NEWS,29.07.2012

The Countries That Will Win the Most Olympic Medals

 

According to a newly released report, the United States is predicted to win the most medals at the London 2012 Olympics. For a country with less than 5% of the world’s population, the U.S. is expected to win 103 medals at the XXX Olympiad, 10% more than the runner up China. This may come as no surprise to some, considering that it has won the most medals in 14 of the 25 Summer Games that it has participated in,including the past five Games.However, based on a report, published by the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, the number of medals a country wins supports the probability that it will win medals in subsequent Olympics. The report’s model predicted the medal count in Beijing in 2008 with 95% accuracy and has been the most accurate predictor of medal distribution among countries since it was unveiled for the Sydney Games in 2000. Based on the report, 24/7 Wall St. identified the ten countries that will win the most Olympics Medals at the London Summer Games.The accuracy of the formula is impressive, given that it only considers four main factors. It includes two economic measures population and gross domestic product (GDP) per capita which it assigns equal weight. The other two factors that it considers are unique to the Olympics and include total medals won, which it accords the most weight, and whether a country is hosting the Olympics, which has been assigned a different weight with each game.According to Emily Williams, author of the report and PhD candidate at London Business School and a recent graduate of Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, when looking at the results “the lagged medal share has the biggest impact and the hosting effect is also pretty substantial.” The model takes into account the total number of medals won by each country in every Olympiad since 1960. China and the U.S. have dominated in recent years, which was factored into their 2012 estimate. Meanwhile, Russia, Australia, and Germany, fell below expectations last year, which has hurt their projections for this year as well.The host effect is considerable and should be a boon to the United Kingdom this summer. “The U.K. stands ready to greatly benefit in terms of its overall medal count and especially its coveted gold medal total,” Williams observes in the report. For the United Kingdom, the model predicts that this advantage will assure third place this summer with 25 golds, up from fourth place in 2008 when it was awarded only 19. It will also increase its total medals won from 47 in 2008 to 62 in 2012.In the 2004 study which the Williams’ report is based on, the authors suggest that the host effect could be the result of diminished costs for athletes from the host nation to participate, the benefit of participating in a home facility or the motivational force of competing before family, friends and fellow countrymen.A look at the countries with the most medals demonstrates the impact that a country’s population can have on the eventual medal count. According to the report, “The larger the population a country has, the more chance it will have an athlete with the extraordinary natural ability necessary to become an Olympic champion.” Of the top ten countries that are predicted to win the most medals this year, seven of the 10 are among the 10 most populous countries in the world. The exceptions are Pakistan, Nigeria and Bangladesh.Neither the population size nor the GDP per capita can be considered in isolation of the other. The U.S. and Germany both do well because they have large populations and considerable wealth. But having an edge in one of these factors can help compensate for a weakness in the other. For instance, China, with its large population, wins more medals than many countries with a higher GDP per capita. Although Australia’s population size ranks just 51st in the world, its GDP per capita ranks seventh, and its standing in the medal count for 2012 is predicted to be seventh.Based on the report, “Jolly Good Show: Who Will Win the 2012 Olympic Games in London?,” by Emily Williams, which relies on the model developed by Dartmouth professors Andrew Bernard and Meghan Busse, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed the countries that are likely to win the most medals at the 2012 London Games. To approximate the data which was used to calculate the projections, we considered 2011 GDP and population data from the World Bank for the 28 countries that the model predicts will win 6 or more gold medals. We obtained total Summer Olympics medal counts from the NBC website, also to approximate the data used for the formula. For countries that have not consistently had the same borders, including Germany and Russia, the medal counts for the entire area were included. For example, all medals won by the former USSR were included in Russia’s count.These are the ten countries that will win the most medals in the London Olympic Games.

