National Affairs: Can Kingston [ever] Become the City it's meant to Be?

As a boy of a bout 9 or 10, I used to often accompany my mother to her weekday workplace of Worker's Bank (now defunct) on Tower Street, named, I'm guessing, for the towers of the infamous prison at the eastern end.

Whilst I had little interest in the intricacies of commercial banking, I cherished these trips for exposing the heart of the capital city, and in particular, the waterfront area, as fine an example of a port city as exists in this hemisphere.

Even then, 40 years ago, there was repeated talk about expansion and renewal of the city, of making it into an even greater urban centre - of rehabilitating the blighted settlements ringing the city centre to the north, east and west. Of expanding the harbour, of fostering culture an entertainment.

Four decades, and several political regimes later, there is again talk from Government about "renewal" and the usual committees have been formed, and there was news just this week of a "point man" of sorts to oversee this latest round of toing and froing.

This latest iteration of renewal has seen Cabinet approve the expansion of the downtown Kingston Urban Renewal project to boost investment in the area.

    

Daryl Vaz, Minister with responsibility for Investment, says the expanded development area will include sections of Kingston and Port Royal.

Yeaahhh.....right. I could do a whole other article on the many grand plans to capitalize on the undeniably rich history of the former pirate capital, but with Disney already way ahead of us on that score, and also four "Pirates of the Caribbean" already funnelling revenues from the Port Royal story into foreign hands (a fifth is reportedly due next year), I may be forgiven for not being too hopeful on that score.

    

What is being heavily touted on this go-round is something called the Urban Renewal Tax Incentive Programme. Under this (latest) proposal, investors will benefit from urban renewal bonds, investment tax credit, tax parental income and exemption from transferred tax and stamp duty among other things

In the official spiel, The Tax Incentive Programme for Urban Renewal was first introduced to downtown Kingston in 1995 and was subsequently extended to Port Royal in 1996, Montego Bay in 2000 and Spanish Town in 2008.

The Tax Incentive Programme is managed by the UDC, on behalf of the Ministry of Finance and the Public Service and aims to garner the support of the private sector in arresting urban decay by encouraging the redevelopment of property in blighted areas.

The programme accomplishes this by enabling persons who either own or lease property in areas defined as special development areas to access incentives to redevelop the properties under the Urban Renewal (Tax Relief) Act which was established in 1995. A special development area is one which is declared by the minister responsible for urban development for the purpose of urban renewal.

Under the Tax Incentive Programme, tax relief is offered to companies or individuals undertaking capital investments in either land or buildings.  These can be residential or commercial holdings. Tax Incentives are offered to both owners and lessees of property in the Special Development Areas.

The four incentives offered are Urban Renewal Bonds, Investment Tax Credit, Tax Free Rental Income and Exemption from Transfer Tax. Organizations such as GraceKennedy Limited, Guardsman Group, NEM Insurance Company Ltd and Courts are among beneficiaries of this programme

The Government is also dreaming of a return of cruise shipping to Kingston, in the manner that presently obtains forthe ports of Montego Bay, Ocho Rios and Falmouth. This, the PM and the developmment Minister say,  involves the construction of a cruise ship pier and a dramatic revitalisation and restoration of Kingston's downtown and harbour front areas, along with existing places of interest.

Well, if the kind of work that has been done, and is continuing, in Falmouth could be replicated in Kingston, then i would - notwithstanding environmental and sociological concerns, be among the first to cheer.

But much of the Jamaican Government modus operandi (both Parties) over te past 40 years or so  leaves me less than optimistic.

For instance, it remains impossible to have the streets of downtown Kingston kept in any semblance of order, much less attractiveness. I'm not expecting them to be pristine, but the truly anarchic sprawl of   economically desperate coupled with the outcomes of official neglect - effluent sewage, uncollected garbage, blighted landmarks - is gonna require far more than  grand pronouncements.

The preservation and restoration of national heritage sites such as the Ward Theatre, for example, is urgent, more so now that the gleaming PetroCaribe-funded Bolivar Centre stands almost right nextto it in mocking splendour.

the area in front of the once great theatre is now an informal depot for route taxis and, yes, staging area for individuals selling everything from snacks to basic school supplies to bootleg DVDs to weed.

