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"In the past, these two streets (Tang Lung Street and Russell Street) were very dirty. Anyone who was a little tidy would not come here," said Siu, whose family business has been in the area for 60 years.
"It used to be a street for people to fix frying pans and sell lanterns," she added.
Siu said she would be forced to move as her landlord is seeking HK$240,000 a month, from HK$40,000 a decade ago.
Prime shop rents have more than tripled during the past decade in Causeway Bay, where a tiny 122 square foot (11 square meter) shop was sold in March for HK$180 million ($23 million).
But as daily necessities such as baby milk powder replace high-end Gucci handbags on mainland Chinese shopping lists, rents have started to stabilize and some international brands are becoming cautious.
"In the last 12 months, we observed that some international jewelry and watch brands have slowed expansion plans here," CBRE retail services executive director Joe Lin said.
Read MoreForbes Media sells majority stake to Hong Kong investors
Others are trimming costs. Beauty products retailer Sa Sa International has in December moved its street-level store on Russell Street to more affordable space on the first floor of another building on the same street.
Some local fashion brands have seized the opportunity to move closer to the city center, although analysts saw no chance of a comeback for noodle shops and tea houses.
"It's very difficult," Lin said. "Even if the rents go back to the previous level, they can't afford it." | Hong Kong's Causeway Bay may lose its crown as a slowdown in mainland tourists hits store sales, paving the way for its first drop in a decade. |
"What is striking about the findings is that the strength of a country's labor market doesn't necessarily correlate with workforce contentment," said Chris Moessner, vice president for public affairs, GfK. "While workers in challenged markets may have had fewer opportunities to advance in terms of promotions or salary during the recent downturn, it has not necessarily affected their happiness," he added.
The survey also delved into possible links between monetary compensation and job satisfaction and found that U.S. workers with the lowest salary were the most likely to be unhappy at work. More than one in five paid less than $50,000 per annum said they either disliked or hated their jobs.
"Regardless of what a worker's priorities are – being challenged, feeling valued or even making more money – it's important for anyone who is not in love with their jobs to remain vigilant about finding [a] better [job]," said Joanie Ruge, employment industry advisor and senior vice president of Monster.
(Read more: Just 14% of global firms to hire in 2014: Survey)
From a regional perspective, workers in the Northeast of the U.S. are most satisfied with their jobs, with 60 percent saying they liked or loved their jobs. Only 48 percent in the Mid-West and 45 percent in the South said the same.
On average, U.S. workers have longer working weeks and a smaller allotment of vacation time compared with other countries worldwide.
According to economic research website FRED, the average employee in America works around 1,700 hours per year, while the average employee in France worked around 1,480. Workers in Asia work much longer hours, with Singaporeans putting in a whopping 2,300 hours a year.
—By CNBC's Katie Holliday: Follow her on Twitter @hollidaykatie | The drudgery of working nine 'til five is a common gripe worldwide, but according to a survey by Monster.com, U.S. workers hate it the most. |
09/17/2015 AT 09:25 AM EDT
impression will make fans laugh and cry – and it did just that to
on Wednesday and surprised Burnett with a touching impression of the legendary actor, who was her dear friend.
While Burnett, 82, was finishing up her interview,
Colbert brought up the fact that one of the last guests to appear on her former show,
, was her "idol" Stewart.
"I loved him so much," Burnett said. "I grew up loving Jimmy Stewart as an actor and then as a person once I got to know him."
This was Colbert's cue to bring Spacey, 56, out on stage ⦠appearing as somebody else.
Burnett appeared confused until Spacey – who idolicizes Burnett – opened his mouth and began a spot-on impression of the late actor, bringing her to tears.
"I wanted to come out here tonight for you, Carol, because you may remember I used to go on the
every now and then," said Spacey as Stewart before reading a touching poem praising Burnett and her accomplishments.
Spacey and Burnett are just a few of the actors and celebrities to have appeared on Colbert's show since he
on Sept. 8. – the comedian
to his late son Beau.
airs at 11:35 p.m. ET on CBS. | The actor impersonated Jimmy Stewart as he read Carol Burnett a poem on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert |
Importantly, these QE deposits add to the net deposits in the banking system. This is different from when a dealer acts as a private sector broker, buying a Treasury from one customer and selling it to another. In that case, the Treasury seller gets credited for a deposit that is, more or less, matched by a debit in the Treasury buyer's account. (The difference, if any, gets booked as a trading profit in the dealer's account.) There's no net deposit increase. It all balances.
It's also different from when a dealer sells a Treasury that it previously held (perhaps from the original issuance). In that case, the dealer sells to the Treasury, gets credited in reserves, but no new deposit is created. That's the scenario Coy was referring to. In that case, you only get a new deposit when the dealer makes a loan.
(Read more: Ray Dalio worries the Fed's QE may run out of gas)
But with a lot of QE transactions, there is new net deposit creation. There is no private sector deposit account debited from the sale of the Treasury because it is the Fed that is buying. What is recorded instead, is a debit of a private sector Treasury. The Fed records a liability—the new reserves—but doesn't debit these reserves from anywhere. They are created with a keystroke.
These deposits created through QE are real bank deposits. They are M-1. The funds in them can be withdrawn as cash currency, spent, invested, or held in the deposit accounts. They are real money, created through QE. And, if investors were so inclined, they can be used to purchase financial assets from high yield bonds to stocks. They could, theoretically, produce assets bubbles and even inflation, if the deposits were just spent on consumer goods.
This doesn't mean that this is happening now. I suspect at lot of QE created deposits simply remain as deposit assets of the Treasury sellers. Some of it, however, probably goes into assets that are close substitutes for Treasurys.
(Read more: The great fight over QE and deflation)
As I've written in the past, the exchange of a Treasury for a bank deposit doesn't suddenly make someone decide they'd rather spend instead of save. And although M-1 deposits grow, the amount of Treasurys in the private sector is relatively reduced. If you construe the money supply very broadly, so that Treasurys are included as money, there's no net creation of money, just a change in its composition. Unless or until the changes in the composition of this broad version of the money supply lead to changes in spending and investing tendencies, QE shouldn't be expected to have broad effects.
It's true that QE is an asset swap. But it's not just an "asset swap." It's actually a number if swaps of liabilities for assets. The liabilities: reserves from the Fed, deposits from the banks. The assets: Treasurys to the Fed, reserves to the banks, deposits to original Treasury owner. | Most people now understand that quantitative easing adds reserves to the banking system. But they still miss the deeper implications. |
Justin Moore with his wife Kate and their oldest daughter Ella
04/01/2015 AT 09:40 PM EDT
just celebrated his 31st birthday Tuesday, but turning another year older isn't stressing him out. In fact, Moore has a very practical outlook on aging: "Getting old beats the alternative!" he tells PEOPLE.
"I love the age I am right now," says the father of three. "Do I want to get old? No, but do I not want to get old? No."
Moore, who's currently touring with
, says he also didn't have any meltdowns over turning the big 3-0 last year. "Hitting my thirties didn't bother me one bit. I think one of the reasons is Iâm in probably in the best shape of my life. Iâm a lot healthier than Iâve ever been – and Iâm happy."
It also helps that he's not seeing any of the effects of aging in the mirror yet. "I'm not noticing any wrinkles and Iâve got all my hairs too thankfully so far," he says. "Iâm sure I donât look as dapper as I once did when I met my wife, but I think sheâs okay with it so Iâm happy with it if she is." | The singer says he's growing old gratefully |
"In today's competitive market, offering a low price is a necessity but does not automatically ensure customer satisfaction," Rick Garlick, global travel and hospitality practice lead at J.D. Power said in a statement issued with the report.
"Online travel agencies need to provide a user-friendly Web experience to meet customer expectations. If the site does not function well or provide the kind of information customers expect, they will either move on to a competitor's website or phone the agency's call center, costing the agency time and money."
Hotels were the most popular item purchased on the sites (58 percent) followed by airline tickets (52 percent), vacation packages (33 percent) and rental cars (31 percent), according to the survey. | Price and quality of information are the two top elements customers want from a trip booking site, according to a new survey. |
Ivory from southern Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic makes its way to dealers in Khartoum and Cairo, said Martin, who is based in Kenya.
Martin said a 20-year civil war in southern Sudan had made it difficult to determine exact elephant numbers, but figures available indicate that the numbers fell to 40,000 in 1992 from 133,000 in 1976.
"Every trader we talked to said the Sudanese national army has been doing the killing, they possess the necessary firearms and ammunition. They also have access to government transport to move tusks to Khartoum and Omdurman," Martin told a news conference in Nairobi.
A Sudan armed forces spokesman declined to comment on the reports.
Martin said three quarters of the illegal ivory was made into chopsticks and other items and sold to Chinese nationals, thousands of whom have moved into Sudan to work in the petroleum, construction and mining sectors.
"Every trader we talked to said the Sudanese national army has been doing the killing"Conservationist Esmond MartinChina has been the largest importer of illegal tusks since the mid 1990's, despite a ban on ivory trade by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) in 1990.
"Every trader we talked to said the Sudanese national army has been doing the killing"Conservationist Esmond Martin
"The driving force behind these elephant killings especially in the recent past is directly linked to the activities of the Chinese. Not restricted to Chinese expatriates in Sudan they extend to traders in China who buy these tusks and encourage the trade," he said.
Martin said prices for ivory in Khartoum and Omdurman, a city across the River Nile from Khartoum, were between $44-$148 per kg compared to $15.50-$43.60 per kg in 1997 due to an increase in demand.
Sale of ivory items in Sudan is legal provided the shopkeeper has a government licence and the items are carved from ivory obtained before the CITES ban, but Martin said he counted over 11,000 items made from post-CITES ivory in souvenir shops in Khartoum.
Ivory items such as walking sticks and daggers are also in demand in South Korea, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, he said. | Sudan's army has illegally slaughtered thousands of elephants and exported the ivory to China where it is made into chopsticks, conservationist Esmond Martin said on Monday after a survey. |
If you're looking for scintillating reading material, your credit reports are not it. Yet these often-ignored documents are, increasingly, a must-read.
A quick review: Credit reports are a summation of your credit history and behaviors, as collected by the three major credit bureaus, Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. Lenders, insurers and prospective employers, among other parties, can take a look, making the information therein make-or-break for things, such as what interest you're offered on a credit card and whether you pass a prehire background check. Reports are also the basis for your credit score, that three-digit number in the 300-850 range (the higher the better) that lenders use as a measure of your creditworthiness to approve loans and set interest rates.
"Periodically checking the contents of your credit report is good financial hygiene," said Kareem Rogers, senior vice president of global consumer and business services for Equifax. "We think it's important for consumers to know where they stand as it relates to their credit history."
Read MoreWhat's the best way to pay off holiday debt?
It's not just knowing where you stand, but also making sure what's in the report is an accurate representation. A 2013 Federal Trade Commission study found that 20 percent of consumers identified errors on their reports that might affect their score, and 5 percent had an error significant enough that it could result in their paying higher loan rates.
Many of those are simple incidents of misreported information, said John Ulzheimer, president of consumer education for CreditSesame.com. "There's very likely a plausible, reasonable and logical explanation," he said. | When was the last time you looked at your credit report? For one-third of Americans, the answer is "never." But that's an expensive misstep. |
. It comes with the territory.
Sometimes the seasons live up to the hype (
comes to mind). Other times, the season
But this season, everything is different. Probst, 53, talked with PEOPLE after returning from filming
– and he seemed genuinely energized about the season. "The contestants were honored that people voted for them, so they felt an obligation to play hard," Probst tells PEOPLE. "Many of them swing for the fences from the get-go."
Jeff Probst, host of Survivor
PEOPLE asked Probst about this season's contestants, even though he knows how each of them placed. There are no spoilers here – although savvy watchers may be able to read between the lines and predict who does well.
Jeff's a smartass. He's a great storyteller. He always has a smirk on his face. Varner's game was never based on physical strength; he's all about the social game. So theoretically, he should be even better in the game. He can say, "No one is going to beat me in any challenge, so I'm not a threat." But here's the thing: He
a big threat, and it would be a mistake to keep him around for too long.
He's one of my all-time favorites. Last time, I proved that I often have no idea what I'm talking about. I was glad he came back. This was Spencer's story from day one until the game was over for him:
If he's insufferable, he'll be gone. That's his Achilles heel. Spencer has to be likable, vulnerable, relatable, curious, asking questions. That's the Spencer we need to see.
Terry personified the element of
that I most enjoy – he can catch you food, win challenges, build shelter. But you can do all of those things well and if you can't relate to people, it doesn't matter. Terry is still in great shape, but what he's not good at is that he doesn't know how to build relationships.
It haunted Vytas that he couldn't play his own game the last time he played; he was in his brother's shadow. No one knew what game he was going to bring. He just wanted everyone to know, "I'm playing my own game. I'm not Aras; I'm Vytas." And nobody knows his real truth.
Woo is so positive. He believes in the good of people, and it cost him a million dollars last time. He wants to go through life and be a good person – but he still wants to win
. So Woo's story is, "I'm just as likable and athletic, but I need to be less trusting." That's hard for him; he's trying to change something that is fundamentally Woo.
