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Published: 2:56PM BST 09 Oct 2009 Media is a very fast paced industry and in order to maintain our strong market position in both print and digital media, we invest heavily in staff development/training and empower staff to take the initiative and continue to drive through new and innovative ways of engaging with our customers. This has led to us being the first newspaper group to go online in 1994 but also the first newspaper group to introduce podcasts. Our culture of innovation is also reinforced through modern facilities. Our state-of- the-art offices in central London were purposely built in order to radically change the way news was published. Our high-tech newsroom operates a hub and spoke editorial system which supports our pioneering approach of reporting news as and when it happens across multiple media platforms.

Telegraph Media Group operate a culture of knowledge sharing and staff empowerment.

Alain Robert and Jeb Corliss are two men who've never met, yet they share many of the same experiences. They're both risk takers driven by their fears. Building climber Alain Robert hangs from ceiling at home to stay in super shape. One scales steel and glass towers, while the other soars through the air. Corliss, 34, uses a flying squirrel-style wing-suit to travel at speeds of up to 300 mph and steer through the air during freefall. "If you want to do something spectacular, something special, you have to be willing to take really unique risks," said Corliss. Corliss described his childhood as unhappy and isolated. By his teens, he said, he was suicidal. Watch the full story on a special edition of "20/20" Tuesday, June 1 at 10 p.m. ET "I didn't really care, nothing mattered to me," Corliss said. "And all I know is that feeling made me want to do things that were really, really dangerous." Base jumping -- freefalling from high structures -- became his passion, and he jumped from iconic landmarks across the globe. "In my search for death I really did find my life," Corliss said. Forever pushing the limits, Corliss moved on to wing-suit flying, which allowed him to fulfill his childhood dream. "I was about 5 years old and I was watching these birds, and I remember seeing them open their wings and start to fly," said Corliss. "And I remember going, you know what, when I get older I'm going to do that." In 2007, Corliss flew past the Christ the Redeemer Statue in Brazil. He describes that flight as amazing but felt he wasn't close enough to anything -- so he set his sights on the Matterhorn in Switzerland. Now he trains constantly to avoid missteps, like the one he had in Italy while training to fly off the Matterhorn. His parachute got caught on some branches during his descent, and he broke his hand in two places. He was still determined to get to the Matterhorn in the Alps. Last year, with his left hand broken, and armed with his trademark cameras that document all his flights, Corliss jumped out of a helicopter at 16,000 feet. He flew at speeds of almost 200 mph, in the coldest temperatures he's ever flown. How does the suit enable him to fly like a bird? It has vents that fill with air as he falls, inflating his "wings" and allowing him to slide against the air. At one point on the way down the mountain, Corliss felt he was too close to the mountain, he said, but courage led the way down. "It's all bonus time as far as I'm concerned," he said. "I've already lived my life 10 times over. If I died tomorrow doing what I love, I don't want anyone to cry for me. Everyone should throw a celebration, because I died doing what I loved."

'20/20' looks at the fascinating exploits of "Birdman" and the "French Spiderman," aka Jeb Corliss and Alain Robert, who talk about what drives them to push the extremes of experience.

There are two traditional views of how Americans can be happiest in retirement. In one, they retrofit their homes with grab bars and wheelchair-accessible bathrooms and "age in place" while maintaining long-time community, church and family ties. In the other, they say farewell to friends and frigid winters and head off to Florida or Sun City for a life of leisurely golf and bridge games. But a new study from the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College suggests there is another road that leads to happiness. Older Americans who move are somewhat happier and wealthier than those who stay put, but most of their moves are short-distance ones--some made as part of a retirement plan and some in response to a shock, such as being widowed or divorced, the study found. Despite their differing circumstances, both groups ended up with at least modest gains in happiness from the move. Those who moved after a shock were a little less unhappy than old folks in comparable circumstances who stayed put. Those who executed a planned move were happier than their less mobile planner peers. The findings dispel the notion that staying put in a long-time home maximizes the psychological well-being of older adults, says Kelly Haverstick, a research economist at the center. "I was personally surprised." The findings are, however, consistent with a broader definition of aging in place. Most of the older folks' moves were short distance, suggesting that maybe downsizing to a more manageable residence, but staying in your community surrounded by family and friends, is the key to happily aging in place. In their report, Haverstick and her co-authors used data from the University of Michigan's national Health and Retirement Study to examine the habits of folks born between 1931 and 1941. They were tracked over a 12-year period from 1992 to 2004. That means the individuals were aged 51-61 the first year studied, and were aged 63-73 during the last year. Nearly a third (30%) of homeowners moved at least once over the 12-year period, while in any two-year period, 7% of homeowners moved. But 60% the moves were short-distance ones of less than 20 miles, while only 21% of moves were for more than 200 miles. The statistics show small net outflows from New England and the North Central regions along with larger net inflows into the South Atlantic (including Florida) and the Mountain regions (including Arizona) but no large-scale migration from the Frost Belt to the Sun Belt. Surprisingly, the report found that a move for traditional retirement reasons (for example, seeking a warmer climate or leisure) ranked only fourth on the list of reasons folks gave for moving. Of the movers, 28% moved for family reasons (to be near children or to care for an older relative, for example); 22% moved because of financial stress; 21% moved to upgrade to a better house and/or location; and 16% moved for traditional retirement reasons. Lastly, the report looks at whether households making a move choose to continue being homeowners. Here there is a big difference between seniors who have faced shocks and those who had the luxury to plan their moves. It turns out that 33% of homeowners who moved after shocks became renters or moved in with relatives. (For advice, see "How to Set Up a Multi-Generation Household.") Only 18% of movers who hadn't suffered a shock discontinued homeownership. Moving also affected the average change in home equity for the various groups. Those who didn't move, whether or not they faced shocks, saw an average increase in home equity of $12,000. Those who moved after a shock saw a decline in home equity of $26,000. Those who moved according to a plan invested more in their homes, with an average increase in home equity of $33,000.

Research contradicts idea that seniors need to cling to their homes.

Making money in the stock market hasn't been this tough since the fall of 2008. Bear in mind that in the short-term the bears may very well be in control. Stock markets are succumbing to the deflationary, and very negative conditions in many European nations that have been driven by very real necessity to cut budget deficits and reduce debt. This fiscal discipline is not priming the pump of slowing economies. In the U.S. the sharp decline in consumer confidence and housing starts along with poor jobs numbers plagues expectations for domestic equities and is driving down--rather dramatically, too--the yield on 10-year Treasury notes. Plunging yields attest to the lack of vigor in the economy. "Count me among those who believe that the 'austerians' (austerity is coming) are about to send the economy off a cliff, or as I see it, into a demolition derby," warns my newest favorite blogger John T. Burke Jr. on Centerlane.com. Indeed, the dividend yield on the Dow is a tad more than the 10-year Treasury. Never mind this odd juxtaposition. Investors continue to take their money out of money market funds and equity funds to put the money in bond funds as the search for yield continues in frustrated fashion. To craft a survival strategy for this environment, StreetTalk has made use of several shrewd, pithy market gurus he especially respects. Christopher Woods, emerging markets expert for CLSA Securities, Stephen Leeb of Leeb's Market Forecast, Robert Smith of Smith Affiliated Capital, and Frank Holmes, CEO, U.S. Global Resources, a mutual fund group. No matter what transpires short term in the world economy, Dr. Stephen Leeb of Leeb's Market Forecast is adamant about a sure long-term trend in global commodities. "2008 was but a prelude to incredibly high commodity prices," Leeb e-mailed me this week. "Where is the excess capacity for copper, oil, indium, silver, rare earths and many other minerals and metals critical for building out alternative energies? China gets it in spades and we are clueless." In light of the desperate cloud over deepwater drilling for crude oil, Leeb likes natural gas stocks, which should benefit from rising natural gas prices, up 17% just in the past month. Today, a perfect example of natural gas prices advancing while crude oil weakens. His choices: Gazprom, which has 20% of the world's natural gas reserves, and CNOOC ( CEO - news - people ) Ltd., a huge Chinese oil and gas giant. By the way, Leeb would be an aggressive seller of BP ( BP - news - people ) on the uncertainty of plugging the well in the Gulf and the size of its future liability. Leeb's preferred way to play the long-term bullish trend in metals is Powershares DB Base Metals Fund ( DBB - news - people ), which tracks an index for the prices of copper, zinc and aluminum, metals that will be required in massive amounts by China for energy infrastructure, including alternatives, where it is far ahead of the U.S. Leeb believes that in two years DBB can rise from $18 to $40, more than a double. "All commodities will have their day big time once Europe is sorted out," says Leeb. "In the meantime more currency debasement means continued gains in gold." Both Leeb and another savvy investor friend, Frank Holmes, CEO of U.S. Global Investors ( GROW - news - people )--which runs several natural resources mutual funds--are excited about prospects for gold prices. At the present price level above $1,200 an ounce, several gold mining stocks seem very well positioned. Both men favor Barrick Gold ( ABX - news - people ) which has substantial gold reserves in North America. Holmes also has been buying Schlumberger ( SLB - news - people ), a big oil services outfit. Check out Holmes' chart on the performance of various commodity prices; it is the formative story going forward.

Market gurus look to gold and commodities as places to put money. Some are shorting European banks, too.

By MARISA GUTHRIE DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER Monday, November 29th 2004, 1:51AM It's that time of year - lots of shopping, cooking and wrapping to keep us busy. And it's a busy season on television as well. But none of it requires spending wads of money, lifting a finger (just a thumb on the remote) or leaving the cozy confines of the couch. Here are some of the highlights of the holiday programming onslaught: Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson further cement their reign as the Sonny and Cher for the new millennium with a holiday variety hour. "Nick & Jessica's Family Christmas," Wednesday at 9 p.m. on ABC, has Nick's old band, 98 Degrees, reuniting for a rendition of "I'll Be Home for Christmas." But that's not all. Jessica is joined by little sister Ashlee for their first-ever TV duet. It's hard to believe, but Rupolph, Hermey the Elf and those lovable Misfit Toys turn 40 this year. CBS screens the long-running holiday classic "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," featuring Burl Ives and a score by Johnny Marks, Wednesday at 8 p.m. The Eds learn the true meaning of Christmas in "Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy's Jingle, Jingle, Jangle," Friday at 8 p.m. on the Cartoon Network. When Eddy finds his presents in the attic and they all stink, he decides the only way to save his Christmas is to get adopted into another family with better presents. But Ed and Edd help Eddy realize that there's more to the holiday than just loot under a tree. Joe Mantegna and Jean Smart play a married couple who are skating on the brink of divorce in the CBS movie "A Very Married Christmas," Sunday at 9 p.m., based on Elizabeth Berg's best seller "Say When." Mantegna plays the oblivious husband who is shocked when his wife (Smart) suddenly announces she wants to split up. Charles Durning co-stars. NBC's "Fear Factor" has a special holiday episode, Dec. 6 at 8 p.m., in which contestants step into Santa's boots and try to deliver presents despite the presence of vicious guard dogs. "Groundhog Day" meets "A Christmas Carol" in USA's "12 Days of Christmas Eve," Dec. 7 at 8 p.m. Steven Weber plays a high-powered, self-centered corporate raider and 21st-century Scrooge who is forced to relive Christmas Eve until he learns the true meaning of the holiday. Molly Shannon co-stars. The Fab 5 morph into Santa's little helpers for "A Very Queer Eye Christmas," Dec. 7 at 10 p.m. on Bravo, taking on one family's bad decorations, holiday clichés and gifting needs. "A Clay Aiken Christmas," Dec. 8 at 8 p.m. on NBC, includes the "American Idol" runnerup performing favorite holiday songs with Barry Manilow and gospel singer Yolanda Adams. "Will & Grace's" Megan Mullally also stops by for a solo. The weather outside is rarely frightful in "The O.C.," but things inside the annual Winter Ball could be when Marissa (Mischa Barton) uses the event to publicly acknowledge her relationship with handyman D.J. (Nicholas Gonzalez), Dec. 9 at 8 p.m. on Fox. Ben Stiller, Hugh Grant, Britney Spears, Jim Belushi, Brad Garrett, Leah Remini, Jerry Stiller and James Woods bring to life the animated tale of "Robbie the Reindeer: Hooves of Fire," Dec. 11 at 8 p.m. on CBS. Robbie (voiced by Ben Stiller) must train to compete in the Reindeer races against black sheep reindeer Blitzen (Grant) for a spot on Santa's sleigh team. George Lopez brings his comedy to the ABC movie "Naughty or Nice," Dec.11 at 8 p.m. Lopez plays a sports radio jock who changes his stripes at the earnest entreaty of a young boy with a life-threatening illness. Once Lopez starts being nice, funny things start to happen, the boys health improves and so do the home teams' scores. The wacky Wiggles - the sensations of the preschool set - gear up for the holidays with a little help from rocker John Fogerty, "Brady Bunch" alum Barry Williams and a big guy in a red suit. "Santa's Rockin'," Dec. 6 at 10 a.m. on the Disney Channel, features 12 classic and new Christmas songs, including "Silent Night" performed in Spanish and English. Pop-culture magazine Entertainment Weekly recaps the year's trends in "The Biggest Little Things of 2004," Dec. 16 at 9p.m. on Bravo. The special examines the "iPod craze," post-Janet Jackson "censorship mania" and the "Perversion of the Family" epitomized by shows like "Desperate Housewives," "Wife Swap" and "Family Bonds." "Karroll's Christmas," Dec. 14 at 8 p.m. on A&E, is another take on the Dickens classic. Tom Everett Scott stars as a young greeting-card executive visited by the ghost of a Marley (more Bob than Jacob), as well as the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future. Verne (Mini-Me) Troyer plays the Ghost of Christmas Future and Sha Na Na is featured on the soundtrack. Dr. Phil and his wife are back for TNT's annual "Christmas in Washington" concert with such acts as JoJo, Michael McDonald, LeAnn Rimes, Ruben Studdard and Vanessa Williams, Dec. 15 at 8 p.m. CBS' "Home for the Holidays 2004," Dec. 22 at 8 p.m., attempts to raise awareness of adoption via inspirational stories. Jamie Foxx, who was adopted, hosts the special, which includes performances by Black Eyed Peas and Ashlee Simpson. "A Christmas Story," Jean Shepherd's classic tale about a boy who wants a BB gun from Santa, gets a 24-hour run on TBS starting at 8 p.m. on Dec. 24. Regis Philbin and Kelly Ripa head to sunny Florida to host ABC's coverage of "The Walt Disney World Christmas Day Parade," Dec. 25 at 11 a.m.

TV IS BLITZEN US WITH SPECIAL Rudy, Scrooge & jolly young Nick HOLIDAY VIEWING GUIDE LONG REIGN: "Rudolph"marks its 40th year on CBS. SNOW BIZ: "Robbie the Reindeer"is all revved up and ready to go. JOLLY ROCKERS: The Wiggles & St. Nick YULETIDE CLASSIC: Jean Shepherd's "A Christmas Story"HE'LL SLEIGH YA! Comic George Lopez in the ABC movie "Naughty o SNOW BIZ: "Robbie the Reindeer"is all revved up and ready to go. 'FAMILY'

Bank of America Corp., the nation's largest bank, unveiled plans yesterday to cut 30,000 jobs worldwide in the next few years, as part of an aggressive effort to streamline its far-flung operations and cope with billions of dollars in losses from toxic mortgages and the continuing weak economy. The cuts will probably affect the company's operations in Massachusetts, analysts say, but bank officials said it was too early to say how many reductions will occur here. Massachusetts is one of the bank’s largest employment centers with 7,000 employees, in addition to its 270 retail branches. Overall, the job reductions will hit more than 10 percent of its workforce, now at 287,000 worldwide. "The whole goal here was to make our company more streamlined, more efficient," Bank of America chief executive Brian Moynihan, who lives in Wellesley, said in announcing the restructuring at the Barclays Capital Global Financial Services Conference in New York. The job cuts are part of an ongoing companywide restructuring effort. The first phase, which includes the company’s consumer business and its support operations, is expected to reduce expenses by $5 billion annually by 2013. For instance, the bank said it plans to combine some of its 63 data centers and merge three deposit systems into one. The bank also plans to examine other divisions in a second round of restructuring, such as wealth management and investment banking, which could lead to additional job cuts. That review is slated to begin next month and be completed in March. Bank officials said it was too early to say how many additional jobs may be cut in the second phrase, but suggested it would likely be smaller than those disclosed yesterday. "It's probably not going to be as fruitful on dollars per square inch, but it will be fruitful," Moynihan said. The cuts are just the latest effort by the bank to save money in the wake of the global economic downturn and collapse of the US housing market. In late 2008, Bank of America revealed plans to cut 30,000 to 35,000 jobs as part of its integration of Merrill Lynch & Co. in January 2009. And earlier this year, the company disclosed plans to cut 3,500 jobs and shed roughly 10 percent of its branches. The company's headquarters are in Charlotte, N.C. Massachusetts has already felt the impact of those moves. Even while the company was growing overall, with the acquisitions of Merrill Lynch and Countrywide Financial Corp., the bank has 2,000 fewer workers in the state than it did in 2007. As recently as July, Bank of America said it planned to let go 150 employees at a back-office operation in Malden by next spring. Other financial companies are cutting their operations as well because of the sluggish economy, weak housing market, and unusually low interest rates, which reduce the amounts banks can earn on deposits. Bank of New York Mellon Corp., which has large operations in Massachusetts, announced plans to cut 1,500 jobs, or 3 percent of its workforce. And Boston-based State Street Corp. said it planned to cut 850 jobs, including 558 in Massachusetts, on top of thousands of jobs cut previously. And Wells Fargo & Co. recently pledged to cut expenses by up to $6 billion. "I think the cuts are necessary given the growing pressures on profitability because of the slowing economy and the prolonged low-interest environment," said RBC Capital Markets analyst Joe Morford. "The challenging environment is affecting all banks and Bank of America is not alone," Morford said. But banking analyst Richard Bove said Moynihan has been forced to cut deeper than many other banks because the company had grown so large through acquisitions, and because the magnitude of the mortgage-related losses it is facing from Countrywide in 2008, which Bove called one of the worst acquisitions on record. In the second quarter alone, Bank of America reported a net loss of $8.8 billion, mostly related to an $8.5 billion settlement with investors who pressured the bank to buy back toxic mortgages handled by Countrywide. And it faces billions of dollars in additional legal claims. Moynihan has "got to focus on those parts of the business that work by getting rid of the parts of the business that don't, so he can pay for all the lawsuits related to Countrywide," said Bove, who works for Rochdale Securities LLC. In addition, the bank has been trying to integrate operations after years of bulking up through acquisitions, including FleetBoston in 2004, and Merrill Lynch two years ago. Moynihan noted the company made six acquisitions from 2003 to 2008, leaving the bank with 63 data centers, three deposit systems, and tens of millions of square feet of office space it didn't need. "It's kind of like an accordion," Bove said. "The bank makes a number of acquisitions, then it decides it has overextended itself and needs to shrink and focus on its core business." The bank said many of the job cuts will occur through attrition or by not filling vacant jobs, rather than outright layoffs. Bank of America's stock rose 7 cents to $7.05.

