China Wins 1st London Olympics Gold Medal

China's Yi Siling wins 10m air rifle; first gold of Games

The Associated Press

Updated 1h 15m ago

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LONDON – The first athlete to qualify for the London Olympics also won the first gold medal Saturday.

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  By Christopher Hanewinckel, USA TODAY Sports
  Top-ranked Yi Siling of China captures the first gold medal of the London Games with a victory in the women's 10-meter air rifle competition at Royal Artillery Barracks.

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By Christopher Hanewinckel, USA TODAY Sports

Olympics and business

The economic benefits of hosting the Olympic Games have been rather dubious at best

IF you were a hard-core sports fan, you would have woken up at 4am to watch the opening ceremony for the London Olympics this morning. In which case you probably won’t read this until afternoon as you regain some sleep.

Yes, the long-awaited games are upon us and we wait again to see if someone will bring a gold medal home finally. I think our only chance is Lee Chong Wei in badminton who lost the last Olympics final to Lin Dan of China in 2008 and returned with a silver.

What continues to boggle the mind is the cost of the games and how it keeps on going up and up. For Britain, the injection of money into the economy as well as a slew of business opportunities the games must have thrown up must offer some welcome respite from the bad times and even a chance to stem the downturn in the economy.

As former British Prime Tony Blair put it at an event publicising the Olympics: “If you were to pose the question to (fellow bidders) Paris or Madrid or New York ... ‘Would you prefer to be putting on the Olympics right now?’ I’m sure they would say ‘Yes’.”

Well that’s his take on it. The cost of hosting the games is £9.3bil or a massive RM46.5bil. But what is telling is that the original estimated cost was just £2.4bil (RM12bil).

Blair helped to deliver the Olympics to London for 2012 in 2005 over other competitors which included Paris and New York, with Paris being the hot favourite. Given the traditional rivalry between the French and the British, the unexpected victory must have been sweet.

But not so the near quadrupling of the costs in hosting the Olympic games. This has been heavily criticised with people questioning loudly whether London would benefit from hosting the games with costs having increased so much.

Besides, London through its mayor Ken Livingstone, signed off considerable rights to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) which requires cities bidding for the games to sign the contract ahead of the awarding of the games to a particular city.

A lengthy article in Vanity Fair gives a glimpse of such requirements revealed by activist groups. Below is an extract:

“To comply with its terms, London must designate 250 miles of dedicated traffic lanes for the exclusive use of athletes and ‘the Olympic Family,’ including IOC members, honorary members, and ‘such other persons as may be designated by the IOC.’ (These traffic lanes are sometimes called ‘Zil lanes,’ alluding to the Soviet-era express lanes in Moscow reserved for the politburo’s favourite limousines.)

“Members of the Olympic Family must also have at their disposal at least 500 air-conditioned limousines with chauffeurs wearing uniforms and caps. London must set aside and pay for 40,000 hotel rooms, including 1,800 four- and five-star rooms for the IOC and its associates, for the entire period of the games. London must cede to the IOC the rights to all intellectual property relating to the games, including the international trademark on the phrase ‘London 2012.’ Although mail service and the issuance of currency are among any nation’s sovereign rights, the contract requires the British government to obtain the IOC’s ‘prior written approval’ for virtually any symbolic commemoration of the games, including Olympic-themed postage stamps, coins, and banknotes.”

One would be forgiven for thinking that London has surrendered its sovereign rights to the IOC for the period of the games!

Back to business. Lloyds Banking Group chief economist Patrick Foley meantime estimates that the Olympic Games will give a boost of £16.5bil (RM82.5bil), mostly through construction, to the UK economy although how he arrives at that is not clear.

That’s not a lot simply because the direct spend on the Olympics is already £9.3bil and unless such spending has the recurrent ability to reproduce income over many years, it is not justifiable.