One of the great city centres and portsides arguably in the world, and certainly in this hemisphere, remains essentiall untamed.

this is partly (you might, depending on your perspective, say largely or entirely) due to the complex and even confusing divisions and overlaps that have been allowed to spring up and fester by uncaring politicians on both sides in their unbridled lust for power. Today, while those "borderlines" and greay areas are not enforced with the quasi-military intensity of the 70s and 80s, they still work against one of the key ingredients of successful urban renewal: standardization.

Each new "plan"   -  Former World Bank country representative, Giorgio Valentini, highlighted in July 2014 that "there are 10 or 15 different plans" which have all "been done in isolation" - arrives with its own baggage of myopia in deference to undrawn but implicit power lines. Until we decode and get past this legacy, then we'll easy slip through another 40 or 50- year time warp with nothing fundamentally changing

One of the things I'd like to see Kingston renewal plans really take into account (no patronising) is what UNESCO has recognised by designating the capital as one of 10 Creative Cities for Music. The designation, made late last year, is long over sue recognition for the symbiotic relationship between the city and its sounds - sounds which now reverberate across the globe.

When we truly give music and the creative arts - all of them - pride of place in the schematic of redevelopment, only then will Kingston truly come to life and attract global interest. This has already been proven on a smaller but no less impressive scale by the courageous work of the Kingston On the Edge (KOTE) conceptualisers. the annual festival has, against the odds, deftly showcased the nuanced riches of the city and drawn growing international attention.

if there was a KOTE every week or or even every month then, trust me, the rest of the officialand economic master plan would be a proverbial snap; visitors would flock, investors would eaglerly sniff and global media would come trotting in eager to capture, explore and share 9albeit not in equal proportion) .

This is obvious to every person who's ever gone to Rae Town, marvelled at the Roktowa and other creative stands during KOTE, or even massed at Half way Tree or Parade (downtown square) to witness our track athletes best the world during the Olympics or World Championships. Simply, Kingston is more than the waterfront and the few stratified and overrun city blocks - it is Dub Club on the precipice of Skyline Drive every bit as much as it is the National Gallery auditorium on last Sundays or the Edna Manley College Amphitheatre every last Tuesday for Poetry Jam.

These are the assets  that Governments have thus far grossly undervalued. But i for one, remain stubbornly (defiantly?) optimistic that the pace of change will move from glacial to something more discernible.

i can think no more apt final point for this piece than the words of the late journalist Jane Jacobs who wrote in  The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961): "Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody"

Let's come together around that guidepost, can we?

Sports: Why We're faster

Orlando Patterson, professor of sociology at Harvard University and the author of The Enigma of Jamaica, writes about “the secret of Jamaica’s runners,” citing, among other factors, Jamaicans’ “combative individualism” and confidence, institutional support in schools, and emphasis on public health. Read the original in the Sunday Review of The New York Times (13 August 2016).

Among the most enigmatic features of Jamaica, an island of only 2.8 million people, is its astonishing supremacy in running. Currently, the world’s fastest man and woman are both Jamaicans. Nineteen of the 26 fastest times ever recorded in 100 meter races were by Jamaicans. The list goes on.

Jamaica’s global dominance is broad and deep, both male and female, and started to emerge over half a century ago. At the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki, Jamaica was ranked 13th by the International Olympic Committee. By the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, it was first in sprints, with Usain Bolt winning three gold medals, and an unprecedented clean sweep of the women’s 100 meters.

How do Jamaicans do it? It’s not because of genetics, as some claim. A vast majority of Jamaicans’ ancestors are from West Africa, which has relatively few outstanding sprinters. Nor can genetics explain why Jamaicans outperform other blacks in the Americas, especially in Brazil, which has 36 times as many of them.

Ask a Jamaican like me (I was born and raised there), and we’ll give you a very different answer: Champs. Officially called the Inter-Secondary Schools Sports Association Boys and Girls Athletics Championship, Champs is an annual competition attended by 30,000 wildly enthusiastic fans. Jamaica is perhaps the only country in the world where a track and field meet is the premier sporting event.

