Dr. Abdullah AlAbdulgader, BDI Founding Executive Director, commented, “BDI has greatly achieved what it had set to achieve. During the short 5 years, we have connected with over 300 members of GCC senior board directors, and we have made tremendous efforts to develop, share and introduce the latest knowledge and best practices on corporate governance to the region. We are now pleased to be on the road to celebrate the many successes of our members, to enhance their engagement in BDI, and share with them our growth plans that will make BDI more resourceful, effective and accessible for them.”

The half a day event, will feature speakers from around the region, including Mr. Abdullatif Al-Othman, Saudi Aramco Sr. Vice President, Engineering & Project Management, Mr. Mutlaq Almorished Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC) Executive Vice President, Corporate Finance and Mr. Mohammed Al-Shroogi, Investcorp’s President, Gulf Business. BDI members will have the opportunity to hear dialogues on the development of corporate governance culture in the region, and take part in roundtable discussions on board effectiveness and the future of corporate governance in the region. Throughout the GCC, the roadshow will be making 5 stops over the next few months.

Speaking on the occasion, Mr. Rasheed Mohammed Al Maraj, Governor of CBB, said, “Boards in the GCC have a tremendous will to raise their effectiveness, and BDI has thrived in an effort to bring the classroom into the boardroom. While this roadshow is a celebration of the continued corporate governance developments in the region, it is equally a great opportunity to pause to consider where corporate governance will and should be in the next five years.”

“With the breadth, depth, and diversity of our members, I believe BDI potential is virtually endless. With the support of our Corporate Partners, Governors, and Faculty, I have every confidence that BDI will continue to advance to great grounds,” Dr. AlAbdulgader concluded.

Earlier this year, BDI set up an office in Bahrain and was registered as a Professional Body, in the Kingdom of Bahrain, under the umbrella of the CBB.

Local traditions are strong. Women, for example, generally have lower social standing than men and have fewer educational opportunities.

Despite strong growth, the economy has struggled to meet the needs of Vanuatu's expanding population.

The main sources of revenue are agriculture and eco-tourism. Both depend on the weather, and when, as in 1999, cyclones and persistent rain hit Vanuatu, both suffer.

Tax revenue is derived from import duties, and neither personal income nor company profits are taxed.

Vanuatu tightened up its tax and regulatory systems after the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development warned that it could face sanctions if lax taxation regimes were exploited by criminals for money-laundering.

Australia, a key donor, has pushed for good governance and economic reform in the islands.

JPMorgan Chase hosted its annual shareholder meeting in Tampa Tuesday, and it was the first chance for shareholders to weigh in on the banks problems. News the bank lost at least $2 billion in a botched trading strategy gave fresh fodder to critics who want banks to be more tightly regulated.

Should coaches instruct their defenders to take the three away altogether, merely try to contest it, or goad their opponent into settling for long-distance attempts? And how should coaches digest the findings of Ken Pomeroy, who concluded this February that defenses, when examined in aggregate across Division I, don’t have much control over their opponents’ three-point percentage — and that opponents have a certain situational threshold for deciding when to take a three, and after that, it’s like playing a lottery? I imagine that control-freak coaches get worried by Pomeroy’s data on the unpredictability of three-point percentages.

What Pomeroy believes — we talked about this at length last week, to stave off offseason boredom — is that the best three-point strategy, and the one a defense actually has a lot of control over, is to limit an opponent’s overall number of attempts. Especially if you’re the favored team. The fewer entries you allow an opponent to have in the lottery, he says, the less likely you are to get burned by an upset.

What I was curious to examine, from a coaching perspective, is not only the teams that adhere to the limiting-attempts philosophy (in particular, St. Louis and Wisconsin) but also the defensive schemes that "beat" the three-point percentage lottery in 2011-12. What are the ways teams try to tilt the lottery odds in their favor?