She's so entertaining. But I still have a question about her. Is she just a mean person? Or is her bluntness a result of her culture, and her nuance is lost on us? I still don't know. She came into this game trying to be nicer; and I can only promise that people will be invested in her story.
She's my favorite person on the cast. Kelly didn't have anything to prove to me. She clearly had the skills, her body is still in amazing shape. She's just as likable. She's just as quiet. When she played before,
stole the game from her, and she wanted the chance to take it again. She has a story this season that will be very compelling to viewers.
Kelley had a rough first season because she was playing along with her dad. She felt like she was judged the way her dad played. She came back with an attitude. "Listen, if you think I'm my dad, I will smoke you." From the get-go, she comes to play, and she plays very hard.
I was surprised that she made the show. She played a good game in China, but she had bad
luck. But here's the thing about Peih Gee: You have to have kept up with the changes of
to succeed, and it's not clear if she did that.
She was a question mark for me because she was so vulnerable when she went out there. Her last season was rough on her, and then we sent her right back. So she was in an interesting place. When the game started, I had no idea what was going to happen with her because she had been so much. She was really emotional.
The cast of Survivor: Second Chance
Savage is a friend of mine, but in full disclosure, we don't see each other very often. I still adore him. He didn't do anything wrong; the outcast twist screwed him out of the game. It's reasonable to assume that I'm easier on people who I like, but the real truth is that I've only become friends with a few people from the show. But I'm not easier or harder on them because I'm friends with them. So Savage's performance in the game is all his; I wasn't easier or harder on him. He was just another contestant.
Jeremy is an interesting contestant. He had a disappointing finish last time because he was one of the few people who really understood the game – and was a threat because of it. This time, he's playing with experts, so his skills don't stand out as much, but they're still there.
is so difficult. He's athletic, good-looking, likable. In any other sporting competition, he'd cross the finish line first and they'd put the medal around his neck. But not in
. All his amazing qualities is the reason why he struggles in this game. People love him, which is why he's a target.
Keith is savvier than people know. He appears to be harmless. He's unassuming and spitting out of the side of his mouth, but what people forget is that he almost won when he didn't know what he was doing. And he comes back to play the same game of, "Aw, gee, heck, I don't know ..." but he
know. He knows how to play this game really well.
I like Fishbach, and I've wanted him back for a long time. He almost won this game because he is really good at reading people. The last time he played, he aligned with the wrong guy. He won't make that mistake again. He's a true student of the game, and he was a legitimate threat in this game.
She comes into this game with the feeling that "I'm my own woman." On day one, she can begin to play the same game she was playing when she was voted out last time. Ciera is now a gamer; there's no doubt that she's a
player. Given enough time, she'll make a big move – and you'd better make sure she doesn't make it at your expense.
She's a blast to have on the show; I'd spar with Kass at tribal council and come home and think, "Please let her stay in the game. She's so fun." She came into the new game with a massive burden, trying to convince people that "Chaos Kass" was a version of herself, but not all that she has to offer. Her obstacle is her first few days. If she can make it past them, then she'll show that she's a much better player than everyone thinks.
She was burdened by being a Christian last time, and she did not want to do anything that would offend the church. She got home and people said, "What is your problem? Go play
and then ask for forgiveness." Tasha said it brought her to tears to get that support from her congregation, and it released all her barriers. So she plays a devil's game this time. It's very clear from day one that she's going to play the game hard – and she makes some interesting choices along the way.
I don't want to hurt Monica's feelings, but I was surprised she got on. I was really curious to see what she brings. If I were on her tribe, I'd be saying, 'Listen, you got on either because you have a big fan base or because you're hot. you didn't get on for gameplay.' And if she came out thinking she'd get by on charm and looks, that will not work. So Monica had something to prove – she had to show people that she was worth aligning with.
I was so happy she got on. She was an average player from 15 years ago. She represents the purity of
back in the day. But times have changed, and Kimmi came into the game wanting to show how much she's matured and how she's different. It was fascinating to see.
premieres Wednesday at 8 p.m. ET on CBS. | The host sounds off on all 20 contestants – and promises a stellar season |
Conrad ShawcrossThe Steady States Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool
Conrad Shawcross brought most of his exhibition from the Walsall Art Gallery up to Liverpool flat-packed in the back of his Ford Capri. When I visited the gallery on Thursday, he was putting the final nuts and bolts to its reconstruction. Over the fortnight of his residence so far, there had been one or two challenges, notably his Space Trumpet, a 20-odd-foot-high listening device beautifully made from birch panels and copper brackets, and based on the sonic dish that first heard the white noise of the Big Bang in 1965, which had shown a tendency to collapse into its many component parts just as it was nearing completion.
Planning for that evening's opening of his show, Shawcross was fretting a little about health and safety, which was insisting that barriers be placed around his most dynamic piece, Loop System Quintet. The same rules prevented him from even demonstrating the huge pendulum-cum-spirograph of Harmonic Tower ('They won't even let me go up my own ladder,' he said, resignedly). He paced the gallery weighing up all the angles, apparently cultivating a slightly boffinish manner: mussed hair, flapping shirt tails and red trainers.
Shawcross is the son of Marina Warner, the academic myth-maker, and journalist William Shawcross, and there is an upfront braininess about him. The niggles from the gallery inspectors seemed appropriate to his work, which, in attempting to demonstrate something like the music of the spheres, never forgets its human comedy and frailties. Though on quite a dramatic scale, none of the three pieces on show is too big or complex that Shawcross cannot build them without help. He is a self-taught engineer; most of what he knows of mechanics comes from taking apart cars he has owned and putting them back together, particularly an old Leyland Sherpa van.
The homemade quality brings a likable touch of eccentricity to his art. He has been compared with Heath-Robinson, though there is a crucial difference; for the most part, his wacky constructions actually work. A more apposite comparison would be with some of the more singular scientific minds of the Industrial Revolution, making do and mending and, along the way, proving the beauty of mathematics.
The best demonstration of this is Loop System Quintet, which is five linked and whirling wooden contraptions, slatted like Victorian toboggans. The arms of each of the five carry a light - an old car lamp - which moves on its own axis in a musical ratio to the main revolution of the base. In the low light of the hall, the lights consequently trace beautiful knots in the air. Each path of light follows its own rhythm until, on every 24th turn, all five fall into alignment like some dysfunctional chorus line finally finding its feet.
Alongside the row of wooden automata, which generate a machine-shop thrum of repetitive noise, a bank of five video screens shows a time-lapse film of each of the motions of the lights, like the ribbon twirls of an Olympic gymnast. In this nicely rational, quite poignant and slightly bonkers way, the perfection of Aristotelian harmonics is revealed.
The attraction of the piece, and you want to spend plenty of time in its company, lies in its contrast between the sublime nature of what it demonstrates and the arcane quality of its construction. It proves the theory that one man pottering in a shed can daily demonstrate the eternal laws of the infinite universe. It feels very British somehow, redolent of lost generations of skill with wood and gearing, long hours tinkering at workbenches. (In fact, when Shawcross tried to find a light engineering firm to make the gears for his loop system, the best quote he got from an English company was £60,000; instead, he went to China and got all his moving parts for £1,000 in a couple of days and brought them home in his suitcase.)
The other two pieces in the show are loosely linked to the loop system in that they are concerned with the geometries that the universe demonstrates in the absence of human agency. The original of his vast ear trumpet, which seems to require a giant HMV dog, collected the noises of creation by accident, a fact which Shawcross rightly rather loves. The great pendulum next door can be fed with a scroll of paper and made to 'draw' unchanging vortices, the loops of which diminish as entropy kicks in.
In a week that has seen headlines about the near extinction of the physics teacher in our schools, you hope that plenty of schoolchildren will come to this show. At the opening, a professor was due to be on hand to explain some of the attractions of the natural laws that Shawcross's work demonstrates.
He himself is a little reluctant to become a poster boy for a merging of the two cultures, though. If it works, he says, it has to be entirely on its own terms. Despite health and safety, and the odd glitch, it nearly always does. | Art: Conrad Shawcross marries art and physics in his giant, loopy works, says Tim Adams. |
She's a red-eyed auntie with undertaker's rouge on her cheeks and big, chipmunk teeth. Behind her rise the balconies and awnings of a swanky hotel. This is her habitat. She wears striped trews, white leather gloves, a blouse with black polka dots, a silk scarf decorated with too many cats and a fur coat slung over her shoulders. How could anyone contrive such awful style? She seems trapped inside her persona. You can't imagine this woman ever having been young, let alone fun and full of life.
But then, this character doesn't exist outside the photograph: the whole thing was conceived, shot, lit, dressed and acted by Cindy Sherman. Untitled number 468 is one of 14 new images of peculiar women recently shown in New York and Berlin; five (one a double image) are at Sprüth Magers in London.
The photographs are huge, their subjects looming like monstrous parodies of the full-dress, full-length portrait. The closer you get, the less there is to see. Texture bleeds out of them, detail recedes, backgrounds go blurry; life is leaking away. I can only think this is intentional. Sherman dresses up and shoots herself against a blank screen, then adds a background. It's all multi-layered mix'n'match make-believe. Artifice was always part of her point.
Who are these women? They could be art collectors, or a kind of idle class whose husbands are the people who buy. You can't imagine them getting serious about much, except themselves. The makeup is alarming: dunes of powder, seams of eyeliner, wastelands of botoxed foreheads.
These women scare me. They remind me of the ones who loomed over my cot to coo and plant sticky kisses on the infant Adrian. They also invite a certain misogyny - and, I have noticed, make other women laugh.
Now in her 50s, Sherman started dressing up as a student in Buffalo, New York, in the mid-1970s. She has played desperate, deranged, drunk, even dead. She has been the leading man, the waif, the feisty career woman; has played floozies and vamps. These new works deal with age, with women clinging on to a misguided idea of beauty and sophistication. They have chosen to spend their way out of ageing, or to stare it down and scare it away.
Some of these women are so cosmetically overloaded, it seems Sherman is pretending to be a man in drag. In one she features twice, cleverly doubled for the camera in some forlorn reception room. The pair look like sisters who tolerate each other only for the camera. Hung nearby is a head-and-shoulders shot of a woman before an avenue of sun-spangled trees. She has a wry smile and great raw sienna eyebrows. Ageing southern belle? Upmarket estate agent? It's hard to know.
Sherman's art is popular and more durable than it looks. Not only does she morph from character to character, but her art stays mutable to the fixations of the moment. Curators can buddy her up with those old photos of Marcel Duchamp in drag, or with the wonderful surrealist photographs of Claude Cahun. She's a woman for all seasons and is made for this role: playing Cindy Sherman pretending to be someone else. It's a hall of mirrors in there. | Cindy Sherman has photographed herself as six peculiar women. Adrian Searle is alarmed |
"Until the Fed provides some clarity on Wednesday, it's difficult to say that we've hit a floor," ING analyst Hamza Khan said. "The volumes we're seeing suggest that this could just be short covering in case the Fed announces some firmer vocabulary."
Rising interest rates pressure gold by lifting the opportunity cost of holding bullion, while boosting the dollar.
Expectations a near-term hike may be possible are making investors hesitant to bid up gold despite a price slide, with its failure to benefit from jitters over Greece this year undermining its appeal as a haven from risk.
The dollar rose 0.5 percent against the euro as investors focused on the Fed meeting.
"Gold is treading water despite a slight improvement in the dollar and U.S. Treasury yields," Mitsubishi analyst Jonathan Butler said. "That would seem to indicate some pricing in of the Fed pushing out interest rate rises further into the future."
Read MoreGold loses traction, closes in on 5½-year low
GFMS researchers at Thomson Reuters said in a report that global gold demand hit its lowest since 2009 in the second quarter.
Also weighing on sentiment, China's net gold imports from main conduit Hong Kong fell to a 10-month low in June.
Spot platinum was up 0.1 percent at $980.25 an ounce, near last week's 6-1/2-year low.
"With the situation between labor unions and miners getting tenser, we believe that there is an increasing risk of strike action at South Africa's platinum mines," said Capital Economics in a note, pegging prices to rise to $1,060 at the end of the year.
Silver was up 0.9 percent at $14.67 an ounce and palladium was up 0.9 percent at $617.50 an ounce. | Gold firmed on Tuesday but remained near 5-1/2-year lows as markets braced for this week's Federal Reserve meeting. |
What's different this time? One possible explanation is that investors have realized that the company's guidance is overly conservative, say some shareholders privately. Brokers often stick close to company guidance for fear of retribution from companies that want to keep expectations within reach. That can keep a lid on consensus forecasts while investors quietly anticipate a better outcome.
Indeed, a strong performance appeared priced into the stock before the earnings release arrived. Kors shares have risen an impressive 19 percent so far in 2014 as the company's sales continue to soar. That compares with steep share price declines for the likes of Coach and Ralph Lauren.
But some investors are watching closely for signs that the company's remarkable growth may not be sustainable. On a conference call Wednesday morning, Kors said it expected long-term sales growth would be at a "double-digit" percentage rate. That compared with a previous long-term estimate of 20 to 25 percent revenue growth that Kors reiterated as recently as November. The company didn't respond to multiple requests for comment from CNBC.