The nation’s largest bank has grown tremendously in recent years with major acquisitions, while also suffering through a perilous economy and steep losses from the mortgage crisis.

LOS ANGELES – While news of Jesse James’s alleged affair only hit headlines last week (thanks to mistress Michelle “Bombshell” McGee selling her story), Sandra Bullock may have been “blindsided” by her husband prior to accepting her Oscar for Best Actress. Bullock barely even acknowledged, let alone touched, a teary James after her name was called out as the winner, although he whispered “something private” in her ear and she gave him a smug look before jumping out of her seat. Despite appearing quite prepared on stage, she failed to thank him in her acceptance speech (although she didn’t forget her “lover” Meryl Streep) and was quick to change to subject when asked about him backstage after the big win. SLIDESHOW: Bullock Was on Top of the World Before Affair Surfaced “Don't piss him off. He had something in his eye. It's very dusty from the dance music,” Bullock responded when asked why James was crying. “I'd never divulge what Jesse says unless he divulges it first.” PHOTOS: Who Is Michelle 'Bombshell' McGee? This was quite a turnaround, given that at the SAG Awards just a few weeks earlier Bullock gushed about “her man” while accepting the award. “I love you so much, and you're really hot,” she said lovingly to James. “And I want you so much!" RELATED: Best Actress Break Up Curse?

Did Sandra Bullock Already Know About Jesse James' Affair at Oscars?

Oppenheimer initiated coverage on shares of Fifth Third Bancorp with an outperform rating as credit trends look to favor the bank over the coming quarters. With the outperform rating, Oppenheimer set a price target of $16 per share. Shares of FITB were higher, picking up almost 2% so far. Canaccord Adams increased its EPS estimates on shares of Apple ( AAPL - news - people ) through 2011 as the firm continues to see strength in the iPad and iPhone product lines. With the higher earnings numbers, the firm maintained its buy rating and its price target of $366. Shares of Apple were slightly lower, falling 0.1%. Bank of America ( BAC - news - people ) raised its price target on shares of F5 Networks ( FFIV - news - people ) from $85 up to $112 networking technology is poised to play an important role in terms of mobile traffic and cloud computing. With the higher price target, Bank of America maintained its neutral rating on the stock. Shares of F5 were higher on the news, climbing almost 1.1%. Market News Video produces and distributes online videos about stocks and investing.

Oppenheimer rates bank outperform,, Canaccord boosts EPS estimate on iPad strength.

LOS ANGELES – Mariah Carey may be relishing in the rave reviews and Oscar buzz surrounding her new drama “Precious”, however her 2001 film disaster “Glitter” still brings some painful memories to the surface. The film (and Carey’s performance on screen and on the soundtrack) was slammed by almost all critics and labeled as one of the worst of all-time, eventually prompting the pop princess to be hospitalized amid an emotional breakdown. However Carey isn’t accepting full responsibility for the “Glitter” gaffe. “Being here is definitely a milestone. But I had one milestone that almost had me under this stone,” Carey told us as the AFI screening of "Precious" on Sunday night. “I didn’t realize you really have to be selective with the people that you work with and you have to have that support system and you have to work with people that you feel are geniuses.” Speaking of genius, Carey’s physical transformation into a run-of-the-mill, unglamorous New York social worker for the flick is quite a work of art in itself. And coming from a pop diva who imposes a monstrous set of rules when it comes to filming her (on one recent occasion where Pop Tarts was present, Carey refused to be shot from the waist-down and had her own Director of Photography on-hand to ensure the lighting and frame size were exactly as she wanted), this was quite a personal challenge. “When it first saw the film I thought I looked hideous, I felt completely rancid. I’ve kind of gotten over it… Have I gotten over it?” she motioned to hubby Nick Cannon, who was quick to disagree. “Not really,” he laughed, shaking his head. “But the performance was phenomenal. I love her in every look. It’s Mariah!” And hey, at least Ms Carey was bold enough to admit she needed a break from fame and glamour and come back down to earth and look a little “ordinary”. “This was such a liberating experience and yet humiliating. But I needed that,” Carey added. “We all need that, we need to understand how to be humble and it’s a difficult business to do that in. But I’m definitely inspired to work out of my comfort zone after this.”

Precious star also says she was 'humiliated' by appearance in the film, despite rave reviews.

What can you say about a 16-year-old with an irrepressible smile and two Olympic gold medals to her name -- including the coveted women's gymnastics all-around? When it's Virginia Beach native Gabby Douglas, you can say: Go, Flying Squirrel! After the first-place finish of the girls’ team, Douglas took personal gold by the slimmest of margins, with Russia's Viktoria Komova just three-tenths behind. Douglas celebrated with her coach, Liang Chow -- whose instruction to avoid looking at the scoreboard she didn't quite manage to follow, admitting that she peeked "after vault, and bars, and beam, and floor."

By Nina Hammerling Smith Snakkle.com The whole world is watching. And although the 2012 Summer Games in London haven't been without their share of con...

Between 1907 and 1938, the Detroit Electric Car Company (formerly the Anderson Carriage Company) produced some 13,000 examples of its electric car – a tall, finely appointed carriage powered by a trunk full of lead-acid batteries. The car promised 80 miles of zero-emissions cruising on a full charge, with a top speed of 20mph – pokier than the 40mph Ford Model T, but adequate for city driving. Now, seven decades after the lights went out on Detroit Electric, the company – well, the name, at least – is on the verge of a comeback. Former Lotus Cars chief Albert Lam revived the Detroit Electric name in 2008, and after a five-year development effort, his gamble seems ready to pay off: The company, from its newly rented headquarters on the 18th floor of Detroit’s landmark Fisher Building, just released this very enticing teaser image. The Lotus Elise-based sports car – which will be the first member of “a diverse family of all-electric production vehicles” – will fill the gap left by the recently departed Tesla Roadster (itself Elise-based). Lam and company are mum on specs, but a press release promises “bold styling, outstanding performance, exhilarating handling and impressive range.” Detroit Electric will unveil its two-seater in its namesake city next week, with a global debut at the Shanghai motor show on 20 April. The company aims to open a dedicated factory with an annual capacity of 2500 vehicles – a plan that could bring 180 jobs to Detroit before the end of 2013. Production of the new roadster is set to commence in August, and Detroit Electric expects to add two additional EVs to its range before the close of 2014. Visit BBC Autos on 3 April for a better look at Detroit Electric’s vision of the future.

Seventy-four years after its demise, Detroit Electric is charged for a comeback with a Lotus Elise-based 100% electric sports car.

Redefining space: The Nation Room – Embassy of No Land by Paulo Moreira and Kiluanji Kia Henda, part of The Real and Other Fictions exhibition. I'm standing in the shadow of an equestrian statue in a Lisbon square, as part of a small crowd, listening to eager young architects explain their projects through megaphones. We're not meant to be here, as a special stage has been constructed nearby for this and other events. But the sun is hot, the stage has no shade and the pompous statue casts a big shadow. It is a perfect demonstration of architects' tendency to insert construction in the wrong places. The square makes a good enough stage unassisted, but a structure to keep off the sun would have made a real difference. Which is ironic, as a major theme of the Lisbon Architecture Triennale, entitled Close, Closer, is that architecture is not just about designing buildings. Under its British chief curator, Beatrice Galilee, Close, Closer is a series of events and exhibitions dedicated to the ideas and proposals of young, mostly European architects. They share a powerful scepticism about the creation of large structures and monuments, as tending to be associated with the more or less corrupt concentrations of power and wealth that have done so much damage over the past decade. Which scepticism coincides with the fact that there are now precious few large structures for young architects to design. Rather than designing buildings, the theory goes, architects can be strategic and tactical. They can map and observe and form networks that might eventually enhance people's enjoyment of their cities. So the triennale includes a programme called Crisis Busters, where architects were invited to spend very small grants on clever ways to address the economic crisis, which in Portugal is acute. Thousands of traditional family restaurants, for example, are threatened with closure by a drastic hike in taxes. So one Crisis Buster grant is being spent on a guide to some of the more endangered ones, such that increased business might help keep them going. If it works, this is indeed a smart way of supporting city life without building anything. It is justified to mistrust the urge to bring in diggers and cranes whenever possible and the idea of thinking more widely about the usefulness of architecture is attractive. But it requires a seriousness of intent, a realism as to how such thinking might take effect, without which strategising becomes ornamental, and the architects in question might as well be designing replicas of Louis Quinze chaise longues. In the triennale, there is a proposal that architects should work with lawyers to redesign legal systems. Well no, they shouldn't and they shouldn't help brain surgeons, either. There is also a display announcing the great importance of the various agencies that now ferment architectural ideas, something that needs to be demonstrated rather than stated, and news of which doesn't seem to have reached the passers-by in the street outside. Much of the triennale is a valiant attempt to realise good intentions within budget limitations made tougher by the crisis, without really succeeding. It is also hampered by the fact that the aversion to building things means that it is hard to know what to look at. An exhibition called Future Perfect, a series of science-fiction cliches about cities of tomorrow, doesn't improve matters. The Real and Other Fictions, by the London-based Portuguese architect Mariana Pestana, however, does. Here a decayed 18th-century palace has been populated by installations inspired by the building's varied history – as an embassy, an institute of landscape architecture, a Madeiran cultural centre. They include a machine whereby you lie on a sofa and find yourself put in intimate proximity with a stranger on another sofa, a sinister quasi-embassy, and a mind-torturing card game by the artist Carsten Höller. The intention is not only to create a series of engaging and provocative rooms, which they are, but also to create an unofficial temporary town hall, where debates and dinners can be held. The point that Pestana gets is that, in the end, architects' main skill is in designing things, in ordering materials and spaces to given purposes and ideas. A wider awareness is highly desirable, but in the end what matters is the way these two things – designing things and social intelligence – come together.

A series of sceptical exhibitions in Lisbon questions the purpose of architecture, writes Rowan Moore

FILE - In this Aug. 25, 2013, file photo, San Francisco 49ers linebacker Aldon Smith stands on the sideline during an NFL preseason football game against the Minnesota Vikings in San Francisco. Smith has been charged with three felony counts of illegal possession of an assault weapon, stemming from a party at his home in June 2012. The 49ers issued a statement Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2013, saying, "We recognize the serious nature of this situation, as does Aldon." (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, File)

LONDON - Aldon Smith's stay in a treatment facility to address a substance-abuse problem will factor into any discipline the 49ers' outside linebacker may face from the NFL, Commissioner Roger Goodell said Saturday. After his second DUI arrest Sept. 20, Smith became subject to discipline from the league under its personal conduct policy. Goodell indicated he's in favor of players sitting out after DUI arrests, but the NFL Players Association is opposed.

When Modern Art Oxford announced that it was planning a major show of Stella Vine there were quite a few shudders in the art world and I heard someone mutter 'they'll be doing Jack Vettriano next.' Is Stella Vine really that bad? From 17 July we'll be able to judge for ourselves. the gallery is mounting by far her biggest show to date, consisting of over 100 works - almost her entire oeuvre - including about 25 new ones, with a catalogue essay by Germaine Greer, i.e. all the panoply of a serious museum exhibition for an artist whom many in the art world still regard as a talentless imposter. Ever since Saatchi discovered Vine just three years ago she has been more or less ignored by art critics while being keenly sought by collectors - and also by younger fans who might not know her paintings but are currently snapping up her T-shirts in Top Shop. I've always loved her work because I love her colours but her crime in many people's eyes is that she paints celebrities, and not just Princess Diana but Z-listers like Chantelle and Preston. The best known fact about Stella Vine is that she used to be a stripper but you would never guess it to meet her: she has a soft, pink, sweet, round face that makes you think of milkmaids and mop caps. Old photos reveal her to have been a real beauty a few years ago but since then she has gained weight and cropped her hair, as if to declare that she has no further interest in being pretty. She certainly doesn't want to be recognised and has an odd ability to make herself invisible: twice I was supposed to meet her in the street and both times failed to spot her, even when she was standing in front of me. I had to meet her in the street because she said I wouldn't be able to find her studio and she was right: it is in a warren of warehouses and workshops in a derelict corner of London's Clerkenwell. The door is heavily barred and locked - a necessary precaution, she explains apologetically, because her paintings are 'quite valuable these days' (they sell for anything from £6,000 to £20,000) and she is not insured. The studio is painfully small with only one office chair to sit on - canvases take up all the wall space and the floor is densely cluttered with tins of paint. There is a bed in the corner but she says she no longer sleeps there 'because of the rats' so she has moved into a hostel. 'A hostel!' I squawk like Lady Bracknell, but she says it suits her down to the ground because 'it's wonderfully anonymous, safe, friendly, and there's the excitement that all the other people are travelling so they're optimistic. There are five bunk beds and you have your own little locker and you can read with a torch under the bedclothes.' She is 38, but still very 'new' as a painter. She only started seven years ago when she took her son Jamie to art classes at Hampstead School of Art and got hooked. At the time she was a stripper and before that an actress. But in 2004 Charles Saatchi saw one of her paintings of Princess Diana ('Hi Paul can you come over, I'm really frightened') in a small East End gallery, bought it for £600, and made it the centrepiece of his New Blood show at County Hall. Critics rubbished it but it didn't matter - where Saatchi goes, collectors follow. She only met him for two minutes but he changed her life. She rightly saw the Saatchi show as her launch pad, her chance to get out of stripping and into painting, and seized all the publicity she could get. But then she found it overwhelming: 'I felt really scared that I was just going to be a joke. The press were putting me in this box saying 'Stripper, Uneducated'. Worse still, her ex-husband, the Stuckist painter Charles Thomson, came out of the woodwork to tell the Mail on Sunday 'Stella is a violent, lying She-Devil'. She was married to him for about two months in 2001 and has not seen him since but he obviously still has the power to upset her. And after the Saatchi show she took on too much work, so she started using cocaine to stay awake and ended up with a £600-a-week habit. It didn't last long but she regrets that the one time she met Sarah Lucas, whom she reveres, she was too drugged to speak. Eventually she had a nasty fall in the street, was taken to hospital, seen by a psychiatrist and referred to therapy. She did four months of daily therapy last year, which she says changed her life. Even so, she is still a wobbly mixture of toughness and vulnerability, egotism and self-doubt, and I find her hard-going at first. She has so much she wants to tell me, it's as if she's been sitting in solitary confinement for months waiting for her lawyer, but then the words come tumbling out so fast I can't follow. And there is no chance of getting her to explain anything because she simply ignores my questions and carries on. But then periodically she breaks off mid-flow to ask herself 'where was I?', as if a light switch has gone off in her brain. (Could this be a result of all the Prozac she has taken? She is not on it now, but was for many years.) At one point, talking about her stepfather, she breaks down helplessly in tears. Later, when she has calmed down a bit, she explains: 'I always get absolutely terrified of interviews - I get too emotionally involved in every sentence.' To start with, she is full of grumbles about how the art world mistreated her. After Saatchi (who behaved entirely honourably) she fell among thieves, she thinks - patronising smoothie-chop art dealers who claimed they had sold things when they hadn't or kept the best paintings for themselves, who had no interest in nurturing her career but only in making a quick buck. But the galleries she admired all told her to go away and learn to paint and maybe come back in a year. So, faute de mieux, she became her own gallerist (she sells her work on stellavine.com) which meant 'learning to be Jay Jopling - and there's no manual. These last three years have been really hard but I think it's been worth it because I've learned so much and now I don't need to be so desperate.' She shows me some of the work she is doing for Oxford - portraits of all the murdered Ipswich prostitutes, and some new Diana pictures. 'I wanted to do 100 paintings of Princess Diana but then I realised I couldn't physically do it in time. Everything takes me so much longer than it used to.' So then she decided to mix new with old, especially as she was keen to borrow back paintings that were sold to collectors in the States three or four years ago without being properly photographed. But shipping all these paintings back is costing a fortune so she has given Modern Art Oxford four paintings worth £46,000 to sell, to cover their costs. There are about a dozen canvases in the studio either in progress or waiting to go to Oxford. At present she is working on a portrait of the young Beatrix Potter, taken from a photograph in which Potter is holding a dormouse, and Vine says she looks forward to painting the dormouse because 'I like putting bits of nature in. It started in 2003 when I did a painting of Sharon Tate and I wanted to put her in heaven so I added some birds, and I just really enjoyed having nature.' But she worries that if she paints birds people will say she is copying Tracey Emin. While much of her work is 'sweet' and 'pretty' - words she uses herself approvingly - some of it is also incredibly witty. She showed me a great series of Lily Cole paintings she did for the American magazine Black Book, which are a brilliant spoof on the whole fashion shoot concept - 'Lily breaks up with her boyfriend in Bulgari, Marc Jacobs & Still by JLO'; 'Lily thinks about Good and Evil in Moschino'; 'Lily contemplates suicide in Van Cleef and Arpels' and 'Lily overdoses in Marc Jacobs'. They're so clever, I tell her, but she bridles at the compliment - 'I'm really not bothered by the clever thing,' she sniffs. 'I don't need to be intellectually approved - I think it's there anyway in my work.' Much of the time, though, she goes out of her way to seem naive or childlike. But that is to do with empathising with her subjects. Basically, she says, all her portraits are self-portraits - she identifies with all these damaged, vulnerable women and commemorates them with all the sweetness she can muster. But sometimes the damage - dripping blood, running mascara - overrides the sweetness. It depends how she is feeling at the time. She has noticed that when she had long blond hair she tended to paint blondes, then when she dyed her hair black she painted brunettes - she shows me one of Princess Beatrice, Fergie's daughter, taken from a Tatler photograph. 'I'm drawn to Beatrice because you can see that there's something very sweet and delicate about her,' she explains. 'I liked her throwing that Scarlett O'Hara birthday party.' When Vine talks about celebrities, there's always this sort of possessive familiarity - 'when Kate [Moss] was in the Priory' - that reminds me of the way children talk about their imaginary friends. And perhaps celebrities are her imaginary friends - she has had quite a lonely life. She is drawn to 'damaged' people because she feels that she is damaged herself and, 'I think when you're damaged you have a childlike vulnerability that never grows up until you fix it. Which I think I have done by four months of daily therapy last year. But there is an openness to me, an empathy and understanding, that causes people to treat me very badly. It's bizarre how many nutters homed in on me in the strips - there were some very dark conversations. And I don't necessarily walk away from those, even when they're very graphic, violent, because I think there's a sort of attempt to self-heal by being kind, by being understanding. But you have to learn that you have the right to walk away - you can't be compassionate to everybody.' 'As a child,' she says, 'I was quiet, very sweet - and afraid the whole time.' Actually it wasn't till she was seven that she was afraid - up till then she was happy, living with her mother, brother, grandmother and auntie Joan (her father ran off with the lodger when she was only two) in her grandmother's house in Alnwick, Northumberland. She was Melissa Robson in those days (she changed her name to Stella Vine about 10 years ago) and she remembers 'There was a roaring fire and there were always gypsies bartering fabric. There was this real sense of belonging there. So all that early stuff was beautiful and wonderful...' But she was closer to her aunt Joan than to her mother, Ellenor, a seamstress, who was strangely elusive. 'She was fragile, she wasn't an affectionate woman, there was never a cuddle, there wasn't really a bond. I adored her but there wasn't anything there - she was ethereal, just this glittering thing. She was hardly there - I think she went off hitchhiking round Europe for a year or something.' She was also ill, with Crohn's disease, which later turned into bowel cancer. The idyll ended when Melissa was seven and her mother told her they were moving to Norwich and she was marrying a Norwich Union executive called Richard Jordan. The first time Melissa met him was the day before the wedding and she distrusted him on sight. She claims he always hated her and her brother because they were not his children and that she spent the years from seven to 13 - when she ran away from home - in a state of constant fear. She never quite says that her stepfather abused her, but that seems to be the idea - she told Waldemar Januszczak that he was always asking 'Have you got your knickers on?' But when I try to press her she suddenly bursts into tears and sobs: 'This stuff that happened and happened, there's just no point in remembering - it just means that for the next three days I feel suicidal. It's not worth it!' At 13 she ran away from home and lived for a while in London (she mentions hanging out in Brixton with Meg Mathews) but then went back to Norwich and signed on as Jane Blackwood, saying she was 19 and had just run away from a hippie convoy - 'I'm sure the social services must still have all those files.' She lived in a bedsit in a derelict house, and at 17 had a baby by the caretaker. This was her son Jamie, light of her life - she always wanted a baby as someone to love. But then Jamie's father started hassling them so she ran away to London where she suffered the awful loneliness of the tower-block single mum. 'People just don't realise the craziness of the isolation - you almost go mad. The only time I ever had to myself was one night a month for a few hours when a charity paid for a babysitter. And I would go to Blow Up and dance to soul music for a few hours and then go home.' Nevertheless, she somehow managed to get herself to drama school, the Academy of Theatre Arts, because she'd always loved drama. She did a Joe Orton play at the National Theatre of Wales in Clwyd, and then went on tour round the country. 'When I went to drama school they told me I would never work because I had a child, so I had this incredible drive, but it was quite tough touring the country, just me and Jamie, finding different babysitters in different towns.' And because she was so driven, she accepted every job she was offered, always afraid to leave a gap, so her career slid gently downhill from Joe Orton to Agatha Christie to panto. (She says she made the same mistake at the start of her painting career but has now learned to pick and choose.) She gave up acting in the end, simply because she was exhausted and Jamie had to go to school, so she rented a flat in Hampstead and worked as a waitress at Fatboy's Diner. From waitressing she moved on to hostessing and stripping, which paid better. She was never an escort girl because that was too dangerous: instead she'd sit in these rather old-fashioned hostess clubs - there was one called The Directors' Lodge where the White Cube gallery is now - chatting to elderly gentlemen and pouring her champagne into flower vases for £50 a night. Then it was stripping at the Windmill Theatre, which she loved because it was a real theatre and felt like acting. She also mentions some mysterious 'sugar daddies', one of whom invited her to stay in New York where she discovered the Frick Collection and her love of Gainsborough. One year when Jamie was a teenager and keen on skateboarding they bought a camper van and spent the year going round skate parks - she says it was the best year of her life. In 2000 she started attending classes at Hampstead School of Art and in 2001 she had her short, unhappy marriage to the Stuckist painter Charles Thomson. In 2003 her mother died and she expressed her grief in paintings of Princess Diana - five of which Saatchi would buy, and is lending back for her Oxford show. Her life now is just painting, painting, painting. Jamie is grown up and has his own flat so there is nothing to distract her. She paints all day and then goes back to the hostel to sleep, or perhaps to read Heat under the bedclothes. 'The drive is phenomenal,' she says. 'At the beginning you think you could be up there with people you admire, and that's a fantastic thing, but then maybe if you get there, you want to go a bit further.' She must be thrilled to be doing the Oxford show, I tell her, but she gives me a black look - I am being patronising and there is no worse sin in her book. 'Obviously I am grateful, and hopefully I'll be proud of the Oxford show, but I'm not really into this acceptance of gratitude because I know that I'm capable of putting a show on anywhere in the world. I don't want to compromise, I don't want to have to prove and explain the way I work and what I do. It will be when I'm dead that the critics can do all that.' I can't wait to see her Oxford show - I think she's the real deal. Born Melissa Robson in Alnwick, Northumberland, in 1969. Changed her name to Stella Vine in 1995. Childhood Aged 13 asked to be fostered due to a breakdown in her relationship with her stepfather. Shortly after moved into a bedsit on her own. Gave birth at 17 to her son, Jamie, then moved to London to attend drama school. Worked as a stripper, waitress, cleaner and in a hostess bar to earn money to provide for her son. Art training Studied at Hampstead School of Art in late 1990s. Opened a gallery in 2003 in former butcher's shop. Big break Charles Saatchi kickstarted her career when he bought her portrait of Diana, Princess of Wales in February 2004 and one of Rachel Whitear, a dead heroin addict, for £600 each to showcase in his New Blood exhibition. Vine spiralled into depression soon after, painting in her car and becoming briefly addicted to cocaine. Personal life Married the co-founder of the Stuckists, Charles Thomson, in 2001 in New York. The couple separated almost immediately. · Stella Vine: Paintings will be at Modern Art Oxford from 17 July to 23 September