But it’s not just Champs. The competition is one part of a broader framework — track and field is huge at every educational level, with periodic regional meets drawing athletes of all ages from the most remote rural areas. So the real question is, why is Jamaica nuts for track?

Part of the answer is institutional. The British first introduced organized and informal athletics, and interscholastic competition, to Jamaica and other colonies in the late 19th century. One of Jamaica’s founding fathers, N. W. Manley, was the greatest student athlete of his generation; later, as the revered head of state, he tirelessly promoted track and field.

Jamaica quickly stood out from other Caribbean islands in extending these competitions from elite white schools to those of the nonwhite classes. Starting early in the 20th century, several outstanding athletes, like G. C. Foster, emerged as role models, mentors and promoters of the sport, and they identified and trained the next generation of talent

Sport:Biles owes Belize, the full uplifting story

Following Al Trautwig's stupid ("senior"?) moment in commentary, it was nice to come across the following, on multiple gymnastics champion Simone Biles, showing yet again, the huge footprint of the Caribbean (even by proxy) on Us and global sports.

 A report by Jeré Longman for The New York Times.

One o’clock arrived. Relatives gathered at a hotel bar to watch Olympic gymnastics on television. So did the first lady of Belize and 11 contestants in the coming Miss Belize pageant, wearing their sashes and carrying tiny flags. But where was Simone Biles?

The women’s individual all-around competition had begun 4,000 miles away on Thursday afternoon at the Rio Games. Biles, 19, was the heavy American favorite, but there was also anticipation in an unlikely place, the tiny Central American country of Belize, where she holds dual citizenship.

Phone calls were made. Television channels were changed. Beauty contestants were perplexed. Still no live gymnastics.

 Finally, after 30 minutes, the live feed began on Caribbean television. Biles had already performed her vault routine, but the delayed start did not mute the ecstatic cheering that greeted her second gold medal at the Rio Games.

There are big stories unfolding in Belize, including a Supreme Court ruling that affirmed gay rights and the cleanup from Hurricane Earl, which churned through last week. But interest in Biles also has resonated here, in the country’s economic capital, as evidenced everywhere from the prime minister’s residence to the shade of a local plum tree, painted purple and gold, where tour guides talk politics and play dominoes.

“We are taking all the gold medals she is going to win,” Kim Simplis Barrow, 44, the first lady of Belize, said with a smile.

Biles’s connection to Belize is as complex and ultimately elevating as the flips, jumps and windmill spins that have made her the best gymnast of her generation, perhaps ever.She was born in 1997 in Columbus, Ohio, to a mother who struggled with addiction to drugs and alcohol, and to a father who was not part of her life. In 2002, Biles’s birth mother lost custody of her four children, who were placed in foster care and faced the possibility of being scattered by adoption.

 Instead, Simone, then 6, and her younger sister Adria, then 4, were adopted in 2003 by their maternal grandfather, Ron Biles, and his second wife, Nellie Cayetano Biles, who is from a prominent Belizean family of teachers and nurses and government officials. (Nellie is not Simone’s biological grandmother; Simone’s other two biological siblings were adopted by Ron’s older sister.)

Before, Ron and Nellie were known to Simone and Adria as Grandpa and Grandma. Now they are Mom and Dad.

Nellie’s mother, Evarista Cayetano, was a teacher and an owner of a grocery store. Her father, Silas Cayetano, also began his career as a teacher, then became an official in Belize’s fishing and agricultural cooperatives, and, later, a senator.

The original family home, at 118 Neal Penn Road, was made of wood. The family lived upstairs and the store was downstairs. It was a gathering place, where Silas Cayetano held court on weekends, settling neighborhood disputes, telling jokes, spinning stories.“It was community central, especially on Saturdays, when the chickens were fresh,” said Opal Enriquez, a cousin of Simone’s and the director of the Miss Belize pageant.

