You can also watch this video by clicking HERE or on the Play Button
12/27/2011
12/25/2011
12/22/2011
The most expensive apartment
Former Citigroup chairman Sandy Weill listed his 6,744-sq-ft apartment at 15 Central Park West for an astonishing $88 million in November, promising to donate the proceeds of the sale to charity.
Now comes news that Ekaterina Rybolovleva, the 22-year-old daughter of Russian billionaire Dmitriy Rybolovlev, is buying the condominium. Rybolovleva is currently studying at an undisclosed U.S. university and plans to stay in the apartment when visiting New York. According to a source familiar with the sale, she paid the full asking price of $88 million setting a record for highest individual transaction in New York City history.
Here is the official statement from her representatives:
"A company associated with Ekaterina Rybolovleva, daughter of a well-known businessman Dmitriy Rybolovlev, has signed a contract to purchase an apartment at 15 Central Park West, New York. The apartment is a condominium currently owned by the Sanford Weill Family.
Ms. Rybolovleva is currently studying at a US university. She plans to stay in the apartment when visiting New York. Ms. Rybolovleva was born in Russia, is a resident of Monaco and has resided in Monaco and Switzerland for the past 15 years.”
The apartment, in one of the toniest post-war buildings in Manhattan, has 10 rooms including 4 bedrooms, a wraparound terrace of more than 2,000 sq. feet, 4 bedrooms and 2 wood burning fireplaces.
“This sale is an outlier. It works out to be about $13,000 per sq. foot, the highest on record, for anything, that has ever occurred,” says Jonathan Miller, chief executive of real estate appraiser Miller Samuel, “What is ironic is that when Sandy Weill bought it for less than half this amount, he paid the highest price per sq foot to date in that building, around, $6,400 per sq. foot. He is again setting a record.”
The previous New York City record had been set back before the market crash when investor Christopher Flowers paid $53 million for a townhouse at 4 east 75th Street. He resold the property on August 15 f
or just over $36 million.Rybolovleva is the second daughter of a billionaire to make huge real estate news this year. Back in July, heiress Petra Ecclestone, daughter of UK Formula One billionaire Bernie Ecclestone, apparently paid $85 million for Spelling Manor, the 56,500-square foot mansion that was previously owned by Candy Spelling, widow of famed TV producer Aaron Spelling, whose works include the “Beverly Hills 90210,” “Charlie’s Angels,” and “Dynasty” series.
Rybolovleva’s father Dmitriy sold the majority of his stake in Uralkali, the fertilizer business that made him rich, for $6.5 billion in 2010. He is already known in U.S. real estate circles for his May 2008 purchase of Donald Trump’s Palm Beach mansion, Maison de L’Amitie. He paid $95 million in cash for that residence, $25 million less than what Trump had originally asked. It was apparently the largest single residence price concession of all time. He may not own that house much longer though. His wife Elena, who filed for divorce in Palm Beach court in 2009, is seeking transfer of ownership of the former Trump mansion. He himself spends much of his time at his home in Monaco and is likely to buy the struggling French football club, AS Monaco.
12/21/2011
12/19/2011
Experts question need for stronger cellphone ban
When the head of the National Transportation Safety Board called for states to pass tough new laws banning drivers from using cellphones or hand-held devices, she said: "No call, no text, no update, is worth a human life."
While Tuesday's statement by NTSB Chairwoman Deborah Hersman is undeniable, there are those who question the advisability of such a ban. Some state lawmakers and transportation experts say it could be difficult to enforce and that there's no real evidence yet that existing laws on hand-held devices have significantly reduced accident rates.
The curious thing is that even as cellphone use has increased exponentially by drivers in vehicles, we see no surge in crashes.
"To date, no state has taken the steps that the NTSB is suggesting," says Jonathan Adkins, communications director for the Governors Highway Safety Association.
The NTSB's recommendation, which is not binding, called for a ban on all portable electronic devices, including hands-free devices, while driving except in emergencies. The sole exception would be devices "designed to support the driving task," such as GPS devices.
Current state laws o
n cellphone use are a patchwork. Connecticut, New Jersey and Delaware, for example, have some of the strictest laws, banning hand-held devices, cellphones and texting behind the wheel, while states like South Carolina, South Dakota and four others have no ban at all. Local governments may have their own laws.
A telephone survey of more than 6,000 drivers in the U.S. showed that people were twice as likely to take incoming cellphone calls as they were to make calls.
South Carolina Rep. Bakari Sellers, who has tried unsuccessfully for about four years to ban drivers from using hand-held devices in his state, says the main argument against it revolves around individual freedoms.
"We are a very conservative state that borders on libertarianism," says Sellers, a Democrat. "Not a safety argument, but an argument that the government is trying to take away our rights."
