Azurra and Artemis make the grade

A calm and sunny morning piled extra pressure on to the four teams racing in Elimination Round 2 of the Louis Vuitton Trophy today. The lack of breeze delayed the start by more than three hours, thus changing the best-of-three format to a sudden-death sail-off to ensure that the round would be completed before the semi-final. The first race between Artemis, with Terry Hutchinson on helm and Paul Cayard as skipper, and TeamOrigin, with Ben Ainslie steering and Iain Percy calling tactics, began as the breeze rose through 12 knots. On the first two legs, with brilliant match racing, TeamOrigin held the lead, but on the second beat a misjudged call on a wind shift allowed the Swedish team to overtake and go on to win by 38 seconds. "We are bitterly disappointed in today's result," said TeamOrigin's director, Mike Sanderson. "At this stage of the event, having it all count on one race is very tough."

With their campaign over, the team will take to the water to test its new TP52 yacht, which was delivered by the Auckland boatyard yesterday. For the second race, between All4One and Azzurra, the breeze had risen to a brisk 18 knots. A very close pre-start duel between Francesco Bruni and Sébastien Col saw Azzurra across the line first, with All4One taking a penalty. The Italians squeezed All4One in a tacking duel all the way to the first mark, to lead around by just nine seconds. At the bottom mark the Franco-German team's race fell apart, as they lost their spinnaker under the boat, then had to sail most of the second beat with a sheet wrapped around the rudder post. Jochen Schümann, All4One's skipper said he was disappointed to have lost on such a messy note but remained upbeat: "For sure it was exciting racing, in very tough conditions - high breezes close to 20 knots. Fighting to be in the semifinals was a good success for us." As the top team in the round robin, Emirates Team New Zealand chose Azzurra as their semi-final opponent, a repeat of last year's final in NIce, which the Italians won. Artemis will fight it out with Mascalzone Latino for the other place in the final. The semi-finals are a best-of-three format. slane@thenational.ae

Cryopreservation: A timeline

Keyhole surgery under general anaesthetic
Ovarian tissue surgically removed
Tissue processed in a high-tech facility
Tissue re-implanted at a time of the patient’s choosing
Full hormone production regained within 4-6 months

Jewel of the Expo 2020

252 projectors installed on Al Wasl dome

13.6km of steel used in the structure that makes it equal in length to 16 Burj Khalifas

550 tonnes of moulded steel were raised last year to cap the dome

724,000 cubic metres is the space it encloses

Stands taller than the leaning tower of Pisa

Steel trellis dome is one of the largest single structures on site

The size of 16 tennis courts and weighs as much as 500 elephants

Al Wasl means connection in Arabic

World’s largest 360-degree projection surface

Know your camel milk:
Flavour: Similar to goat’s milk, although less pungent. Vaguely sweet with a subtle, salty aftertaste.
Texture: Smooth and creamy, with a slightly thinner consistency than cow’s milk.
Use it: In your morning coffee, to add flavour to homemade ice cream and milk-heavy desserts, smoothies, spiced camel-milk hot chocolate.
Goes well with: chocolate and caramel, saffron, cardamom and cloves. Also works well with honey and dates.

Company Profile

Name: Thndr
Started: 2019
Co-founders: Ahmad Hammouda and Seif Amr
Sector: FinTech
Headquarters: Egypt
UAE base: Hub71, Abu Dhabi
Current number of staff: More than 150
Funds raised: $22 million

While you're here

Andrew Wilks: Turkey’s promised reforms could recast US relations under Biden administration

David Lepeska: How two 16th-century pirates inspired Erdogan's foreign policy

Con Coughlin: Grandstanding in Turkey leads to terrorism in France

Sole survivors

Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
Bahia Bakari, then 12, survived when a Yemenia Airways flight crashed near the Comoros in 2009, killing 152. She was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for 13 hours.
Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.

FIXTURES

December 28
Stan Wawrinka v Pablo Carreno Busta, 5pm
Milos Raonic v Dominic Thiem, no earlier then 7pm

December 29 - semi-finals
Rafael Nadal v Stan Wawrinka / Pablo Carreno Busta, 5pm
Novak Djokovic v Milos Raonic / Dominic Thiem, no earlier then 7pm

December 30
3rd/4th place play-off, 5pm
Final, 7pm

States of Passion by Nihad Sirees,
Pushkin Press

Start-up hopes to end Japan's love affair with cash

Across most of Asia, people pay for taxi rides, restaurant meals and merchandise with smartphone-readable barcodes — except in Japan, where cash still rules. Now, as the country’s biggest web companies race to dominate the payments market, one Tokyo-based startup says it has a fighting chance to win with its QR app.

Origami had a head start when it introduced a QR-code payment service in late 2015 and has since signed up fast-food chain KFC, Tokyo’s largest cab company Nihon Kotsu and convenience store operator Lawson. The company raised $66 million in September to expand nationwide and plans to more than double its staff of about 100 employees, says founder Yoshiki Yasui.

Origami is betting that stores, which until now relied on direct mail and email newsletters, will pay for the ability to reach customers on their smartphones. For example, a hair salon using Origami’s payment app would be able to send a message to past customers with a coupon for their next haircut.

Quick Response codes, the dotted squares that can be read by smartphone cameras, were invented in the 1990s by a unit of Toyota Motor to track automotive parts. But when the Japanese pioneered digital payments almost two decades ago with contactless cards for train fares, they chose the so-called near-field communications technology. The high cost of rolling out NFC payments, convenient ATMs and a culture where lost wallets are often returned have all been cited as reasons why cash remains king in the archipelago. In China, however, QR codes dominate.

Cashless payments, which includes credit cards, accounted for just 20 per cent of total consumer spending in Japan during 2016, compared with 60 per cent in China and 89 per cent in South Korea, according to a report by the Bank of Japan.