One area of vulnerability could be the key North American market, where Kors generated 84 percent of its sales in the year through March.
Read MoreFor once, Amazon won't leave a path of destruction
Kors has about 300 stores in the U.S., compared with roughly 550 for rival Coach, according to Paul Lejuez, an analyst with Wells Fargo. But Kors also sells a large amount of merchandise through department stores like Macy's. Lejuez estimates that Kors generates about $1.3 billion in U.S. wholesale revenue versus $225 million for Coach.
Existing wholesale revenue is potentially an issue because Kors might not be able to add a new retail store at a mall where it already generates big sales. The bar is especially high for Kors because it earns far more sales per retail store than rivals like Coach.
Of course, such concerns haven't yet come to fruition. The company said Wednesday that gross margins in retail haven't changed much from last year, even as Kors moved ahead quickly with store additions.
The real issue is that investors didn't respond as they have in the past to a very impressive earnings report. While Kors' earnings multiple has come down significantly over the last couple of years, it still trades at 24.3 times consensus forward earnings. Given how skittish investors have been recently, the company will need a perfect showing to keep the stock in the stratosphere. | Michael Kors had a rare stumble Wednesday, when its shares were at risk of falling for the first time on a day it reported earnings. |
09/22/2015 AT 02:40 PM EDT
After a long summer without our favorite musical melodrama,
is finally poised to return Wednesday.
While we can't wait to be reunited with our role model Cookie, played by the incomparable
, and we're also excited for more dope musical performances from Lucious Lyon's (
), as well as other star performers on the
Here are the top seven performances you need to watch to pregame the new season of
. (Just remember to leave space in your heart for a whole new season of impromptu musical numbers.)
Serayah and Hakeem's fictional Teen Choice Awards performance was steamier than the bathtub scene between Hakeem and Camilla (
All we have to say about this one is:
"You just keep making me jump through hoops / What do I gotta do? I just want you to look at me / And see that I can be worth your love." Lucious, you should have loved your son better. (Then again, if he had loved him properly, would Jamal have become such an excellent musician? These are the questions.)
We could listen to Jamal read us the Arby's menu – especially with
We love seeing the whole family having a good time together, if only for three minutes and 40 seconds out of the entire first season. (We may be exaggerating, but not by
much – the Lyons are a volatile bunch.)
The video shoot may seem campy and low-budget, and even though Hakeem and Teana's on-screen romance had already gone to shambles by this point, the duo's chemistry is
premieres Wednesday at 9 p.m. ET on Fox. | Running down the chart-topping Fox show's best original tracks |
"In terms of awareness around the tax-filing special enrollment period, we know that generally knowledge of special enrollment periods is low," said Jessica McCarron, a spokesman for the Obamacare advocacy group Enroll America.
"Because there are fewer consumers who qualify for coverage than during open enrollment, outreach can be challenging. Especially since this was the first year that many consumers were understanding the tax implications of the law, the tax-filing special enrollment period was also new to consumers," she said.
However, McCarron said, the numbers compare "favorably" to other special enrollment periods.
"We're certainly happy about any opportunity for consumers to get coverage and it's great news that thousands more were able to enroll in health coverage for the rest of the year," she said.
The special enrollment periods were available in all but three states—Colorado, Idaho and Massachusetts—after open enrollment on Obamacare exchanges ended in mid-February.
The chance was offered by federal and most state exchange officials because of concerns that some people would face a double whammy after becoming aware they owed a fine for failing to have insurance during 2014 only when they prepared their tax returns for that year, after the open enrollment period for 2015 plans was closed.
Read MoreHow hard is it to buy healthinsurance?
In such cases, people could have ended up owing the higher of $95 per person or 1 percent of their household income as a fine for 2014, and then be unable to avoid a fine that rises to the higher of $325 or 2 percent of household income for 2015. But despite that potential financial hit, most people who were eligible for the grace period passed on the opportunity.
"I don't know how many people were really aware of it," said Katherine Hempstead, who directs health insurance coverage research for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. "I think people thought maybe this was going to be this big, teachable moment that people realized something that they didn't know before."
But, she said, in talking with people who had decided earlier on not to sign up for insurance this year, "The vibes that we got with people was that they had kind of run the numbers and looked at what their insurance was going to cost them, and what the penalty was going to cost them," and decided they would rather pay the penalty.
"It sounded more or less rational," Hempstead said. "They're rolling the dice on that point," she added, noting the risks of high health bills if one falls ill without insurance. | Fewer than 250,000 people signed up for a special tax season enrollment period for Obamacare exchanges despite rising fines. |
FORTUNE — You can hardly blame the reporters and editors who wrote all those headlines proclaiming Samsung’s victory over Apple AAPL in J.D. Power and Associates’ 2013 U.S. Tablet Satisfaction Survey.
After all, that’s what J.D. Power’s press release said. Sort of.
But reporters who got their hands on the attached chart were left scratching their heads. It details Samsung’s performance in the five categories that resulted in the company’s 835 to 833 win over Apple in “overall satisfaction.”
What’s puzzling is that Apple did better than Samsung in four out of five of those categories, scoring the maximum five stars in performance, ease of use, physical design and tablet features.
The only category that Samsung beat Apple in was (duh) cost. And cost, according to Power’s press release, counts for at most 16% of the total score.
Bottom line: Apple took home 22 gold stars. Samsung took home 18. And then, for reasons known only to itself, J.D. Power and Associates put out a press release under the headline:
Samsung Ranks Highest in Owner Satisfaction with Tablet Devices
The company — a division of McGraw Hill — promised to put me in touch with the guy who managed the tablet survey.
UPDATE: “It’s very simple,” says Kirk Parsons, J.D. Power’s senior director of telecommunications services, who got back to me Friday afternoon. “It’s just math.”
He explained that the real results — the ones that count as far as J.D. Power is concerned — are the numbers it reported in its press release and illustrated with the bar graph at right.
They come from a survey 3,375 tablet owners who were asked to rate their devices on five criteria using a scale of 0 to 1,000.
The results in each category were multiplied by a weighting factor — performance (26%); ease of operation (22%); styling and design (19%); features (17%); and cost (16%) — and the products summed.
J.D. Power won’t release any of the details, except to say that when the numbers were crunched, Samsung edged Apple by two points, 835 to 833.
The problem comes when J.D. Power uses its “Power Circles” to communicate the results to consumers.
Those gold circles are derived from same tablet survey, but they don’t reflect the original 0 to 1,000 scale. Rather, they show where each company’s products stand relative to its competitors — “among the best,” “about average,” etc.
This system has worked pretty well over the years.
But from time to time, signals get crossed: the Power Circles say one thing and the overall rating says another, as they do in the case of Apple’s iPads and Samsung’s tablets.
How can that happen? Parsons gives an example, stressing that these are not the real numbers:
Say Apple in four of the categories had a 10 point lead over Samsung — for a total of 40 points. But if Samsung had a big enough lead in that fifth category — say 50 points — that might be enough to push it over the top.
Okay. I can see that, especially since Apple sells the most expensive tablets on the market and Samsung among the cheapest.
But if cost is the criterion by which Samsung edged out Apple — trumping such factors as ease of use and performance — is “satisfied” really the best way to describe how those 3,375 survey participants feel about their tablets? | How exactly did Samsung overtake Apple in "overall satisfaction"? |
Marco Rubio's personal finances became an issue in the 2016 campaign this week when The New York Times published a lengthy piece detailing the Florida GOP senator's sometimes questionable spending habits and his occasional commingling of campaign and personal funds.
Elements of the story could prove damaging to Rubio—especially the use of campaign funds and employment of Rubio's spouse by a major campaign donor. But the overarching picture of a candidate from humble means struggling to pay off college loans and provide an education and comfortable life for his kids may wind up a benefit, making the candidate more relatable to voters who struggle with many of the same issues.
The Rubio campaign is counting on this.
Campaign spokesman Alex Conant told me this week he found it "sort of offensive for someone to suggest that he's bad with money because he's been paying off student loans while investing in his kids' education, donating to charity, and providing his family a safe and nice life."
Read More Elizabeth Warren slams SEC's Mary Jo White in letter
Conant added: "For all the Times' breathlessness, the facts are pretty simple: Marco has one debt, which is his home mortgage. He owns his truck outright and his wife leases another (until recently a Buick). He's given a lot to charity, putting his kids a private school education and savings for college, and has retirement accounts with the state Legislature and U.S. Senate. Considering that he inherited no wealth and took out a lot of student debt to go to college and law school, I'd argue that he has a good financial story to tell—or at least one that is relatable to a lot of Americans."
The personal financial narrative also contrasts with that of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, one of Rubio's principal rivals in the establishment lane in the GOP primary. Bush comes from a famous, wealthy family (though he too left office without great personal wealth).
Rubio was already pitching himself as an American success story, the son of immigrants who lifted himself up by dint of hard work. It's a powerful message that's helped lift Rubio into the top tier of GOP hopefuls and led Democrats to fear him as perhaps the most potent general election challenger to Hillary Clinton.
But the Times story is not an unalloyed positive. | How will reports of financial missteps by presidential candidate Marco Rubio impact his campaign? Politico's Ben White explains. |
But silver and dried fruits won't be able to replace gold's important role in weddings, religious events and festivals.
That's why some experts say that regardless of economic conditions, India will always have a strong affinity for the yellow metal.
Somasundaram PR, managing director, India, for the World Gold Council, said that people there buy gold as a long-term investment to protect their wealth and that gold has social and emotional significance.
(Read more: Gartman still likes gold, despite bear market)
"Demand for gold, whether in the form of jewelry or investment [bars and coins], is predominantly retail—driven by millions of individuals across rural and urban India investing as part of their household savings ... not discretionary spending for consumption," PR said.
Demand just might not be as strong this holiday season.
—By CNBC's Seema Mody; Follow her on Twitter: @SeemaCNBC | Demand for gold in India usually peaks near the Diwali holiday, but with a weaker economy Indians see silver as a cheaper alternative. |
When I press the brakes on my Prius, the hieroglyphics on the dash tell me that I’m charging the battery — enough, I’d guess, for a few minutes in EV mode as I circle the Whole Foods parking lot. But the Tube train that rolls into London’s Holborn station has a little more heft than my hybrid.
In fact, with some new technology, stopping a massive commuter train can generate enough electricity to power the whole of Holborn station for two days a week.
For each day of the five-week test, the system captured a full megawatt hour — enough to power more than 100 homes for a year.
In the first experiment of its kind, the London Underground has installed an inverter system that converts braking energy into power. For each day of the five-week test, the system captured a full megawatt hour — enough to power more than 100 homes for a year. Spread across the entire Tube system, that technology would result in savings of £6m, about $9m. Additionally, regenerative braking doesn’t produce the heat that conventional friction braking does, so the tunnels themselves stay cooler, requiring less energy expenditure on climate control (and keeping Tube riders happier in the process).
This experiment is part of a London Underground initiative that factors whole-life energy costs into every new project, giving engineers a reason to seek lower-consumption options as they plan. They’re doing this because the Tube has plans to increase rider capacity by 30 percent as the city grows, and they’ll need to do a lot more than just put on the brakes if they want to move forward.
If you would like to comment on this story or anything else you have seen on BBC Autos, head over to our Facebook page or message us on Twitter. | Beneath London, a successful five-week experiment in reclaiming waste electricity could save millions of pounds each year — and make Tube riders a whole lot happier in the process. |
Like a lighthouse perched on seaweed-covered rocks, a temple stands on a landscape of black hair, atop a structure that is taller than I am. The whorls and skeins of hair form a canopy over the wall of an ancient building that is pierced by empty windows. Beyond the wall is another landscape of undulating hills, with a writhing highway whose multiple exits go nowhere. With me so far? It is confusing. The entire structure stands on a concrete pillar set on to a rock at its base. The rock is impregnated with large crystals that seem to have grown there.
Is Lee Bul’s Excavation, 2007 a model of a place, or an image of a body – the spirit up there in the temple, the comings and goings of the highway like speech or thoughts, the lower functions rooting us to the earth?
There is an awful lot of fabrication and jiggery-pokery in Lee Bul’s constructed worlds. But there are no people, even though a few figurines, like the ones that populate model railway sets, would add a sense of human scale.
In another model that looks like a towering mountain of petrified goo, a pylon flashes an illuminated sign that reads Weep Into Stones … Fables Like Snow … Our Few Evil Days. The phrases come from Hydriotaphia, a meditation on mortality by the 17th-century English writer Thomas Browne, which inspired WG Sebald’s tour of East Anglia in his novel The Rings of Saturn.
Here, Browne’s words illuminate a psychological terrain that has its roots in South Korea, where Lee lives and works. Elsewhere in her Mon grand récit: Weep into stones … is a scale model of the studio she occupied in Seoul in the late 1980s. It was on the top floor of an abandoned tower block, the typical remorselessly utilitarian architecture of a country under a military dictatorship. Her idiosyncratic art resists the conformity of the culture she grew up in, and constantly returns to the idea of a failed utopia, dreams of a better future and the ruins of the past.