The Cayetano home had opened its doors to the nine Enriquez children, whose family came to Belize City from the southern town of Punta Gorda. Silas Cayetano had skipped high school, worked at a seminary and passed his teacher’s exam at age 19, relatives said. He encouraged his nieces and nephews, as he had his own four children, telling them that education was the most reliable way to escape poverty.

“Our uncle set the bar high,” Enriquez said. “Failure was never an option. He embedded in our brains that we were destined for greatness. Simone listened. We weren’t afraid to dream.”

When Ron and Nellie Biles adopted Simone and Adria, they had two sons of their own who were about to graduate from high school and leave for college. The couple wanted to travel. It would not be easy raising two young girls. But the girls needed parents, and adopting them was a “no brainer,” said Nellie, 61.

"When you grow up, I firmly believe that you see what goes on in the family, what your father and mother do,” she said. “And you tend to mimic what you see. It’s innate. It wasn’t even a question.”

 The extended Biles family is watching Simone compete at the Olympics across two continents and four time zones. Ron and Nellie and a dozen other relatives are in Rio. Others are in Spring, Tex., north of Houston, where the Bileses live and own a gymnastics center. Still more are scattered in Belize, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago.

"We’re trying to put Belize on the map as much as we can,” Nellie, a retired nurse, said. “Simone is competing for the U.S., and we’re not taking any credit away from that. But the fact that she has dual citizenship, I don’t see why we cannot celebrate her second country also.”

 And Belize seems happy to celebrate Biles. Formerly known as British Honduras, it gained its independence only in 1981. Belize has never produced an Olympic champion since it began competing in the Summer Games in 1968. A small contingent of three athletes was sent to Rio to compete with modest ambitions in track and field and judo.

During the 2000 Sydney Olympics, Belize did have a big moment, celebrating and claiming three gold medals won in sprinting by the American Marion Jones, whose mother was born here.

After winning the 200 meters, Jones held up a Belizean flag. Its coat of arms features two woodcutters, one with light brown skin carrying an ax, the other darker skinned and holding an oar, who symbolize the country’s ethnic diversity, history of slavery and its mahogany industry.

 Jones’s gesture brought international attention to Belize and widely endeared her to its citizens. The country later named her a sports ambassador.

Though Jones’s victories were nullified and her career disgraced by doping and a check-fraud scheme, which brought a prison sentence of six months, she remains popular and appreciated here. Belize’s national stadium, long being refurbished, is called the Marion Jones Sports Complex.

Belize’s relationship with Simone Biles is less entrenched so far, but also less complicated.

She is a bubbly teenager who has traveled here regularly to visit and to go fishing and snorkeling on vacation. Last summer, she attended the wedding of her brother here, posed for a newspaper photographer, and was spotted doing back flips off a pier. Upon arriving in Rio, she traded Olympic pins with a Belizean athlete.

“Simone said, when she gets married, it’s going to be in Belize,” Nellie Biles said.Ron Biles paused as he sat on a sofa at a hotel near Rio’s Olympic Park on Monday, his 67th birthday.

“It’s going to be a while longer,” he said as a group of relatives broke into laughter. “Another 16 years.”

As the Olympics approached, Simone was acknowledged by Belize’s ministry of youth and sports, interviewed on the popular Love FM radio, featured in the country’s largest-selling newspaper and followed widely on social media.

“People are very excited, because she has Belizean parentage, she’s a great athlete and she acknowledges her Belizean roots,” Adele Ramos, the assistant editor of Amandala, Belize’s largest-circulating newspaper, said of Biles. “She is the next best thing for us after Marion Jones.”

Yet some feel conflicted, not about Biles, but about the way Belize, in their view, does not fully support its homegrown athletes.

Karen Vernon, the theater director of Belize’s Institute of Creative Arts and the mother of two of the country’s top cyclists, said she was happy for Biles but did not “like the fact that Belize is waiting for her to win to claim her.”

 “We need to support our own athletes and artists,” Vernon said. “We have talent here.”

The Cayetano family was not athletic, Nellie Biles said the other day with a laugh, though her father did claim ornately to have been a gymnast and the source of Simone’s versatile skills.