While he applauds the NTSB's proposal for its substance, he thinks it will sink his efforts at home because it has the imprimatur of the federal government.
"It will seal any chance of passing this in South Carolina," he says, chuckling.
The same survey found that drivers under the age of 25 were two to three times more likely than older drivers to read or send text messages or emails.
That sort of us-against-them attitude is shared by many people in South Dakota, says Republican state Rep. Betty Olson, who has opposed efforts to implement a ban in her state.
She doubts the NTSB's recommendations will cause any of her fellow lawmakers to seriously reconsider the issue. "Most of us don't pay much attention to what the feds are doing," she says. "We're kind of an independent bunch out here."
Olson, a former emergency medical technician, has seen plenty of automobile accidents, most of them attributable to "distracted driving" — of all kinds. That's already aga
inst the law in South Dakota, she says, so there's no need for a specific ban to target cellphones and hand-held devices.
"I think using a cellphone while driving is stupid," Olson says. "But the last thing the cops need is another law to try to enforce."
Since Delaware's ban went into effect in January, police officers have issued 9,000 citations for cellphone use while driving, says Sgt. Paul Shavack, a spokesman for the Delaware State Police. During the same period, there have been 139 accidents in which cellphones were cited as a distracting factor, one of which was fatal.
Shavack says the law can be tough for officers to enforce "because it's hard to tell if the driver was using a cellphone unless he or she admits it or a witness says it's happening."
He also notes that it's too soon to know whether the ban has had any effect on the number of accidents. "That might take three years of data," he says.
A National Highway Traffic Safety Administration pilot program in Hartford, Conn., and Syracuse, N.Y., suggested that a combination of aggressive public service advertising ("Phone in One Hand, Ticket in the Other") and stepped-up enforcement can reduce the numbers of distracted drivers, if not the number of accidents.
Each city received $200,000 in federal funds and $100,000 in state funds last year to test whether a crackdown would work. It did. Officials in Hartford say cellphone use and texting declined by a third during the enforcement period. In Syracuse, handheld use dropped by more than one-half and texting by nearly three-quarters, officials report.
The NTSB call to action was spurred by a deadly pileup in Missouri in August in which a 19-year-old pickup truck driver was texting when he rear-ended a semi-trailer, which careened into a school bus that subsequently hit another school bus. The pickup driver and a 15-year-old student were killed; 38 others were injured.
"The success of these pilot programs clearly shows that combining strong laws with strong enforcement can bring about a sea change in public attitudes and behavior," says NHTSA Administrator David Strickland.
Russ Rader, a spokesman for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, agrees but says there's just one problem: "We don't know if [the demonstration project] had any effect on crashes — and that's a key measure."
The institute's own study shows that states with cellphone bans have seen no real decrease in accident rates.
"The curious thing is that even as cellphone use has increased exponentially by drivers in vehicles, we see no surge in crashes," Rader says. "So as this trend has accelerated, with more and more people having phones in their cars and using them, the number of overall crashes has been declining."
Cellphone use behind the wheel is no doubt a dangerous distraction, Rader says. But the overall problem of distracted driving is much bigger — it's about fiddling with the car radio or eating a sandwich as much as it is cellphones, he says.
Adkins of the Governors Highway Safety Association acknowledges that there is no evidence proving that state bans reduce crashes.
"People in the safety community have been able to show that enforcing the ban has reduced the number of people actually using the phone while they drive," he says. "But we haven't been able to show that that actually reduces accident or crash rates."
Adkins says even though his organization hasn't decided whether to support the NTSB's proposal, "we understand it and think it has a lot of credibility."
Photos: Jeff Roberson/AP
12/11/2011
In Argentina, Violence Is Part of the Soccer Culture
Joao Pina for The New York Times Fans of River Plate, which was relegated from Argentina's top division, greeted the team before a September match at Quilmes.
BUENOS AIRES — Three fans of the soccer club San Lorenzo de Almagro slipped past security guards after a closed-door practice last month and berated players on the field for their recent losses.
Jonathan Bottinelli, a star defender, told the men to leave. One of them lunged at Bottinelli and punched him in the face. Another hit him from behind. A few teammates rushed in to stop the fight, Bottinelli and other players said, but the beating continued, leaving Bottinelli, a club fan since childhood, with doubts about ever again pulling on the red-and-blue San Lorenzo jersey.
More than a decade after England finally tamed the roving bands of hooligans that long ravaged soccer stadiums in Britain, fan-related violence continues to stain the sport in Argentina.
The unrest in part reflects an increasingly violent Argentine society, where street crime has been on the rise. But much of the violence can be traced to hostilities between rival factions of barra bravas, the Argentine version of hooligan fan groups that use fists, firearms and knives, and operate like mini-mafias. They engage in legal and illegal businesses, including selling drugs, often with the cover and complicity of the police, politicians and club officials, according to prosecutors and others who have studied them.
