London 2012 Olympics: Saudi Arabia Refuse to Lift Ban on Female Athletes - ibtimes.co.uk
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Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Brunei are the only countries that have never fielded women on their Olympic teams. While Qatar and Brunei have announced plans to take female athletes to London, the Saudis have yet to do so.
According to Rogge, discussions with the Saudis are continuing.
He ruled out the possibility of Saudi woman competing in London under the Olympic flag, rather than as members of the Saudi team.
The IOC has come under pressure from human rights groups for not imposing sanctions against Saudi Arabia for not sending female athletes.
Human Rights Watch Middle East director Sarah Leah Witson said: "Saudi Arabia is the last holdout denying women and girls the ability to take part in sports.
"The clock is running out for Saudi women to join the games and for the international community to insist that the Saudi government allow women to participate."
Although Saudi Arabia may not have women who meet Olympic qualifying standards, the IOC is prepared to offer them special conditions or look for other solutions.
As recently as the Atlanta 1996 Olympics, 26 national teams did not include women.
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London's luscious, low-key side - Los Angeles Times
LONDON — As a Californian, I had forgotten that you don't cancel your life just because it rains. If you did, you'd never see anything in London, at least not recently. And there is much to see.
Too much, in fact. It's a travel buffet, and it's hard not to load your plate with a plethora of monuments, historic buildings and churches.
It's important to see that London, but it's imperative to see the lesser-known London, if only to escape the hordes who are coming here for the Queen's Jubilee from June 2-5, World Pride from June 17-July 8, the Summer Games from July 27-Aug. 9 and the Paralympics from Aug. 29-Sept. 9.
By stepping away from the famous sites, you see a different, less daunting London. There's lugubrious London, luscious London, Latino London, liquid London, even low-key and sometimes low-cost London. And if even those get to be too much, there's always leaving London. So welcome to London for the "L" of it, a sort of suggestion box of ideas for a city about to steal the spotlight and always threatening to steal your heart.
Lugubrious London
If you want to torment your soul, go to the Thames on a foggy morning and listen to Big Ben chime the hour. On the right day, it's bone-chilling and it's free.
If you'd rather focus on someone else's tormented soul, check out the Wraiths of London, a 2½-hour ghost walk in central London, which is said to be haunted by the restless dead. Guide Alan Aspinall, a newcomer to the crowded ghost-walk field, takes his passion for stories, combines them with history and spins your head around.
He talks about Amelia Dyer, a "baby farmer" in Victorian England. For a fee, she and others of her trade took the offspring from unwed mothers and found homes for them. True to her name, Dyer didn't place them; she killed them. She was sentenced to death, but before her execution, she told one of the guards, "I'll see you again, sir." He did see her again — in a vision, or so the story goes. As Aspinall unspooled the tale, a street sign came loose and clanged on its metal post as we stood across from Old Bailey, the criminal court where Dyer was tried. Coincidence?
Departs 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays from Exit 1 of St. Paul's tube stop. Cost: about $13. Info: http://www.wraithsoflondon.com
Luscious London
After hanging with the dead, you may need some antioxidants. Chocolate always works for me, and an organized walk sounded sublime. CityDiscovery's Thursday afternoon trek took a group of us to such little pieces of heaven as Hotel Chocolat, where I learned the proper way to eat good chocolate (take a slice, hold it against the roof of your mouth, let it melt, repeat); Freggo (sample the dulce de leche ice cream with bitter chocolate); Prestat; Ladurée; and Charbonnel et Walker (where the violet and rose crèmes became my new BFF). Or you can skip the tour and go directly to Selfridges, which has many of these under one roof in its food hall. It's a little like eating dessert first, but life is short.
Info: http://www.lat.ms/Jnjsvd. About $32.
Latino London
On the outside, the Church Street Hotel looks like another stately inn. On the inside? Fiesta! Bienvenidos to a Latin-flavored London, to a hotel so unexpected that you're apt to ask yourself, "Did I take a wrong turn and end up in Oaxaca?" (Not yet, but hold on and you may.)
Each of its 28 rooms is awash with color (mine was a brilliant beach-day blue), and the knickknacks and pictures say "hola." If you haven't come for the décor, come for the price (rates during non-Olympics start at an almost unheard of $145 a night, including breakfast), the quiet and the quirkiness. You pay a price for feeling South of the Border because you're in what feels like far southern London; it's a trek into the city, but I grew to love Bus 36. Note that there's no elevator, the steps are steep and illumination — in my room, at least — wasn't a strong point. Still, the hotel was a bright spot.
Church Street Hotel, 29-33 Camberwell Church St.; 011-44-20-7703-5984, http://www.churchstreethotel.com.