“Everybody knows that Nellie’s father was a comedian,” said Florita Avila, 59, a cousin of Simone’s.

 As a girl, Nellie Biles said she played tennis and did the hop, skip and jump.

Ron, her husband, shook his head.

 “You played hopscotch,” he said.

His wife did not play sports but watched them on television, Ron added, before correcting himself and saying, “You didn’t have a television.”

It is a true story, Nellie said. In 1973, at 18, she left Belize to attend nursing school at the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio. Until then, she said, she had never seen a television in person, used a phone or flown on a plane.

“It was, needless to say, culture shock,” she said.

In 1976, she met Ron, who was stationed at Randolph Air Force Base outside San Antonio. (He is retired from the military and from his career as an air traffic controller.) In 1977, they married, and they have the playful banter of a couple who has been together for 40 years.

Was it love at first sight?

“No, oh no,” Nellie Biles said. “It was his good luck.”

Ron replied, “She’s still here, isn’t she?”

 When the adoption of Simone and Adria, now 17, became official in November 2003, the Bileses returned home from meeting with a family judge outside Houston. Nellie told the girls that they could continue to call her and Ron Grandma and Grandpa, or they could call them Mom and Dad.

Simone has said that she went upstairs, practiced in the mirror, then came down and said “Mom.” Nellie remembers Simone running back upstairs, probably giggling because it seemed funny. It was Mom from then on.

“I think these girls did more for us than we did for them,” Nellie Biles said. “Simone centralized us as a family. We come together and do things and go places because of Simone.”

While on a day-care field trip, Simone became interested in gymnastics. Her relatives in Belize remember her from those days as “little Simone,” a tiny girl in perpetual motion, a “spring chicken” and “a firecracker.”

And they say she came to possess the same discipline, insistence, confidence and expectation as Nellie, the eldest sibling in her own family, who with three partners came to own 14 nursing homes in Texas before selling them last year and turning her attention to operating a gymnastics center.

“She is Nellie’s child all over,” said Felix Enriquez, 47, Opal’s brother, who is scheduled to become the second in command in Belize’s ministry of defense. “A fair but stern personality. Always demanding that things be done in a proper way. A very big thinker. She doesn’t think small.”

Ron and Nellie Biles have lived in their current home in Spring, Tex., for six years. Ron, a native of Cleveland, said he had never been in the pool until he jumped in when the Cavaliers won the N.B.A. title in June, the city’s first major championship since 1964.

Would he jump in the Atlantic in Rio if Simone won gold in the women’s individual all around?

“I’ll probably just cry,” he said.

Nellie said she would watch nervously in the arena, grabbing someone to hold onto. Here, at the hotel bar, there was little tension, only clapping and cheering except for during Simone’s wobble on the balance beam.

“I was panicking at that one,” Felix Enriquez said.

Not to worry. Biles had a huge lead, which she secured on the floor exercise with elegance, strength and the stunning ability to land like a dart.

“Oh my God!” Simplis Barrow, Belize’s first lady, said, putting her hands to her face, pumping her fists, and photo bombing a family picture. “Woooh.”

“She has inspired us all,” Simplis Barrow said. “No matter where you come from, you can succeed. It is all right there in that small package.”

lisaparavisini | August 12, 2016 at 11:11 am | Categor

Watches: How Omega Does Rio

- from A Timely Perspective


This year marks the 28th year that Omega acts as the Official Timekeeper of the Olympics. As an Olympic Partner, the brand’s vital role is to provide such precise timing and imaging of every event so that there is no question to the athletes and judges about who the winners are. To do this, Omega continually evolves its state-of-the-art technology.

This year alone, the brand has developed a host of new, innovative scanners, scoreboards and timing solutions.   Among them:

Omega Scan’O’Vision Myria camera: A combination of time detector and a chronograph. It takes up to 10,000 digital images per second at the critical finish of track and field races.

Omega Photocell Technology: A high-tech photocell reader with four cells instead of two to detect more body movement and patterns.

Omega Electric Photocells system.

Omega Scoreboards: New scoreboards that display timing and line up faster and bolder. There is also a new scoreboard developed for the golf and archery games.