Vilified by critics but pursued by art dealers including Charles Saatchi, this ex-stripper lives anonymously but never escapes controversy. On the eve of her first major show, Stella Vine tells how her sudden fame was followed by cocaine addiction and therapy. By Lynn Barber.

Reporter: The search is on, with new solid leads coming in from the oil fields of the west. It could be. I could be paul. Reporter: To southern california. I might be paul fronczak. Reporter: To a... Reporter: The search is on, with new solid leads coming in from the oil fields of the west. It could be. I could be paul. Reporter: To southern california. I might be paul fronczak. Reporter: To a family that added facial hair to the age progression image, and saw the spitting image of dad. I do believe that there is a chance of me being paul fronczak. Reporter: After almost 50 years, there is now new life in the stolen baby investigation that the fbi closed out in the 1960's. We're going to do everything that we can to follow up to see if that baby is out there. The special agent in charge of the fbi office in chicago, bob shields, says the case was re- opened after paul fronczak dna revealed that he was not the stolen baby. Reporter: And he showed me the thousands of page of documents from the old case files. Including one directive signed by then-director j. Edgar hoover. You could tell from the documents, significant investigation with priority. We believe there's someone out there that has information. Reporter: Is there a danger that the person who think she might be the stolen baby would say, "but I don't want to turn in my mother as a kidnapper?" It is. There's always that concern. But I would ask them to reach out to us, talk with us. Reporter: Would you actually prosecute 50 years later? That's the us attorney's office who would make that decision. But we definitely would follow up with them and see whether or not this could be prosecuted. Reporter: Law enforcement experts told us that once the age progression images were made public, we should be prepared for all kinds of people to come forward with their own sad tales. Own reasons why they may be the grown up stolen baby. So far, four separate individuals have come forward, each of them 48 or 49 years old, the right age range. Joel lang and his wife joni contacted us after they saw the age progression images on the abc news website. It's about as close as it's gonna get. It's shocking, the similarities. The hairline, everything is a match. Reporter: Lang volunteered to have his dna tested, telling us that he learned at the age of 8 that he was adopted under what he called suspicious circumstances. Nothing adds up. Nothing is normal. Everything is different all the time and that's you. Reporter: It was much the same story with cody hall of loveland, colorado. His wife pamela contacted us after seeing the story on television. The baby picture really just reminded me so much of cody that it gave me chills. Reporter: Hall said he wanted to take a dna test because he never knew his birth parents, and was told he was just "found somewhere" by a relative. She just said she found me, but I don't know how that was done. Reporter: And then there is david fisher, who lives outside fresno, california. A man with a troubled life that he says grew out of uncertainty about his real identity and parents. Even questioning what appears to be a valid birth certificate. I do believe there is a chance that I am the stolen baby, just due to the fact of all the circumstances of my childhood and how I was raised, and how I was passed around. Reporter: As he provided us with his dna sample, he told us how his wife and children saw the abc news stories. And when they saw the picture pop up, they said, "well, dad, that looks like you." Reporter: And when his family added facial hair to the age progression images, there was a distinct resemblance. I was totally shocked when i saw the resemblance. If I had no mustache, it would be me. Reporter: But we found an even more intriguing lead closer to chicago. In kansas city, where we sent our consultant, former fbi agent brad garrett to meet with a man who did not want to be identified publicly but said he not only looks like the drawing, but that his grandmother was found with an aged clipping of the original kidnap story from 1964 hidden in her closet. There's enough loose ends in this case, in this particular lead, to resolve with a dna test. We can cut to the chase. But with four separate dna samples ready to be tested, the best leads in five decades, our investigation hit an surprising and unexpected roadblock. Paul fronczak reported to us that his parents and his brother refused to provide their dna samples to us, making it impossible for us to see if any of the men were a match. You know, my parents love me and I love them. But for some reason, they don't want to know. And I think by not wanting to know, they don't want to help at all. The fronczak parents, chester and dora, and their other son david say they will work with the fbi. But they declined to speak with us and have not spoken publicly about the case since 1964 when they pleaded for their son's return. It turns out there are a number of questions they have never addressed. Either publicly or with their son. When they brought paul home from new jersey, there was no celebration, and they refused to talk to reporters about what should have been a joyous homecoming. In fact, there was so much uncertainty, that they were required to formally adopt paul as their son. And the previously-sealed adoption files obtained during the course of our investigation, in fact, say the blood tests of the parents and the little boy "were contradictory," meaning the tests did not prove or disprove that the little boy was the fronczaks' son. But we learned, the top detectives on the case, including lt. Jack cartan who led the investigation, were skeptical all along. He was sure that was not the baby. Reporter: Lieutenant cartan's daughter mary hendry says her father said the police and the fbi tried to tell the parents it was not their missing son, but kept it quiet publicly. And the fbi and chicago police, who were working together closely, agreed that they would do that. Reporter: They kind of went along with it? Yeah. I overheard him saying to my mother,"that's not the fronczak baby." Those people are so nice and want to believe it that we're going along with it. Reporter: With the public believing the case had been solved, the fbi and chicago police essentially closed the investigation. The search for the stolen baby was over. And at the fronczak home, paul says his parents never shared whatever doubts they might have had with their adopted son, trying to keep it all a deep, dark secret. This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.

Act 5: Agents hope new tips will pour in after ABC News report.

Reading this on mobile? Watch the bed-in video here "I am just in awe that the bed-in is getting attention again. We did it in 1969 for a week in Amsterdam and a week in Montreal. We loved doing it and thought somebody will give us applause for creating original theatre to appeal to the world about the importance of world peace. Instead we got the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) to tell all newspapers to never put us on the front page again. Did any theatre critic stand up for us? Well, no. But now we have the film of it that tells of the incredible event: a creation of a woman and a man, performed by them. See the film, and you will get encouragement and inspiration for what you are doing now as activists … which is all of you who now live on this planet. The bed-in may seem too primitive to you … if so, create an event that tops it. You can do it. I will send applause to you. John will too, from wherever he is now. Yoko."

In 1969, Ono and John Lennon took to their bed to campaign in support of world peace. Here, she recalls the experience

Friend and Barber continued to work in London for two years to finance the renovations, which cost about 400,000 euro ($555,720) for new plumbing, additional bathrooms, rewiring electricity and adding an outdoor pool. La Villa de Mazamet opened for business in 2009 in Mazamet, a town in southwestern France. Owning a bed and breakfast is a dream of city-weary professionals attracted to the idea of tossing aside the 9-to-5 life, yet still earning a living, making friends and working for themselves. The price tag and the day-to-day work and expenses of running a meal-serving inn might seem steep, but there are plenty of people turning the dream into reality. “You’ve got to love working with people, but enjoy the solitude of running the business side,” said Friend, adding that the freedom of time and space — something impossible when he had a corporate job — is gratifying to Friend. “I can stand and chat with guests for 30 minutes.” Small hotel or pension (Japanese for B&B) owners say business is booming now because in-the-know travellers crave a one-of-a-kind experience that comes with staying in someone’s home. Visitors value the close attention from proprietors and eating gourmet meals while staying in a well-appointed, unique private home. There’s certainly money to be made — even if buying a bed and breakfast isn’t always inexpensive at the start. Bed and breakfasts are seeing more guests than ever with an average room price of $160 per night — $50 more than the average nightly cost of a hotel room, according to a 2012 survey from the US-based Professional Association of Innkeepers International. Many visitors want to explore locales not served by a large hotel chain, said Jay Karen, association president. “Travellers want to go off the beaten path a bit,” he said. Owners get to live in a beautiful location of their choice while schmoozing with guests and charging rates that cover their mortgage and living expenses. But be aware: the lifestyle takes plenty of effort, said Stefano Zocchi, who in 2006 opened La Palazzetta del Vescovo, a nine-bedroom guesthouse in Umbria, Italy, with his wife, Paola. The couple bought the place in 2000, but took their time with renovations and kept working their former jobs for several years before opening the guesthouse. During the high season, “for almost eight months, we are living in a sort of golden jail without the possibility to take some time just for us,” he said. Being busy makes the bed and breakfast profitable, but it can be tiring. Owners tend to take time to rest in long holidays. Friend and Barber, for instance, use quiet time over the winter to reinvest in the property and take a month-long vacation. How to choose and pay for a property Depending on size, location and the extent of renovations or retrofitting needed, an operational bed and breakfast could cost as little as $200,000 in rural or lesser-travelled locales and upwards of $600,000 or more in parts of Europe or in historic towns. A common strategy is to convert a residential home into a guesthouse that can accommodate visitors. Such a home might cost less to buy, but retrofitting and renovations can more than double the purchase price. The first question to ask: Will buying be a lifestyle change (that is, you plan to operate the inn yourself) or purely an investment (you’ll pay others to do a chunk of the work and reap profits)? The answer will help you determine the size of property to purchase, said Karen. Real estate agents specialising in holiday properties can help would-be owners find a property that’s viable for conversion or already operating as a bed and breakfast. When converting a residential property, most banks only provide financing based on your current income and won’t consider the potential income from the bed and breakfast, said Rick Wolf, a real estate agent and co-founder at the B&B Team, consulting firm in Maine in the US. Existing bed and breakfasts are typically sold as commercial properties and that allows owners to get a commercial mortgage in many countries. As for the payoff, in the US, an average bed and breakfast has 9 rooms and between $200,000 and $500,000 in annual revenues. More than 30% of that is profit post-expenses (such as food, payroll, utilities and maintenance of the guesthouse), according to Professional Association of Innkeepers International survey. Bed and breakfast businesses can be a solid long-term investment — or a money loser, depending on where you buy. Wendy Snodgrass purchased the Bellavista Bed & Breakfast after a major hurricane, which brought prices down on St. Thomas, a part of the US Virgin Islands. Snodgrass said the purchase price was about 30% of current market rates, which start at around $600,000. Snodgrass, 47, and her partner, Doug Kriebel, run the inn without full-time employees. “We live pretty simply on the side and put the money back into the house,” she said. Kate Warburton, 32, who owns a guesthouse on Roatan, an island off the coast of Honduras, said a “constant demand for beachfront rooms” has made her choice of locale a smart one. She is adding two more rooms to her six-bedroom bed and breakfast later this year. “The location helps us a lot,” Warburton said. Hiring a staff of six has allowed her year-old business to flourish without the need for her to be on site all of the time. Warburton, currently spending a few months in the UK, pays her staff between $500 and $1,000 per month. That strategy allows her more freedom, but it’s also risky as it can be hard to find good staff. Figuring out the right place to buy can take several years. Snodgrass purchased her bed and breakfast after she had lived on St Thomas for five years. The Zocchis saw more 50 properties in the Tuscany area in Southern Italy over two years, before stumbling upon La Palazetta with their real estate agent. The property had been abandoned for 40 years and needed two years of renovation. “We bought it in two weeks,” Zocchi said. For those dreaming of a quaint life, keep in mind, running a bed and breakfast yourself might be more work than the day job you left. Days can run from the break of dawn until well after dinner and include preparing meals, cleaning rooms, advising guests and marketing work, said Snodgrass. Online review sites including TripAdvisor and Yelp can make a dramatic difference in boosting visitor rates so business owners must constantly work to improve feedback from guests and battle the competition. Proprietors use Facebook fan pages to keep in touch with former guests and spending time on online marketing is critical. For eight months of the year, there’s a seven-day workweek and zero personal time, but bonding with guests has been rewarding, said Zocchi — some 40% are now repeat customers and have turned into lifelong friendships. “We can go to almost every country in the world, pick up the phone up and call somebody,” he said. If you would like to comment on this story or anything else you have seen on BBC Capital, head over to our Facebook page or message us on Twitter.

If you’ve always wanted to move to the country or an historic town to open a guesthouse, here’s how to make it happen.

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NPR announced Tuesday that come August 1, the public broadcaster will eliminate 28 jobs and end its weekday show Tell Me More due to budget cuts. An NPR spokesperson told Poynter in an email that eight of the eliminated positions are not currently filled. Tell Me More host Michel Martin and executive producer Carline Watson will stay at NPR to continue covering race, faith, gender and family. “These times require that we organize ourselves in different ways and that we’re smarter about how we address the different platforms that we reach our audiences on,” Kinsey Wilson, NPR’s Executive Vice President and Chief Content Officer, said in a statement. “We’re trying to make the most of the resources that we have and ensure that we keep radio healthy and try to develop audience in the digital arena.” The network hopes to reduce its costs by $7 million a year with the aid of these cuts and a combination of buyouts. Last March, NPR canceled Talk of the Nation, although executives said that it had nothing to do with the company’s deficit.

The radio network, which has hundreds of member stations across the U.S., announced the cuts as part of a larger effort to cut costs by $7 million this year

Graduation season is upon us, which means hordes of famous (and, to the disappointment of many graduates, not-so-famous) people will trudge across auditoriums and football stadiums around the country to deliver speeches full of vaguely uplifting platitudes. Of course, plenty of these speeches will actually be quite good: witty, insightful, and genuinely inspirational. See, for instance, Charlie Day’s recent speech at his alma mater, Merrimack College. The actor and writer — best known for his role as the erratic, emotional, illiterate Charlie Kelly on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia – was of course hilarious, offering commentary on everything from the graduation robes which made everyone look like “some sort of medieval pastry chef” to the sound of his own voice, reminscent of “a ten-year-old with a smoking problem.” But Day’s real message to the graduates comes later in the speech when he shares tales of his own post-college years and the many failures he faced before eventually finding professional and personal success. “You do not have to be fearless,” he says. “Just don’t let fear stop you.” Wise words from a man whose favorite hobby is magnets.