Foley points that the bigger impact will be the regeneration of a neglected area of East London which became the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. However, it is naïve to think that the area would continue to be as lively after the Olympics and there would be the question of what to do with all that excessive infrastructure post the games.

At best, the benefits of the Olympics for the host city is dubious. At worst, one can argue quite cogently that all that money could have been put for better use in infrastructure and regeneration that would have been more sustainable than for providing facilities for a large and temporary influx of athletes, even if they were world-class, and others.

Meantime, Britain is making the best out of the Olympics. Prime Minister David Cameron just two days before the opening ceremony for the Olympics launched a high-powered attempt to woo global business at a conference to showcase Britain to the world.

Among those for whom the red carpet will be rolled out is a 30-strong delegation from China. Britain is wooing foreign investors in a real big way and using the Olympics to the hilt to do that.

And read what Cameron’s predecessor Blair said to Vanity Fair earlier: “If you said to David Cameron, or anyone involved with this, ‘If you could click your fingers, and the Olympics would be held in Paris instead of London, what would you feel: (a) relieved, or (b) Oh, my God, what did we give that up for?’ it would be b. What you make of the Olympics is in a way up to you. For a country like Britain, it’s a great thing for us to have the Olympics here. We can afford to do the Olympics. We’re Britain. We’re not some Third World country.”

Really? That’s almost a desperate attempt to try and get foreign investments in to help soothe the troubled waters that is the British economy smacks of what many Third World countries would have done to boost their own economies.

A Question of Business by P.GUNASEGARAM

 l Independent consultant and writer P Gunasegaram (t.tp.guna@gmail.com) does not love the Olympics so much as to stay awake until 4am to watch the opening ceremony.

National Instruments to set up its largest R&D facility outside US in Penang

KUALA LUMPUR: US-based National Instruments (NI) is aiming to set up its largest research and development (R&D) facility outside the United States with the expansion of its facilities in Penang.

“Currently we are operating in a rented space. With this expansion, we will have our own infrastructure to support our business in the region,” NI Penang managing director Raj Purushothaman told a press briefing on the expansion plans of the company yesterday.

The company also aims to increase its manufacturing capacity to support an additional US$1bil in the company's growth.

Raj: ‘With this expansion, we will have our own infrastructure to support our business in the region.”

The capacity would add another 40% to its global hardware manufacturing capacity which would include the manufacturing of academic products, embedded controllers, industrial chassis and modular instruments.

Its manufacturing arm is slated to be operational in the fourth quarter.

In tandem with the planned five to 10-year expansion, the company is aiming to expand its local headcount to 1,000-1,500 employees from its current 165.

This includes 250 engineers in electrical, mechanical and engineering management fields.

The technology hardware and software provider began operations in Malaysia in 2009 with an US$80mil capital investment.

Raj said as part of the planned investment, the expansion was envisioned to transform its facilities in Penang to be the Asia-Pacific hub, serving its clients in the region and elsewhere.

“It will be an integrated operations centre, which manages R&D, manufacturing, supply chain, product distribution, product services, IT and finance,” he said.

Its expansion includes the construction of a 314,000 sq ft office and manufacturing space on a 23-acre site in Batu Maung, Penang.

Its manufacturing arm slated to be operational in the fourth quarter would have the capacity to support an additional US$1bil in the company's growth.

NI is among other American multinationals that have established its presence in Malaysia such as Honeywell, Dell, Intel, General Electric, Western Digital and Motorola.

At the event, International Trade and Industry Minister Datuk Seri Mustapa Mohamed said the United States was the third largest foreign investor in the manufacturing sector in 2011 with RM2.5bil.

The investments were mainly in electrical and electronics, chemical and chemicals products, transport equipment and wood & wood products.

“The electrical and electronics (E&E) industry continues to be a major contributor to Malaysia's gross domestic product growth . For the period January to May 2012, E&E exports were 32.27% of the total country's exports and 48.73% of the manufactured exports,” he said in his speech delivered by Malaysian Investment Development Authority (Mida) chief executive officer Datuk Noharuddin Nordin.