In fact, Omega brings with it to Rio 2016, 450 tons of equipment including 355 scoreboards, hundreds of cameras, thousands of sensors and timing that measures to 1/10,000th of a second. More than 500 trained professionals accompany this effort, and another near 1,000 people are employed on site to assist.

Omega Seamaster Diver 300M Rio 2016 watch

Naturally, to celebrate its role in timing the Olympics, Omega also has brand ambassadors participating in the Olympic Games – including golfing great Sergio Garcia. Finally, the brand unveils a line of Rio 2016 Official watches.

Omega Seamaster Bullhead Rio 2016 watch

watches: "Watching" Rio

riday marked the official opening of Rio 2016 and despite the city not being ready—the start has come. With it, come a host of athletes – many of whom are also brand ambassadors for a variety of watch companies (including, Hublot, Montblanc, Rolex, Richard Mille, etc.), and we will have our eyes on them over the coming weeks. Omega is, of course, the official timekeeper of the event – as it has been for decades. We will bring you more about that this week. In the meantime, we bring you a quick look at the Olympic Games and its far reach.

Bubba Watson

So many more athletes come to the Games this year than in previous years, especially with golf making its return after more than a century. With golf teams from around the world attending, it means that stars such Omega brand ambassador and golf great Sergio Garcia, and Bubba Watson – who wears an nearly $1 million Richard Mille watch – will be seen by more than 3.6 billion global television viewers.

Richard Mille RM055 Bubba Watson watch

In the track and field realm, Yohan Blake, who sprinted to the silver medal in the London Games 100 meters run, is also a Richard Mille brand ambassador and is contending in Rio 2016.

Yohan Blake wearing his Richard Mille watch

He will most likely be sporting the Richard Mille watch that bears his name. (Yes he, like the other Mille brand ambassadors, wears his watch during “play.”)

Richard Mille RM059=01 Tourbillon Yohan Blake

Topping Blake in the London Olympic Games with a gold medal in the 100 meters, and heading to Rio to try to do it again, is Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, a Hublot ambassador.

Usain Bolt is a Hublot brand ambassador

Bolt  also has a watch named after him and co-designed by him. In fact, the most recently unveiled Hublot Big Bang Unico Usain Bolt watch is the second round of timepieces he has worked on with the brand.

Hublot Big Bang Unico Usain Bolt watch

Chinese badminton player, Lin Dan – a super star – will also be in the Games. He wears a specially made Montblanc TimeWalker Pythagore Ultra-Light Concept watch, which you can read about here.

Montblanc Timewalker Pythagore Ultra-Light Concept watch made for Lin Dan

There are others, as well,vying for the Gold. That Gold medal, by the way, is not entirely made of gold. It is gold-plated silver and is valued at approximately $560 dollars (according the a $43.75 per-gram pricing of gold).  With 11,000 athletes competing in 28 sports, the Mint of Brazil had to produce 812 gold medals, 812 silver medals and more than 860 bronze medals.

Let’s see where and how those medals are distributed. As the Games unfold, we will bring you the news of who’s winning for the sports, the countries and the watch brands. Stay Tuned.

Some Olympic themed motivation

In the wake of Jamaican Alia Atkinson's disappointing swim in the 100m Breaststroke finals in Rio (still great that she made a second finals), we offerthis perspective from Alvin Day

The Olympics certainly can be a symbol of success, personal power, persistence, commitment and a host of other virtues. However, beware the seduction of stadium competitions contrived to entertain us and create heroes.  They tell a false story of life, based on scarcity, where one wins and all the others lose. Believe the gold medal story and you may think that only one person in each event is truly great. Nature is abundant; it is not organized for one winner in each field, but for as many as will prepare, implement, fail and go again until they outperform themselves.

For every one gold medal recipient, there are scores who failed to qualify for the event, often by a fraction of a second, or a fraction of an inch. Yet, for many who pay the price of preparation and do not get to compete at the Olympics, life offers an abundant array of options that can bring spectacular success—success that is often more sustainable than a one-off medal might be. In the meantime, after the gold and the glory, many “Retired Olympians struggle with return to daily life,” according to an NCB TV article.