It also revels in its own excess. Or rather, she points out both the plenitude and complexity of the world – and our inability to control it all. So it is with her work. Sometimes dark and doomy, frequently decorative and definitely strange, Lee fills two floors of the Ikon in Birmingham with sculptures and maquettes, installations and drawings. One work is a maze of screens and mirrors, culminating in a chamber of infinite reflections and bright lights, your own shadow disappearing in a vortex. This is fun, but infinity mirrors are such a cliche.
The exterior walls of this maze have been papered with pages, in English and Korean, from American psychologist Julian Jaynes’s The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. You can only read fragments – the pages are disordered, pasted upside-down and semi-obscured by deliberate stains.
Lee’s references add heft to what she does, and help her work come alive, but they don’t always make it better. I get lost among all the ramifications in her more complicated works. Look – there is a tiny jade-green model of Tatlin’s Tower, no bigger than a peanut! And here are dozens of drawings. The best are those with pendulous bulges and pouches, their phallic and breast-like and shoe-like forms. They remind me of the early drawings of Eva Hesse, and their almost human forms provide relief.
Elsewhere Lee has installed “cyborg” creatures and sculptures of vomiting dogs. These had yet to be unleashed on my visit, which is a pity. I do like a vomiting dog. Twinkling lights, more infinity mirrors, and a tunnel that’s mirrored on the inside and like a ramshackle shanty on the outside, through which you can stoop and crawl, give her show a kind of fairground liveliness. There is so much going on everywhere that the whole exhibition becomes an obstacle course. There is no let-up, and after an hour or two, you wonder if there is any way out.
On another mirrored floor, a rough-hewn black mountain morphs into a kind of Batman-black futuristic cabin whose interior is a mirror-lined cave. This sort of sci-fi, techno-terror art is alarming. Lee’s art comes at you from odd angles, slides away into an unknowable future and reaches back into an imagined past. We see it all in broken mirrors. That, I suppose, is what she is trying to tell us.
• Lee Bul is at Ikon gallery, Birmingham, until 9 November | Cyborg creatures share space with infinity mirrors and oppressive sculptures in this South Korean artist’s odd exhibition that feels like an obstacle course, writes Adrian Searle |
NATO's chief has accused Russia of deliberately violating Turkey's airspace during bombing raids on Syria, as Ankara summoned Moscow's envoy over the latest intrusion.
The rise in tensions came as Russian warplanes struck Islamic State group targets in and around the ancient city of Palmyra for the first time, Syrian state television said.
NATO member Turkey accused Russia of violating its airspace at least twice over the weekend, and warned it will activate its rules of military engagement if such intrusions are repeated.
NATO has criticised the violations as "irresponsible" and urged Moscow to end raids against civilians and Syria's opposition forces.
On Tuesday, it stepped up the rhetoric, insisting the violations were intentional.
"For us, this does not look like an accident, it is a serious violation," NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said at a press conference in Brussels.
"The violations were for a long time compared to previous violations of airspace we have seen elsewhere in Europe."
Turkey meanwhile said it had summoned the Russian ambassador to Ankara for the second time in as many days to protest a violation of its airspace on Sunday.
Turkey warned that "Russia would be held responsible" for future intrusions, a Turkish official said.
Ankara said on Saturday its fighter jets intercepted a Russian warplane and forced it to turn back.
Then on Sunday, two Turkish F-16 jets were "harassed" by a MIG-29 plane, according to the army.
"Our rules of engagement are clear whoever violates our airspace," Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu warned.
"The Turkish Armed Forces are clearly instructed. Even if it is a flying bird."
Russia has acknowledged the Saturday incident, which it blamed on "unfavourable weather conditions".
"There is no need to look for some conspiracy theories," the defence ministry said of the incident, which it added lasted "several seconds".
Russian warplanes have been carrying out raids in Syria since Wednesday, targeting what they call "terrorist" groups, though rebels and their backers accuse Moscow of hitting a range of opposition fighters, not just jihadists.
The West has accused Moscow of using the raids as cover to hit President Bashar al-Assad's moderate opponents.
Turkey and Russia remain on opposing sides of the Syrian conflict, with Moscow one of the few allies of Assad while Ankara says his ouster is the only way out of the current stalemate.
Ankara and Moscow enjoy burgeoning trade ties and had until recent months appeared intent on building a strong strategic alliance.
US Secretary of State John Kerry warned a Russian "incursion" into the air space of Washington's NATO ally Turkey risked provoking a serious escalation.
"It is precisely the kind of thing that had Turkey responded under its rights could have resulted in a shoot-down," he said, at a public event in Chile.
Do you have any news photos or videos? | Tensions are escalating between Russia and Turkey amid claims Moscow's planes are straying over the border from Syria. |
The PATCO Speedline between southern New Jersey and Philadelphia was not operating during Wednesday's rush because of power problems. Trains were expected to be running after midmorning. New Jersey Transit has suspended service on its Atlantic City rail line.
The Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority suspended service along some regional rail lines.
Four people sustained minor injuries when a building collapsed in the Fishtown section of Philadelphia.
In New Jersey, nearly 200,000 homes and businesses were without electricity Wednesday morning after the storms, some packing 75 mph winds, thundered through the region.
Gloucester, Camden and Salem counties were among the hardest hit areas. Complete utility restoration could take several days.
The NWS is investigating whether a tornado formed in parts of Gloucester County.
Strong winds ripped off part of the Deptford Mall's exterior. More than 30 animals were left stranded when a pet shop roof fell in in Gibbstown.
Parents and students scrambled when the storms formed as the Egg Harbor Township High School graduation ended.
There are no reports of injuries.
In New Hampshire, the fast-moving storm knocked out power in Colebrook, Columbia, Pittsburg and Stewartstown, but most service was restored before morning.
The strong storm system was the same that had spawned tornadoes in the Midwest, including at least nine in northern Illinois.
As the storms moved through southeastern Pennsylvania on Tuesday evening, the sky blackened and commuter train service was halted beginning at rush hour. Amtrak suspended its Northeast Corridor and Keystone services from Washington through Philadelphia and on to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, but restored service about two hours later. | Powerful storms that plowed through eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey downed trees and power lines, leaving nearly 400,000 without electricity. |
The most important bank to report was Wells Fargo because it's the nation's largest mortgage lender. About 60 percent of its revenues are from community banking, which includes mortgages.
Mortgage banking declined 5 percent, but originations were up 2 percent quarter over quarter.
Net interest margin (the difference between the income generated from loans and the interest paid out to lenders) dropped 9 basis points, to 3.06 percent.
Loan growth was mixed. Commercial loans grew 2.6 percent, while consumer loans were down 1.4 percent. Average it out, and loan growth was up 0.3 percent.
The problem with Wells Fargo is that because it is such a mortgage behemoth it is much more dependent on interest-rate growth than most other banks. And the lack of any rise in rates is a problem for the bank.
Let's call it a good, not great, quarter. It's a bit worrisome that consumer loan demand remains tepid.
Financials have held up much better than the overall market. The S&P 500 is down about 5 percent this month, the S&P Financial Sector is down 3.5 percent.
1) The German government cut its growth outlook to 1.2 percent from 1.8 percent for 2014, and to 1.3 percent from 2 percent in 2015. The German economy minister cited "geopolitical crises" and sluggish global growth as the culprit, though he did say domestic demand remains "intact." German investor confidence was weaker than expected.
2) In London, British luxury brand Burberry said that conditions in some markets, particularly China, had worsened. The Ukraine crisis is also affecting demand in Russia, and the demonstrations in Hong Kong are not helping. Concerns about the possibility of slowing travel due to Ebola concerns are also present.
Still, keep it in perspective. Sales in China grew in the high single digits. That isn't the double-digit growth that was previously seen, but it's hardly a collapse.
3) Just where is break-even for shale producers? I've quoted several different estimates in the past two weeks as shale producers have seen their stock prices plunge, with West Texas Intermediate prices going from $105 to $85.
Commerzbank called out the problem in a note: "According to Maria van der Hoeven, director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), 82% of shale oil producers have a break-even price of $60 or lower. By contrast, IEA Chief Economist Birol claimed that US shale oil production needs about $80 in order to be profitable."
In other words, the estimates are all over the place because it depends on what fields you are talking about. Some fields have higher yields, others have more gas than oil, but for sure with oil now in the low $80s, some are marginal. | Weakness in stocks is distracting from economic tailwinds: lower oil prices, a better U.S. economy, and high cash levels at U.S. corporations. |
Japan's Nikkei 225 index posted its best day in six-and-a-half weeks to close at a one-and-a-half-week high on Friday, as dollar-yen breached the 119 handle. By 1540 SIN/HK, the yen traded at 119.16 to the dollar.
As such, exporter stocks got a fillip; Toyota Motor surged 4.3 percent and Nissan rose 2.4 percent. However, Sony underperformed the bourse, losing nearly 2 percent, on reports that North Korea was behind a cyber attack which has resulted in Sony Pictures pulling all plans to release its comedy "The Interview."
Meanwhile, the Bank of Japan kept its monetary policy steady at its final meeting of the year, as had been expected. But the central bank raised its economic assessment, citing signs of a pickup in exports.
Read MoreNikkei to go from 'ho-hum' to 'home run' in 2015
China's benchmark Shanghai Composite index put up a rally late Friday to close up 1.7 percent.
Among the most active stocks in Shanghai were China State Construction Engineering which rose the maximum allowable 10 percent, and China Shipbuilding Industry up 5.9 percent. Property developers extended Thursday's losses; China Merchants Property slumped 2.5 percent while Vanke sank 1.2 percent..
Meanwhile, China revised up the estimated size of its economy for 2013 by 3.4 percent to 58.8 trillion yuan, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Friday, but said the revision will not affect economic growth this year.
Read MoreHow China steel data masks scale of glut
In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng index climbed 1.3 percent, after hitting a one-week high of 23,189 points earlier in the session.
Carmaker BYD finished 14 percent higher in Hong Kong and up 2.9 percent in Shenzhen, after posting its biggest single-day drop of more than 45 percent in the previous session amid various market rumors such as U.S. investor Warren Buffett is considering to reduce his stake.
Meanwhile, BAIC Motor, partly-owned by Germany's Daimler, traded at HK$8.85 in its trading debut. The Chinese automaker raised $1.4 billion dollars in the public offer.
Gaming stocks remained in focus ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to the city this weekend. Melco Crown led gains in the sector by rising 22.7 percent.
"There's a need to clean up Macau, make it more mass market... and that is a painful transition," Jon Oh, Research Analyst for Gaming and Lodging at CLSA, told CNBC Asia's "Squawk Box." "As such, gaming plays are likely to underperform in the next 1-2 quarters." | Asian equities put up an upbeat performance on the final trading day of the week, following an inspiring U.S. lead overnight as investors cheered the Federal Reserve's pledge to be patient in increasing interest rates. |
There can be also little question that Russia depends on oil. We learned that vividly in 1998 when the price of oil declined 58 percent, Russian oil exports declined and, in time, Russia was unable to make payments on its sovereign debt.
Read More Cashin: Why it's not like 1998 all over again
Conditions have not changed. Exports constitute 28 percent of Russia's nominal GDP; oil exports equal 39 percent of its total exports. A decline in the price of oil from $108.66 (the 2013 average price for Brent crude) to $54 (the current price) along with sanctions minimally has caused the economy of Russia to slow. This is not something that has happened overnight. The consensus forecast for the Russian economy for 2015 has been declining each month since January this year from 3.0 percent to -0.2 percent and is likely to decline further.
Based upon the experience of 1997, Russia is pulling out all stops. It has raised interest rates and is on the edge of considering restrictions on capital flows. The ruble and the economy are sinking rapidly.
The real question is "Will the crisis in Russia be transmitted to Europe and perhaps the U.S.?"
The answer that we hear is, "no." After all, Russia only accounts for only 2.7 percent of world GDP and 1.7 percent of world trade. Additionally U.S. bank lending to Russia is 0.1 percent of GDP and lending to Russia is equally insignificant among other important lending countries like Japan, the U.K., and Germany are below 1 percent of GDP. Moreover, the losses from declining oil prices are concentrated among oil producers and the positives are dispersed among many consumers.
That's the argument. We don't really buy it.
Read More Saudi oil minister: We need help cutting output
While the case is compelling, there is more to think about. As market historians will tell you, the Southeast Asia crisis began in Thailand in 1997. At the time Thailand was an even smaller percent of global GDP and global trade. Thailand was not nearly as important an export destination in 1997 as Russia is today. Moreover, U.S. bank lending and lending to Thailand by other larger countries was even less significant. But, as insignificant as the crisis in Thailand was thought to be, it was not. The crisis was transmitted throughout the world in ways that very few anticipated.
There are ordinarily three important transmission mechanisms:
Psychology. Declines in the Thailand currency and stock market scared investors throughout the world. I saved the Oct. 28, 1997 Wall Street Journal article: "The Dow Jones industrials sank 554.26 points, or 7.18%, to 7161.15, in a follow-through to selling that began with a plunge in Hong Kong last week."
Trade flows. When the economy of Thailand sank into a recession, exports to Thailand from the nine major economies of Southeast Asia declined. Eight of the nine major economies of Southeast Asia contracted. Only China averted a recession. U.S. exports to Southeast Asia declined in excess of 10 percent. The crisis spread outward.