Perhaps the only graduation speech you really need to hear

Reporter: After spending nearly half a year living away from her own family, Bridget is finally back, and so is that trademark smile she's so often flashed as a little girl. So now, I can touch my... Reporter: After spending nearly half a year living away from her own family, Bridget is finally back, and so is that trademark smile she's so often flashed as a little girl. So now, I can touch my mother and my brother and my father, and I'm living back at home. So I guess it's pretty much full circle. Reporter: Sharing a meal with the same family that she was once so terrified of, terrified that they would contaminate her. She takes us to her room. So I do my school work on the floor here, just here. And then I sleep here. I can't actually use a blanket because I don't know who has used the blankets before. Reporter: And Bridget, every day, remembers Dr. Weg's words. You have to face your fears. It's flying into the darkness. Reporter: But flying into the darkness still isn't as easy as it sounds. She takes us through the house to the doorway of the den where she stops. She tells us she can't go in. Do you feel like it's creeping back a little bit? Yeah, absolutely. Because I'm very good at avoiding things and making it look like that I'm not avoiding it. That's how my mom doesn't know it. And I don't even think she noticed that I haven't been in the den. So I'm very sly at that. But, it's -- Reporter: Mom, did you notice? Oh, I noticed. It would be, you know, "Bridge, come sit in the den," so she would come sit in the den for, you know, maybe five minutes, and that would be it. Reporter: Now, Bridget admits she can't make herself go into the den at all. It is a major step backwards. Do you sense pressure from other parents who might say, "Why don't you just make her go in there?" Because I've tried that and she just breaks down completely when she's not ready. And that's a horrible thing to see someone, you know, go through. Reporter: We notice her brother sitting in the den. He knows his sister is still tormented by fear. I'm curious what goes through your mind as you're watching your sibling struggle through this. We know that this isn't her fault, you know? I think that there's probably a point when she thought that we were blaming her for this. And that's definitely not the case. Reporter: He told us he's proud of his sister, and then he revealed something about his mother. How proud of his mother he is, too. Do you feel sorry for your mom at all, given what she's been through? Oh, well, I always knew, like, if anyone ever asked me, I would say that my mom is the nicest person in the world, and I'd, you know, stake my life on that. And it's definitely a difficult process for her and I think she's a great woman and I'm good -- I'm glad she's my mom. That's very nice. Becker, come here. Reporter: The whole family taking it one day at a time, all for Bridget. While for Michelle, that time has arrived, that prom she so feared. We snake our way through all of those kids looking for the 14-year-old who once couldn't get out of her own house, the teenager who couldn't step inside her own school. Now after all of that, on the other side of the dance floor, we found this. Michelle, dancing with her friends. And just outside, her mother, out of sight, wondering if her daughter is out of the woods. How is she doing? Reporter: She's tearing up the dance floor. No, really? Reporter: She's on the dance floor. Oh, that's a big thing for her. Reporter: Big smile. Oh, mom's proud. Reporter: Are you proud? Really proud. Reporter: And another moment we thought unimaginable when this journey began. Bridget getting into the front seat of the car with her mother, something she couldn't do just a few months ago. And where were they going? To the pool Bridget has so missed, the water she so loved as a little girl. We are about to try it again. Are you ready? I'm ready. Reporter: Bridget told us it is hard to believe she's here. What are you gonna show me, the butterfly? I'll show you some butterfly. Yep. Reporter: Show me how it's done. Yeah. Reporter: We were there the day you told Dr. Weg -- Mm-hmm. Reporter: -- That you were going through this therapy so that you could swim again. Yes. Reporter: And we're here. Yes, we are. Reporter: Should I time you? No. Reporter: That wouldn't be fair. We watched, and she was off. Bridget back in the pool. And that butterfly has come back to life. And for the mother who never gave up? I can't put it into words. It's just such a good feeling. Reporter: You've come a long way. Yes, I have. Reporter: But we all knew that day that this was just the first lap. We promised we would stick by them for the journey, and tonight, five years after we all first met, where is Bridget now? Where is Michelle who made it to that prom? And where is Rocco, so worried to leave his house? We go back for one more visit. And you're about to see a holiday weekend reunion we will never forget. ] This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.

Act 5: While she has finally returned home, Bridget still struggles to face her fears.

06/10/2014 at 11:35 AM EDT People write inscriptions onto a panel on the Pont des Arts bridge in Paris The thousands of locks that cling like barnacles to the Pont des Arts in Paris have become a symbol of danger, rather than love, after a chunk of fencing fell off under their weight. The fencing tumbled late Sunday on the pedestrian bridge, which crosses the Seine. Thousands of couples have latched padlocks to the bridge and thrown their keys into the river as symbols of lasting love, resulting in what some decry as an eyesore. The locks are periodically removed by the city, but spring up ever faster. Deputy mayor Bruno Julliard said the city was already soliciting suggestions from artists on what to do to the locks when the fencing collapsed. Officials are hoping to persuade visiting lovers to show their undying affection in less disruptive ways. Married couple poses in front of the love padlocks of the Pont Des Arts bridge Julliard told BFM television on Monday possible alternatives included ribbons and – if lovers insist upon the padlocks – a dedicated sculpture. "Then there were some radically different ideas. Why not use new technology so that couples could write each other messages that could be projected somewhere in Paris?" he said. No one was hurt when the approximately two-meter (6.5 feet) stretch of fencing came down on the Pont des Arts. But Julliard said there are real safety concerns, as the Seine is heavily traveled by tour boats and barges. View of Paris from Pont des Arts bridge Locks also increasingly adorn a bridge near Notre Dame Cathedral and some have even cropped up on the Eiffel Tower. "We don't lack for ideas, but now it's rather urgent for reasons of aesthetics and security. We have to find an alternative to these padlocks of love," Julliard said. Post from Zach Hines's Instagram account @fromga2wi

Not everything can handle the powerful weight of romance

07/02/2014 at 09:20 AM EDT Camille Grammer and Adrienne Maloof head back to the 90210? reports that the former reality stars are set to return to next season, shooting some scenes with the show's leading ladies: Kyle Richards, Kim Richards, , Yolanda Foster and Brandi Glanville. Fans, however, shouldn't place their bets on a full-fledged reunion just yet. PEOPLE has learned that although Grammer and Maloof were indeed at Kyle's annual White Party as guests while the show was filming, there are no plans to have them back on in any full capacity. (Photos of the duo's appearance at the party were posted on Instagram.) Still, season 4 has two open spots for main housewives after Bravo Grammer, 45, brought plenty of drama early in the series: Cameras rolled as her marriage to crumbled amid a cheating scandal. But she left after season 2, appearing in a recurring role on season 3. Maloof, 52, had an infamously explosive exit after season 3, engaging in a bitter war of words with Vanderpump, 53.

Reports are swirling that the original costars are slated to appear on the show's fifth season

July 21, 2014: A second video that possible shows a missile launcher heading into Russia has emerged, with the Ukrainian government claiming it could be the weapon that shot down MH17. Malaysian flight MH17 may have been shot down by "mistake" by ill-trained pro-Russian separatists, US intelligence officials say, dismissing Moscow's accounts of the incident. Evidence gathered so far suggests separatists launched the SA-11 surface-to-air missile that blew up the Malaysian airliner, but it remains unclear "who pulled the trigger" and why, said a senior intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity. "The most plausible explanation ... was that it was a mistake," and that the missile was fired by "an ill-trained crew" using a system that requires some skill and training, the official said on Tuesday. The intelligence official cited previous incidents over the years in which both Russian and US forces have mistakenly shot down civilian airliners. A Korean airliner was downed by a Soviet fighter jet in 1983 and US naval forces mistakenly shot down an Iranian civilian passenger plane in 1988. "We've all seen mistakes in the past," the official told reporters. July 19, 2014: The Ukrainian government has released footage it claims shows a stolen Buk missile launcher with missiles missing, which could have been used to shoot down MH17. Russian operatives have been spotted on the ground in eastern Ukraine but the US intelligence community had no explicit proof that Russians were with the SA-11 unit that fired on the airliner, officials said. US satellite and other "technical" intelligence confirmed the airliner with 298 people on board was hit by an SA-11 surface-to-air missile from an area controlled by the pro-Russian rebels. Although the United States had observed a flow of heavy weapons, including air defence systems, into Ukraine from Russia, intelligence agencies had not seen the larger SA-11 missiles being moved into the country before the airliner was downed, officials said. The Russian military had been training the rebels at a large base in Rostov on various weapons, including air defence systems. But US officials said there was no explicit evidence of the Russians training the separatists on the SA-11 missile batteries. July 23, 2014: There is international outrage this morning after forensic experts confirmed 80 bodies expected to be delivered to them from the crash site are missing. The senior intelligence officials said they chose to brief reporters partly to counter what they called misleading propaganda from Russia and its state-controlled media over the incident. Allegations that the Malaysian Boeing 777 took evasive action in the air, similar to how a military plane might manoeuvre, had no basis and the reports amounted to "a classic case of blaming the victims", the senior official said. The claim that the Ukrainian government had shot down the plan was not realistic, as Kiev had no such missile systems in that area, which is clearly under the control of the rebels. That scenario would mean Ukrainian government troops would have had to fight their way into the area, fire at the passenger plane and fight their way out again, the official said. July 23, 2014: 9NEWS reporter Damian Ryan is in eastern Ukraine where investigators have finally gained access to the MH17 crash site. "That is not a plausible scenario to me," the official said. The Ukrainian government had no reason to be deploying anti-aircraft weapons, as the separatists were not flying helicopters or staging bombing raids from the air, officials said. But the separatists had a motive to use surface-to-air missiles, as they faced offensives by Ukrainian government troops relying on helicopters and cargo planes, they said. July 22, 2014: Pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine have released footage to the BBC showing flight MH17 directly after it crashed. Do you have any news photos or videos?

A White House spokesman has confirmed the US will release more information on the downing of flight MH17.

The Great Hall at Target’s Minneapolis headquarters was bustling this morning. Usually a low-key place where employees sip coffee, hold relaxed meetings and take a few minutes of R&R, this morning there was a line about 200 people long, according to Dustee Jenkins, Target’s vice-president for public relations. They were there to meet Brian Cornell, who this morning was named Target’s new CEO and showed up in the Great Hall for an impromptu meet and greet, though he won’t officially start until Aug. 12. “It has been absolutely electric,” Cornell says in an exclusive phone interview from the Hall. “There’s a really fun, positive energy here. It’s great to meet so many employees.” He posed for selfies, shook hands, and tried to set a tone of openness—a marked change from his predecessor, Gregg Steinhafel, who was not known for socializing with the rank and file (or talking to the press, for that matter). The first outsider to take the job in the company’s history, Cornell, 55, joins from PepsiCo, where he was head of the snack-and-soda giant’s $25 billion Americas Foods division. He also did stints running Sam’s Club and Michael’s Stores, and once held a senior position at Safeway. Says Frank Blake, who knew him when he served on Home Depot’s board: “I’m a big fan of Brian’s. He’s a terrific business executive and leader and was a great contributor to Home Depot.” Says another executive who knows him well: “Everywhere he’s gone, he’s made a huge difference.” Cornell will need to make a huge difference at Target, which has been stuck in a rut for a few years now. Not only have same-store-sales declined, but an enormous security breach rocked the company’s credibility last December. That, a disastrous expansion into Canada, and internal tensions led to Steinhafel’s unceremonious ouster in May. The company’s stock has slumped over the past year. The CEO search, which was led by Korn Ferry and completed in three months—incredibly quick for a search of this caliber–included both insiders and outsiders. Jenkins says Cornell’s leadership skills ultimately swayed the board of directors. “We wanted someone transformational, someone who understood retail,” she says. Yet retail expert Robin Lewis notes that Cornell is really more of a packaged goods specialist, and that the track record of outsiders in the retail business is not great. “The risk is bringing an industry outsider into an industry that is much more complicated.” Cornell’s departure may also be a blow for PepsiCo, which reportedly had been considering him as a potential successor to CEO Indra Nooyi. But over in Minneapolis, Cornell seems to be garnering some goodwill in the Great Hall, at least today. Here’s hoping it lasts.

Brian Cornell wowed his new troops with handshakes and selfies this morning. But the challenge facing the well-regarded former Pepsi executive is substantial.

FORTUNE — Coffee table books typically dominate the publishing world at this time of year, and 2012 is no exception. Hundreds of new titles have appeared in recent weeks, all vying for your gift shopping dollars. From this vast selection I chose five very different but equally sumptuous volumes. First up: Howard Schatz’s At The Fights: Inside The World of Professional Boxing. An 11-by-14-inch work of art that weighs in at a healthy seven pounds, six ounces, it includes 320 photos of current and former boxers and interviews with more than 50 boxing insiders. It’s a one-two punch that anyone with the slightest interest in photography or the sport of boxing should be thrilled to find in his or her stocking. Schatz devoted six years to the book. As multi-talented as you can get, he spent 23 years as a retina specialist, clinician, and professor of ophthalmology before swapping his medical practice in San Francisco for a photography studio in New York. That was in 1995. Since then he’s won dozens of prestigious photography awards. His work appears regularly in Harper’s Bazaar, Sports Illustrated, Vogue, and other major publications. (At the Fights was produced by Sports Illustrated Books. Sports Illustrated and Fortune are both published by Time Inc.) Assisted by his wife Beverly J. Ornstein, he has also created a small library of books. At The Fights, his 19th published work, grew out of an earlier book that focused on athletes in general. “When I was working on it,” Schatz says, “I saw how different boxers are from other athletes. The courage to box is beyond anything I can understand. It is fascinating.” Schatz’s interview subjects include trainers, judges, referees, managers, promoters, writers, announcers, commissioners, and physicians. Brutality is a common thread. So are skill and performance. “You can see a million guys go 20 or 30 minutes shooting basketballs,” says Emanuel Steward, a trainer, “but nothing is as devastating as seeing someone who can slip and slide punches.” Nigel Collins, an ESPN analyst and former editor of The Ring magazine, provides another perspective: “I love boxing. If you’re in love with a dangerous woman, it’s very exciting. But because you know the facts about that woman doesn’t make you stop loving her. That’s how boxing is with me.” The fighters have their say. “To me, boxing is the most gentlemanly sport there is,” says heavyweight Chris Arreola. “There’s two guys that don’t know each other, go in the ring, beat the living shit out of each other, and after they’re done they shake hands like nothing ever happened. I don’t hate the guy, and he doesn’t hate me. We both know it’s a sport, and you both know you’re going to go home and kiss your kids.” As good as the words are, the pictures tell the tale, including powerful shots taken at ringside. Schatz is a studio photographer at heart, however, and he convinced most of his subjects to visit him at his place of work. “My major goal,” says Schatz, “was to use each boxer to make art, to create remarkable and unique images that surprised and delighted me.” He does that and more, starting with straightforward studio portraits and moving on to kinetic action shots. Schatz gets amazing results by dousing boxers with water or having them punch their way through sheets of salt and powder. And his stroboscopic multiple exposures of fighters jumping rope and hitting a punching bag are out of sight. The book includes a seven-foot gatefold with images of 37 former and current champs. It also features dozens of shots of muscular boxers doing their thing, plus studio portraits of Muhammad Ali, Sugar Ray Leonard, Lennox Lewis, Leon Spinks, and Joe Frazier. My favorite is a two-page spread that contains 55 photos of Shane Mosely, swinging and swaying his way across the page. Like At the Fights, James Balog’s Ice: Portraits of the World’s Vanishing Glaciers is actually two books in one. The first showcases strikingly beautiful photographs of glaciers in Greenland, Iceland, Alaska, Canada, the Himalayas, the U.S. and Canadian Rockies, and other locations around the world. The second consists of time-lapse photos that record the changes the glaciers experienced over a six-year period. To make it happen, Balog and his team embedded some 40 cameras in strategic spots in and around the glaciers. Programmed to take one picture during every half hour of daylight, year-round, the cameras recorded roughly 8,000 frames a year, working through temperatures that dropped to minus 35 degrees Fahrenheit, winds of up to 160 miles per hour, dozens of feet of snow, torrential rain, rock falls and more. “We are in the midst of a gigantic, unplanned, uncontrolled experiment involving the entire planet,” Balog says in the introduction. His time-lapse photos provide stark and irrefutable evidence of what the results of climate change look like. A similar story is told in Chasing Ice, a feature-length documentary that Balog and his team produced about their work. It brings the melting glaciers pictured in the book to the big screen. The film, which opened earlier this month, just might make it to the Oscars. Balog is an award-winning photographer who has produced five other books and shoots for publications like National Geographic and Vanity Fair. He started work on Ice following a 2005 New Yorker assignment to photograph Icelandic glaciers. In addition to making an environmental point, the photos in the book display the grandeur and majesty of centuries-old ice and snow sculptures in a way I’ve never seen. Many are breathtakingly beautiful. The Postcard Age, published by the Boston Museum of Fine Art, introduced me to another world I knew little about. It began in 1869, when the Austro-Hungarian Empire authorized the post office to deliver mail without envelopes. Postcards became an overnight hit. They were the new media of that era, playing the role that e-mail, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and the like handle today. The difference, of course, is that each snail mail card came with a bonus flip side that showcased a picture, a painting or other work of art. Some were crafted by well-known artists, others by unknowns, who used the tiny canvases to play, experiment, make political points and much more. The nearly 400 images in the book, all part of the museum’s Leonard A. Lauder collection, cover historical and cultural themes from the late 19th century through the First World War, from the evolving role of women to breakthroughs in technology to soldiers in uniform. The book contains wonderful turn-of-the century pictures of the Eiffel Tower, Montmartre, and Moulin Rouge. There are also loads of new-fangled autos, planes, and railroad cars, plus dozens of images of women riding bikes, playing tennis, and cavorting on the beach. India In My Eyes is another book that looks and feels good. New York City photographer Barbara Macklowe has traveled often to India, and the images she brings back capture not only the warmth, beauty, and energy of the country but also the hardships its people endure and the triumphs they celebrate. The book features plenty of classic Indian scenes: royal palaces, the Ganges River, landscapes with camels in the foreground and mountains in the distance. Macklowe is at her best, however, when she focuses on young women on their way to market with baskets on their heads. A master of color photography (“I think, see and dream in full color,” she tells us in the introduction), her skill is particularly apparent in the close-up portraits of women, children and soldiers, decked out in beaded caps, red turbans, silver necklaces, and decorative earrings. The Seasons of New York is small by coffee-table standards (8 ½ by 8 ¼ inches), but it tackles big subjects and gives them a nice twist. We’ve all seen a million pictures of the Brooklyn Bridge, for example, but photographer Jim Kahnweile breathes new life into an old icon by showing a woman in a black coat and umbrella crossing the bridge with a white dog in a snowstorm. The book is divided into the four seasons, and yes, the city’s landmarks look very different in spring, summer, winter, and fall. Charles J. Ziga, who took most of the photographs, also wrote a brief intro that sets the stage for the images that follow: “New York City is magical and vibrant. Simply eyeing the famous tourist attractions is enough to excite even the most seasoned traveler, but to truly experience this splendid city I encourage you to linger.” Our Weekly read column features Fortune staffers’ and contributors’ takes on recently published books about the business world and beyond. We’ve invited the entire Fortune family — from our writers and editors to our photo editors and designers — to weigh in on books of their choosing based on their individual tastes or curiosities. Lawrence A. Armour is deputy editor of custom content for Fortune, Time, Money, and Sports Illustrated.

New, beautifully illustrated doorstoppers on boxing, glaciers, antique postcards, modern India, and New York City.