The next-door Angels & Gypsies restaurant is more Iberian than Mexican, but it's hard to resist this small-plates place, where hams hang in the window. The fennel/pomegranate/feta salad alone is worth it, never mind the chorizo tortilla.
Angels & Gypsies, 33 Camberwell Church St.; 011-44-20-7703-5984, http://www.angelsandgypsies.com.
If your hambre won't be satisfied by anything but Mexican, try Wahaca (Oaxaca to the rest of us), which bills itself as "Mexican market eating" with such offerings as tacos, burritos, quesadillas and salads. I tried the green rice (coriander, onion and garlic, $3.70) and piquant pork pibil tacos (three for $6.35). To put out the slight sting of the piquant: vanilla ice cream topped with pumpkin seeds and cajeta sauce (lighter than caramel, $6.35). An indulgence calorically and monetarily but a bueno one.
Wahaca, multiple locations, http://www.wahaca.co.uk.
London 2012: 640,000 tickets put on sale this month have been sold - The Guardian
London 2012 organisers have sold more than two-thirds of the remaining tickets that were put on general sale this week, with many sports sold out.
Of the 928,000 tickets first put on sale this month around 640,000 have been sold. That leaves around 300,000 still to be sold, plus a further 150,000 to 200,000 that will come back on to the market as seating configurations are finalised.
In addition to those sports that had sold out before the general sales window opened, the 70,000 general access tickets to the Olympic Park have also gone, as have race walk, mountain biking, trampoline and shooting.
Organisers said there was still good availability in volleyball, football, taekwondo, handball, basketball, boxing, beach volleyball, canoe sprint, table tennis and hockey. However, most of the remaining tickets are at high-price points.
Paralympic sales were also described as encouraging, with a further 125,000 tickets sold this week, taking the overall total to 1.2m. In all, there are 8.8m tickets available for the Olympics and 2m for the Paralympics.
While the figures suggest that 25 of the 26 Olympic sports will sell out, allowing Locog to hit its £650m revenue target with ease, organisers face an uphill battle to sell the remaining 1.3m football tickets.
Locog will also put tickets for the main climb in the cycling road race and the cycling time trial at Hampton Court on sale next week at £15. The move has proved controversial with cycling fans used to watching the action from the side of the road for nothing.
On the same day, 29 May, general access tickets to the tennis tournament at Wimbledon – allowing access to Henman Hill and the outside courts but not the show courts – will also be made available.
London 2012 organisers – who warned earlier this week that users would face waits of half an hour on the site at peak times but said that it had remained operational throughout – this week defended their record on ticketing, insisting that they have managed to balance fairness with revenue raising.
"Do I think we have delivered the fairest possible system? I absolutely do. We got it about as right as we could. We wanted to hit our revenue targets, we wanted full stadiums and we wanted to treat everyone as equally as we could," said Locog's deputy chairman, Sir Keith Mills.
London picked as test bed for Skynet-like Intel tech - The Register
London will be a guinea pig for future smart city technology after Intel pledged to spend a slice of £25m ($40m) on a new lab in the capital. The chipmaker will also plough millions into research centres dotted around Blighty.
Intel will set up the unwieldily monikered Collaborative Research Institute for Sustainable Connected Cities in the capital in partnership with Imperial College and University College London, it announced yesterday at an event at 10 Downing Street.
The company will spend the £25m over the next five years on all five of its Collaborative Research Institutes, but wouldn't give the breakdown of exactly how much London would be getting. ICL and UCL will also chip in some dosh, but again no figures were bandied about.
At the same event, Chipzilla said it will open a string of research centres around the UK, investing around £45m in an Intel Labs Europe UK R&D network: this will employ 350 researchers in labs including the one in London and others in Brighton, Swindon and Aylesbury to start with, and five more to be decided on by the end of the year.
"It is investments like this that will help us put the UK on the path we need to take to create new jobs, new growth and new prosperity in every corner of our country," Chancellor George Osborne said at the launch.
"We are determined to make the UK the best place to do business in the world and a great place for technology companies to invest and build new business. It is encouraging to see major tech partners like Intel investing in this country as a result of the policies that the Government has put in place," he self-congratulated.
Intel will use the London lab to suss out smart city technology and it will also team up with Shoreditch's Tech City entrepreneurs to use their "social media expertise" to "identify and analyse emerging trends with cities".
"Using London as a testbed, researchers will explore technologies to make cities more aware by harnessing real-time user and city infrastructure data," the company said in a statement, describing similar Skynet-like smart city research elsewhere.
"For example, a sensor network could be used to monitor traffic flows and predict the effects of extreme weather conditions on water supplies, resulting in the delivery of near real-time information to citizens through citywide displays and mobile applications."
Rattner: City under pre-planned stress
Intel CTO Justin Rattner also said that the London Olympic games would give the firm a great opportunity to look at a city under pressure and figure out where the weak points are.