Barra bravas are blamed for many of the 257 soccer-related deaths in Argentina since 1924, almost half of which have occurred in the past 20 years, according to Let's Save Football, a nongovernmental organization in Buenos Aires that is working to eradicate violence in the sport.
“We don’t feel safe inside of our stadiums in Argentina,” said Monica Nizzardo, president of Let’s Save Football. “That is why families have stopped going.”
The head of the San Lorenzo barra brava, Cristian Evangelista, led the attack on Bottinelli, players testified in court, though they refused to name the other barras involved. Club officials did not respond to requests for comment. After the episode, the Argentine government canceled San Lorenzo’s next match while officials investigated.
Soccer violence became so rampant in the past decade that officials barred visiting fans from attending all but first-division matches for four years. The prohibition was lifted in August.
Visiting fans are not always the problem. After the storied club River Plate lost a match in June, relegating the team to the second division for the first time in its history, its fans pulled apart their own stadium, throwing bleachers and metal poles onto the field as the police fired tear gas into the stands. Fans fought with one another and attacked reporters and the police, who used rubber bullets and water cannons to try to quell the chaos. An estimated 70 people were injured, including 35 police officers, and about 100 people were detained.
The tension was palpable at a second-division match in September between River Plate and Quilmes. Some 600 police officers set up roadblocks around the stadium to separate Quilmes and visiting River fans. After the match, Quilmes fans had to wait a half-hour for River fans to exit before being allowed to leave the stadium.
Asserting control over unruly fans is more complicated than in England, said experts who have studied soccer violence.
In England, many hooligans were working-class men looking for a weekend fight. In Argentina, the barra bravas have ties to politicians, the police and club management, and some of their leaders have gained the admiration of young fans. Politicians tap them as a “shock force” to muscle unions backing rival politicians. Prosecutors have accused barras of killing union workers.
“On Sundays they go to the stadium and wave the flag of the club to support the team,” said Gustavo Gerlero, a public prosecutor. “During the week they are giving support to politicians and union leaders as laborers and bodyguards by the very people that theoretically should be stopping them.”
The Argentine Football Association, the sport’s national governing body, said it was concerned about the barra bravas’ role in the violence. Nizzardo and others have criticized the powerful president of the association, Julio Grondona, for not showing the will to break the barras. Grondona, 80, has led the association since 1979, when Argentina was in the midst of a bloody dictatorship. He is also a senior vice president of FIFA, soccer’s world governing body.
Grondona, who officials said has been ill lately, declined to be interviewed. In an interview last year that appeared in an Argentine book, “Football and Violence,” Grondona said his association wanted to eradicate the barra bravas to “ensure normality in the stadiums.” And he said the clubs needed to institute “biometric” control of fans entering the stadium to “deepen the right of admission.”
A barra brava typically has a few hundred members. They chant songs and wave flags and organize the huge banners supporting their club. Away from the field they earn money from scalping tickets, parking cars, selling illicit drugs and, some prosecutors have said, taking a cut of the sale of players.
Gerlero suggested that a deadly attack in 2007 on a high-ranking barra brava member, Gonzalo Acro, was sparked by a dispute over a cut of the sale of striker Gonzalo HiguaÃn by River Plate to Real Madrid for 13 million euros (about $17 million). In September a court in Buenos Aires sentenced Alan and William Schlenker, leaders of one of the River Plate barras, and three associates to life in prison for shooting Acro three times after he left his health club. Grondona, in the interview last year, called the notion that the barra bravas were working with the clubs in the selling of players “absurd.”
The barra bravas of the top clubs, like Boca Juniors La 12, earn more than 300,000 pesos a month (about $70,000), with a group’s leader earning $15,000 or more per month, said Gustavo Grabia, a journalist and author of a best-selling book about the Boca barra brava.
Rafael Di Zeo exemplifies the cult-figure status of some barra bravas leaders and the changing fan culture here.
The former leader of the Boca La 12 barra brava, Di Zeo was released from prison in May 2010 after serving more than three years for aggravated assault for his role in a 1999 fight against fans of the Chacarita Juniors that resulted in 14 injuries. He signs autographs at matches for young fans and has appeared on magazine covers.
Until the 1990s, fans idolized the top players at their clubs. But with the growing lure of bigger contracts abroad, many Argentine stars leave to play in Europe.
“There isn’t time for kids to identify with a player as the idol of their club,” Grabia said. “So they identify with the barras instead.”
On Oct. 30, Di Zeo made his long-awaited return. He stood at the opposite end of the field from Mauro MartÃn, his successor, and both men rallied fans to shout louder for the players. Di Zeo and some 2,000 of his followers hurled insults at a large group of MartÃn’s followers, chanting about fighting.