After writing a story on the Pack-Line Defense — a packed-in, help-oriented man-to-man that Dick Bennett first used at Wisconsin-Green Bay in the mid-1990s — I couldn’t help but notice that three teams running pure Pack-Line this season were among the leaders in three-point field-goal D: Arizona, which ranked third nationally at 28.5 percent; Virginia, which was sixth at 28.9 percent; and Xavier, which was 22nd at 30.5 percent. Meanwhile, two teams that seemed to encourage opponents to take threes, Florida State and Syracuse, also managed to rank in the top 50 in defensive three-point percentage and were top-20 overall defenses in efficiency.

Even among elite defenses, one can find widely different approaches to three-point defense. What follows is a look, through coaches’ eyes’, at three effective schools of thought from this past season:

St. Louis’ Rick Majerus and Wisconsin’s Bo Ryan built two of 2011-12′s elite defenses around the philosophy of taking away the three-point line. Majerus’ Billikens had the nation’s 10th-most efficient defense and allowed the ninth-lowest ratio of threes to overall attempts (25.6 percent). Ryan’s Badgers were even better, finishing as the nation’s fifth-most efficient defense and allowing the second-lowest ratio of threes to overall field-goal attempts (24.1 percent). And when opponents did take threes against Wisconsin, they made just 29.4 percent of them — the 11th-worst percentage in the country.

When SI.com asked Majerus and Ryan to explain their rationale, the common thread was a belief in the death of the mid-range game. The Majerus Doctrine, in his words, is, "As bad as I was in math, I know a three is better than a two — and while you find a lot of guys that are shooters, most of them don’t have a middle game."

The Ryan Doctrine: "Young people are getting to be such prolific scorers from long range — I see it in high-school and AAU games, and all the shooting drills kids do in workouts — so the toughest shot, lately, is the mid-range jumper. I would much rather have people taking a two-point jumper than a three where they catch the ball with their feet pointed toward the rim."

The numbers bear this out: According to Synergy Sports Technology’s logs, the two teams who forced the lowest portion of their opponents’ jump shots — not overall shots, but jump shots — to be taken from beyond the arc were Wisconsin (45.9 percent) and St. Louis (50.0 percent). The Badgers also pulled off the amazing feat of forcing a nation-best 24.4 percent of its opponents’ jumpers to be logged in Synergy as "long twos," taken between the 17-foot mark and the three-point line. (St. Louis ranked 30th, at 20.1 percent. The chart below breaks down the defensive shot distribution of all seven teams mentioned in this article.)

If you don’t think the long twos-vs.-threes argument is important, consider this: While Wisconsin held its opponents to just 0.807 points per possession on three-point attempts — an amazingly efficient rate — it allowed just 0.628 PPP on long twos. There’s a reason Ryan charts and cherishes the two-point jumpers UW forces outside the paint. The odds on getting beat from that area are miniscule.

Tactically, how is this accomplished? Majerus has a few key points of emphasis, the first being in transition, where he sends three players back — but not all of them into the paint. "A lot of times they go to the three-point line," he said, "and then identify guys we want to make bounce it." Certain elite shooters are given an absolutely-no-catch-and-shoot designation, with penalty of benching for allowing it to happen.

On screen-and-rolls with a dangerous shooter, Majerus is willing to concede the drive-to-midrange option as opposed to giving up the long-range shot. He has the Billikens defend the pick-and-roll seven different ways based on his studies of current and former NBA coaches he admires — Don Nelson, Del Harris, George Karl, Tom Thibodeau and Gregg Popovich. "A lot of college coaches have a condescending attitude toward the NBA," Majerus said. "I do not. I think the NBA guys actually do a lot better job than we do at defending in critical situations."

At Wisconsin, Ryan said, "the idea is not to let shooters get comfortable behind a screen." While the Badgers’ hedging strategy in the pick-and-roll varies depending on the opponent, he estimates that the on-ball defender goes over 90 percent of screens to avoid as many pull-up threes as possible. On drives to the rim, they never same-side help off of a shooter, which would allow catch-and-shoot opportunities; the help has to rotate over from the back side. On kick-outs, they emphasize running shooters off the three-point line. "If someone is going to get a three against us," Ryan says, "we want them shooting on the move."