Commodity prices. As trade flows slowed and economies contracted, the demand for and price of commodities declined. The price of oil declined 58 percent and other commodity prices declined 41 percent. The economy of commodity-export countries to include Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Canada, and Russia entered recessions; many others came close. The crisis spread outward.
We find it hard to believe that the transmission mechanisms will not again be operative.
Declines in the price of oil and other commodity prices have already scared investors. The view is that the decline reflects a slowdown in the global economy. This is somewhat easy to accept. After all the IEA (The International Energy Agency) has reduced its forecast for global oil consumption five times this year and the IMF (the International Monetary Fund) has reduced its forecast for global economic growth for 2014 to 3.3 percent from 3.7 percent and for 2015 to 3.8 percent from 3.9 percent. This minimally has contributed to the 5-percent decline in the S&P 500.
Read MoreThe one person who can bail out Putin
Can the crisis in Russia be transmitted through declining trade flows? Exports to Russia are important to Europe. Exports equal 27 percent of the European economy and exports to Russia equal 6.9 percent of Europe's exports. In turn, exports to Europe are important to the U.S. U.S. exports to Europe equal 17.5 percent of U.S. exports.
Can the crisis in Russia be transmitted through declining oil and other commodity prices? After all, the price of West Texas Intermediate has declined 32 percent and other commodity prices have declined 24 percent. These price declines are, of course, global. Inflation in Europe is now 0.3 percent. The spread between the yield on a 5-year inflation-indexed note and the yield on a 5-year U.S. Treasury note, a proxy for inflation expectations, has declined sharply.
This is the bad news. But, there is, at least, some good news.
First, although the economies of eight of the nine Southeast Asia countries contracted in 1998 and although U.S. exports to Southeast Asia contracted in 1998, the economy of the U.S. (and the U.S. stock market) continued to expand. We suspect quite strongly that this will again be the outcome. We don't believe the Russian crisis will derail the current bull market-economic recovery.
Read MorePutin speech sparks more ruble volatility
Second, although the Southeast Asia financial crisis was significant and although it led to a global decline in stock prices, it did end. It drove U.S. stock prices from levels that were arguably over-valued to levels that were undervalued hence, setting up a meaningful move up in prices. A very strong argument could be made that the current crisis is doing the same thing.
Third, the price of oil has declined in part because the global economy and, hence, demand has slowed and also because global production (particularly U.S. production) has increased.
While this is true, it is hard for us to make the case that demand and supply have changed that much. Perhaps the forecast for global consumption was too high and indeed the forecast for global production was too low. But, even if we revise the forecast for consumption lower and the forecast for production higher — to levels that are consistent with the revised estimates from the IEA — we still cannot forecast oil prices that are statistically near $65 per barrel. Perhaps speculation in the oil markets has driven the price of West Texas to this level much the way speculation, not significantly changed fundamentals, drove the price to $140 in 1998.
My guess is that, in time, the price returns to the mid-90s. The only question that remains is … when? That's anybody's guess. | Some say the crisis in Russia won't ripple into Europe and the U.S. — we're not buying it, says portfolio manager Hugh Johnson. |
The robustness in the services sector contrasted sharply with manufacturing surveys last week, which showed factories were struggling at the end of 2014. The findings reinforced expectations that Beijing will roll out more stimulus to avert a sharper slowdown which could trigger job losses and debt defaults.
"The services sector continued to hold up well amidst the manufacturing downturn, providing some counter-weight to the downward pressures on the economy," said Qu Hongbin, chief China economist at HSBC.
Read MoreChina's 2015 outlook in three words
"We continue to believe that there is insufficient demand in the overall economy and more (policy) easing measures are warranted in the coming months."
A similar official survey released last week also showed the services sector remained strong, with the services PMI rising to 54.1 in December from November's 53.9. That survey focuses more on larger, state-owned firms.
Hurt by a sagging housing market as well as slowing domestic demand and investment, China's economy is expected to grow at its slowest pace in 24 years in 2014, with annual growth seen at 7.4 percent.
Some economists have urged Beijing to set a growth target of 7 percent for 2015, compared with 7.5 percent for 2014.
After saying for months that China doesn't need any big economic stimulus, the central bank unexpectedly cut interest rates in November for the first time in more than two years to support growth. It has also loosened some lending restrictions to persuade banks to make more loans and injected funds into the banking system in an attempt to bring down borrowing costs.
While its recent moves may have bought the central bank some time to see if conditions improve, many economists still expect more interest rate cuts as well as reductions in banks' required reserve ratios (RRR) this year, perhaps as soon as the first quarter. | China's services sector grew at its fastest pace as orders remained strong, a sign of strength even as manufacturing activity and property market slows. |
Is Wall Street's biggest question: After a 7 percent drop from the highs, has the S&P 500 bottomed out? The answer may be impossible to know for sure, but historical analysis suggests that stocks may have a bit further to fall.
Carter Worth of Sterne Agee looked back on all the market's corrections of 5 percent or more going back to 1927, in order to get a sense of how long they tend to last, in terms of both time and magnitude. He learned that the average (mean) correction is 12.2 percent, and lasts for 41 sessions. The median correction, which is shallower because it is less affected by outliers, is 8.2 percentage points deep and lasts 22 sessions.
Given that the S&P closed Tuesday just over 7 percent off its highs, Worth takes this information as an indication that there will be more to this selloff.
"Were it to just be in line with the median, it means we have at least a percentage and a half to go. Were it to be in line with the mean or average decline, we're talking about another 4 or 5 percent to go. The principle being that this is unlikely to be at an end," Worth said Tuesday on "Futures Now."
Why the stock market selloff may be nearing an end
Additionally, stocks were at all-time highs a mere 18 sessions ago, "so it's not even mature in terms of duration, not to mention magnitude," Worth added.
And while this may be dismissed as a quirk of statistics—after all, if one starts with all the time that stocks ever fell more than 5 percent, one is bound to find a bevy of times when it has fallen substantially—Worth says there are specific market dynamics that get triggered when stocks drop 5 percent or greater.
"The reason that that's an important number is that when a stock or an index or a currency goes down 2, 3 percent, nothing really happens, that's noise," Worth said. But starting at 5 percent, "stop losses start kicking in, or people start to de-risk, or margin calls [are triggered], or the spouse calls up and says, 'My gosh, we're losing money, do something.' The point is that once you're down 5 percent, you usually go down more."
It's certainly looking that way on Tuesday morning. S&P futures are down sharply in early trading, with the December S&P futures contract hitting the lowest level since April. | If history is any indication, stocks are likely to keep falling, technician Carter Worth argues. |
The idea would require the Republican-controlled Congress to pass legislation so that the federal government could pay for 75 percent of tuition, with participating state governments having to pick up the rest of the tab.
"With no details or information on the cost, this seems more like a talking point than a plan," said Cory Fritz, spokesman for Speaker John Boehner, the top Republican in the House of Representatives.
Read MoreTug-of-war: Fund retirement or kid's college education?
The White House has not yet discussed the idea with lawmakers.
"We don't expect the country to be transformed overnight, but we do expect this conversation to begin tomorrow," Cecilia Munoz, a top domestic policy adviser to Obama, told reporters.
Obama will elaborate on the plan on Friday during a visit to Tennessee, where the Republican-led state has started a free community college program.
If all states signed on to Obama's plan, an estimated 9 million students could benefit. A full-time community college student could save an average of $3,800 in tuition a year.
Under the proposal, students who attend at least half-time, maintain a 2.5 grade point average while in college, and make steady progress toward completing their programs would have their tuition eliminated.
Not all college programs would qualify. Colleges would be required to offer programs where credits could count toward a four-year college and university degree, should students decide to pursue one, or training programs for skills in demand by local employers. | Obama wants to make two years of community college free and universally available, saying he would propose this at the State of the Union speech. |
The north's economy is surprisingly internationalized, with no signs of slowing down.
In 2013, as an example, North Korean trade totaled $8.6 billion, with 77.4 percent of that amount stemming from China, which accounted for $6.7 billion. In 2003, North Korean trade with China was a mere $1.05 billion, according to estimates tracked by "North Korea: Witness to Transformation," a blog about North Korea. Other, smaller trade partners include Russia and South Korea.
While full 2014 figures have not yet been compiled, monthly data from January to September last year show similar record-high trade levels, said Kevin Stahler, a research analyst at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
"There's a lot more international trade than 10, 15 years ago," said Kang, also director of USC's East Asian Studies Center.
Much of this growing international trade is owed to the north's strategic alliance with China. North Korean government leaders use banks and middle men, based in China, to conduct business. The poverty-stricken country enjoys shipments of food, technology and other resources from neighboring China and beyond. | A look at North Korea's growing, not-so-isolated economy, and key reasons Kim Jong Un is feeling good after three years in power. |
Friday's jobs report showing a gain of 252,000 positions and a dip to a 5.6 percent unemployment rate offered up more good news for President Barack Obama, who is wrapping up a weeklong road trip to tout the improving economy and offer up fresh proposals on housing and education in advance of his State of the Union address later this month.
Obama, as I reported Friday at more length in Politico, can rightly take credit for some of the improvement in the economy given his early moves on the auto and Wall Street bailouts, the stimulus and actions to bolster the Federal Reserve and hold the line on even greater spending cuts after Republicans took control of the House in 2010.
Read MoreAmerican workers fed up with stalled wages
But the December jobs report also highlighted continuing lines of attack Republicans will be able to make as they craft economic policy in the new Congress and hit the trail for the 2016 presidential campaign.
The report showed that average hourly earnings decreased by 5 cents to $24.57, following an increase of 6 cents in November. On the year, average hourly earnings have risen just 1.7 percent, barely enough to keep pace with inflation. The encouraging 0.4 percent increase in wages reported in November got revised back down to 0.2 percent.
The long-awaited rise in wages still shows few signs of actually materializing, indicating that slack in the labor market remains despite the drop in the overall unemployment rate close to the level at which the Fed will likely have no choice but to start boosting interest rates. | Heading into the 2016 presidential race, Republicans can seize on stagnant wage growth, Politico's Ben White says. |
Thousands of questions have since flooded in, ranging from what India can do to stop its "brain drain" to what the government is doing to clean up Delhi – the world's most polluted city - and everything in between.
The town hall will be held on September 27 at 9:30am PST/10 PM IST.
Modi's visit to Facebook is part of a week-long visit to the U.S., from September 23 to 29, during which he will spend two days in Silicon Valley in an effort to strengthen business ties between California and India.
Since assuming office last year, Modi and his team have adopted an aggressive social media strategy to engage in diplomacy and communicate directly with citizens.
He is the third-most widely followed leader on Twitter after U.S. President Barack Obama and Pope Francis, according to Twiplomacy, a website that tracks the use of Twitter, with 14.9 million followers. | The number of questions that have poured in ahead of Narendra Modi's appearance at Facebook HQ: Roughly 24,000 |
The move is just the latest reflection of fast food's love for all things digital and social media. Earlier this year, burger giant Burger King also made a foray into the emoji world with a Chicken Fries keyboard to highlight the return of the dish, which has been especially popular on social media.
For Bojangles,' the idea came about after it noticed "a large percentage of (its) most loyal fans use emojis as a primary dialect when communicating," said Doug Poppen, the chain's senior director of marketing, during a phone interview.
Read More One startup's goal: Uber for food
He added Millennials, a key target group for restaurants, and Gen Z customers are especially heavy users of the characters.
Some examples included in the batch are riffs off existing emojis, like a fist pump image that is now holding a Bojangles box, or clinking beer glasses that have been turned into sweet tea cups.
Read MoreTaco Bell is now selling a taco shell made of what?!
The Bomoji app marks a return to the app store for the chain, which shuttered a previous one that was focused more on entertainment and information rather than the mobile ordering and pay features that restaurants are increasingly launching. Bojangles is also looking to enter that mix in the future.
"We're currently evaluating things like mobile payment," Poppen said. | The iOS keyboard now has hundreds of available emojis, but Bojangles' does not think that's quite enough. |
10/16/2015 AT 12:05 PM EDT
may have met his match.
In an exclusive First Look at Tuesday's upcoming episode of
, Harris enlists the help of
to prank an unsuspecting contractor – but (twist!) the prankee is all too willing to play along.
In the "Voices in Your Head" segment (
!), Ferguson poses as a homeowner looking to renovate his house while Harris and
feed him off-the-wall phrases to say to the contractor.
Jesse Tyler Ferguson (right) and a contractor on Best Time Ever with Neil Patrick Harris
In one exchange, Harris instructs, "In your best Jack Nicholson impersonation say 'So, what are you gonna do with my house?' " – only Ferguson misunderstands and tells the contractor to test out his impression skills.
it, summoning Nicholson's famous line from
: "You can't handle a good painter!"
After Harris and Ferguson stop laughing uncontrollably, they agree it was a job well done and tell the man: "You're hired."
airs Tuesdays (8 p.m. ET) on NBC. | Jesse Tyler Ferguson lends a hand in pranking a contractor, only to be impressed by the guys' improv skills |
10/27/2015 AT 09:50 AM EDT
Whether at a red carpet event or enjoying a
prove that any place is a place for romance.