“Oh lele, oh lala, we are going to kill all the traitors,” Di Zeo and his supporters chanted. Across the field, MartÃn was captured on camera making a cut-off-your-head gesture.
After the match Di Zeo told reporters that he sat on the visitor’s side to avert problems. Carla Cavaliere, a judge in Buenos Aires, did not agree. On Nov. 4 she barred both Di Zeo and MartÃn from going within 500 meters (about 547 yards) of any stadium where a game was taking place or about to take place until at least the end of this season, a move apparently intended to avert a violent clash for control.
Di Zeo has said that the violence is eternal in Argentine soccer.
“Do you think that with me in prison the violence is going to end?” he told Grabia before entering prison in 2007, as recounted in his book. “Do you believe that if you put us all together in a plaza and kill us the violence is going to end? No, it isn’t going to end ever. Do you know why? Because this is a school. It is heritage, heritage, heritage.”
That sort of violent posturing has driven many families away from the stadiums.
Andrés Nieto, a supporter of San Lorenzo, said he stopped attending matches three years ago, and lately has had to resist pressure from his 8-year-old son, who wants badly to go.
“Every day it is harder to go to the stadiums with your kids to see the games,” said Nieto, 41, a graphic designer. “It seems like the quality of soccer is getting worse every day. The young players, most of them, are looking to play in whatever other country because they can earn more and it’s less violent.”
Nieto said the threats and assaults on players had become all too common.
After being beaten up at the hands of the barras, Bottinelli went to the coast to recover. He has decided to stay with San Lorenzo — for now.
“I am a little nervous, a little tense about what we had to go through,” Bottinelli told Fox Sports after the beating. “Now it’s over. What are you going to do? We have to live with this in soccer.”
from The New York Times
12/04/2011
Tablet computers to all kindergarteners (audio)
Photo: Tom Porter
Teacher Laurie Gerard uses iPads with her kindergarten students in Auburn, Maine
12/02/2011
Corporate fraud - Appropriate behaviour
THE lot of the middle manager is not always a happy one. Dumped on from above and resented from below, they are often first in the firing line when cuts are made. It is probably no surprise, then, that they also tend to be the quickest to steal from their companies when the chance arises.
from The Economist
According to a survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers, a consultancy and accounting firm, just over half of British firms said that they had uncovered high levels of fraud over the last year. Only Kenyan and South African ones found more (see chart), although it is likely that British companies are just better at spotting it.
Most fraud is carried out by outsiders, such as customers or vendors. But a firm’s employees still represent a big risk. A third of the companies questioned said that the biggest swindles over the last year were perpetrated by their own staff. Middle managers were by far the biggest culprits—and they are becoming more sticky-fingered. In 2007 32% of reported internal frauds at British companies were carried out by middle managers. By 2011 this had risen to 65%.
This is happening even as the overall level of internal fraud is falling. Middle managers are particularly keen on “asset misappropriation” (common theft to you or I), while the types of crimes more associated with the big cheeses, such as accounting fraud, have fallen—probably because firms, and regulators, have become more stringent after the credit crunch. But it might also be that internal fraud is now less likely to be detected. During a downturn, c
ompanies are tempted to do away with frontline defences, such as internal audits. This may have led to the under-reporting of some crimes.
When PwC asked firms to describe their typical fraudster, they identified him as a man in his 30s, who has been with the organisation for between three and five years. It sounds like a wild generalisation. But Tony Parton, an investigation partner at PwC, thinks it is not so far-fetched. In all likelihood, he says, it is describing a particular type of disgruntled manager, who has been passed over for promotion during straitened times. He might be driven to fraud by a sense of bitter entitlement, or it may be that he is feeling the economic pinch of sending his kids to private school or maintaining a second home.
Not every employee caught defrauding his company is sacked. Seventeen percent get to keep their jobs, while a quarter are not reported to the police. Many bosses decide that, even after being caught in the act, some managers are too valuable to lose. Better, they think, to shift them quietly to another department, with little more than a ticking off.
It is nigh on impossible for firms to quantify the cost of crimes such as theft. Many have concluded that the cost of a proper audit would outstrip the actual losses. The trouble with that approach, says Mr Parton, is that one also needs to consider the "collateral damage". Olympus, a Japanese maker of cameras and medical-imaging devices, may be an extreme example, but it lost 80% of its value after it sacked its new CEO, Michael Woodford, who had uncovered $1.3 billion in dodgy payments. And, of course, accounting frauds have brought down entire companies.
What is more, most firms are home to a vibrant grapevine. Knowing that your peers are stealing with impunity might lead you to think that you are the sucker for staying honest. Particularly if you promise yourself you will go straight once you get the promotion you deserve.
If you're interested in reading PwC’s latest fraud survey please click HERE
from The Economist
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)