Aurora Shooting: Mall's Troubled History Of Racism, Crime

Until last week, the Town Center at Aurora seemed like a typical mall.But the 37-year-old shopping center had problems even before July 20, when a gunman opened fire at a midnight screening of "The Dark Knight Rises" in the movie theater that sits adjacent to the mall in its parking lot.In recent years, shoppers have fled the aging mall for fancier centers like nearby Cherry Creek. Management, seeking to weed out what it perceived as undesirable customers, set a curfew for minors and enforced a dress code for shoppers. In 2004, a mall leasing agent was caught on audio tape explaining that the mall wanted to attract more whites and "reduce negative aspects" like "young, black customer(s)." "This is why we don't hang around aurora mall/Century 16," one resident tweeted hours after the shooting. "Aurora mall has always been ghetto, tho" said another.In some ways, Town Center's history follows the same rise and stumble as many American malls. When it opened in 1975, J.C. Penney and Sears fed the shopping appetite of new middle class fleeing Denver for cul-de-sacs and spotless mailboxes. In 1998, Simon Property Group, the largest mall owner in America with 221 U.S. properties and an annual revenue of $4.3 billion in 2011, acquired the mall. Simon rechristened the structure in 2005, calling it Town Center, an appropriate name in Aurora; the sprawling suburb of 325,000 had built its own municipal campus across the highway from the mall in 2003 -- an attempt to manufacture a downtown.When malls were first conceived, they were meant to be utopias. Early mall developer Victor Gruen called them "crystallization points for suburbia's community life." But these days, the rise of online shopping and a lingering economic crisis have sucked away malls' reverie. Many are abandoned, attracting crime and draining municipal budgets; others are losing shops. The average vacancy rate for regional malls is currently at 8.9 percent, according to Reis Inc., a real estate data and analysis firm. Once hovering around 5 or 6 percent in the mid 2000s, the rate nearly doubled over the course of the recession.While Town Center hasn't suffered from fleeing stores, it has coped with crime before. Gang activity surfaced at the mall in the early 2000s and was one factor that led Simon to announce it planned to spruce up the center with a $100 million renovation. In 2005, during the renovations, a woman was shot and killed outside the Champs store. The city of Aurora contributed $15 million in tax incentives to the renovations.At the time, the mall also faced accusations of racism. Before the shooting, a leasing agent was caught on audio tape by one of the mall's tenants saying the planned renovations were in part to attract more white people. After local television station 7NEWS aired the comments in August 2004, Simon suspended the agent, promising to hire more black staff and begin a parental patrol program that paid adults to supervise youth. Three months after the shooting in 2005, Simon also established a curfew for teens. The movie theater, where the shooting occurred Friday, was built in 1998 by Century Theaters now a part of Cinemark in the southeast parking lot of the oval-shaped mall complex. Though unattached, the Century 16 theater has always been considered part of the mall. The theater sits on land registered to Simon Debartolo Group, the former name of Simon Property Group, according to the Arapahoe County assessor database. The theater is owned by Century Theatres.Up until this week, the theater was also listed as a business on Simon's official website for the mall alongside the rest of the stores. But in the days following the shooting, Town Center removed Century 16 from its online directory. A cache of the old listing from July 7 is still available.In a written statement sent to The Huffington Post on Thursday, Simon said, "There is no connection between our operation of the mall and the terrible tragedy which occurred at the theater last Friday morning. Since 2004, we have invested nearly $60 million in Town Center at Aurora and have made it a great shopping venue for our tenants and customers." Les Morris, a spokesman for Simon, refused to answer questions or confirm facts about the mall. Since the shooting, store employees have been told by management not to talk to press, according to a cashier at the mall boutique Luxie.In a statement released on Friday, Cinemark said that it was "deeply saddened about this tragic incident."Locally, there is a history of complaints about racial profiling at the mall. In 1990, the NAACP spoke out about the mall's security guards, provoking then owner Corporate Property Investors