013, BankMed’s total assets posted a 10 percent growth to hit $13.8 billion.

The bank invested around $679 million of its balance sheet growth in 2013 in liquid assets including cash and deposits in the Central Bank and commercial financial establishments and $422 million in marketable securities such as treasury bills, while granting around $282 million in loans.

BankMed is committed to its long-time policy of maintaining high liquidity ratio, the statement said. BankMed’s foreign currency liquidity ratio stood at 40.6 percent compared to the Central Bank limit of 10 percent. The bank’s capital adequacy ratio reached 13.8 percent by the end of 2013 compared to the 10.5 percent required by the Central Bank.

International rating agency Moody’s recently reiterated its negative outlook for Lebanon’s sovereign rating and warned that banks’ profitability would remain under pressure owing to slow economic growth.

Moody’s said the outlook reflected banks’ increasing exposure to B1-rated Lebanese government securities, which leaves their modest capital buffers susceptible to sovereign event risk.

The majority of Lebanese banks are rolling over their maturing treasury bonds but have been cautious to buy new issues of government debt.

Pressure arising from banks’ operations in regional countries hit by turmoil was also among the issues highlighted in Moody’s report.

However, despite the political concerns in Turkey, the operations of BankMed’s Turkish subsidiary (T-Bank) were not affected, and its assets grew by 39 percent during 2013, according to the statement.

Turkey’s central bank hiked all its key interest rates last February in a bid to defend the country’s crumbling currency.

According to Moody’s, the sharp interest rate hike will squeeze the profitability of the banking sector through higher funding costs and hurt the quality of bank assets.

BankMed’s statement downplayed the impact of the rate hike in Turkey on its operations, saying the current circumstances were the result of a political spillover into the economy rather than vice versa.

BankMed, which was the first Lebanese bank to expand to Turkey in 2007, has more than 29 branches in the country.

BankMed posted an 8 percent growth in profits in 2012 as well as 16 percent growth in deposits and 15 percent growth in loans.
The Daily Star

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 U.S. Politics

Obamacare sign-ups hit seven million target: White House

WASHINGTON: The White House said Tuesday it had reached its target of signing up seven million people to new insurance plans under President Barack Obama’s health care law.

“I think it is fair to say we surpassed everybody’s expectations,” spokesman Jay Carney said, noting that 7,041,000 people had signed up before a midnight deadline.

Carney said more than 200,000 people signed up on Monday on a federal website, and the number was expected to rise as data came in from the states.

Obama was due to speak on the issue at 4:15 pm (2015 GMT).

The scramble to sign up for insurance plans at the end of a six-month enrollment window caused website glitches and long lines at on-the-spot enrollment centers.

Senior White House officials saw the deadline day rush as vindication after the disastrous rollout of the federal health care website — HealthCare.gov — late last year.

The law demands that all Americans have health insurance or pay a fine, but offers subsidies for the less well-off.

Republicans have renewed a vow to repeal the law, which they say costs jobs, handcuffs small businesses and represents a government power grab in the private health care market.

AFP

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