Nobody messes with Mother Nature – and even if they tried, they wouldn’t be able to make her change. Just like your own mother, once Mother Nature has decided what she’s doing, she’s doing it, and there’s no stopping her. You want to go to the beach today? If she’s not having a good day, you’re not having a good day. But if you think Mother Nature’s a beast, what about her whirlwind children? Yes, those little babies that can wreak complete havoc with their torrential rains, fierce winds, and flash floods. Hurricanes are a force to be reckoned with, which is perhaps why they are often named after women! After all, isn’t that how women are? Unpredictable, dangerous, and they leave chaos in their wake? Actually, the myth that hurricanes are named only after women isn’t true. It USED to be true – before 1978 all hurricanes were named after women. The exclusively male club of meteorologists up until that point must have thought that was pretty funny. But then a few women’s rights movements fought the sexist implications of the idea, especially when women started becoming meteorologists. So now we alternate between male and female names for hurricanes. Now the question is does it mean anything different for a hurricane to be named after a woman versus after a man? Not really. YET, people think it does. According to some studies, people don’t take female hurricanes as seriously as they do male names (as though the “gender” of a tropical storm actually means something). Newsflash: the name doesn’t matter! Ever hear of Hurricane Sandy, or Hurricane Ike? What about Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Mitch, or Hurricane Andrew? I don’t think the name made any difference in how dangerous any of these guys (or girls) were. And I don’t know about you, but when I hear that a hurricane’s coming my way, I don’t care what its name is – I only care about getting away as fast as possible and calling 911 Remediation to restore my home when I get back. Now that you’ve learned that hurricanes really aren’t exclusively named after women (and that their name doesn’t matter anyway), you can forget about gender issues with tropical storms. And the next time you find yourself coming up against a hurricane, don’t stop to ask its name. Just get out of the way, because Mother Nature’s coming through!

The weather outside is hard to predict; it may be sunny, rainy, snowy, stormy, or mild from one day to the next, or it might be any number of these all in one day. Eventually you just learn to deal...

We already know that Sam Heughan is a breakout star on to learn – and love! – about the Scottish heartthrob who plays the dashing Jamie Fraser. Here are five things to know: Heughan, 34, grew up in converted stables on the grounds of a castle in New Galloway, Scotland. Since the books describe Jamie as a ginger, Heughan colored his hair auburn for his role as the who sweeps married war nurse Claire Randall (Caitriona Balfe) off her feet. This involves hiking the mountains in Scotland and then journaling about it. that he tried out for multiple roles on the HBO drama, such as playing a member of the Night's Watch. "It's funny about those things," he told the website. "You're up for so many things, and coming from those auditions and testing on other shows, I had more experience, more experience with the process. And maybe I was more confident. I don't know, something about this one just felt right. This part felt different. I knew this character. I felt a connection with him." For more on Heughan and his costar Caitriona Balfe, watch this Costar Challenge:

The hunky actor, who plays Jamie Fraser, auditioned seven times for Game of Thrones

The long gallery was the special contribution of Elizabethan and Jacobean society to architecture that deals with the passing of time: it was a place for walking in bad weather, for contemplating and showing off art and ancestral portraits and, therefore, combined the rhythms of exercise, meteorology and genealogy. A smallish but satisfying example is in Chastleton House in the Cotswolds, built by a rich wool merchant (or possibly lawyer), whose family later dissipated his wealth and so were unable to alter the original building. Nikolaus Pevsner called the decoration of Chastleton "blatantly nouveau riche, even barbaric, uninhibited by any consideration of insipid good taste", but it now it looks gentle and charming, softened by wobbles in wood and plaster and the fall of light. It is also more bare than it would have been, in the absence of its original artworks and tapestries. What is particularly pleasurable is the way the stuff of the ceiling – ornamental plaster – descends, while the stuff of the floor – wood – rises in the form of panelling and the two meet at mid-height. It gives a boat-like sense of enclosure and protection.

Rowan Moore, introduces a spectacular interactive 360-degree panoramic view of this classic example of the Jacobean long gallery

FORTUNE — Fall holds different meanings for different people, but for many technorati, this September will likely see the unveiling of another all-new iPhone. Indeed, next month’s news may prove more newsworthy than years past if some of the speculation is right. Will Apple AAPL finally introduce a new, cheaper iPhone? Could the high-end model sport fingerprint-sensing technology? What else is in store? Until Apple’s reported September 10 event, we’ll have to content ourselves with the rumors. Here’s a roundup of what the blogosphere is currently salivating over: Truth or misguided gossip? Analysts, pundits, and blogs have long talked about a new, “cheap” — largely dubbed in the press as the iPhone 5C — iPhone for over a year now. Last January, Topeka Capital Markets analyst Brian White told Fortune that there’s substantial market opportunity abroad in China for such a product, where the average consumer doesn’t have as large a discretionary income. More recently, Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster suggested such a device would replace the older 4S model and possibly exclude software features like the voice-activated assistant Siri. When Apple acquired fingerprint-sensor maker AuthenTec Inc. for $350 million last year, some wondered how such technology could find its way into iPhones, iPads and the like. KGI Securities argues the new high-end iPhone — let’s just call it the iPhone 5S — will integrate a sensor allowing users to potentially log in by simply pressing a finger to the screen. A security feature like that would prove even quicker, easier, and more secure than the current method of inputting a four-digit code. Once in a while, Apple likes to get colorful. (Look no further than today’s iPod Touch or iPod nano as proof.) The buzz around the crop of iPhones is that they may come in flavors other than black and white, which let’s face it, aren’t even technically colors, according to scientists. The 5C could come in an array of hues not unlike the Touch or nano; the 5S could expand to models with a gold frame. When Apple announced the iPhone 5 last fall, Jony Ive, senior vice president of design, explained why 4 inches was a sweet spot: “By making the screen taller, but not wider, you can see more of your content but still comfortably use it with one hand.” But as devices from competitors bear out, there’s a large swath of users who prefer their smartphones screens even larger . To wit, although sales of Samsung’s 5-inch Galaxy S4 are lower than analysts expected, the company still sold 10 million units within a month of launch. In Apple’s case, reports claim the new iPhone — or at least one iPhone — may sport a screen between 4.5- to 5-inches. Some bloggers are calling for the end of the iPod Touch entirely, but more likely than not, Apple won’t kill its iPhone-like music player any time soon. This May, Apple reported it had sold 100 million units since the Touch hit the market in late 2007. Clearly, demand for the device is still there, so chances are Apple will introduce a new Touch with slightly-beefed up parts inside, keeping in lockstep with the company’s oft-held tradition of tossing in a Jobs-ian “one more thing” toward the end.

A highly anticipated fall announcement from Apple could bring some of the long-awaited upgrades that fans and investors have been calling for.

Peter Mandelson must have loved the smell of Millbank on the morning of May 2 1997. A heady mix of diesel fumes, brake dust and the breeze along the Thames, maybe, but to the new government's chief spin doctor, it would have smelt like... victory. The Labour party - New Labour - had been returned to power, after 18 cold years, with a majority of 179. "Operation Victory", Labour's pugnacious election campaign, had been fought and spun as much in the party's new headquarters, a floor in Millbank Tower - a shiny, Grade II listed 60s skyscraper overlooking the Tate Gallery on one side, the Palace of Westminster on the other - as it had been on hustings and in the press. Today, with a rent rise looming (up from £300,000 to £900,000 a year), the party's deficit rising, membership falling and a new office close to the Houses of Parliament to move into over the Bank Holiday weekend, Labour is ditching Millbank. In five intense years, its Thamesside HQ has served its purpose well: a machine for making Labour electable and capable of government. A decade earlier, the squabbling party had seemed all but washed-up and incapable of winning. "Those were the days of Walworth Road," says Mandelson, of Labour's former headquarters housed in a rabbit-warren of historic buildings in the shadowlands of Elephant & Castle in south-east London. "I first went there as director of campaigns and communications in 1985. I was sat down in a wobbly, revolving chair at a three-legged desk with a spider plant and a second world war-style phone. The place was dominated by the policy department, which specialised in mass-producing election-losing policies. I'd been there about six months when I came across an office I'd never noticed before. It was, I learned, a part of my department. Inside, I met a chap who said he was the 'sign-writer'. He painted very nice signs, but said it wasn't really a full-time job; so, he ran a small import-export business from the office on the side... believe me, we really did have to modernise, there and then, or melt down completely." All of which explains the move to Millbank. Millbank Tower - originally Vickers Tower - was designed by Ronald Ward and Partners and completed in 1963. It was everything the Labour party offices on Walworth Road in the early 1990s were not: tall, gleaming, sleek, modern, aloof and close to the heart of power. Its 32 storeys were topped with a plethora of communications equipment. It was long a favourite location for filming episodes of Dr Who. Millbank Tower owes nothing to the history of the street it rises from, nor to local architectural styles. It might have been equally at home rising above the streetscapes of Frankfurt or Brussels. A clean break with history, it was, at 387ft high, one of the very first buildings in London to rise higher than St Paul's; an overt symbol of a newly confident free-market economy and one that went, hand in slippery hand, with the removal of historic planning controls. Its architects, like those of other early London skyscrapers, made a splash with this one big gesture and then appear to have vanished into obscurity. Their one major earlier work was the slick, 260ft high St George's House, Croydon, the refurbished UK headquarters of Nestle today. Buildings such as Millbank Tower and its contemporary, Euston Tower, were meant to be domineering, yet at the same time all but anonymous command posts of both the embyronic computer age and of burgeoning global capitalism. It was almost waiting for New Labour to come its way. Rising from the glazed lobby, lifts gave access to floors lined for the most part with neat rows of cellular offices. When New Labour moved in, office partitions were stripped away. The new headquarters - a cool, simply designed space - was to be open-plan. Not only could everyone communicate with one another easily, everyone could be watched. This was a perfect home for anyone who wished to control and dominate. Within months, Millbank was known as the centre of government spin and control. MPs were paged from the new command centre; the whole party, electronically tagged, was on-message, on-line. After his victory in the 1964 general election, Harold Wilson had moved the new National Economic Development Council, an alliance of government, business, unions and academia, into the tower. They conspired here to launch Britain into the era of what Wilson and his postmaster general, Anthony Wedgewood Benn, liked to call white-hot technology, and to plan and control its economy. Curiously, it was at this time that the government, and its enemies within MI5 and elsewhere, became obsessed with conspiracies and spies. Perhaps appropriately, Millbank Tower had opened as From Russia With Love premiered in the West End. Even today, the high-security building - you need your passport to visit several organisations here - is occupied with outfits which sound like fronts for some sinister secret service. Take your pick from: the Judicial Studies Board, Command Software Systems Inc (Europe) or Technology Colleges Trust. Was that John Steed you saw shimmering into the lift? This image appeals to the many journalists who have depicted Mandelson's Millbank as the dark, furtive and controlling heart of New Labour. For political correspondents such as BBC's Nick Jones, author of The Control Freaks, "the very word Millbank has come to mean a sinister place". "Journalists have never been welcome here," says Jones. "I've long liked to imagine Mandelson in a dark cloak in Millbank at night, spinning the mystery of the New Labour message, teaching his baby vampires the dark political arts of control and manipulation of news, before they fly off, gorged, to lucrative roosts in political consultancies, media companies and public relations. All the Charlie Whelans, Dolly Drapers and Jo Moores of a world in which the blood of media and politics mingles unhealthily." Jones is teasing - up to a point. Yet the word Millbank struck fear in Londoners' hearts long before politics' Prince of Darkness came here to spin and foil his opponents. The Millbank Penitentiary, based crudely on the reformist ideals of the political philosopher, Jeremy Bentham, brooded here from 1821 to 1903. In the 19th century, Millbank spelt control, surveillance and locked doors. It did again, for journalists at least, at the end of the 20th century. Deep inside Millbank Tower, so the legend went, whirred the mighty Excalibur, a computer possibly even nastier than Hal, dark star of Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. Excalibur was an intelligence gatherering machine that kept tabs on national and international news. In the mythical world of Millbank, Mandelson presided over this evil engine like the Wizard of Oz. Attended by 10 hand-picked acolytes, Excalibur was the machine by which he would turn Tony Blair into Britain's first, all-seeing, all-knowing president. "What a lot of tosh," says Mandelson. "Excalibur was a news gathering program. We live in a world hungry for news; Excalibur was a database of tens of thousands of press cuttings. Since McLuhan, we've all known that the media is the message, and the massage. In the lead-up to the 1997 election, we needed to be acutely aware of what was going on, what was being said. We had to sharpen our act, and we did. All the talk of skullduggery is plain silly." "The press found it hard to believe we had become so good at our jobs", says David Hill, Labour's chief media spokesman from 1993 to 98, and now a director of Good Relations, a London-based PR firm. "Some of them wanted to believe that we'd invested in some sort of all-intrusive machine, something from a James Bond film. The turning point for us was in November 1996. The Tories issued a report in the morning, putting a blow-by-blow cost on the likely spending plans of a future Labour government; by 6pm, we were able to issue a rebuttal, a counter-report, that proved them wrong on every one of 80 or 90 points. We couldn't have done that without an enormous amount of readily get-attable material; that's what Excalibur was all about. There was no mystery, just hard work, speed and the kind of professionalism that was new to European politics." Even so, Millbank's talk of an "Opposition Watch", of an "Attack/Rebuttal Task Force", of a "Media Monitoring Unit", and even a campaign "war room" for 1997's Operation Victory, and of the very real bullying of journalists that went on in the first two or three years of Blair's government, gave the place a special, gargoyled nook in the annals of British political history. "Realistically, you have to see where we were coming from," says Mandelson. "I remember attending a transport policy sub-committee meeting of the National Executive Committee of the TUC at Transport House, the Labour party HQ before the Walworth Road rabbit-warren. This was in the 70s. I was working as an assistant in the economics department of the TUC. Bill Rogers, the secretary of state responsible for transport at the time, was pushing an innovative proposal for road-rail freight interchanges. The door flew open. In came Jack Jones and three other trade union officials. They sat down. Jones said they took exception to the policy. They didn't want it. And here's the extraordinary thing; when challenged, Jones said: 'We're the landlords here; we want it off the agenda.' This was a defining moment in my politics. The Labour party had long shared premises with the unions, but surely the relationship between them had got too close for comfort?" Although the party's next home, Walworth Road, was the backdrop to the epic struggle between the modernisers and the old left, it never evoked as clear an image, or political style, as its successor. Remarkably, the irony that Millbank Tower just happens to stand on the site of the house Tony Benn was born in passed most of the apparatchiks by. "I think it [Millbank] was very good in its time," said David Triesman, General Secretary of the Labour Party, talking to BBC Radio Four's The Westminster Hour earlier this week. "It was a good place to organise. It was physically the right environment, but I think that it's true that it's now become lumbered with a good deal of history and mythology. And I will be quite glad [to move]." The new headquarters - low-key, low-rise refurbished modern offices in Old Queen Street in the heart of Westminster - will, says Triesman, "symbolise a new openness". The building will be nameless, working through the night, yes, yet spinning a little more gently, a little less shrilly than its over-spun and myth-engulfed predecessor. As for Millbank itself, the traffic fumes and the breeze along the Thames will still be there. So, too, the mysterious organisations that toil and spin in the stainless-steel tower. But, of the early days of New Labour, not a trace. Not so much as the electronic squeak of a pager on the belt of a tagged and gagged member of parliament.

As the Labour party moves out of Millbank, Jonathan Glancey assesses the building that defined an era.

Will the prize go out with a bang, or will the lights flicker on once more as another deal comes forward? And will yet another quartet of artists set themselves up, or will they run and hide, joining the throng of contenders who turn down the chance to be parodied, mocked and misrepresented? The Turner Prize is a big deal in Britain, but winning it has less impact on an artist's career than might be supposed. For Tyson, the inclusion of his work in the international section of the last Venice Biennale was surely more significant than last night's award. Only the money counts. With every year, the prize becomes more meaningless. Art is not like novel writing here, not everyone is speaking the same language. For all that, Tyson's work can be appreciated on many levels: it is often funny and calls up big issues. It manages, paradoxically, to be highly accessible yet incomprehensible: why is that toaster under the table, and why is it plugged in to the exploded rear end of a Trafalgar Square lion? Maybe the prize is a bribe, so Tyson will tell.Such obscure motives are part of his play with meaning. Tyson's art, clearly, beguiles people. They stand and laugh and scratch their heads. They smile at his drawings, and brows furrow over his sculptures, and that black meta-computer of his which belongs somewhere between the portentous black monolith in Stanley Kubrick's 2001 and Rodin's Thinker. Tyson's conceptually inventive and quirky games - like watching Douglas Adams meet Marcel Duchamp over chess- leave me a bit cold. I find the profligacy of his art wearying. I would have liked Fiona Banner to win the prize, and not just because only two women have won since the Turner Prize 's 1984 inception. This anomaly goes beyond the laws of chance - though the twisted logic of Tyson's painted machines might come up with an equation which can prove otherwise. The real twister is that the judges can never get it wrong, because there is no right.