- The Star

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The mystery woman from N. Korea is leader's wife

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea's new young leader, Kim Jong-un, is married, state media said on Wednesday, putting an end to speculation over the relationship with a woman seen at his side during recent events.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un (C) and his wife (red), who was named by the state broadcaster as Ri Sol-ju, visit the Rungna People's Pleasure Ground in Pyongyang in this undated picture released by the North's KCNA on July 25, 2012. REUTERS/KCNA

The announcement, which fits a trend the upbeat Kim has followed to break out of the dour management style of his late father, Kim Jong-il, came just two weeks after he was seen at a gala performance accompanied by the woman, with rumours swirling as to whether she was his wife, lover or sister.

"Kim Jong-un's move appears to give the youth hoping for change, especially young women, a favourable impression of him although it can make conservative old North Koreans uncomfortable," said Cheong Seong-chang, a senior fellow at the Sejong Institute think tank.

"Although Kim Jong-un continues a one-man dictatorship, he is expected to have a more open attitude in culture than in the Kim Jong-il era."

Some observers in South Korea speculated she was a singer, Hyon Song-wol, he dated years ago before his father put a stop to it, but who was now back on the scene.

But the North Korean state broadcaster named his wife as Ri Sol-ju, without giving details. It is not clear when the two tied the knot.

Recent TV footage showed the two laughing with each other, touching a child's hair together and clapping while watching a performance featuring western show tunes and Mickey Mouse.

"While a welcoming song was playing, our party and people's supreme leader, Marshal Kim Jong-un, came out from a ceremony of the completion (of a 'pleasure ground') with wife, Ri Sol-ju," it said.

Kim, in his late-20s, took over the family dynasty last December with the death of his father, whose rule took North Korea deeper into isolation, abject poverty and large-scale political repression.

KIM DID IT HIS WAY

Since then he has taken a more glitzy approach, at least on the surface, to ruling a country which is locked in a stand-off with the West over its nuclear weapons programme.

Once the official mourning period was over, the youngest Kim to rule North Korea was seen laughing with fusty old generals, gesticulating in delight at a military parade and, the biggest shock of all, speaking. Most North Koreans went to their graves never having seen Kim the elder speak.

Kim the younger has steadily worked to impose his own stamp on the top leadership of North Korea, and on Sunday ousted Vice Marshal Ri Yong-ho, the country's leading military figure, who was seen as close to Kim Jong-il.

Kim was named marshal of the army in a move that adds to his glittering array of titles and cements his power. He already heads the Workers' Party of Korea and is First Chairman of the National Defence Commission.

He is also gearing up to experiment with agricultural and economic reforms after purging Ri Yong-ho for opposing change, a source with ties to both Pyongyang and Beijing told Reuters earlier.

This month's unusual gala performance, where Kim was seen with his wife, featured Walt Disney's "It's A Small World", a thumping rock version of the theme tune to "Rocky" and Frank Sinatra's "My Way", a song that might have particular appeal to the Kim family, whose word is law in North Korea.

Bizarrely for a state which frequently voices its loathing for all things American, it featured a cast of Disney characters, including Winnie the Pooh and Minnie Mouse.

The family does have a previous Disney connection: the ruler's elder brother, Kim Jong-nam, said he was on his way to Tokyo Disneyland when he was caught illegally entering Japan in 2001.

(Editing by Nick Macfie)

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How to impress Malaysian law examiners?

The semester examination has just ended at my university. Working late till the wee hours of many mornings, I completed the evaluation of several thick bundles of examination scripts. As always, a fair number of answers were illegible, incomprehensible and terribly disorganised.

FOR all of us in the teaching profession, the periodic ordeal of marking examination scripts arouses suicidal as well as homicidal instincts!