The couple stepped out on Monday at the Hollywood premiere of
at the TCL Chinese Theater. In the midst of the photos, poses and fans, Amal managed to steal a sweet kiss from her husband of a
The Clooneys whispered to and gazed at each other as they walked the red carpet. The smooch was quick, but the two were all smiles as they posed for pictures at the premiere.
Amal stunned in a blush Roland Mouret dress, and George opted for a black suit paired with a black button-down shirt.
When he wasn't close to Amal, George was seen posing for photos with the film's star
in the movie, donned a floor-length, black-and-white gown with cutouts at the sides and bodice, as she attended the premiere
George is a co-producer on
, which hits theaters Friday. | George and Amal Clooney showed off some sweet PDA while attending the film's Los Angeles premiere |
10/29/2015 AT 12:30 PM EDT
Three YouTube stars are about to appear on a much larger screen.
are making a new comedy called
, a follow-up to their first feature-length film,
. This time, the stakes are a bit different – Lionsgate just bought the rights.
The move marks a heightened interest in Hollywood in turning YouTube stars into movie stars:
, another Internet superstar with millions of subscribers, will have his first documentary,
will be released digitally next year – and we can't wait. And as could be expected, their announcement of the news was
"A big thank you to our friends over at Lionsgate, who most likely regret the decision of working with us already. But too late, it's already on the Internet!" | The YouTubers' next comedy, Dirty Thirty, was just bought by Lionsgate |
11/01/2015 AT 06:55 PM EST
Fred Thompson, a former U.S. senator and
star died on Sunday, according to a statement issued by his family. He was 73.
"It is with a heavy heart and a deep sense of grief that we share the passing of our brother, husband, father, and grandfather who died peacefully in Nashville surrounded by his family," the family said in a statement to
"Fred believed that the greatness of our nation was defined by the hard work, faith, and honesty of its people," the statement continued. "He had an enduring belief in the exceptionalism of our country, and that America could provide the opportunity for any boy or girl, in any corner of our country, to succeed in life."
after getting his law degree from Vanderbilt University in 1967. He was later appointed as the committee counsel to the Senate Watergate Committee investigating then-president Richard Nixon. Thompson famously grilled former White House aide Alexander Butterfield about recording devices within the presidential residence during a public hearing, which eventually led to Nixon resigning from his position.
Fred Thompson (right) in Die Hard 2
After serving on the committee, Thompson worked as a lobbyist for 20 years before moving into the film world by playing himself in 1985's
, a film version of one of his high-profile cases. He successfully won a seat in the U.S. Senate in 1994 when he ran for then-Vice President Al Gore's remaining term in the Senate. Thompson won re-election in 1996 but chose not to run again in 2002.
While politics always remained a big part of Thompson's life, he still remained a part of the acting world. After
, he landed roles in
, but he was perhaps most famously known for his five year stint on NBC's
where he played Arthur Branch from 2002 to 2007.
Thompson took a break from Hollywood to pursue the Republican presidential nomination for the 2008 election, although he ultimately lost out to Sen. John McCain.
Despite his brief break from the acting world, he returned to it after the election, most recently starring in the TV show
alongside Kate Bosworth and Hayden Christensen.
Still, Thompson remained actively interested in politics.
focused on Hillary Clinton's email scandal as well as sharing his thoughts on the shootings in Roseburg, Oregon, and New York City's struggle to deal with stray cats.
Thompson is survived by his wife, Jeri, and three children – Fred Thompson Jr., Hayden Victoria Thompson and Samuel Thompson. | The 73-year-old star was known for his folksy demeanor and conservative opinions |
Souq.com, a large e-commerce hub, is a poster child for the investing going on in the Middle East. The Dubai-based company last spring attracted $75 million from South African media giant, Naspers. The investment was a milestone for the region, and it gave the 1,000-employee company a reported valuation of $500 million. Tiger Global's venture-capital arm, led by Lee Fixel and Scott Shleifer, is also an investor in the rapidly growing company.
Last year, whenEgypt was in a state of emergency and under curfew, the team at Souq.com's Egypt operations kept working, the sellers kept selling, and perhaps most importantly, people kept buying.
Except for a few days of Internet outage during the ouster of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi, Souq operated smoothly, said Ronaldo Mouchawar, the company's CEO. Employees felt a sense of pride at keeping deliveries consistent.
"People look at the Middle East and they write it off," he said. "But people here are hungry to overcome that (the stereotype of a violence-plagued region)."
Security concerns may fuel e-commerce growth, said Ahmed Alkhatib, founder of MarkaVIP, a four-year-old Amman, Jordan-based luxury retailer similar to Gilt Groupe. "We may do better as an e-commerce company if security becomes an issue," he said. "They can shop online without going out."
Read MoreWhy Alibaba's $68 is a lucky number | The market is fixed on Alibaba's IPO, but there's another emerging middle class creating an e-commerce giant—and in the land of Ali Baba. |
Almost 40 years ago, Jack Bogle invented the index mutual fund and became the whipping boy of Wall Street—at least temporarily. It took decades for the funds to become common-place in retail investors' portfolios. By the 1990s, Bogle was an iconic investor. He came in No. 9 on the CNBC 25 list.
Before he founded The Vanguard Group in 1974, Bogle was the president of the Wellington Fund. Around that time, he helped orchestrate a merger with a "Go-Go" investment firm out of Boston.
The fund tanked, and almost took down Wellington with it, Bogle recalled during an interview with CNBC on Tuesday. It cost Bogle his job but opened his eyes to new possibilities at soon-to-be-founded Vanguard.
"You make a big mistake and you pay a big price," Bogle said on CNBC's "Power Lunch." "Who says life isn't fair?"
Read MoreJack Bogle: Why investors shouldn't fear flash trading
Bogle chalked up most of his mistakes to "marketing" and attempts to please the public or chase hot investments. He said most of his ill-fated ideas—specialized portfolios and real estate investments—fall into this category.
The miscues only re-enforced Bogle's trademark investment strategy of low-cost mutual funds that track the returns of benchmark stock market indexes. You can't beat simple math, Bogle said.
"What I got right was not only the index fund, which was the product of a simple mind," Bogle said. "If I was some kind of genius I would have thought I could beat the market all the time and been a big quant or something, but I don't have the talent for that. ...
"So I did the right things by my standards and by the simple math of markets—gross return on the markets plus cost equals net return. That's a formula that's good forever." | Even billionaires and business titans make mistakes. As zeroes attached to each mistake multiplied, so did the risk to their fortunes and reputations. |
Don't get me wrong, I still believe the political issues most Americans primarily care about are a combination of job creation, wages, and general economic growth. It's just that translating those concerns to the ballot box has become difficult for both candidates and voters alike.
Read MoreDemocrats don't want to solve tax-inversion issue: Myrow
The biggest reason for that is that analyzing the economy and economic policies is hard, very hard. While most Americans agree the economy isn't strong enough, that's where the agreement ends. Ask three voters, and you're likely to get three different answers about what should be done, who's to blame for the stagnation, and what political party or candidate would be the best economic leaders.
A confused and splintered electorate is a candidate's worst nightmare. Politicians like wedge issues that divide us clearly along gender, age, racial, or class lines. And right now, the economy is cutting across all those demographics in a gerrymandered way that no political consultant can confidently navigate.
This was astonishingly clear in the 2012 election.
Neither Barack Obama not Mitt Romney polled very well on the economy. In fact, President Obama's poll numbers on his ability to handle the economy were way down from where they were in 2008.
Read MoreOp-ed: Why GOP lite is good for Wall Street
But he still won the election despite the fact that all the experts told us that the economy was the No. 1 issue.
Post-election studies show that the complex issues like the economy didn't sway the key voters in 2012. The real deciding factor was that most voters just liked and connected with President Obama more than they did with Mitt Romney. It was a popularity contest.
What does this tell us for the midterm elections and the 2016 race for the White House?
One issue can swing the next two elections, but it has to be a lot less complex than the economy.
Read MoreObama's magic number is 40
Right now, the Democrats are trying to strip out one aspect of that complex economic picture in hopes of simplifying what they believe is a winning issue. Instead of talking about jobs and economic growth, they're focusing on raising the minimum wage and attacking corporations for trying to avoid taxes.
Both of those issues certainly pass the simplicity test but they fail to resonate with enough voters to swing an election, especially independent voters. That's because as disenchanted as many Americans are with their economic lot in life, not many are willing to join the "Occupy" crowd and get into a blame game that fingers their fellow non-politician Americans. And while most Americans favor a minimum-wage increase, key swing voters aren't minimum wage workers and they don't expect much of a personal boost from that. These issues will help the Democrats solidify their base voters, but they won't move the needle.
The Republican campaign messages are in a similar pickle. The promise to repeal or at least drastically reform Obamacare is relatively simple, but once forced to get into the specifics of an alternative plan, things get murky again. The GOP does have alternative plans to the Affordable Care Act, but they're a lot harder for even the most savvy voter to understand and get behind.
Other Republicans are trying to make the growing number of scandals in the Obama administration, from the V.A. to the IRS, a winning issue. Punishing wrongdoers in government is a tried and true strategy for the party out of power. And there's good evidence that the tactic, combined with anti-Obamacare sentiment, will be enough for the GOP to win back the Senate and hold the House this November.
But President Obama will not be a candidate in 2016, and to win back the ultimate prize of the White House the Republicans will need to capture another simple and clear single issue.
And that brings us to our national and personal security.
Perhaps focusing on security right now isn't enough to win an election, but if the next two years are filled with more headlines about ISIS, the refugee crisis at our southern border, threats to our allies and interests in the Middle East, and military and cyber threats from Russia and China, you can bet a candidate or a party that strongly promises to improve America's security can win big. | The election could come down to one issue — and, Jake Novak says, it's not the economy. |
But he was adamant that the region, where ethnic Russians are the majority, should remain part of Ukraine but enjoy broad autonomy.
Yanukovych said he would not ask Russia for military support in dealing with a crisis in which power had been stolen by "a bunch of radicals."
He said he had spoken by telephone with Russian President Vladimir Putin after arriving in Russia with the help of "patriotic officers." They had agreed to meet at some point.
Accusing the West of pursuing "irresponsible" policies by patronizing the "Maidan"—the name given to the uprising against his regime—Yanukovych said he had trusted in the "decency" of Western ministers when he signed an agreement in which he made many compromises to end the crisis.
He added that the May presidential election was illegal and that he would not take part.
According to a Reuters report, Putin said Friday that there must be no further escalation of violence in Ukraine and that free elections are the best solution for the country.
Ukraine's interim government confirmed Friday that Russian forces had seized control of two airports in the Crimean peninsula—the only part of Ukraine with an ethnic Russian majority and the last major bastion of support for Yanukovych, the report said.
Putin is in phone communication with British, German and EU leaders, the Kremlin told Reuters.
(Read more: Russia the 'swing factor' in Ukraine's future)
British Prime Minister David Cameron told the Russian leader that all countries must respect the territorial integrity of Ukraine, and Cameron and Putin agreed that the international community should consider how to help Ukraine tackle its economic challenges, a Downing Street spokesman said. | Ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych said "nationalist, pro-fascist gangsters" had forced him from power. |
Six months ago, few New Englanders had heard of DONG Energy. But that is likely to change soon as the Danish company with a quirky acronym for a name pursues its plans to build a massive offshore wind farm south of Martha’s Vineyard.
The roughly $10 billion-a-year behemoth is already a major player in the European energy market, with deep pockets and a nearly 25-year track record of building turbines in the ocean, making it the global leader in the offshore wind business.
That history will prove helpful as DONG eyes a North American expansion from its new office in Boston’s Financial District. The company’s expertise and its ability to dedicate more than $1 billion a year to offshore projectscould give it a significant edge over two other wind developers that also have rights for federal waters south of New England.
“[DONG has] more experience than pretty much anybody in the world at this point,” said James Manwell, a professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and director of its wind energy center. “The fact they decided to come over here, it’s a bit of a gamble, but maybe they feel they have enough experience that it’s worth the gamble.”
The Danish government-owned company got its start managing fossil-fuel projects in the North Sea four decades ago. Its name, translated, stands for Danish Oil and Natural Gas, a reference to those early ventures.
The energy company is proposing what could be North America’s largest offshore wind farm 15 miles south of the Vineyard.
In 2006, several Danish energy companies were merged into one company under the DONG umbrella. Among them was Elsam, which built the world’s first large-scale offshore wind farm, known as Horns Rev 1, several years earlier, as well as the first one ever, back in 1991.
DONG’s ventures benefited significantly from government incentives for clean energy across Europe, some of them created specifically for offshore wind. The Danish government, for example, has a target of ensuring that all of the country’s electricity can come from renewable sources by 2050.
By 2014, wind energy represented nearly 15 percent of DONG’s revenue and nearly 40 percent of operating profit. The offshore wind division is now the biggest in the world, with about 2,000 people and 14 offshore wind farms.
But amid expansion, controversy swirled. In an effort to help finance the offshore wind expansion and stabilize its finances, DONG accepted a $1.5 billion investment early last year from Goldman Sachs. The New York bank’s involvement sparked furor from the Danish public, with many residents upset because an international investment bank would play a major role in a Danish utility.