(*Duke, which uses a more extended man-to-man, has been historically great at limiting threes, but its defense was uncharacteristically inefficient in ’11-12, so the Blue Devils are relegated to asterisk status here, rather than at the forefront of the discussion.)

At first glance, you might not think that a defense based on packing all of its off-ball defenders into a 15-17 foot arc around the basket would be good at contesting threes … but as I mentioned in the intro, the pure Pack-Line teams were among the best at limiting opponents’ percentages, because they’re so good at recovering and closing out on shooters. Pack-Line teams are willing to give up three-point attempts, or at least the illusion of attempts, because they believe they can challenge most of them — and opponents often settle for late-shot-clock threes against the Pack-Line because it’s so difficult to penetrate off the dribble. Arizona permitted opponents to take 30.3 percent of their overall field-goal attempts from long range (the nation’s 80th-fewest), Virginia permitted 32.4 (153rd) and Xavier permitted 35.6 (268th) — all far higher than Wisconsin or St. Louis.

This is how James Whitford, Arizona’s associate head coach, explained their three-point philosophy in the Pack: "It’s a system more for keeping percentage low that it is for keeping attempts low," he said. "When guys drive, our defenders are already in help [position], so all their energy can go into early recovery. It’s easier to get back to a shooter when you’re only helping one way rather than two. In our opinion, open threes will kill you, but challenged threes won’t."

The Pack-Line preaches hard, high-handed closeouts on perimeter shooters — and although plenty of coaches preach that, the Pack puts its defenders in position to make more short, choppy (and effective) close-outs than long, flailing (and ineffective) runs at shooters. That adds to its success at limiting long-range percentages. Arizona’s first big-stage showcase of the Pack’s effectiveness in the Sean Miller era was against Duke in the 2011 NCAA tournament, when the Wildcats held the Blue Devils to 5-of-14 three-point shooting and pulled off the West Regional’s biggest upset.

The Seminoles (the nation’s No. 15 defense) and Orange (No. 17) look nothing alike on the court, but they both want you to settle for a contested three. Opponents only use around five percent of their possessions against these two teams in the post, according to Synergy.

Syracuse plays an extended, trapping 2-3 zone that leads to few post-up possessions and a ton of contested threes. An amazing 73 percent of ‘Cuse opponent jump shots were threes — nearly 30 percent higher than Wisconsin’s rate! The Orange ranked 289th in three point attempts allowed, at 36.2 percent of overall shots.

Florida State plays a tenacious man-to-man that fronts the post at all times, leading to few interior opportunities and plenty of contested bombs. As we saw in the earlier chart, 66.5 percent of FSU opponent jumpers were threes — nearly 20 percentage points higher than Wisconsin’s rate. The Seminoles ranked 294th in three point attempts allowed, at 36.4 percent of overall shots. They depend on their length — they place a priority on size in recruiting, even on the perimeter — to contest long-range shots.

Stan Jones, Florida State’s associate head coach (and a respected defensive guru), explained his team’s philosophy thusly:

"We have the old-school belief that if you can keep the ball away from the easiest shots, and challenge the toughest ones, you’ll have a higher percentage of winning," he said. "I’m still a big believer that the team that gets the most layups and free throws is going to win the highest percentage of games. … That’s why we work very hard to keep it out of the inside, and if you do get it in there, we have excellent shot-blockers. Our defense package gives the illusion that there is more opportunity to shoot the three than there is to get an easy two — even though we put a huge emphasis on being there on the catch and challenging threes, trying to do something to affect rhythm."

Using that strategy, which is essentially the polar opposite of the No-Attempts School, the Seminoles have ranked in the top 15 in defensive efficiency for each of the past four seasons — including No. 1 in the country in ’09-10 and ’10-11. However, when the ’10-11 team looked as if it might be on the verge of a Final Four run, reaching the Sweet 16 as a No. 10 seed with a suffocating D, it was derailed by a wild run of threes. VCU hit 12-of-26 treys en route to its fourth straight upset of that NCAA tournament. It was a rare — and painful — occasion in which the Seminoles came out on the losing end of the lottery.