Keith Tyson has won the Turner Prize . My first reaction is to feel relief that we can now drop the whole thing until next year, when Channel 4's sponsorship deal comes to an end

Is it any wonder actresses are neurotic about their appearance? If anyone ever doubted the sexist scrutiny they are up against, Michael Parkinson's 1975 interview with Helen Mirren (a YouTube sensation) is a sobering reminder. "Critics spend as much time discussing her physical attributes as assessing her acting ability," says Parky, by way of introduction for the "sex queen" of the RSC, that byword for "sluttish eroticism". Nor does he seem much interested in Mirren's acting, either. "You are, in quotes, a 'serious actress'; do you find what might best be described as your equipment hinders you in that pursuit?" You can understand why many women on stage and screen prefer the title "actor" – as an assertion of their professionalism and to fend off the prurient personal remarks the "actress" has suffered since she first trod the boards in the 1660s. The emergence of the actress on the Restoration stage was revolutionary. As every pupil of Shakespeare knows, it was men in drag who took the ladies' parts before. Imagine the frisson, then, when Nell Gwyn first showed herself aged 14 to a packed house at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, in 1664. This unprecedented female exhibition provoked salacious frenzy, which theatre companies hoped to harness to their profit. The showcasing of beauties in "breeches roles" exploded ideas of decorum. Actresses welcomed the chance to demonstrate the virtuosity demanded by parts such as Viola and Rosalind. But the display of their shapely legs was condemned as an exercise in "brazenness" which confirmed the shameless immodesty and sexual availability of the actress. That both theatre-land and prostitution had their metropolis in Covent Garden was not lost on the press. From the first, the "actress" of popular imagination was a shimmering mixture of whore, coquette, talent and celebrity. Nell Gwyn, still one of history's most famous Englishwomen, might justly claim to be the original female celebrity. Born in obscurity, barely literate and no conventional beauty (red headed and hazel eyed), Gwyn was as celebrated for her ready wit as her legs – which she revealed even when cast as an angel in The Virgin Mary. Within months of her debut, Nell was known to the public by her first name. In becoming mistress to Charles II, but never hoity toity, she became the people's Cinderella, and a Protestant one at that. "Nell" was both star and brand. A new exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, The First Actresses: Nell Gwyn to Sarah Siddons, investigates the concept of the "actress" in all its troubling contradictions. The artists include Reynolds, Gainsborough, Hoppner, Lawrence, Zoffany and Gillray. The exhibition is the brainchild of Gill Perry. When she was writing her book Spectacular Flirtations: Viewing the Actress in Eighteenth Century Art and Culture, she realised that the NPG had an exceptional collection of early actress portraits – "And not only that they are in Covent Garden," she says. The idea appealed to Lucy Peltz, the NPG's curator of 18th-century portraits, because this "will be the first show to explore the importance of women in early English theatre, through portraiture, highlighting themes that are close to the Gallery's heart – gender, identity, representation and the history of celebrity culture." The first actresses benefited from an emerging publicity machine that anticipated aspects of the modern star system. The explosion of print after the relaxation of censorship in the 1690s spawned theatre reviews, gossip columns and puffs, as well as adoring and salacious biographies. The burgeoning art market served their image too. Fans could gaze on their idols in glowing portraits in popular exhibitions and mass-produced prints. They could even take home a model of their favourite in porcelain (Kitty Clive as Mrs Riot or Sarah Siddons as Lady Macbeth) or a transfer printed on snuffbox, fan or screen. Portraits of actresses were always crowd-pleasers at the Royal Academy, hanging next to the flower of the nobility – a juxtaposition that inflated the prestige of the performing arts. The actress was usually depicted in full theatrical make-up and flamboyant costume, posed seductively to beguile the viewer. "Portraiture is always a form of dazzling performance, not a mirror image," Perry points out. But the audience conflated the painted lady with the real woman, and the actress with her role. The canniest performers stage-managed their public appearances to enhance their reputations. Mary "Perdita" Robinson used her well-reported outings in "her chariot" to advertise her versatility. As Laetitia Hawkins wrote in her diary: "Today she was a paysanne, with her straw hat tied at the back of her head … yesterday she perhaps had been dressed as a belle of Hyde Park, trimmed, powdered, patched, painted to the utmost powder of rouge and white lead; tomorrow she would be the cravatted Amazon of the riding house." Artists, critics and dramatists were as interested in the public persona and desirability of the actress as in her acting. Even singing and dancing were described as theatrical flirtation and coquetry. But women were not passive victims of the new cultural marketplace. They constituted an opinionated section of the audience for plays, as for opera, concerts, assemblies and exhibitions. Meanwhile the first female journalists, novelists and playwrights managed to live by their pens. Many actresses including Susanne Centlivre, Charlotte Charke, Kitty Clive, Eliza Haywood, Elizabeth Inchbald, Susanna Rowson, Siddons and Robinson enjoyed a second career as playwrights and authors, some deliberately writing challenging roles for women. Others like Lavinia Fenton, Elizabeth Farren, Frances Abington and Dorothy Jordan used their charisma to scale the social ladder. Their leap "from gutter to royal mistress or aristocratic wife might surprise the Hello! generation", Peltz says. The skill with which actresses managed and manipulated their public reputations is striking. Clive, for instance, was a separated wife, who shone in breeches parts, comedy and oratorio, attracting numerous admirers. By 1744, she enjoyed a salary of £300 a year – twice the annual income of the director of the British Museum. She shrewdly maintained a reputation for chastity. At her death, Horace Walpole sniffed: "The comic muse with her retired. And shed a tear when she expired." Critics lingered over Siddons's perfection of form. "Her height is above the middle size, but not at all inclined to em-bon-point. There is sufficient muscle to bestow a roundness upon the limbs. The symmetry of her person is exact and captivating." But Siddons conveyed the impression she was above such tosh. She harped on her love for her children and vaunted her aristocratic contacts, carrying herself with regal dignity. This air of moral rectitude and personal nobility leant credence to her tragic performances and informed the grandiloquence of her portrait by Reynolds. However, as Perry acknowledges, the "construction of the actress as a celebrity brand was a fickle process". A reputation could be as easily demolished as made in print, especially by dredging up a scurrilous sexual history. Being a lofty vehicle of erotic fantasy was one thing, a whorish backstory was quite another. No wonder so many actresses turned to autobiography or commissioned self-portraits to frame their own story. "Artists – even in satirical prints – paid less notice to the breasts of actresses than critics did," comments Shearer West in her essay on beauty in the catalogue. Jordan's "bosom concealed everything but its own charms", frothed one reviewer. Commentary on the appearance of actresses was not always positive. Beautiful females were supposed to be symmetrical, irrespective of the demands of the role, and performers could be castigated for being either to fat or too thin. Farren, a comedienne, was mocked for her flat chest and bottom. Most actresses had no choice but to soldier on through heavy pregnancy and inevitably feared for their livelihood when they could no longer convince as pert ingénues. When Garrick was urged to restage The Jealous Wife for Hannah Pritchard (then aged 57) he recoiled at her "great Bubbies, Nodding head & no teeth – O Sick – Sick – Spew". When modern critics rate a female performance on whether it's theatrical Viagra or doubt that a woman is thin enough to play Juliet, they invoke a long and dishonourable tradition. "Modern actors should see the first actresses as trailblazers, fighting prejudice and innuendo," Perry concludes. Certainly women today might take comfort that so many of their forebears managed to seize the public relations initiative and shape the culture that so objectified them.

An obsession with the looks and love lives of actresses is nothing new, as an exhibition of portraits of the first women on the stage makes clear

A lexicon of passing clouds, veiled suns and reflections on water. Early-1960s newspaper photos of murdered student nurses, which once ended up in a Gerhard Richter painting. A family snap of Uncle Rudi, proud in his army uniform; crinkle-edged postcards and pictures from other people's family albums. Mountains and aerial views of cities, and similarly hovering views of towns that exist only as architects' models. Portraits of famous dead men, of Hitler at dinner, of Mao like a babyish, grey, blurred blob. Flowers, some wilting. This is an image-hoard. Shown for the first time in Britain, Richter's Atlas fills the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London. There is also a small selection of Richter's paintings. Dispersed through the gallery, they pace Atlas, just as Atlas paces the development, and the subjects, of Richter's painting in all its variety and modes. It goes on: country lanes winding between cornfields, corpses piled in the road with vultures waiting. Mothers and babies and a food-spattered toddler trapped in his high chair. Innocent things: a toilet roll dangling in cool morning light, an acrobat diving, stags at bay. And guilty things: two women doing something with a cucumber, a man doing something to another woman with a length of pipe, a woman sucking a man's penis, a Nazi hanging a boy who has something almost like a smile on his face. Humiliated Jews, the camps. Emaciated victims in the hut, touched up with vivid happy colours. Photos of trains going by near the artist's studio in Cologne. Is it now possible, in Europe, to watch trains without thinking where the lines once led? Is it possible to look at so many images - whether mundane, or titillating and pornographic, or inhuman and horrific and filled with despair - without becoming aware of just how much we like to look, that looking drives us where it will, that we keep on looking? Atlas is an ever-growing bank of images, encyclopedic, compendious. Many of the photographs were taken by Richter himself, while others are re-photographed images whose origins slip away the more they have been reproduced. Arrays of standard processed snapshots - ordinary, inartistic photographic information that could have come from anywhere - have found their way into this vast cache, including close-up details of the artist's own brushwork and pictures of his children and grandchildren. The anonymous and universal vie with the personal and sentimental. Most images that have found a place here never migrate beyond it. Stalled images, then: some suspended in groups and others lain out singly, all behind glass in identically sized frames, then ordered and presented in juxtapositions that, the artist has remarked, are sometimes "weird and seemingly cynical". Some groups contain material collected as a resource for specific paintings. At one point Richter, obsessed with Caspar David Friedrich's painting of a ship mired in a frozen sea, travelled to the pack ice and icebergs off Greenland and took numerous photographs there. These colour works are now presented in a huge block of images that fills a wall of the smaller upstairs gallery at the Whitechapel. Other groups stand out, such as the magazine photographs and police archive documentation related to the lives, imprisonment and mysterious deaths of the Red Army Faction in jail, for Richter's most important ensemble of works, titled October 18 1977. Certain images erupt from the wall as we scan. There are stories here, chains of coincidence, runs of images like repetitive thoughts that won't go away. Atlas has been presented in exhibitions around the world since 1972, although Richter began to compile and order his stockpile a decade before, soon after his move to the west when he was 30. He has continued to add to his Atlas to this day. It has been in a work in progress for more than 40 years, its origins lying not so much in his art as in a job he once had as a darkroom assistant to a commercial photographer. Richter is one of the world's leading painters, if not the most impressive painter working today. He is also a somewhat bewildering artist, in that his work ranges from portraiture to thickly worked, agglutinative abstract paintings, from intractable monochromes to softly focused, photographically derived landscapes. Always preoccupied with questions of subject matter, and of manner and genre, Richter has continually asked himself the most basic and fundamental questions an artist, working alone in his studio, can ask: questions of what to paint as much as how to paint. These, one might say, are the first things an artist might ask right at the beginning of a career. They are the questions a child often asks: what shall I paint, what shall I draw? That the artist, now in his 70s, is still faced with what I regard as an existential as well as a creative problem is one of the keys to his art, as well as being its submerged subject. Born in Dresden in 1932, Richter moved to West Germany only months before the erection of the Berlin Wall. His formative years were spent under not one but two totalitarian regimes, National Socialism and East German communism. He came from what he has described as a pious family. Moving to Düsseldorf in 1961, he found himself in a Germany preoccupied with forgetting, or, perhaps more precisely, repressing its own recent past, suspended in a state of moral ambiguity. All of which has led Richter to distrust ideologies, and to make an art that is the product of doubt and ambiguity - that also defines what artistic freedom he sees himself as having. It is worth adding that Richter's art is extraordinarily tough-minded. What Atlas shows us, cumulatively, is an entire world of images, some of which Richter regards as unpaintable. A dozen years ago, Neil Ascherson wrote: "Richter's sensibility, although it is in many ways carefully unpolitical, is a product of this endlessly idealistic, endlessly disillusioned Germany." The key word is Ascherson's repeated "endlessly". Images, too, are without end. Walking among the banked grids of Atlas, one has a growing sense of their proliferation, of Richter's logic and also of the randomness and multiplicity of the world, its intractability. But there is also a growing sense of Richter brooding, brooding over the images that have made their way into Atlas. It is a dark undercurrent in his art. Richter's fellow East German and contemporary, Sigmar Polke, seems to me to evince the opposite in his art, a kind of hysteria. Ascherson also wrote of what some people saw as Richter's inner coldness and indifference. For all the hot colour in certain Richters - his sunny landscapes, his broken-textured, scraped-over abstract paintings, his colour charts - there is something one might describe as a chill, an inner greyness. And, ultimately, Atlas might seem to be a product of indifference. Or is it that photographs themselves provoke indifference? What appears as Richter's distance - a wariness and inconclusiveness, a blurring and shadowiness in his portraiture, his cityscapes and still lives - can also be read as a kind of terrible doubt, which goes beyond painting itself, and beyond his painting's frequently close relationship to photography. Richter once said: "The image of the artist as a misunderstood figure is abhorrent to me... I'm increasingly in favour of the official, the classic, the universal." This I take as a kind of provocation. To those who cling, however naively, blindly or idealistically, to an idea of an avant-garde pitched against the "official" and the "classic", this is anathema. In some quarters Richter has come to be regarded as a pompier painter, a bourgeois salon painter for the kind of society that a more "committed" art should be pitted against. But Richter has always been too complex a painter, and a thinker, to fit so simplistic a view. What Atlas shows us (and what his greatest work, the Baader-Meinhof October 18 paintings, also shows us) is an artist committed not to his own aggrandisement or to bolstering society, but pitted, rather, against indifference, and against the numbness of the world. He is also, in a certain way, fiercely mistrustful of images and what they convey. Some photographs, especially those of the Holocaust, are irreducible, and perhaps unpaintable in themselves. He keeps picking them up and putting them down again. You can tell he is in there, thinking them through and unable to think about them. When we look at them, we do the same. And do our own brooding. · Gerhard Richter: Atlas is at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London E1, until March 14. Details: 020-7522 7888.

Gerhard Richter has spent 40 years amassing photographs that shock, chill and amuse. Adrian Searle sees a remarkable collection.

Jason Landau and Cheyenne Jackson 09/15/2014 AT 05:05 PM EDT Talk about a night to remember. is still on Cloud 9 after with boyfriend Jason Landau on Saturday evening. "There was so much love coming at us," Jackson, 39, tells PEOPLE. "We're both just love hungover." Set atop the converted tennis court of a friend's lavish estate in Encino, California, the ceremony and reception scene melded nature with glam elements. "I grew up in the woods with no running water and outhouses, so I wanted the woodsy look. Jason wanted glitz," says Jackson. To outfit the space, 1540 Productions brought in 20 trees and 100 chandeliers. What they hadn't planned for were the bluebirds who chirped overhead as the grooms exchanged vows beneath a "At first I thought they were bats!" says Jackson. "But it was just perfect." Following an emotional ceremony – "I lost it as soon as Jason came around the corner with his mom. I cried throughout the whole thing," says Jackson– the two grooms took to the dance floor and put on a show. After dancing to a cover of Fleetwood Mack's Song Bird by Ava Cassidy, "All of a sudden the music changed and Jason and I did a choreographed dance to Michael Jackson's 'PYT,' " gushes the newlywed. "It came out of nowhere, everybody went crazy." From left: Justin Mikita, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Cheyenne Jackson and fashion photographer Karl Simone The dancing didn't stop there. Out of their 200 guests, including friends , "We were the last ones to leave the dance floor." All in all, "It was over the top, but not like the gay wedding in ," Jackson says with a laugh, "It was over the top but in the best way, because it was still us." Now the two, who head off on their honeymoon to Bora Bora this week, can relax and revel in the memories. "All Jason and I wanted to do was create an environment of love," says Jackson, "and that's what happened."

The Glee actor says he's still "love hungover" from his big night

FORTUNE — Most everyone believes that America will become recessionary if we fall off the fiscal cliff in 28 days. What has gotten less attention, however, is what might happen were Washington to actually get its act together. I’m not talking about how taxes might rise for some and not for others, or how particular programs might be cut or saved. Instead, I’m simply talking about the notion that a deal — any deal — pass through Congress and get signed by President Obama’s famous pen. Would such an agreement not only prevent recession, but actually prove stimulative? That’s the thesis of Jason Thomas, director of research at private equity firm The Carlyle Group CG . Thomas today published a paper arguing that a credible fiscal cliff resolution would finally prompt corporate America to begin investing its record cash hoards. Even if corporate taxes were to rise. “A lot of CEOs are risk-adverse and part of that is behaving as if it’s going to be the worst-case scenario,” Thomas explained in a phone call. “But if what comes out is even mildly better than they anticipated, then they could begin making investments. It also would give them some confidence that our government has the ability to function.” “Q1-2010 marked the first time in history that corporate profits exceeded business fixed investment. Unlike prior cycles where an increase in corporate profits led to faster investment growth as cash was reinvested in plant and equipment, business investment has increased very modestly since 2009 even as corporate profits have nearly doubled as a percentage of GDP. Were businesses simply to reinvest cash flow at historic rates, fixed investment would add nearly 4% to GDP ($695 billion) by the end of 2016 and more than offset the fiscal drag from reduced disposable personal income.” To be sure, Thomas is largely rehashing the uncertainty argument that I find so asinine. But, if he’s right, then we could be talking about the fiscal cliff representing much more than a six point swing from (nearly) 3% GDP to -3%. Instead, it could be a 10-point swing. Thomas also rejects arguments that America would be better off, in the long-run, by going off the cliff. He believes that the short-term effects could be so damaging that they could change the baseline assumptions going forward. “You have the potential for a real confidence shock, and then there’s the debt limit that’s going to have to be raised,” he says. “If you reach an impasse, the prediction of 3% contraction could be optimistic.” Also worth noting that Thomas’ employer seems to be betting on a deal. The firm committed to invest $4.4 billion of equity in the first three quarters of 2012, almost two-thirds of which was in industrial or manufacturing plays. It also has developed a reputation for being the top bidder in several competitive situations. Part of this activity is prompted by debt market conditions, but those aren’t unique to Carlyle. If the firm believed there was a strong chance of shock recession — and the aforementioned long-term repercussions — then it probably wouldn’t be making so many new deals. Thomas declined to comment on Carlyle’s investment decisions, as he is not a part of them. Here is the entire paper: Sign up for Dan’s daily email newsletter on deals and deal-makers: GetTermSheet.com

Fixing the fiscal cliff isn't just about avoiding disaster.

The number of deaths due to General Motors’ faulty ignition switches has risen to 21 as compensation expert Kenneth Feinberg starts providing weekly updates of the compensation claims he thinks are legitimate. After last week’s initial report of 19 deaths from the GM Ignition Compensation protocol, headed by Feinberg, today the commission updated the numbers and revealed that he has deemed two more death claims valid, bringing the total deaths to 21. Prior to hiring Feinberg, GM GM had said there were only 13 deaths resulting from the faulty ignition switches, which have resulted in a string of recalls starting earlier this year. A spokesman told Fortune, though, that the Detroit automaker is accepting the Feinberg protocol’s determination of death claims as the final number. Camille Biros, the deputy administrator of the compensation protocol, said that there would not be more information given about how many of the 21 deaths were in single-fatality accidents versus crashes with multiple deaths. “There’s been so much press around some of these [cases] that we don’t want to provide any way to identify them,” she said. The number of total approved claims, including both death and injuries, has also increased, growing from 31 to 37. Since the protocol started receiving claims, on Aug. 1, Feinberg and his team have received a total of 675 claims, including 143 death claims. That includes 230 total claims and 18 death claims in the past week. Biros said it is standard practice for Feinberg’s compensation protocols to release weekly numbers, mostly to appease a media hungry for updates. Feinberg has previously worked on compensation protocols for victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the Virginia Tech shooting. This is another bit of bad news for GM, which announced another recall — unrelated to the ignition switch problem — earlier Monday.

We'll be getting weekly updates on the ignition switch compensation protocol now.