By this past spring, DONG executives had started to cast their sights across the Atlantic, seeing untapped opportunity in the relatively shallow waters and powerful breezes off New England’s coastline.
Samuel Leupold, the head of DONG’s wind operations, said the company recognized that the offshore wind industry was starting to develop in the United States. It made sense, if just for competitive reasons, for it to figure out a way into this nascent market.
“We’re the current number one,” Leupold said. “Why should we give up that position? If the market is moving outside Europe, the success story we have in Europe can be repeated.”
The Danish executives entered the US market relatively quietly in April with a deal to acquire development rights for 187,500 acres 15 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard — enough room, DONG says, for 100-plus turbines that could collectively generate enough electricity to power up to 500,000 homes. The local operation would be called Bay State Wind.
Wind industry supporters see what DONG accomplished in places like the United Kingdom, where its workforce grew from 10 in 2009 to 725 today, and hope that success can be replicated in the United States.
“They can bring that kind of get-it-done philosophy, that capability to the states,” said Greg Cunningham, the Conservation Law Foundation’s clean energy director.
But there is competition in New England from two other companies. OffshoreMW is owned by the private equity giant Blackstone Group, but its affiliates have built just one 80-turbine, offshore in Germany. The second group, Deepwater Wind, is backed by the investment firm D.E. Shaw. Its experience is limited to a five-turbine project off Block Island, R.I., that will be done in 2016.
By comparison, DONG’s broad portfolio means it has a proven recipe for wind-farm development — honed over three decades of building one-third of the world’s offshore wind capacity — that gives it an edge.
The company has also committed to setting aside more than 60 percent of its capital investments for offshore wind-specific projects, according to a spokeswoman, providing serious financial muscle for the division.
“They will have some advantages with some of their expertise, their balance sheet, and financing depths,” said Peter Rothstein, president of NECEC, a renewable-energy trade group in Boston.
For the project to move forward, though, it will also need legal cover in the form of new state legislation that would allow big utilities to enter into long-term contracts for offshore wind farms, thereby guaranteeing them a sustained customer base.
With that in mind, DONG is working to build relationships on Beacon Hill.
At the company’s invitation, Representative Patricia Haddad, a Somerset Democrat who is the industry’s most prominent supporter in the State House, along with several colleagues, traveled to Denmark in September, in part for a tour of a DONG wind farm.
The Danish company also will need to escape Cape Wind’s long shadow. For years, that project was New England’s only offshore wind proposal. But Cape Wind stalled amid court challenges and eventually lost contracts needed for financing. Developer Jim Gordon hasn’t given up hope, but his prolonged quest to build in Nantucket Sound has made some skeptical about offshore wind here.
DONG doesn’t have specific wind farm plans drawn up yet for New England. But it has several advantages over Cape Wind.
Its new farm would be built in stages and would be much farther from shore, in areas designated for wind farm construction, limiting the potential opposition. It would also use much bigger, more modern turbines, allowing it to generate more power — and more revenue — per windmill.
Despite the competition from the Danish company, the two other wind farm developers say they are not threatened. But right now, there’s power in numbers. All three want to convince politicians and the public that they’ll be more effective than Cape Wind. DONG’s long list of successful offshore wind farms brings credibility to an industry that’s still in incubation mode in the United States.
“It gives us a lot of confidence that we made the right decision in acquiring our lease area to know the world’s largest offshore wind developer is right next door,” said Erich Stephens, an executive vice president at OffshoreMW. | In the race to harness New England’s offshore wind power, DONG Energy is a latecomer, the newest arrival. But the Danish company still has a head start over its rivals, in a number of ways. |
Reasonable people might ask why anyone would pay $28 million for a 2,000-pound Popeye.
Koons is the main reason. His orange "Balloon Dog" became the most expensive work sold by a living artist when it was auctioned for $58 million at Christie's last fall.
Read MoreBlue diamond sells for nearly $24M
Scarcity is another. Koons made only three versions of the 6½-foot tall muscle man. Megadealer Larry Gagosian owns one and hedge funder Steve Cohen owns the other.
But it turns out, Popeye also has a special place in pop art.
"Popeye represents the beginning and the end of pop art," said Alexander Rotter, co-head of contemporary art at Sotheby's. He points out that one of the first paintings by Andy Warhol was of Popeye and Roy Lichtenstein did a famous Popeye piece.
For Koons, Popeye was a boyhood hero. "There was something about the little guy that becomes giant," Rotter said.
Based on his prices, Koons has certainly followed Popeye's example. | Steve Wynn was strong to the finish and laid out the spinach, snapping a Jeff Koons sculpture of Popeye for $28 million. |
French police have launched dozens of fresh raids across the country as warplanes strafed the Syrian stronghold of Islamic State jihadists which France has vowed to destroy after their attack on Paris.
Authorities in France and Belgium stepped up the hunt for more gunmen and possible accomplices to the shootings and suicide bombings on bars, restaurants and a sports stadium that killed 129 mostly young people on Friday night.
US Secretary of State John Kerry described those behind the massacre as "psychopathic monsters".
"This is not a clash of civilisations. These terrorists have declared war against all civilisation," said Kerry on Monday as he arrived in the scarred French capital to meet President Francois Hollande on Tuesday morning to pledge Washington's solidarity with Paris.
Police are on the trail of 26-year-old Salah Abdeslam, one of three brothers believed involved, and investigators believe Belgian jihadist Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who is based in Syria, was the mastermind of the attacks.
"We don't know if there are accomplices in Belgium and in France.... We still don't know the number of people involved in the attacks," Prime Minister Manuel Valls said on France Inter radio.
French police carried out 128 raids targeting extremist networks across the country on Tuesday morning, a day after a similar sweep found "an arsenal of weapons" in the southeastern city of Lyon, according to Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve.
He said more than 100 people had been placed under house arrest and 23 arrested.
Meanwhile French warplanes destroyed a command centre and training centre in the Syrian city of Raqa, the stronghold of IS, in its second series of airstrikes in 24 hours, the defence ministry said.
Hollande has vowed to hit back at IS "without mercy" after the attacks which stunned the nation less than a year after a three-day attack which left 17 dead, including on the Charlie Hebdo magazine and a Jewish supermarket.
Friday's "acts of war... were decided and planned in Syria, prepared and organised in Belgium (and) perpetrated on our soil with French complicity", Hollande told an extraordinary meeting of both houses of parliament in Versailles.
"The need to destroy Daesh (IS) ... concerns the entire international community," he told MPs, who burst into an emotional rendition of the Marseillaise national anthem after his speech.
Hollande said the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle would be deployed to the eastern Mediterranean to "triple our capacity to take action" against IS in Syria.
"We will continue the strikes in the weeks to come... There will be no respite and no truce," he said.
The vessel, the flagship of the French navy, will take a few days to reach its destination, near Syria or Lebanon, whereas it was not due to reach the Gulf, its original destination, until next month.
On the domestic front, Hollande called for an extension of the state of emergency by three months and announced 8500 new police and judicial jobs to help counter terrorism.
A government source told AFP that those returning from Syria could be placed under house arrest and said the presidency was considering amending the constitution to allow for tougher security measures.
Five of seven known attackers have been identified after the attacks.
Meanwhile, as soft rain fell on Paris, thousands of people continued to flock to pay their respects as shrines of candles and flowers at the attack sites.
Outside the Bataclan concert hall, many people had added photographs of the victims - strikingly, most appeared to be aged under 30. | France says that the "dangerous" Salah Abdeslam is wanted in connection with Friday's attacks in Paris which killed at least 129 people. |
Barack Obama says Australia can be a partner in ensuring disputes around the South China Sea are settled peacefully.
The US president has signalled he wants to work more closely with Australia and Japan on maritime issues, including the South China Sea, as he announced $US250 million ($A352.34 million) to help Southeast Asian countries.
Mr Obama has made the "pivot" to the Asia-Pacific a core part of his strategic policy, as the US seeks to ensure China abides by international rules, especially in the South China Sea where some territory is disputed by neighbouring countries.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Mr Obama discussed freedom of navigation and maritime rules during wide-ranging talks in their first leader-level meeting on the sidelines of the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation forum in Manila on Tuesday.
Mr Obama said since neither the US nor Australia had claims over the waters, it was important they worked together.
"Simply to uphold the basic principle that these issues should be resolved by international norms and rule of law, and peacefully settled," he told reporters in Manila on Tuesday.
Mr Turnbull said both sides agreed that "big changes" in the region should occur peacefully and in accordance with international norms.
"That's absolutely vital for the continued peace and security of our region."
The South China Sea is crucial for trade and the flow of resources.
APEC members China, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and the Philippines have rival claims, and Australia recently backed the right of the US to sail a warship within 12 nautical miles of one of China's artificial islands there.
Before the meeting, Mr Obama toured the flagship of the Philippines Navy that operates missions around the disputed Spratly Islands.
The BRP Gregorio del Pilar is a former US coast guard ship acquired by the Philippines in 2011.
The president also announced funding for the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia and Malaysia to improve their maritime capabilities.
"My visit here underscores our shared commitment to the security of the waters of this region and to the freedom of navigation," Mr Obama said.
The Philippines will get two more ships out of the deal - a research vessel to map territorial waters and a coast guard cutter able to conduct long-endurance patrols.
The plan also involves co-ordinating with Australia and Japan on maritime security "to align and synchronise regional security and law enforcement assistance programs for maximum effect".
The US will lift the ban on some of the "maritime-related lethal capabilities" of Vietnam, which will allow that country to operate more closely with the US, Australian and other navies. | The United States has launched a $US250 million program to boost the maritime capabilities of a number of Southeast Asian nations. |
Deloitte predicted that sales would rise between 4 percent and 4.5 percent in the November to January period, to $963 billion to $967 billion. That's in line with the 4.5 percent the firm saw last year.
Alix Partners forecast sales would increase 4.1 percent to 4.9 percent from last year, when the effects of Superstorm Sandy dampened retail sales growth.
Meanwhile, ShopperTrak forecast that retail revenue would rise only 2.4 percent this holiday season.
Online sales seen more robust
The NRF's digital division expects online sales to be more robust as savvy buyers migrate to the Web looking for deals and value. It forecast growth of 13 percent to 15 percent—up to $82 billion—in November and December. Its prediction last year was for online growth of 12 percent.
(Read more: Amazon bucks the cautious holiday hiring trend)
This is roughly in line with Deloitte's expectations for 12.5 percent to 13 percent growth in nonstore sales, which include online, catalog and interactive TV purchases.
As retailers begin to ramp up their seasonal hiring for the holidays, the NRF expects nowhere near last year's hiring frenzy. It projects hiring growth of between 0 percent and 8 percent, or between 720,000 to 780,000 workers, compared with last year's 13 percent gain in seasonal employees.
Retailers are proceeding cautiously so far, with GameStop, Kohl's and Toys R Us planning to add roughly the same number of extra workers they did last year and Target announcing that it will add fewer.
Several companies, including Amazon, Wal-Mart and Macy's, singled out plans for their online fulfillment hiring as Web shopping continues to outpace overall sales growth for many stores.
—By CNBC's Katie Little. Follow her on Twitter @KatieLittle. | Faced with a slow-growing economy, consumers will spend marginally more than last year, according to the National Retail Federation forecast. |
· Go to: part two | part three
Evolution has quickened to freakish speed, it seems, looking at the creature with multiple bodies, phalluses for noses and anuses for mouths that Jake and Dinos Chapman created in 1995 and named Zygotic Acceleration, Biogenetic, Desublimated Libidinal Model (Enlarged x 1000). Sometimes it feels as if hyper-mutation is what has happened to British art in the two decades since the Turner prize was invented; as if our art has been transformed with a brutal violence, by disruptive leaps, to become unrecognisable. The land of JMW Turner has become another country, another biological laboratory.
Yet the monsters have been with us for a long time, their eggs patiently nurtured in British culture. Their 19th-century grandparents can be found sulking among the shrubs in Crystal Palace Park, south London. Here, behind neat low fences, an iguanodon, with its horned nose, grimaces at the boating lake. An ichthyosaurus lies motionless in the water. They were made of brick and iron in 1854 and a banquet was held inside one of the hollow creatures, copious toasts made to the discoveries of the fossil hunters, the burgeoning empire of palaeontology. Today the dinosaurs in Crystal Palace Park are out of date, their anatomies reckoned inaccurate. And yet the monsters among the flowers constitute one of the most fascinating instances of public sculpture in Britain.
But, you may ask, is it art?
The question returns, naggingly, as you contemplate the innumerable dead flies of Damien Hirst's 1990 installation A Thousand Years. On a warm autumn day, it's a sad spectacle. Every single fly inside the divided glass tank that is supposed to contain myriads of buzzing insects, drawn from the chamber in which they are born into the one that contains a cow's head and an "insect-o-cutor", has passed away. No - one set of tiny legs twitches for a while, then stops. A big wet eyeball looks back at you. The cow's severed head is still gloved in soft brown fur; if the flies were alive they would have stripped it red by now. Instead of swarming there is stasis. This is a dead planet, silent and dry. The bottom of the tank, whose sides are yellow with fly shit, is a black shrivelled carpet. If A Thousand Years is an image of human history, or natural history, it has come to an end.