(New York, N.Y.) The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is encouraging applications for $100,000 in funding to study contaminated sites and other sources of pollution that are impacting water quality in the lower and middle Raritan River. This funding is part of an EPA Raritan River Initiative, which will support the analysis of existing data to enable environmental agencies, institutions, community groups and local governments to identify data gaps, plan future research and make other environmental decisions.

The Raritan River runs from west of Somerville, N.J. into the Raritan Bay. The river and the surrounding watershed is home to over one million people, providing drinking water, transportation and recreation opportunities and important habitat for wildlife. The watershed is impacted by many sources of pollution, including contaminated sites, industrial facilities and sewage treatment systems. While there is sampling data collected within the Raritan River watershed, this information is fragmented.

“This funding demonstrates the EPA’s continued commitment to a cleaner and healthier Raritan River and the health of everyone who enjoys it," said EPA Regional Administrator Judith A. Enck. "The data and information collected will help Raritan River communities better understand pollution that has affected river conditions and will assist in decision-making on the best ways to improve water quality.”

Using the funding, the selected applicant will identify high priority sites and sources of pollution that are potentially impacting the river. The resulting site list and associated data will then be made available to the public and put into a format that can be used by state agencies, country and local governments, non-profit organizations and other stakeholders to make environmental decisions. The data would also be used to create an interactive website to show exact locations of potentially polluting sites along the river along with the data for each site.

All applications are due no later than April 23, 2012 at 5:00 p.m. EDT. Additional information on the grants, including guidance on eligibility and procedures for applying, is available at http://www.epa.gov/region2/grants/ or through http://www.grants.gov.

Follow EPA Region 2 on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/eparegion2 and Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/eparegion2.

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Shaikh Khalifa made the decision when he received Shaikh Mohammad and His Highness Shaikh Hamad Bin Mohammad Al Sharqi, Supreme Council Member and Ruler of Fujairah, yesterday at Al Bateen Palace.

General Shaikh Mohammad Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, and Shaikh Hamdan Bin Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Dubai Crown Prince, were present.

Shaikh Khalifa expressed his wish that the summit would achieve the desired objectives of the Gulf people for more cooperation and integration between GCC nations. He said that this will enhance the GCC’s march and will highlight its role at both the regional and international level.

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Owned by Stefan Antoni – one of the directors at Stefan Antoni Olmesdahl Truen Architects (SAOTA), the firm that designed and constructed the home – and his wife Carla, this modern dwelling’s allure is due in part to the levels and layers that make up its structure and capture the feel of the surrounding natural landscape and nearby beaches, as well as its fantastic location.

It was the mix of the views that span Cape Town’s Atlantic seaboard out towards Robben Island as well as the intoxicating clarity of the seaside light that persuaded Stefan and Carla to demolish their original city pad and create a larger home for their growing family. "I’ve never really wanted to move from this spot," Stefan says. "It’s so unique; its position at the intersection of a number of roads, its orientations and I suppose the way I blended all this together makes it capture the view like no other home in the area."

Renowned for his ability to design houses on the steepest of mountain sites – of which Cape Town has many – Stefan admits that "this was perhaps my most difficult project to date". Constructed on a triangular plot, Stefan had to utilise as much of the space as possible, resulting in an undulating structure with curvaceous balconies that jut out gently around the house, making full use of the property and maximising views. The home includes Stefan’s dual-level penthouse with two en-suite bedrooms, a living area and a kitchen on the first level, a studio, third bedroom and garage on the lower level, as well as an apartment underneath. On the roof, which is found off the main living area up a beautiful set of marble stairs, is a private swimming pool and sun terrace with curtained four-poster sun beds and a view Stefan describes as "pure Rio de Janeiro".

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