to retrain staff and hire more minority guards.In wake of the scandal over the leasing agent's comments, residents hoped the mall's policies might change for good. Alvertis Simmons, 55, a community organizer in Aurora, flew to Simon's headquarters in Indianapolis that year to discuss how the mall could improve its relationship with minorities. He worked with the company to implement its parental patrol program.But Simon never followed through on its promise to hire more black staff, according to Simmons, even though it hired a few contractors during the renovations. "They could do better," he said this week. "Aurora mall would have never changed their culture had they not been taped."The leasing agent is no longer employed at Simon, the company said in its statement Thursday.In 2006, the local chapter of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) conducted a survey of 1,000 mall shoppers on discrimination and identified about 50 minority youth who said they were were profiled by mall security, mostly because of their clothing. "There was no clear demarcation [in the dress code] of what was gang attire and what was urban culture," said Ben Hanna, 31, who worked as head organizer for ACORN at the time. The Simon Property Group code of conduct posted on the websites and in the hallways of many of its malls does not mention "gang apparel" but requires shoppers to wear"appropriate" clothing. "Apparel that may provoke a disturbance or incite violence is prohibited," it states.Cinemark never adopted any of the mall's policies such as the dress code or parental patrol, according to Simmons. Still, the theater's clientele was affected as they also patronized the mall, he said. Freddie Hanns, 60, visits the mall almost every week and worked briefly as a contractor there during the renovations. Hanns, like Simmons, is black. "I think the mall has gotten better," he said. "It couldn't get any worse."But Aurora's racial tensions have mounted in the past decade as downtown Denver gentrifies and minorities move to the suburbs, according to Jeremy Nemeth, chair and professor of urban planning at the University of Colorado Denver. In 2000, Aurora was 13.4 percent black, 19.8 percent Hispanic and 68.9 percent white. In 2010, it was 15.7 percent black, 28.7 Hispanic and 61.1 percent white.Massacres like the one on July 20, however, are generally not caused by shifting demographics. Law enforcement officials call people like Aurora suspect James Holmes "active shooters," individuals who open fire in crowded areas and kill at random. Active shooter incidents are on the rise in shopping centers; besides the one in Aurora, there have been at least nine mall shooting sprees in the United States unrelated to gang or personal disputes since 2005."The mall is a victim of individuals who want to inflict as much carnage and get as much publicity as possible," said Malachy Cavanagh, a spokesman for the International Council of Shopping Centers. Like schools and churches, malls become targets because they draw large crowds and are publicly accessible, he said.In Aurora and many other suburbs, malls are also among the few public places teens can congregate. "Libraries close early. Recreation centers, they don't have them in the vicinity. And it's hot, hot, hot," said Simmons. "All they got is the mall."In the past decade, the Department of Homeland Security has partnered with the retail industry to develop training programs for dealing with active shooters, said Cavanagh.One way to deal with recurring crime like gang violence is to make malls more restrictive, as Town Center attempted to do. Unlike true public spaces, privately owned malls for the most part can expel anyone who looks suspicious; they aren't obliged to give patrons a right to free speech. There are a few exceptions: In five states, one of which is Colorado, courts have established rulings requiring mall owners to permit certain political activities like protesting and collecting ballot signatures."Malls are repressive spaces," said Michael Sorkin, an architect and critic who has written on malls and public space. "They have distorted the nature of the way in which one is able to participate in the life of a city as a citizen." This could make malls a target for violence on the part of those disenfranchised by consumer culture, Sorkin says.Yet few mall policies could have helped catch James Holmes. The 24-year-old graduate student at the University of Colorado grew up in a white, upper middle class family in San Diego as close as it gets to one of Town Center's target customers."It doesn't matter if you have 100 parent patrols at the mall or at the movies," said Simmons. "That guy was going to do what he did."