Sports/tech: Keeping Watch Over Rio

-From Fast Company

When the Olympic Games begin in about 48 hours in Rio de Janeiro, billions of people are expected to watch athletes from countries around the world compete.

But also watching over the Olympic and Paralympic events will be a set of futuristic, balloon-mounted surveillance camera systems capable of monitoring a wide swath of the city in high resolution and in real-time.

Initially developed for use by U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan by Fairfax, Virginia-based Logos Technologies, the technology is sold under the nameSimera, and offers live aerial views of a large area, or what the company calls "wide-area motion imagery," captured from a balloon tethered some 200 meters above the ground. The system's 13 cameras make it possible for operators to record detailed, 120-megapixel imagery of the movement of vehicles and pedestrians below in an area up to 40 square kilometers, depending on how high the balloon is deployed, and for up to three days at a time.

The Brazil sale, which includes four systems operated under an $8 million contract, marks the first export of Simera, and the first time such as system will be deployed by a non-U.S. government at a large-scale event, the company says. "Simera was built late last year and we tested it this past February and then immediately sold four of them to Brazil," says Doug Rombough, Logos’s vice president of business development.

Th

Rombough compares Simera to a live city-wide Google Maps combined with TiVo, explaining that it lets authorities not only view ground-level activities in real time but also rewind through saved images to do things like track a suspicious vehicle—for instance, one that departs a crime scene—back to its origin.

The government has announced it will deploy 47,000 security guards, 65,000 police, and 20,000 armed service personnel to patrol the Games, which have raised security concerns amid soaring crime rates in the city and a global burst in terrorist activity. Last week, Brazilian police arrested 12 people alleged to be planning an ISIS-inspired attack on the Games, which have been said to be a target discussed in jihadist chat groups.

The system evolved from technologies Logos previously supplied to the Defense Department for use in combat zones, including the Constant Hawk aircraft-mounted surveillance camera system and Kestrel, a similar balloon-mounted sensor system that’s been used in Afghanistan to monitor activity near about a dozen U.S. bases.

There, the company says the technology helped U.S. troops monitor potentially threatening activity as it evolved over days, enabling officials, for instance, to track the movement of suspicious vehicles in the vicinity of an attack. But as Logos's technology continues to evolve and become easier and cheaper to deploy in civilian scenarios, it's likely to raise more questions about the appropriate balance between security and privacy.

Over time, the company’s sensor systems have become lighter and easier to deploy: Early Constant Hawk systems weighed about 1,500 pounds, Kestrel units weighed around 150 pounds, and Simera systems just 40 pounds, expanding the range of aircraft that can carry the devices. Including the ground-based equipment necessary to control and monitor the cameras, the Simera system—which generally costs $500,000 to $900,000 per unit, depending on features— can be transported in a single vehicle and put into an operation in under three hours, according to Logos.

And as the company's systems have gotten lighter in weight and easier to deploy, the range of potential use cases has expanded. In addition to policing large events and patrolling borders and ports, the company hopes its system could prove useful in supporting humanitarian assistance and disaster relief missions

Sport: Trying to cast a large shadow over the Chinese

Jamaican diver Yona Knight-Wisdom hopes his uncharacteristically large frame will not only help him stand out among his competitors at his first Olympics but also enable him to win by making as small a splash as possible.

Standing at 1.89m tall and weighing close to 90kg, the first male diver from the Caribbean island to qualify for the Olympics is at least 20cm taller than the slight Chinese divers who dominated the London 2012 Olympics.

While Knight-Wisdom sees his height as a disadvantage that prevents him from spinning as fast as other divers, his weight allows him to propel himself higher from the springboard and execute the harder dives, he said.

“My advantage is that I’m able to get a really clean entry into the water, so I make very little splash,” said Knight-Wisdom, who competes in the individual 3m springboard event. “I’m just aiming to keep it really, really simple and just try to get the most consistent performance, because I feel like people will make mistakes.”

