Welcome, all, to the 2017 Prognostication Quiz! We have a fun year ahead of us with sports, politics, economics, and hopefully a number of untimely deaths. We have 42 entrants this year, which is down 4 from last year. 1. Freedom Freedom House is an international organization that studies democracy and freedom in the world, publishing an annual report on how many countries it calculates to be free, partly free, or not free. The 2016 report calculated that 86 of the world’s 196 nations were free in 2015. Will freedom advance, stay stagnant, or retreat in this year’s report, covering 2016? Note: the seven worst free countries (with the highest likelihood of being downgraded) are Botswana, El Salvador, Guyana, India, Jamaica, Peru, and Suriname. The nineteen best partly free countries (with the highest likelihood of being upgraded) are Albania, Bolivia, Dominican Republic, East Timor, Ecuador, Fiji, Georgia, Indonesia, Lesotho, Malawi, Mexico, Moldova, Montenegro, Paraguay, Phi