NEWS, 30.05.2012.

IMF chief riles Greeks

 

Political leaders in Athens and thousands of internet users have rounded on International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief Christine Lagarde for branding Greeks tax dodgers, as parties went on the campaign trail for next month's elections.Socialist leader Evangelos Venizelos accused Lagarde on Sunday of trying to "humiliate" the debt-stricken country, which is facing its second election in six weeks, a vote seen as crucial to the future of the eurozone.Radical left-wing leader Alexis Tsipras, whose Syriza party is one of the two top contenders for the June 17 vote, insisted "Greek workers pay their taxes, which are unbearable".Greek web users waged Facebook war against Lagarde, with the IMF's French managing director receiving more than 10 000 messages, many of them obscene, on her page on the online social network.By late Sunday afternoon a separate Facebook page had sprung up titled "Greeks are against Lagarde".Their anger was sparked by comments Lagarde made in Britain's Guardian newspaper on Friday that Greeks must "help themselves collectively" by all paying taxes, saying she was more concerned about Africans in poverty than Greeks in the economic crisis.Among the online messages posted by angry Greeks, Iakovos Magdakis wrote: "Who are you to tell me to pay? My wife has been unemployed for four years, I have been unemployed for five months and we have a four-month-old baby."Lagarde responded to the flood of angry online messages by responding on Facebook that she was "very sympathetic to the Greek people and the challenges they are facing"."That's why the IMF is supporting Greece in its endeavour to overcome the current crisis," she said on the social networking site.The comments by the French IMF head came as parties squared off for the election that could determine whether Greece continues to receive European Union-IMF funds as part of a multi-billion euro bailout package and stays in the eurozone.Tsipras seized on her comments to assert his stance as a defender against economic cuts, which drove many Greeks to vote for him in an inconclusive election on May 6, putting him second ahead of Venizelos's Pasok party."The last thing we seek in Greece is her sympathy. Greek workers pay their taxes, which are unbearable," Tsipras said in a statement, taking a swipe at Pasok and the conservative New Democracy party which came first in May."For tax evaders, she should turn to Pasok and New Democracy to explain to her why they haven't touched the big money and have been chasing the simple worker for two years."In France, whose Socialist President Francois Hollande has defended Greece's place in the eurozone and pushed for a more growth-orientated strategy in the crisis, government spokesperson Najat Vallaud-Belkacem described Lagarde's comments as "rather simplistic and stereotypical".Venizelos welcomed Lagarde's Facebook message, after saying an election rally: "Nobody can humiliate the Greek people during the crisis."Greece made a deal in 2010 to receive hundreds of billions of euros from the IMF and the EFSF, a European Union bailout fund, to rescue it from financial collapse. Lagarde took the reins of the global lender in May 2011.The country will head to the polls for a second time in six weeks on June 17 since political parties failed to form a coalition after the May 6 election.Syriza, which has threatened to renege on the bailout accords, has led at times in the opinion polls, but a series of polls published Sunday indicated New Democracy had taken the lead.New Democracy and Pasok each defend the bailout agreement they signed as partners in a coalition government, but have proposed to amend it.Venizelos said he wants to extend the loan repayments."The country needs a government that will unite the people and revise the loan agreement, but assure we stay in the euro," he said Sunday.Former prime minister Lucas Papademos has warned that Greece may run out of money by the end of June if international bailout funds are cut off following the election, To Vima newspaper reported Sunday.Campaigning on Saturday, New Democracy leader Antonis Samaras said a victory for Syriza would cause "catastrophe" and send Greece out of the euro.

Greece's crime bonanza

 