FORTUNE — Disaster and misbehavior have dominated recent headlines about big banks. Whether it’s multibillion-dollar trading losses (J.P. Morgan Chase), a settlement for rigging interest rates (Barclays), a Senate report asserting money laundering for drug cartels (HSBC), or assorted bad press for Standard Chartered, Capital One, Wells Fargo, and others, some financial giants seem bent on returning their reputations to the darkest lows of 2008. Little surprise, then, that the KBW index of bank stocks has slipped 7.3% since April, while the broader market has been flat. It’s not just the news. Investors fear that Dodd-Frank reforms, which require holding more capital and limit certain trading, will squeeze profits. Meanwhile, many banks are still taking losses on pre-crash mortgages, and interest rates are near historic lows. Yes, that means banks can get away with paying 0.05% on a savings account. It also means they can’t lend money at high rates. MORE: Why AIG is still the market’s scariest stock As investors flee, a few intrepid souls are buying. Value investor Bill Nygren, manager of the Oakmark Fund, now has 23% of his $6.2 billion portfolio in financial stocks, according to fund research firm Morningstar. He already had a stake, but bought more as bank shares faltered in recent months. Some share prices, he says, are “assuming that the worst recession since the Great Depression will happen every five years or so.” For example, Nygren thinks J.P. Morgan’s JPM annual profits could jump 50% by 2014 as interest rates eventually rise and the mortgage mess recedes. Even if that doesn’t happen, JPM’s stock is trading for nine times its last 12 months of profits. If the bank achieves its expected earnings of $5.23 a share next year and returns to its five-year average price/earnings ratio of 15, the stock price would double, to $75. Like JPM, other banks with headaches have gotten stronger. Wells Fargo WFC (which agreed to pay $175 million in July to settle a federal fair-lending case, but denied wrongdoing) scooped up Wachovia during the financial crisis and has demonstrated “strong performance in a weak market,” as Morningstar’s Jim Sinegal put it in a recent note. He praised Wells’ fundamentals, such as attracting deposits and making loans. With a P/E of 11, it’s less of a bargain than JPM, but boasts a higher return on equity and little exposure to the mess in Europe, says Jim Kee, president of South Texas Money Management, which oversees $2 billion and recently bought Wells shares. MORE: Growth stocks for barren times Capital One Financial COF (which in July agreed to a $210 million settlement for deceptive marketing of credit-protection products) bought ING’s U.S. online bank and HSBC’s HBC credit card unit. Capital One has a P/E of 9, a bargain given its expected $6 in earnings per share this year and the fact that its credit card revenue continues to climb even as Americans charge less. The next year may be dicey for banks, says portfolio manager Adam Scheiner of RBC Global Asset. But much of the recent bad news won’t be harmful (or remembered) over the long run, analysts contend. The worst effects of the housing bust are slowly ebbing, and interest rates will climb at some point, making loans more profitable. Long term, Scheiner says, there’s a compelling case for big banks. This story is from the September 3, 2012 issue of Fortune.

If you look beyond recent mishaps and scandals, there are values to be found in financial shares.

09/29/2014 AT 01:45 PM EDT Moody teens in a haunting, dystopian future? Sounds like a case for a , who has been tapped to curate the soundtrack for , just released the film's title track, "Yellow Flicker Beat," which she also wrote and recorded. Of the foreboding (yet, at the same time, strangely catchy) tune, Lorde, born Ella Yelich-O'Connor, posted on her , "It's my first offering from what I hope will be a soundtrack you love. It's my attempt at getting inside her head, Katniss. I hope you like it." There's no word yet on any of the other artists Lorde has tapped to appear on the soundtrack, but the singer says she jumped at the opportunity to choose songs for it. "The cast and story are an inspiration for all musicians participating, and as someone with cinematic leanings, being privy to a different creative process has been a unique experience. I think the soundtrack is definitely going to surprise people," the singer said in a statement. have included tracks from Arcade Fire,

The teen queen not only wrote the film's theme song, but is also curating the entire soundtrack

FORTUNE — Both smartphones were highly anticipated and well-reviewed. Both were made available for online orders and quickly sold out. But one — Apple’s AAPL iPhone 5 — overcame some initial production hiccups and as of Thursday, according to Piper Jaffrey’s Gene Munster, had “finally reached a point where consumers can walk into an Apple Store and walk out with a phone.” The other — made for Google GOOG by LG Electronics LGLD as a showcase for Android 4.2 (a.k.a. Jelly Bean) — has become an object lesson in how not to stage a roll-out in advance of the holidays. I quote from Computerworld’s JR Raphael (Google’s Nexus 4 launch and the land of lost opportunity): Selling out isn’t the problem; that’s relatively common with hot products in high demand. There’s more to this story. First is the way Google started the Nexus 4’s sales. With no presales available, people were champing at the bit to get the phone the second orders opened up. Google initially said it’d start Nexus 4 sales on November 13th, with no specific time; later, word got out that the floodgates would open at 9 a.m. PT that day. Plenty of Android enthusiasts planned their days around that schedule to make sure they wouldn’t end up empty-handed. But then Google randomly started the sales about 15 minutes early, with no announcement and no warning. And then things really went to hell: The company’s Play Store buckled under the pressure of incoming traffic and became almost unusable. Even if you managed to get a Nexus 4 in your shopping cart, the site would repeatedly hiccup and give you errors before you could check out. Soon, Google’s storefront started randomly switching between showing the phone as available and showing it as “coming soon.” That level of barely-usable business went on much of the day. With enough work, you could often place an order — but it took an awful lot of effort. I chatted with scores of people who spent hours trying to make it happen. If only the troubles had stopped there. After two days of silence, many of the users who managed to order devices — myself included — received emails from Google stating that the Nexus 4 was backordered “due to overwhelming demand” and that the phone should ship “within three weeks.” There’s been no official communication since. And Google’s Play Store continues to show the Nexus 4 as being “sold out,” with no option to place an order or be notified when more units become available.

One hot new smartphone is now "readily available" for Christmas. The other ain't.

What we know: Not a whole lot. According to a report this week from The Wall Street Journal, the group in charge of Intel’s INTC TV strategy, dubbed Intel Media, is run by Erik Huggers, a corporate VP who once worked for the BBC and Microsoft MSFT . A set-top box may be in the works touting speech and face recognition, as well as social features, making for more of a “shared experience” with multiple users. Intel’s also kicking around an idea called the “virtual operator,” which would basically offer TV channels in Internet bundles similar to the way they’re offered today. ETA: Originally end of 2012, but that proved about as accurate as the Mayan apocalypse. Now? Anywhere from mid-2013 to end-of-the-year. In other words: unclear. What we know: The rumors just won’t die. What we do know is Apple AAPL is certainly cooking up something there. Tim Cook just about hinted as much in an interview with NBC’s Brian Williams at the end of last year. “When I go into my living room and turn on the TV, I feel like I have gone backwards in time by 20 to 30 years,” Cook said. “It’s an area of intense interest. I can’t say more than that.” Confirmation? Not quite. But as close as a “yes” as we’ll probably ever get from a company that also recently admitted it’s doubling down on secrecy when it comes to product development. And what that TV device/service will ultimately look like is anyone’s guess. Maybe it’ll be an actual TV set designed by Jony Ive & Co. with an inventive software interface to rival its inevitably slick physical appearance. There are certainly no shortage of fanboy mock-ups in that area. (See here or here.) “We expect the beauty of the design to be a feature, but the most important feature will be the ability to use the TV as the main interface for the living room across multiple devices,” writes Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster in a report this week. Munster thinks the TV will include Siri and FaceTime features but not unbundled channels. Fortune even took a crack at coming up with 11 features the Apple TV must have. ETA: Munster expects such a device could arrive this November in time for the holiday season, priced somewhere between $1,500 and $2,000 with screen sizes in the 42″-55″ range. If he’s right, three words: start saving now.

Both tech giants are rumored to be developing television products for this year or next. Here's how they (might) stack up.

If you’re reading Fortune, you’re aware of Mark Zuckerberg. You likely know Jack Dorsey and Marissa Mayer. You might know Kevin Systrom, and Ben Silbermann. But what about Andriy Kobolyev, or Tristan Walker, or Julie Smolyansky? The names Liv Garfield, Kevin Chou, and Raj Chetty might not ring a bell. Or do they? How well do you know the super-successful, high-flying business stars of our new 40 Under 40? Test yourself with our quiz. Then take to Twitter and use the hashtag #fortune40 to let us know how you did.

Take our quiz to test your knowledge

FORTUNE–“Our mission is simple: to make all athletes better,” says Under Armour founder and CEO Kevin Plank. “Our vision is even simpler: to empower athletes everywhere.” Have you noticed that the best businesses are typically built on easy-to-understand foundations? That is, one big idea. That was the message that Plank delivered last Friday in a keynote talk at a University of Virginia Entrepreneurs Symposium. Back in 1996, as Plank explained, he was a 23-year-old graduate of the University of Maryland, where he’d been special teams captain of the football team, and he was determined to invent a T-shirt that wouldn’t get soaked in sweat. Plank didn’t create the performance apparel category, but he made it mass-market, and that fielded lucrative opportunities for Nike and other companies that were smart and nimble enough to adapt. Meanwhile, he built a startup that generated $2.3 billion in revenue last year and has a stock-market valuation of more than $9 billion. UA stock is due to join the S&P this week. Plank, 41, had loads of advice for the entrepreneurs at UVa (my alma mater), but he said that his remarkable success comes down to three lessons: Focus. “We rebuilt that first T-shirt time and time again during the first five years,” Plank said about Under Armour’s early product development. “People kept saying, ‘You should do this…You should do that,’” he recalled, noting that he ignored advice to broaden his product line. Two decades later, Under Armour sells shoes and sunglasses and all sorts of athletic gear, but the original product, the moisture-wicking T-shirt, is still in development. “I think we’re on the 63rd version of that shirt,” Plank said as we chatted after his keynote. “It’s key to become ‘famous’ for one thing first,” he added, “and that will give you the credibility to go into other areas once your ready….which generally means a long time and a lot of perfecting!” Find out if your product can sell. Before he created Under Armour, Plank had an on-campus rose-selling business, Cupid’s Valentine. He invested $16,000 from that business into his T-shirt startup in 1996—and $9,000 of the $16,000 went into patents and trademarks. “Save yourself time and money,” Plank said, contending that he overspent on legal fees. Early on, use scarce capital to “get your product into stores,” he advised. Possess strong will. “I have a saying at the company,” Plank said as he described how he talks to his 7,000 employees’ about their Baltimore-based company’s culture of ownership. “Employees get things done. Partners get things done done. But owners get things done done done.” Listening to Plank, I thought of other leaders like him who created multi-billion-dollar businesses from one idea. Whole Foods founder-CEO John Mackey has done that. So has Hamdi Ulukaya, who created Chobani Greek yogurt and built a business that grew as fast as Google and Facebook in its first five years. Read Beth Kowitt’s exclusive Fortune interview with Ulukaya about his new $750 million investment from private equity firm TPG—and her Fortune cover story about Whole Foods. Meanwhile, brand expert Jim Stengel, the former CMO of Procter & Gamble , captures the essence of enduring growth companies in his six-part series here. Growth begins with a big idea, and if you’re smart and lucky, it never ends.

Kevin Plank took on Nike and built Under Armour into a $2.3 billion company. The hypercompetitive CEO says he learned three major lessons along the way.

10/29/2014 AT 09:20 AM EDT Like many other denizens of the The star was visiting Jimmy Fallon on Tuesday's to discuss his new film, , when Fallon brought up "I think I was the first kid in my class to learn all the words to [Eminem's] 'Real Slim Shady,' " Radcliffe told Fallon. Radcliffe went on to say that memorizing lyrics became something of an obsession for him, which soon led Fallon to challenge him to perform Blackalicious's "Alphabet Aerobics," a song that, as one would guess from the title, features an intricate rhyme scheme in alphabetic order, at a gradually increasing speed. Spoiler alert: Radcliffe nails it. (With one hand in his pocket for a portion of the performance, like he's casually chatting with a friend.) It's easily the most impressive and unexpected performance we've seen on of "All I Do Is Win." Watch the full clip below and, for your own sake, do not ever challenge Daniel Radcliffe to a rap battle.

Radcliffe performs Blackalicious's 'Alphabet Aerobics' flawlessly

There’s a disconnect, it seems, in a lot of young American families. Just who is going to take care of the kids? According to a recent study by the Harvard Business Review, 66% of millennial men expect their partner to take the primary responsibility for raising children. On the other hand, only 42% of millennial women think they will be the main caregiver. That’s quite a gap, and if the numbers above are to be believed, this is a fight that women are ultimately losing. The HBR study found that 28% of Generation X women and 44% of Baby Boomer women had taken at least six months off work at some point in their careers to take care of their kids. How many men in those two generations had to take a similar break? A minuscule 2%. In Generation X and the Baby Boomer generation, even women who didn’t expect to end up in a “traditional” arrangement — where the man’s career is prioritized and women take most of the child-raising roles — often ended up in one. Generation X includes people aged between 32 and 48, while Boomers are between 49 and 67. Only 25% of women in Generation X expected to be in a “traditional” arrangement when it comes to one person’s career taking precedence, but 40% ended up in that situation. Fifty percent of women thought their childcare arrangements would be “traditional,” but it ended up that way for 65% of them. Women CEOs in the Fortune 1000 are also more likely than their male counterparts to be married and have kids. It’s worth nothing, though, that there is an increasing number of Fortune 500 CEOs with husbands who do not work. HBR notes that an millennial men who graduate from Harvard Business School are less likely than their older counterparts to enter a relationship with the expectation that their career will take precedence over that of their partner. Obviously, that’s a good start, but there’s still that pesky fact that many of these same men are expecting that women will be the main caregiver for children. And, as previous generations have shown, saying you think you and your partner’s careers will take equal precedence does not mean that’s how things will turn out. Editor’s note: The HBR survey looked at around 25,000 graduates of Harvard Business School. Reliable data about sexual orientation wasn’t available, so the HBR study assumed that the people surveyed were in opposite-sex relationships.

Most Boomer and Gen X women wanted to prioritize work, but ended up focused on child-rearing. Can millennials avoid the same trap?

He was a teenage actor who trekked the African desert with Peter O’Toole in Lawrence of Arabia. He was a three-time Olympian, in two different sports. He graduated Harvard University and then earned a Harvard MBA. He is a vice-chairman of investment banking at Citigroup, where he chairs Citi Private Bank in the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) region. And he’s the husband of one of the wealthiest women in the world. And yet, perhaps you never heard of Michel de Carvalho. De Carvalho is the supporting actor, so to speak, in my exclusive profile of Charlene de Carvalho, the sole heir to the Heineken fortune, in the current issue of Fortune. Until I sat down with the billionaire couple (she owns a quarter of Heineken, worth more than $11 billion) in Amsterdam in June, they had not shared her story, which is a sort of business fairy tale about a woman who learned to embrace her power. Charlene had never before talked to the media. And until 2002, when her father, Freddy—who built Heineken in America and expanded the brand to become the world’s most distributed beer on earth—died, she was a mother of five and dutiful investment banker’s wife in London. Walking out of the cemetery on the day she buried her father, Michel challenged Charlene to uproot her tidy life and become an active owner of Heineken. “We’ve gone mad!” de Carvalho, an insanely energetic 70-year-old, announced to Heineken executives as he whirled me through the brewer’s headquarters in Amsterdam. A few weeks before my visit, I had gotten a cold call from a London-based PR man, who told me that 2014 is Heineken’s 150th anniversary and the heiress was willing to talk for the first time—and that Michel, as outgoing as Charlene is shy, is fascinating too. Michel de Carvalho has certainly lived a life. Born to a British mother and a Brazilian diplomat father in England, he began acting as a child. Using the stage name Michel Ray, he was in several movies, but most memorably he played the shepherd boy Farraj who gets mortally wounded by a detonator in the epic Oscar winner, Lawrence of Arabia. He quit acting to go to Harvard, and then he infuriated his parents by putting off Harvard Business School to join the British ski team at the 1968 Olympic Games in Grenoble, France. He competed again with Britain’s luge team at the 1972 and 1976 Olympics—and went on to HBS and a banking career that included stints at Credit Suisse CS and Nikko Securities before Citigroup C . De Carvalho wooed Charlene, Freddy Heineken’s overprotected only child, on the ski slopes of St. Moritz, where both families had vacation homes. “The nicest thing Charlene’s father ever said about me was, ‘He’s not interested in Charlene for her money,’” he says. After he and Charlene married in 1983, she had five children in rapid succession—at 37, she had five kids under the age of seven. And until she was 47, when her dad died, Charlene had no money to her name except one share of Heineken stock. That day he died, Charlene went from holding one Heineken HINKF share, worth $33 in 2002, to 100 million shares—and control of the company. Michel helped his wife lean in and embrace her new power. He prodded her to get involved in the business, traveled the globe with her to see breweries, and helped her assess the management. Soon enough, the couple decided that the board needed to replace CEO Thony Ruys. Ruys recalls de Carvalho as a force to be reckoned with. “If you see a tsunami coming, you’re not going to manage the tsunami. You’re going to manage yourself,” Ruys told me. His replacement was Jean-Francois van Boxmeer, who has helped triple Heineken’s sales and is still CEO today. Many people thought that the de Carvalhos would sell Heineken. But a sale was their last resort. They told me a story about August Busch, the scion of the Anheuser-Busch dynasty, inviting them to meet soon after Freddy died. Though rivals, the de Carvalhos were friendly with Busch, who was in charge of the world’s largest brewer and worried about predatory rivals. In fact, de Carvalho says, they talked with Busch about helping each other’s companies expand distribution—putting Budweiser on Heineken trucks and vice versa. But the talks stalled. Had a Heineken-Busch venture come together, Michel says, “it might have changed the history of the Busch family.” In 2008, InBev ABI bought Anheuser-Busch for $52 billion. “It was quite shocking,” says Charlene, who views the sale as a bitter end to the Busch dynasty. In September, when another rival, SABMiller SAB , made an unsolicited takeover bid for Heineken, “the lady who throws the switch,” as her husband calls her, issued a quick and adamant “No.” De Carvalho likes to prod Heineken to reduce bureaucracy (“the cancer of corporations,” he says), move quickly, and invest to grow. “If you don’t grow, you start to die,” he says. Two years ago, the company won a takeover battle for Asia Pacific Breweries, the Singapore-listed company that owns the Tiger brand. De Carvalho calls the negotiation for APB “one of the most painful 10-year experiences.” Had the board agreed on a deal a few years earlier, he says, Heineken could have bought the company for about half the $4.6 billion price that it ultimately paid. “I’m always frustrated,” he says. He feels the heavy load of responsibility to guard the dynasty that his father-in-law passed on to his daughter. “One of the things that drives me is the thought that one guy is constantly looking down and wondering whether we’re going to fuck it up.” He seems to be keeping his end of the bargain. Last Friday night in Amsterdam, at the company’s Christmas dinner, de Carvalho spoke to about 50 of the company’s senior executives and board members about upholding this year’s theme: Women at Heineken. He thanked Laurence Debroux for joining Heineken as the company’s first female CFO. Then he singled out, as he told the group, “one woman who this year, more than ever, deserves thanks: my darling wife, whose out-of-character and seminal moments in 2014 included taking the lead in saying ‘No’ to SABMiller and agreeing to do the Fortune article, which removed the last vestige of anonymity.” Here are Michel and Charlene de Carvalho together, talking about how they guard and guide Heineken to keep growing in the future:

The most interesting man behind a powerful woman may not be Bill Clinton, after all.