"London is, as everyone knows, the host city to the 2012 summer Olympic Games, and we plan to use the event to understand the experiences of a city under pre-planned stress. What systems worked or didn’t work and why? How were the daily lives of the citizens, workers, and businesses of London affected?" he wondered out loud.
As well as giving Intel the opportunity to see it mess up, London is also a good choice for the research institute as the fifth largest city in the world.
"It has the largest GDP in Europe, and with over 300 languages and 200 ethnic communities, its diversity is a microcosm of the planet itself, offering an exciting test bed to create and define sustainable cities," Rattner enthused. ®
Vauxhall Mallards and Great Witchingham seek progress in ECB National Club Championship - EDP 24
Friday, May 25, 2012
4:36 PM
The two remaining Norfolk sides in the National Club Championship are set for a showdown this weekend.
Vauxhall Mallards will face Great Witchingham on Sunday in the group semi-final of the Kingfisher Beer Cup after both teams recorded comfortable wins in their second round ties last weekend.
Mallards registered an eight-wicket win at reigning East Anglian Premier League champions Cambridge Granta.
Skipper Paul Bradshaw removed both Granta openers with only 20 runs on the board, before Stuart Lipshaw’s five-wicket burst saw the hosts fold to 130 all out in the 40th over. The off-spinner claimed five for 23.
Carl Amos and David Turner put on 70 for the first Mallards wicket and Amos went on to steer the visitors to victory in the 40th over with an unbeaten 72 from 104 balls.
Witchingham thrashed Boston by 205 runs as Sam Arthurton, pictured, hammered a century.
Arthurton made 133, while James Hale (48no) and Carl Rogers (41) also contributed in a total of 279 for four from their 45 overs.
Boston were then skittled out for just 74, with Jonathan Spelman claiming four for 32 and two wickets apiece for James Spelman and Tom Collishaw.
Sunday’s match at Great Witchingham starts at 1pm.
London Gets Gold for ID Fraud - Yahoo Finance
NOTTINGHAM, UNITED KINGDOM--(Marketwire -05/23/12)- London could be set for a rise in identity fraud this summer as new figures from Experian CreditExpert reveal that 7.7 million Britons from outside the capital are set to descend on some of the UK's worst areas for ID theft - while 1.9 million Londoners plan to escape.(1)
London, the boroughs around many of the Games venues in particular, is already home to the UK's worst ID fraud hotspots, with rates of attempted fraud up to 11 times higher than the national average. These include East Ham (11 times higher), Woolwich (6.5 times higher) and Stratford itself (six times higher).(2)
There will be a mass influx of people into these areas, carrying personal information in the forms of UK bank account details, and credit card details. This leaves individuals at a high risk of Identity Fraud with individuals, in unfamiliar surroundings, exercising less caution than they would normally adhere to in their normal surroundings. This presents a massive opportunity to fraudsters, with visitors likely to have passports and other pieces of personal identification about their person, be freely using smart phones and unsecured WiFi hotspots, and also potentially sharing hostels or rented accommodation with strangers all of which increase the risk of identity theft.
Visitors are therefore advised to keep a close eye on their personal information, and on their credit report following their visit for any signs of unusual activity. CreditExpert also provides alerts if your personal details appear anywhere unexpectedly online so it is easy to protect yourself pro-actively.
TOP FIVE RISKS TOP FIVE TIPS TO STAY SAFE ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Passports Think about how much sensitive information you really need to have about your person - if your hotel booking has your card number and address, do you need to carry it around with you, for instance? Likewise, don't take your passport out with you unless you absolutely have to. If you are staying in a hotel for the Games, ask for sensitive documents to be securely stored in the hotel safe when you are not using them. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- PIN codes Make sure that no-one else can see you enter your PIN code at ATMs and chip and pin machines, particularly in large crowds. Do not write down or carry your PIN code with you. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Smartphones If you have a smartphone, you'll certainly want to photograph and tweet your time at the Olympics, but be particularly careful what you share when connected to an unsecured wireless network. Also ensure you switch off Bluetooth and roaming settings when not required and ensure you use a password. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post If you're going to be one of the lucky ones visiting London for a few weeks to enjoy the Games, think about what you'll do with your post. Intercepted post is one of the key ways in which fraudsters can take people's detail, so it could be worth setting up a redirect for the duration of the Games. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Face-to-face Check the credentials of anyone asking for your personal information, whether by phone, face-to-face or over the internet. If in doubt, don't do it!
The Experian CreditExpert research reveals that no fewer than one in six Britons (16 per cent) is planning on visiting London during the Olympics, half as tourists and half to attend the Games themselves. Seventeen per cent of people coming to the capital have not been for more than a decade, with a further three per cent making their first ever trip to the city.