The British-born 21-year-old, whose father is Jamaican and mother is from Barbados, now counts himself as a professional athlete after competing his Sports and Exercise Science degree at Leeds Beckett University, in May.

Sponsored by British-Jamaican musician and sauce maker Levi Roots, he chose to represent Jamaica after struggling to get into the British diving team.

Jamaica has only had one other Olympic diver, Betsy Sullivan, who participated in the 1972 Games in Munich.

In the run-up to the Games, Knight-Wisdom said he is training at least 25 hours a week with only Sundays off.

While he is keeping his eye on the final and clinching a spot in the Fina/NVC Diving World Series next year, his main goal is to enjoy the occasion, he said. Still, he admits his presence holds greater significance in breaking down stereotypes about divers.

“To see an African-American diver kind of at the top level in this sport, there’s very few of us,” he said. “Some people do still get shocked when I say I’m a diver.”

Meanwhile, China’s Wu Minxia will be making her bid to become the most decorated female Olympic diver during the Rio Games, fronting an attempt by her country to sweep all eight titles next month at the Maria Lenk Aquatics Centre.

The 30-year-old, who equalled her former diving partner Guo Jingjing’s record of four gold medals at the 2012 Olympics, will lead China’s 13-member team who are expected to dominate after winning six out of eight golds at test events in February.

They also won six of the eight titles at the London Games.

Among China’s other headline gold medal hopes are Qiu Bo, who won silver in the men’s 10m platform event in 2012, and 15-year-old Ren Qian, who scored a perfect 10 at the February test event in the women’s category.

China’s diving team leader, Zhou Jihong, has remained cautious over the country’s chances, saying that China “had no advantage in the men’s events” and warned that “dark horses” lurked in the women’s platform events.

“It is very hard. Our rivals are at high-level, very experienced and at the same time very young,” she was quoted by Xinhua news agency as saying about the men’s events in May.

The major competition for the Chinese men are the United States’ David Boudia, who will defend his 10m platform gold at his third Olympics, and Britain’s Tom Daley, who took the bronze in London.

Wu, however, will not be defending her individual 3m springboard gold and will instead compete in the synchronised event with team-mate Shi Tingmao.

North Korea will also be pinning their medal hopes on teenager Kim Kuk-hyang in the women’s 10m event after she won her country’s first gold at last year’s world championships.

While China dominated the test event, there are concerns that weather changes at the outdoor venue, especially during Brazil’s winter, could affect divers’ performances. The venue also suffered temporary power cuts during recent competitions.

Sport: Pullen triple jumps all the way to Rio

21-year-old Clive Pullen has etched his name the history books after becoming the first Jamaican man since 1972 to qualify for the Olympic games in the triple jump.

His historic achievement came after producing a spectacular personal best of 16.90m in the event at the Jamaica Olympic Trials National Senior Championships on Thursday.

Lennox Burgher (in 1968) and Henry Jackson (in 1972) are the only males athletes that have ever represented Jamaica at the Olympics in the triple jump.

On Day 1 of the Jamaica Olympic Trials National Senior Championships, Pullen impressed when he cleared the Olympic qualifying mark of 16.85m.

n an interview with The Gleaner, the accomplished, former Kingston College student described his most recent feat as the realisation of a lifelong dream.

“I am indeed overwhelmed as my dream is to compete at the Olympics as this is the greatest sporting show on Earth, and I must thank God as this was His doing,” stated Pullen.

Just a few weeks prior to his historic achievement, Pullen fouled on all his attempts while competing at the NCAA Division I Outdoor Championships, finishing in last place.

A result which understandably placed a damper on his spirits. However, that setback seemingly served to motivate the talented youngster:

“It has been a great season for me, a little up and down sometimes, and I was really devastated at the NCAA Championships, knowing that I had let down my team, and I also wanted to make the Olympic qualifying mark, but possibly it was divine intervention as it was for me to qualify before my home crowd on home soil in Jamaica,” he stated.

“It’s all about the coach’s decision now. I am going back to the drawing board and fine-tuning and saving for the best as I could have done my two remaining jumps, but I am saving it for Rio,” Pullen also stated.