Andreas and Emilia Karabalis, who are both 80, feared their bank in Greece would collapse, so they withdrew their €80 000 ($100 000) savings and stashed it at home for safety. Days later, the thieves came in the night. "We were sleeping. The two masked burglars came to our bed and tied us up. They hit us. "They robbed us - they didn't leave anything, it was torture," said Emilia, who still trembles when she recalls the attack this month on the island of Lefkada. Husband Andreas added: "Our life is black now. They took our life's savings. We lost everything." No one knows just how much cash lies stashed in Greek homes, secreted in cupboards, at the back of the ice-box, beneath the floor or under the mattress. But by any guess it is well in the billions, and burglars are after their share of loot which is both highly portable and virtually impossible to recover. Greece's debt crisis has plunged it into five straight years of economic contraction, thrown half of its young people out of work and may see it ejected from the eurozone. In the past two years, Greeks have withdrawn from banks more than €72bn - or close to €7 000 for every man, woman and child in the country. And much of that has been taken in cash. No money in robbing banks Police say that gangs who may have once eyed "hard targets", - like the banks themselves, or jewellers - are now going after homes of ordinary people, where there is far less risk and often large stashes of cash freshly withdrawn from savings accounts. "Many people have withdrawn their money from the banks fearing a financial crash, and they either carry it on them, find a hideout at home or in storage rooms," said national police spokesperson Thanassis Kokkalakis. "We urge people to trust the banking system, leave their money there, or at least in a safe place, not hide it at home, where they must anyway take the basic security measures," he said. "Some people don't even lock their doors and windows." The unexpected bonanza is attracting foreign crime networks, he said, including two from ex-Soviet Georgia which police dismantled in recent months, blaming them for 300 burglaries. Crime is just one hazard for people storing unusually large hoards of cash, most of which are not insured. There are tales of savings going up in smoke in fires or, as in one case, being lost when a pensioner withdrew his life savings - then died suddenly, before telling his family where they were hidden. Theft, though, seems the biggest risk and the crime wave has spread far beyond the big cities into rural areas where robbery was little known. Carpenter George Psychogios, 30, withdrew his savings of €8 000 and kept them in his house at Arta, a small town 350km from Athens and known principally for its Byzantine stone bridge and a 13th-century church. "I hid the money in two different places before leaving for a trip. When I came back it was all gone," he said. "They broke into the house through a balcony door and they took it all." "We used to sleep outside with the doors unlocked. Now we don't feel safe even when we lock up. They break into homes, shops, businesses. There is a surge in robberies here." In Iraklion, a working class neighbourhood of Athens, local people say some thieves have become so brazen that they often prowl in broad daylight, even when a family is in. "We were sitting on the front veranda chatting when they jumped from the roof to the back yard and got into the house," said pensioner Mattheos Michelakakis, 61. Before he realised what had happened, they had made off with his family's gold. "Burglars hear that people are scared and withdrawing money and they hit homes randomly hoping they will be lucky," he said. "I feel like I've been naive. We always used to leave all the doors open; we had nothing to worry about." Hoarding in troubled times According to the central bank, Greeks withdrew €72bn from bank accounts between January 2010 and March 2012, leaving just €165bn behind. Since then, withdrawals have accelerated further after an inconclusive May 6 election led Eurtopean Union leaders to talk openly of Greek exit from the single currency. Some of that money was wired abroad and some spent, but much of it was hidden in homes, either in cash or converted to gold. If Greece leaves the common currency area, any money left in Greek banks would probably be turned into drachmas worth a good deal less. Euros stashed in a box at home would still be euros. "People have already taken their money out of the bank. The rest are doing it now because they are afraid we will be kicked out of the eurozone," said one police officer. Among cases he said he had come across in the past week: a man reported €30 000 in cash and gold stolen from a storage room next to his house and an elderly woman had her life savings of €100 000 stolen from her apartment. That woman's home also happened to be packed full of cartons of long-life milk and boxes of pasta - in case, she explained, the economic crisis led to food shortages. Stashing cash is as old as Greece. The countryside is dotted with archaeological sites where the ancients squirrelled away their silver drachmas to hide them from marauding armies. Greek museums are rich in treasure whose owners never made it back. "Hiding valuables - small or larger amounts of coins, golden, silver, even bronze - was very widespread in antiquity, especially in times of war, crisis or difficulty," said George Riginos of the Association of Greek Archaeologists. "Sometimes the owner would perish and this is how they reached us, hidden in the ground, in holes in the wall, small vases under the floor or leather bags." Future archaeologists may yet stumble on some of the buried treasure of the eurozone crisis of 2012. A senior banker tells the story of a family on the island of Rhodes who recently visited their local branch, trying desperately to figure out how much their late father had withdrawn before he died. Not trusting the bank, the old man had taken out his life savings. But he hadn't told anyone where he hid it. His children were searching everywhere, tearing down walls in the house trying to find it, but with no luck.