Many students fail to exhibit basic knowledge of the subject and, understandably, fail the examination. Others have undoubted ability but not the technique or methodology of writing effective answers. It is to the latter group of law students that I wish to address today’s column.

Let me begin by saying that law is “reasoned argument”. To perform satisfactorily in the field, some special skills and techniques need to be cultivated.

Language: A law student should understand that oral and written communication skills are absolutely indispensable for the effective practice of the law. Law students should seek constantly to improve their command of the language by reading newspapers, law books and law journals.

Original sources: A good law student buys her own textbooks and statutes and does not rely entirely on class handouts. She constantly supplements class handouts with self-study from textbooks and adds to the “bank account” of knowledge opened by the lecturer for the students.

Art of reading: Reading is an art. Unless we have a smart strategy, it is entirely possible to get lost in the undergrowth. In reading a book or article, the student must avoid beginning at the beginning and plodding to the end. She must first look at the headings and sub-headings to get a broad feel or outline of what the chapter contains.

She must proceed from the general to the particular; from the woods to the trees. If an easy book or handout is available, she must read that first to get a background.

Self-study: Her study techniques must have three aims. First, to understand the basic principles of the law. Second, to recall basic ideas. To achieve this she must summarise the main principles or ideas in simple diagrams, charts, “magic words” or acronyms. These “scaffoldings” or outlines must be committed to memory. A third aim must be to evaluate existing materials and to highlight the flaws in the laws.

Attending tutorials: Successful students go prepared to class bubbling with queries. During the class or tutorial, they don’t just hear, they listen. They jot down prolific notes. They ask questions orally or by e-mail or in other written form. They participate.

Study groups: Successful law students form informal groups for study and revision. They try to be in a group of hard workers and independent thinkers. They encourage differences rather than conformity. They expose their understanding to scrutiny by others.

Summarising notes: Organising, systematising and summarising knowledge is the best way to master it. In preparation for the examination, a good student summarises each topic on one A4 page or on index cards or uses flow charts or diagrams to organise the vast amount of material collected.

For example, the whole topic of constitutional supremacy in constitutional law can be summed up in six points:

> Article 4(1) and 162(6) on supremacy of the Constitution
> Fundamental rights
> Federal-state division of powers
> Judicial review
> Amendment process
> Darurat (emergency).

These six points can, in turn, be summed up in one magic acronym AFFJAD to help you to recall the broad contours of the topic effortlessly.

Likewise, important cases could be summed up in half a page with a few lines each on three important parts of each case: the facts, the issues, and the court’s decision on each issue.

Past years’ examination papers: Familiarity with existing patterns of evaluation helps greatly in preparation. A successful student obtains and analyses past years’ examination questions. She prepares charts to discover the examiners’ preferences or patterns. She is, however, aware that examiners change from year to year and are not bound by patterns or precedents.

Practising written answers: A good student solves some past years’ questions and submits them to her lecturer for evaluation. This way she seeks to learn by simulation. She submits her knowledge as well as her methodology to sympathetic scrutiny.

Effective presentation: Examinations are like life. Substance is important but so is show! An organised, easy-to-read presentation always secures higher marks than one that is all jumbled up, disconnected and disorganised.

In writing her answers in the examination hall, a wise student does not start writing the moment she is allowed to do so. She spends five minutes organising her answer; drawing up the scaffolding or the outline on the left page of the answer book.

ATACR formula: For each essay or problem question, a wise student follows the ATACR formula. “A” stands for analysis or breakdown of the question or problem into its constituent parts. The more issues the student spots, the higher her marks are likely to be.

“T” refers to theory or the law relating to each issue identified above. The theory and the law are found in statutes, decided cases and juristic works.

The next “A” stands for application of theory or law to the facts of the case or question at hand.

“C” refers to conclusion on the point being discussed and “R” signifies the remedy or course of action to be recommended.

Reflecting On The Law
By Shad Saleem Faruqi

> Shad Faruqi is Emeritus Professor of Law at UiTM