12/19/2014 AT 06:00 PM EST Bob Bashara's once-respectable reputation crumbled for good Thursday when a jury found the former Michigan businessman with a string of S&M mistresses guilty of murdering his wife. Jane Bashara's beaten and strangled body was discovered on Jan. 25, 2012, slumped over in her Mercedes SUV in a Detroit alley far from the family's home in the upscale Grosse Point Park suburb. Initially captured by TV cameras as a grieving father and widower, Bashara's facade fell away as investigators uncovered his , which involved a basement dungeon where he met other women for sex. Prosecutors in the lengthy trial argued that Bashara, 57, aimed to inherit the assets of his wife, 56 – a marketing exec who earned four times as much money as her husband in 2011 – and continue his side S&M lifestyle, reports the His defense attorneys afterward said their client, who never surrendered his claim of innocence, was "in shock" at the verdict. Bashara once enjoyed a profile as a charity fundraiser, Rotary Club president, church usher and married father of two who volunteered at his kids' suburban volleyball and soccer games. He stood accused of hiring handyman Joe Gentz, whom Bashara sometimes employed to work on his real estate holdings, to kill Bashara's wife of 26 years. The prosecution said he lured Gentz with offers of a Cadillac, cash and Jane Bashara's wedding ring. Gentz confessed to his role in the murder and is serving up to 28 years in prison. In a further twist, Bashara, the son of a state appellate court judge, also was charged in a murder-for-hire plot for trying to have Gentz killed in jail. "[The] defendant's ultimate goal was to silence Joseph Gentz in an effort not to avenge the murder of his wife, but to prevent Gentz from any future testimony against defendant Bashara," said a sentencing memo in that case. to that solicitation charge in December 2012 and is already serving up to 20 years. He faces life in prison when he is sentenced for Jane Bashara's murder on Jan. 15.

Testimony revealed S&M relationships and ties to a hit-man killer he also tried to have killed

This post is in partnership with Travel + Leisure. The article below was originally published at TravelandLeisure.com. By Kate Parham Kordsmeier, Travel + Leisure Twenty-two million turkeys appear on Christmas tables every year, washed down by 122 pounds of eggnog and made possible by umpteen hours in the kitchen. No doubt about it, hosting Christmas dinner is a lot of work. Let’s be honest: sometimes the reality of hosting a festive feast is enough to turn the cheeriest person into a Grinch. If your favorite thing to make for dinner is reservations, we’ve got you—and your loved ones—covered this holiday. There are dozens of restaurants just waiting to host you for a meaningful meal on Christmas Day—no preheating or dish duty required (though, in the spirit of the season, consider leaving a generous tip for those who are working). For a truly one-of-a-kind Christmas away from home, snag a seat on the open sleigh ride that brings diners through the Colorado woods to Uley’s Cabin for an intimate, mountain-inspired feast including venison chop and roasted chestnut soup. Or get dolled up in your Sunday best for a spread of figgy pudding beignets and eggnog crème brûlée at the Grille at Morrison House in Alexandria, VA. Chef Tim Graham’s Chicago hot spot Travelle puts a more playful spin on the season, offering a choice of entrées dubbed “Naughty” or “Nice”—served, we hope, without judgment. Going out for Chinese food is its own sort of Christmas tradition, and one of the finest places to partake is at San Francisco’s Yank Sing, where roast beef is swapped for Shanghai dumplings and other dim sum. In short, whatever you’re craving at Christmas, one of these restaurants will satisfy.

Cheers to these restaurants that work overtime to deck the halls and concoct special Christmastime menus.

This post is in partnership with Entrepreneur. The article below was originally published at Entrepreneur.com. Here we are at the beginning of a New Year. The revelry of the holidays is behind us, and it’s time to get serious and get back to work. But before we get too deep into goals, strategies, tactics and financial projections, let’s take a look at how you can turn some traditional holiday practices into greater profits in 2015. My clients and I use the phrase “Pop a cork!” as a cue to stop and celebrate. Why? Because sharing a toast does two things; it recognizes progress and potential. It says, “Wow, something great happened, and here’s a toast to having more of it!” That’s the kind of energy we need to keep us moving all year long, so don’t save your celebrations for the beginning of 2016, find a reason to pop a cork (real or virtual) at least once a month. We’re reminded, during the holidays, of how much we have to be grateful for. Expressing gratitude can be a powerful exercise in business as well. Take stock of all the things you have to be grateful for in your professional life. All the people you’ve connected with, all the experience you’ve accumulated, all the clients you’ve served. Guess what you’ve done. You’ve inventoried your resources. And you’ve probably uncovered a few that are undeveloped; people you’ve neglected, talents and skills you haven’t leveraged, testimonials you haven’t asked for. Develop those resources, and you’ll have more reasons to say “Pop a cork” and even more to be grateful for the next time you take stock. Right now it’s probably easy to remember the last time you received a physical card, with a stamp and a handwritten address. But by March you’ll probably have to think back three months to remember how it felt knowing someone took the time to think of you. If it’s true for you it’s probably true for some people who are important to your business. They may be prospects you haven’t worked with yet, referral sources you haven’t talked to for a while, or even ex-employees who’ve gone on to bigger things but might be your best source of talent and clients if you keep the relationship fresh. Anyone who showed up on your gratitude inventory should probably go on your “just because” greeting card list. Do you know when you’ll find the most sugar in your dentist’s office? You got it, between Thanksgiving and New Year’s. That’s because general dentists refer business to dental specialists. So every year they get an avalanche of gifts from the practices who have received their referrals. And, as ironic as it may be, most of those gifts are sweets. Gifts are sweet any time of year. In fact, they’re even sweeter when they aren’t anticipated, or expected. You don’t have to give big gifts, it might just mean spending a little extra time with a client or making a small contribution to a cause you know an employee holds dear. It’s more than the thought that counts, but it’s the thought that counts the most in building meaningful relationships with your referral partners, prospects, employees and friends of the business. Not the drink until dawn kind of parties. With the exception of a few industries, those probably won’t do much for your reputation. But during the holidays we take more time to reconnect, see people we haven’t seen for a while, and hang out with no agenda except catching up or getting to know each other a little better. Anyone can put together a networking event, the real key to building business relationships by hosting get-togethers is to let go of the agendas and simply connect. Each year as we say “goodbye” to the old and “hello” to the new, many of us have made a practice of reflecting on the year past. But in business we usually go straight into analysis mode. What a SWOTT analysis of the business won’t tell us is our own strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats and trends. Yet, the greatest strengths and opportunities, as well as the greatest weaknesses and threats, aren’t going to be found in looking at operations, or profit margins, or sales funnels or market trends. You’ll only become aware of them by looking at leadership. And that begins with you. Most people have “failed” on their New Year’s resolutions so many times they’ve given up on making them. That’s because most people don’t really make sure they have the resolve to do what they say they’re going to do. Even more people don’t realize that resolving isn’t a onetime activity, it’s a daily practice that becomes easier with repitition. Keep resolving, on New Year’s Day and the 364 days that follow, and you’re likely to find a lot of your problems resolved by this time next year. 4 Motivating TED Talks to Help You Keep Your New Year’s Resolutions For Entrepreneurs, The Gift-Giving Season is Year Round 5 Simple Ways to Express Gratitude Every Day

Turn these once-a-year activities into monthly habits and watch your business grow.

Despite some tumultuous twists and turns, the U.S. stock market made big gains in 2014. But the new year has got off to a rough start with a market-wide sell-off. In 2014, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 7.5% as it crossed both the 17,000-point and 18,000-point marks for the first time ever. The S&P 500 posted 53 record highs as it rose 12% on the year while the tech-heavy Nasdaq composite jumped more than 13% to its highest levels since the dot-com bubble burst in 2000. But this year, the Dow has already lost more than 2.5%, and it is more than 700 points behind its record levels of just weeks ago. Both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq have also dropped by roughly 3% during that time because of concerns about the European economy and falling oil prices. Despite 2014’s record levels, this year’s slow start has some market analysts declaring an end to the bull market and predicting that Wall Street’s bear is emerging from hibernation. Here are some reasons why 2015 might be a disappointing year for the stock market:

From steadily declining oil prices to possible interest rate hikes, the market faces a number of headwinds.

Equality is a worthy goal—but its tough to achieve when unconscious bias so pervades the American workplace. Certainly women have made inroads in corporate America, but a Pew Research Center survey released Wednesday points at why women struggle to climb to the corporate world’s highest ranks—and often tone down their ideas, hide behind an agreeable facade or leave the workplace altogether. Four out of 10 surveyed in the Pew study said that there are double standards for women seeking the highest levels of leadership in politics or business. They added that women have to outshine their male counterparts—and more than one-third of respondents believe the electorate and corporate America are not ready to put more women in top leadership positions. That conclusion comes as no surprise to Howard J. Ross, a diversity expert from Silver Spring, Md., who says “men are more likely, on television and elsewhere, to be seen in the workplace. It affects the way men see women and the way women see themselves.” Ross, who addressed the issue in his recent book, Everyday Bias: Identifying and Navigating Unconscious Judgments in Our Daily Lives, says, “It’s not just men but women too who have ingrained expectations of workplace roles.” Google’s GOOG disclosure last year that it has a 70% male workforce and its public effort to address that “deserves recognition,” says Ross. Google, along with companies like BAE Systems, Exel, Genentech, T. Rowe Price and Roche Diagnostics are among those who are moving to overcome their workplace biases, he said. One step some companies are taking when hiring? Stripping resumes of names and other identifying information and assigning numbers, Ross says. Roche Diagnostics, a subsidiary of pharmaceutical giant Roche Group, is aiming to make its managers more aware of unconscious bias. It held two bias acquaintance sessions with its senior and middle managers in recent months and has plans for a third at its national sales meeting in late January. “We are trying to ensure that our culture understands how bias exists everywhere, and being aware of it is critical,” says Bridget Boyle, Roche Diagnostics’ vice president of human resources. In addition to ongoing training to highlight unconscious bias, the company broadened its recruitment and promotion policies in 2013. More than half of its lower level employees were women but their presence began to thin in middle management, Boyle says. To spark change, the company instituted a mentor policy that has paired 150 sets of employees over 18 months. It’s also strengthening maternity and paternity benefits and assuring diverse slates of candidates for the 750-800 openings it fills each year, Boyle adds. Royal Bank of Canada started an effort in May 2013 to raise awareness of bias among its 78,000 employees worldwide. Dr. Mahzarin Banaji, a Harvard University social ethics professor who co-authored Blind Spot: The Hidden Biases of Good People, has held sessions for about 1,000 of RBC’s executives to help alert them of their biases. In addition to these meetings, employees have access to tests developed by Harvard to assess their unconscious biases and apply their personal findings in workshops. These sessions, says Norma Tombari, RBC’s director of global diversity, are continuing in 2015 as part of the company’s “entire talent management decision-making.” The program covers gender, race, disability and LGBT biases. Despite such concerted efforts, change won’t be sudden, warns Gerard J. Holder, the author of Hidden Bias: How Unconscious Attitudes on Diversity Undermine Organizations and What to do about It. “We didn’t get conditioned overnight,” says Holder, who works with companies to help reeducate employees on their learned behaviors. “It’s a learning process that has to be done over a period of time, not a training that can be done in three hours.” A transformed workforce may be a while away, but the Pew study did reveal several gems that hint at progress. Women won high rankings on key leadership traits like ambition and decisiveness. The respondents also said that women place more importance on intelligence and honesty than men do—and that those are essential leadership traits.

Roche Diagnostics and Royal Bank of Canada have launched internal initiatives in hopes of increasing workforce diversity.

It should have been the greatest time of their lives. Last April, the all-girl band was just gaining buzz, heating up the charts with "Ugly Heart" and singing the chorus to Pitbull's popular radio jam, "Wild Wild Love." The five singers were huge in Australia and performed on the And then, the unthinkable happened. Group member Simone Battle, 25, who had risen to fame as a finalist on the 2011 U.S. version of "It all just came to a stop," says member Paula Van Oppen, 25. "Everything halted." was almost unbearable for the group. "You can never prepare yourself for something like this, ever," says group member Lauren Bennett, 25. "We'd just been in rehearsals the day before, learning choreography for our show, and the next day we were starting the morning as usual when we got the call. I still can't believe it. I don't think any of us can. It's weird that we're even sitting here, talking about it." Ray Tamarra / GC Images The members say the last four months have been a blur, dealing with the loss of their friend, taking care of one another, going through therapy (both together and individually) and slowly trying to regroup and find their next path. They don't just want to get back in the studio and start working on an album – they want to make a difference in the world, to prevent a tragedy like this from happening to anyone else. "This time has given us a moment to reflect and find purpose as a group," Van Oppen says. "A big part of what's helping us move forward is partnering with this amazing organization, , which raises awareness for mental health issues and helps people learn about the signs of depression." They say their main mission is to bring the topic of depression out in the open, especially among their young fans, for whom that sort of stuff is generally taboo to talk about. "Mental health is important for everyone, and people need to be able to talk about it," says member Natasha Slayton, 26. "And also be aware of the signs that friends and family members can look out for, in case someone close to them is going through something." They say the fact that they didn't realize their close friend was struggling so much will always stay with them. "She was such a strong woman, and very independent, and we had no idea what she was going through, or her pain," Van Oppen says. "We admire how prideful she was, but now we just wish she'd let us in a little bit so maybe we could have helped her. Now we want to spread that message that it's okay to talk about, and help people, maybe even change the world." They recently recorded the single "Lighthouse," a song about being there for your friends, and the entire video features footage of Battle, from her childhood to her time with G.R.L. "We rehearsed the other day without her, and it's just weird. But she was so passionate about singing and this group, and I feel like we're keeping her memory alive by being together," says member Emmalyn Estrada, 22. "But right now we're focused on the song and the positive message overall, about being together in hard times. We're taking everything else one day at a time." "We learned so much from her," says Bennett, choking back tears. "In the video you can see her passion for performance, and you can see her strumming along to the music in the beginning. It's us showing that she's still part of the group. She'll always be part of this group."

Members of the girl group open up about how they've been coping and how they vow to honor Battle's memory

FORTUNE — If you’ve ever been frustrated, annoyed, or otherwise perturbed by annual performance reviews — whether giving them, getting them, or both — here’s something that may surprise you: Not even the HR people in charge of overseeing yearly appraisals really think they’re worth doing. At least, that is one finding from a recent poll of 2,677 people (made up of 1,800 employees, 645 human resources managers, and 232 CEOs) by San Francisco-based rewards-and-recognition consulting firm Achievers, which numbers Microsoft MSFT , 3M MMM , CVS cvs , and Levi Strauss among its clients. Although virtually all the companies surveyed use some form of annual evaluation as their chief means of giving performance feedback to employees, only 2% of HR people think these reviews accomplish anything useful. What’s more, the study found a big disconnect between what CEOs think is going on below them and what employees say actually happens. (What? That doesn’t shock you?) Consider: 57% of CEOs believe their people are “regularly recognized” for their hard work and contributions. Employees who agree: 9%. MORE: 5 Gen-Y corporate refugee entrepreneurs While 61% of employees say they would welcome immediate, on-the spot feedback from bosses and peers about how they’re doing, only 24% say they get it. Meanwhile, 54% of CEOs believe they do. “That gap may be because CEOs are projecting, based on their own behavior,” notes Achievers chairman Razor Suleman. “Chief executives usually give their own direct reports frequent feedback about their job performance, so they think everyone is doing that all down through the ranks.” If not even the HR department sees any real value in annual reviews, why are they still so ubiquitous? Part of the answer is that, for legal reasons, companies need a formal, standardized method of creating a “paper trail” that documents discussions about performance problems, in case a terminated employee later decides to sue. Still, with the technology currently available, there’s no logical reason why managers couldn’t track and report the same information in real-time instead of once every 12 months. “The annual review is a relic of the pre-electronic past,” observes Suleman. “It persists mostly out of inertia. If you ask, ‘Why are you doing this?’ the response you usually get is, ‘Because we’ve always done it this way.’” A far more productive way of giving feedback, he adds, is “having coaching conversations every day, instead of once a year.” A cynic might note — correctly — that Suleman naturally favors that approach: His company is in the business of selling software that clients use to give employees real-time updates on how they’re doing. Nonetheless, there is plenty of evidence that, without daily or weekly conversations about their work — especially pats on the back for a job well done — your best people are likely to quit. One of the many strange quirks in the current labor market is that, although unemployment is high, people who have jobs are not hesitating to ditch them for a better offer. A new study from PricewaterhouseCoopers says voluntary turnover has increased by 14% since 2010 and is still rising. The No. 1 reason people give for quitting, according to the U.S. Department of Labor: They don’t feel that their efforts are recognized or appreciated by their direct bosses. MORE: Exposing management’s dirty little secret “Employees want to know what they are doing well and where they can improve,” says Kristen Leverone, a senior vice president at outplacement and coaching giant Lee Hecht Harrison. “Career conversations are critical to engagement and retention.” The firm did a poll, released last month, showing that 52% of employees say they rarely or never get on-the-spot feedback. Leverone acknowledges that managers now are stretched so thin that frequent coaching sessions are tough to fit in. But she says even a two-minute chat, on some kind of regular basis, can help: “Quick check-ins are just as important as full career discussions.” Or as Razor Suleman puts it: “Think about a football team. During a game, the coach and the quarterback are in constant communication, play by play. What if they only talked once a year? Would they ever win a game?”

Ninety-eight percent of human resources executives say yearly evaluations aren't useful, according to a recent survey. So why are companies still doing them?

02/02/2015 AT 09:35 AM EST 's NASCAR ad that ran during the Super Bowl, decrying it as offensive to people living with celiac disease. The ad plays on Offermnan's uber-masculine image, and features the following line in its "America's gone soft"-themed narration: "When our idea of danger is eating gluten, there's trouble afoot." At least one man, "Gluten Dude," from Newtown, Pennsylvania, took issue with that and began circulating a petition last week to have NBC cancel the ad. "[The ad] implies that we're soft," he writes. "We're weak ... we're part of America's problem. When all we're trying to do is manage our disease." Gluten Dude posted on Jan. 31 that NBC had promised to remove the gluten reference, though he later said that the change had not gone through. already parodied this style of overamped "America's gone soft" rhetoric back in 2012, and it was

The signees claim that the ad is offensive to people with gluten allergies

As of next year, Costco Wholesale shoppers will be safe to leave home without their American Express cards. AmEx AXP shares dropped to their lowest levels since mid-October on Thursday after the credit card company announced that its exclusivity deal with wholesale club retailer Costco is set to expire at the end of March 2016. The market reacted swiftly and sharply to the prospect of Costco no longer accepting AmEx cards. AmEx is currently the only credit card accepted by the retailer, which is one of the largest U.S. retailers with nearly 470 stores across the country. The credit card company’s shares dropped to around $80 in early trading and were recently trading down by about 6.7%, at $80.88. The steep decline erased roughly $5.9 billion from the payment card giant’s market value, which is still nearly $88 billion. Costco previously dropped AmEx as its exclusive credit card issuer in Canada and Bloomberg reported last fall that the retailer was considering making the same move in the U.S. The retailer negotiated a deal to partner with Capital One Financial Corp. COF and MasterCard MA in Canada. Shares of Capital One and MasterCard were each up roughly 3% on Thursday. In a Thursday morning earnings call, AmEx said losing the Costco contract would drag down its earnings and revenue this year and in 2016. The company said it now expects earnings to be flat this year after analysts projected 10% earnings growth, based on polling by Thomson Reuters. AmEx expects earnings growth to return next year. AmEx and Costco had been engaged in negotiations to extend their agreement in the U.S., but the two sides were unable to reach a deal, AmEx CEO Kenneth Chenault said in a statement. The chief executive added that his company will instead “focus on opportunities in other parts of our business where we see significant potential for growth and attractive returns over the moderate to long term.” AmEx shares are down 13% on the year and the company announced last month that it plans to cut more than 4,000 jobs this year.

AmEx's stock decline erased more than $5 billion from its market value Thursday.