Nearly six out of 10 (59 per cent) will be staying for several days. Although one in four (25 per cent) will be staying in hotels and one in five (21 per cent) with friends, a significant minority (four per cent) will risk staying in a hostel and two per cent will be renting a property or someone's spare room - some 154,000 people.(3)
And although they are concerned about large crowds (23 per cent) and the expense of London (20 per cent), just three per cent are worried about identity fraud.
The risk of ID fraud among visitors is arguably heightened by the decision of many Londoners to quit the capital during the course of the Games. One in 14 (seven per cent) are looking to leave London for the duration of the Olympics, with a further one in six (17 per cent per cent) planning to get out of the city for at least some of the period.
But it's not just newcomers who need to be careful. The one in 20 Londoners taking on a lodger or renting out a room or their whole property need to be aware they are putting themselves at risk of ID fraud by inviting a stranger into their home and are advised to ensure personal details are locked away and post collected promptly.
Peter Turner, Managing Director at Experian Interactive, commented: "This is set to be a once in a lifetime summer. But that doesn't mean people should let their guard down - just because you are holidaying in the UK, you should still take the same precautions you would if you were on a city break to Europe.
"Identity fraud is one of the fastest-growing crimes of the 21st century, and anyone could be at risk from fraudsters getting hold of their personal information, particularly if they are in an unfamiliar area, renting a flat short-term or a room in a B&B. Likewise if you are a homeowner letting a spare room just for the Olympics, do ensure all your personal details are kept safe from visitors."
"This is why it is so important to have proper safeguards in place to protect your identity. With Experian CreditExpert if the worst should happen you will be alerted to any significant changes to your credit report so that you can react quickly and keep the risks to a minimum."
Identity fraud hotspots
Top 10 10k households Top 10 in 10k households nationwide Cases London Cases ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Slough 25 East Ham 78 London (all) 22 Woolwich 46 Gravesend 20 Stratford 43 Birmingham 17 Ilford 33 Luton 16 Walthamstow 27 Manchester 15 Harrow 27 Leicester 14 Cheapside 26 High Wycombe 13 Lewisham 26 Peterborough 13 Hatfield 26 Windsor 12 Enfield 26
To avoid becoming a victim of identity fraud this summer, Experian CreditExpert suggests some further tips:
1. Keep an eye on your credit report It's a history of all your credit accounts and will highlight any irregularities such as suspect applications for credit and rises in card balances. You can view your credit report free with a 30 day trial with Experian CreditExpert.(ii)((i)New customers only. Monthly fee after trial ends) 2. If in doubt, don't click If an email purporting to be from a hotel or linked to the Games seems suspicious, contact the relevant organisation and don't give out personal details. Your bank, credit card provider and any reputable business will never ask for confirmation of details by email. 3. If you do become a victim of fraud Don't forget you can sign up to Experian's CreditExpert whose dedicated victims of fraud team will work on your behalf to resolve the issue.
Notes to editors:
1. The UK adult population is 48,091,600 (ONS). Sixteen per cent of adults are set to come to London during the Olympics. Therefore: 0.16 x 48,091,600 = 7,694,656 or 7.7 million.
The population of Greater London is 7,753,000 (ONS) 24 per cent of Londoners are looking to leave the capital during some or all of the Games. Therefore: 0.24 x 7,753,000 = 1,860,720 or 1.9 million
2. Based on analysis of information from the National Hunter anti-fraud data sharing system and the Insurance Hunter database.
3. 0.02 x 7694656 = 153,893 or 154,000
Key benefits of Experian CreditExpert membership:
- Experian is the UK's most trusted credit reference agency
- Experian is the credit expert with more than 30 years of experience
- Free 30-day trial of CreditExpert(i)((i)New customers only. Monthly fee after trial ends)
- Unlimited access to your Experian Credit Score
- Weekly alerts of changes to your credit report
- Access to an award-winning, UK-based customer services team
- Identity Protection Insurance of up to GBP 75,000(ii) ((ii)terms and conditions apply)
- Expert advice and tools to help improve your credit rating
- Intelligent price matching to credit products suited to your credit history
- Consumers can apply directly from the website: www.creditexpert.co.uk
About Experian
Experian is the leading global information services company, providing data and analytical tools to clients around the world. The Group helps businesses to manage credit risk, prevent fraud, target marketing offers and automate decision making. Experian also helps individuals to check their credit report and credit score, and protect against identity theft.
Experian plc is listed on the London Stock Exchange (EXPN) and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 index. Total revenue for the year ended 31 March 2012 was US$4.5 billion. Experian employs approximately 17,000 people in 44 countries and has its corporate headquarters in Dublin, Ireland, with operational headquarters in Nottingham, UK; California, US; and Sao Paulo, Brazil.
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