Exactly one month before a winner is picked, an evaluation of the four cities competing for the 2016 Summer Games finds weaknesses in all of the bids.

The International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) report is the final milestone before the October 2 vote in Copenhagen to select a winner from Chicago, Madrid, Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo.

On a sultry June morning in Macau, casino billionaire Stanley Ho strode into the Venetian, the gambling palace of American archrival Sheldon Adelson, and reflected on life, death and how not to succeed in the world’s biggest gaming market.  For almost half a century, Ho, 87, had reigned as King of Gambling in the 10-square-mile dot on the steamy South China coast.

Never before have Wall Street stock analysts diverged more with economists at their own firms over the outlook for earnings in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index.  Profits for companies in the S&P 500 will rise 25 percent next year, according to the average estimate of more than 1,500 equity analysts tracked by Bloomberg. That’s 10.9 times faster than the expansion in gross domestic product foreseen by 53 economists surveyed last month.