The question has hummed over the creations, collections and gestures of Damien Hirst and his contemporaries ever since Hirst was shortlisted for the Turner prize in 1992. When we ask, "is it art?" there is, implicitly, a contrast with the older British art that everyone knows to be art: with the paintings of Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon, of JMW Turner and John Constable, of Thomas Gainsborough and William Hogarth. It has been ritually mentioned as an irony that Turner, of all painterly painters, should have had his name hijacked by the prize that, since it was founded in the mid-1980s - and especially since it was relaunched in 1991 with an upper age limit of 50 - has become identified with all that is found, filmed, unlaundered, pickled and switched on and off in British art.
And yet the historical ground beneath our feet may not be as stable as we think. The great tradition of British painting is not the secure museum art we assume but a difficult, odd, eccentric phenomenon, never entirely understood or wholly liked by outsiders and, most interestingly of all, never considered simply as art. There always has been, in British art, a tendency to elide the aesthetic and the scientific, beauty and hard fact. Far from a violent departure, the art of the Turner prize era is a distillation of some of British art's most characteristic substances. | Modern art has never been so popular - or so controversial. Fans of 'proper' sculpture and paintings 'that, you know, look like something' are outraged by Damien Hirst's pickled cows, Tracey Emin's filthy bed, Martin Creed's empty room. But the moaning won't change the facts, says Jonathan Jones: these are the direct descendants of Constable, Stubbs and Turner. |
■ Foo Fighters with Mighty Mighty Bosstones and Mission of Burma (July 18, Fenway Park)
■ Butch Walker (May 4, Wilbur Theatre)
■ D’Angelo, Slayer, Florence + the Machine, Billy Joel (June 13-14, Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival)
■ The Mavericks (Feb. 19, Wilbur Theatre)
■ Don Henley (Oct. 18, Ryman Auditorium)
James Reed and Sarah Rodman look at some of the big stories in the music world in 2015.
■ Lisa Fischer (April 5, Wilbur Theatre)
■ Chris Cornell (Oct. 21, Shubert Theatre)
■ Newport Folk Festival (July 24-26, Fort Adams State Park)
■ Eric Church with Chris Stapleton (April 30, TD Garden)
■ Betty Buckley (March 13, Scullers Jazz Club) | Sarah Rodman’s top 10 concerts of 2015, including Foo Fighters at Fenway and Lisa Fischer at the Wilbur Theatre. |
‘I have a skin disease called psoriasis that I’ve had since I was a kid and I’m very comfortable with it. When I was a kid, my parents were afraid I’d get depressed about it because kids are really mean, especially when you stand out. So my mother said to me, “Rick, so you don’t get upset, why don’t you make a list of all the good things that there are about having a skin disease?” And I was, like, OK. And this is what I came up with. If I’m ever in a plane crash or a disaster and the survivors are forced to eat each other . . . I’m all right. I don’t look delicious.’
Canavan hosts Friday nights, including New Year’s Night, at the Comedy Studio in Harvard Square, Cambridge. | Rick Canavan tells a joke. |
updated 01/09/2016 AT 04:40 PM EST
•originally published 01/09/2016 AT 02:10 PM EST
There was apparently no date night for
Instead, the couple spent their Friday night getting some quality time in with friends.
Jenner, 18, spent her evening
at Rosti Café in Calabasas.
The reality star ditched her typical glammed up look for a more
outfit for the night out. She donned a pair of black leggings with a matching black bomber jacket and Yeezy boots. She wore minimal makeup and kept her hair pulled back in tight french braids.
Meanwhile, Tyga, 26, also enjoyed a night out, attending the Lakers vs. Oklahoma City Thunder game in Los Angeles. The rapper was all smiles as he sat court side, cheering on the home team with a few friends.
Noel Vasquez / GC Images
The night apart comes just days after a 14-year-old aspiring model and singer claimed Tyga
Jenner has not commented on Molly O'Malia, the teen who came forward during a press conference after a tabloid published a story suggesting she and Tyga had a sexual relationship.
and that she ended their communication when he tried to meet up with her in person.
Tyga's manager Anthony Martini insisted that the artist only reached out to her to discuss signing her to his record label and claimed Molly told him she was 17.
A few days after Molly's press conference, reports surfaced that Tyga had allegedly cheated on Jenner with Brazilian model Annalu Cardoso.
Despite all the accusations, a source tells PEOPLE that the pair have not split up.
"They have been fighting but are still hanging in there," says the source.
Tyga and Jenner were most recently seen together on a
trip in Mammoth Lakes, California. | Jenner spent her Friday night hanging out with close friend Sofia Richie |
The Abbott government’s supporters and opponents of same-sex marriage are gearing up for a potential party room discussion about a free vote after the winter parliamentary recess, with a cross-party bill set to be introduced in August.
But the prime minister, Tony Abbott, played down the prospect of substantial progress, saying it was rare for private members’ bills to proceed to a vote in parliament.
Sky News reported a marriage equality bill backed by MPs from all sides of politics would be introduced into Australia’s House of Representatives on 11 August, the first sitting week after the US supreme court declared same-sex marriage legal across America.
The bill could pave the way for the Liberal party room to discuss the issue on 18 August and decide on whether to allow its MPs to vote freely on the legislation in line with their conscience. The dates reported by Sky News are consistent with the timeframe that supporters have previously flagged but party sources said the dates were not locked in.
Conservative elements will push for the party to stay firm in its opposition to same-sex marriage, saying cabinet ministers and frontbenchers should resign from their positions if they want to take a different view.
It has previously been unclear whether the decision on a free vote would be made by the Liberal party room or a joint meeting of the Coalition parties, including the Nationals.
The bill is to be backed by Liberal MPs Warren Entsch and Teresa Gambaro, with support from several backbench Labor MPs, the Greens MP Adam Bandt, and two independents, Cathy McGowan and Andrew Wilkie, the Sky News report said.
Guardian Australia understands the MPs were involved in talks during the final sitting fortnight of parliament before the winter recess.
The growing global momentum for same-sex marriage – fuelled by decisions in Ireland and the US – could make it harder for Abbott to oppose a free vote.
Abbott, a longstanding opponent of change, has previously said the whole parliament should “own” any decision on changing the Marriage Act, which defines marriage as being between a man and a woman.
The prime minister’s office reacted to the developments on Wednesday by emphasising that it was not normal for private members’ bills to proceed to a vote – a criterion for triggering a Coalition party room discussion.
“Any member can introduce a private members’ bill into the parliament but they do not come before the joint party room for discussion unless they will be voted on in the parliament,” Abbott’s spokeswoman said on Wednesday.
“It is rare for a private members’ bill to be voted on and any bill would be subject to the usual process. The prime minister’s position remains the same as it has always been and he supports the current policy that marriage is between a man and a woman. The government’s priority is strong economic management and keeping Australians safe.”
Parliament’s selection committee – chaired by the Speaker, Bronwyn Bishop – is responsible for deciding the timing and order of debate on private members’ bills. The committee includes government and opposition MPs, but the Coalition has a majority.
The NSW Liberal senator Arthur Sinodinos, who supports a free vote, told Sky News the cross-party efforts were significant because “it’s finally bringing the issue to a head”.
Sinodinos said the US supreme court decision had “no doubt added further momentum” to the push for same-sex marriage.
“At some stage it will come up in the Liberal party room and we will have to make a decision about how we handle the bill,” he said.
The Labor MP Terri Butler confirmed she was actively involved in the cross-party push.
Related: Guardian Australia survey of MPs shows same-sex marriage not a done deal
“During the last sitting of parliament I signed a document stating my intention to second a bill for marriage equality,” she said.
Gambaro also confirmed she intended to co-sponsor the bill, saying marriage was “fundamentally an expression of love and should not be an issue that divides us”. She said the issue must “be dealt with carefully, responsibly and in a respectful manner” and noted that it was yet to come before the party room or the parliament.” These processes must be followed if this issue is to be accorded the respect it deserves,” Gambaro said.
Entsch, who has been spearheading the cross-party push but is currently overseas, said he wanted the issue to be “debated in the parliament, not through the media”.
Entsch’s office said the north Queensland-based MP had long argued that “if there is to be any chance of success, this issue needs to be approached in a careful, considered and respectful manner”.
“He will not compromise this by prematurely running a debate in the media,” Entsch’s spokesman said.
“If the media wants to see this bill be successful, they should respect that decision. He has previously outlined the intention to move on this in the spring sittings, and nothing has changed.”
The Labor leader, Bill Shorten, who has introduced his own bill on marriage equality, said he welcomed the sign of progress.
“I hope it means Tony Abbott will finally grant Liberal MPs a free vote on the legislation,” he said.
“As I’ve consistently said, it’s the outcome that is important here, not whose name is on the bill. Like millions of Australians, my first and only hope here is that we can make marriage equality a reality.”
South Australian Liberal senator Cory Bernardi, who is one of the most outspoken opponents of changing the Marriage Act and of a free vote, said the party should hold firm in its “longstanding policy position”.
“It would be most unusual to change that position as a result of a private members’ bill. Private members’ bills are usually not discussed in the party room, particularly where they don’t reflect the Liberal party’s long-standing policy position,” Bernardi said.
“If we have a free vote on one of our longest-standing policy positions, then it’s legitimate to say there should be a free vote on every single policy position including 18C [of the Racial Discrimination Act], industrial relations reform, constitutional recognition of Indigenous people, and anything else you care to put.”
Bernardi said he would expect every minister to uphold the policy position the party had adopted. He said if frontbenchers wanted to advocate against existing policy “they are free to resign and do so from the backbench”.
Several ministers and assistant ministers – including Malcolm Turnbull, Simon Birmingham, Josh Frydenberg and Kelly O’Dwyer – have publicly supported same-sex marriage.
The Greens said they had been involved “in productive talks with colleagues across the political spectrum and it’s clear that support for marriage equality across the parliament is growing”.
Greens senator Janet Rice said people from all sides were working together so they could achieve a result this year.
“As the Greens have been saying, this is going to require co-operation from all sides,” she said.
“Greens senators and our member for Melbourne, Adam Bandt, will continue working cooperatively across the parliament to progress this long-overdue reform.
“It is time that the parliament caught up with the public and just got on with it.” | Same-sex marriage opponents gear up for clash over free vote for Liberals as critics demand party sticks to its guns on ‘longstanding policy’ |
“Son of Saul” opens with a sequence whose content is almost unbearable to watch, both in spite of and because of its form. The setting is the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp toward the end of World War II; the Germans are losing, which just means their machinery of slaughter is spinning faster. A prisoner named Saul (Géza Röhrig) works as a member of the infamous Sonderkommando — Jews forced to maintain the gas chambers and ovens, to sort out the personal belongings of the murdered, and to bury the bodies. In so doing, they put off their own deaths by a month or two.
A new shipment of prisoners arrives for extermination. The camera keeps Saul in the center of the frame, held in shallow focus as unspeakable things happen just beyond our line of sight. We hear the doors slam shut. We hear a slow, agonizing tidal wave of human screams that takes forever to build to the breaking point. Then silence. Then the cleaning up. Then the process begins all over again.
Few movies have gone here, for the simple reason that visualizing obscenity runs the risk of diminishing it. Should some things remain unseen? Claude Lanzmann’s epic 1985 documentary “Shoah” decreed as much, matching filmed testimony of survivors to modern-day footage of empty camps. “The Grey Zone,” a 2001 drama by director Tim Blake Nelson featuring a Hollywood cast, rubbed our noses in a re-enacted reality of the Sonderkommando, to mixed results.
The Hungarian director László Nemes, in a nervy and largely successful filmmaking debut, takes a middle path. “Son of Saul” details the absurdist efforts of its hero to give one young boy a proper Jewish burial amid an endless parade of anonymous death. It proposes that, in a universe that has entirely lost its bearings, one futile act of morality is better than no act at all.
Working with cinematographer Mátyás Erdély, Nemes keeps Saul at the center of that frame throughout the film’s 107-minute running time, wavering in and out of close-up, the action unfolding in layers of focus that reveal bits of the horror but never its totality. This approach renders the men and women with whom Saul comes into contact over one night of chaos and killing as individuals, and unforgettable ones. And it denies us — or rescues us from — the abstraction of crowds, honoring the dictum that the death of one man is a tragedy while the death of millions is a statistic. (Which Joseph Stalin did not say, no matter what the Internet tells you.)
It’s also a gimmick, a story-telling conceit, and as powerfully as “Son of Saul” uses its withholding camera eye as a way to imagine the unimaginable, there are moments — more than a few — when you feel the filmmaking rather than the film. At times, that’s a relief. But it’s also a critical reservation. Nemes successfully avoids Holocaust kitsch, but he courts the flame.
You may not mind, so far does this movie go into the abyss while retaining a hold on its humanism — so fully does it ask us to fill in the blanks of a living, dying world beyond the reach of its vision. The boy Saul wants to bury is one of the few to survive the gas chambers, only to be finished off by one of the Auschwitz doctors; it’s a final outrage that seems to spur this fierce, solemn little man — this nobody — into a quest to find a rabbi.
The scene is out of Dante. The Russian army is about to overwhelm the camps even as trains arrive from the west bearing more men, women, and children. The Sonderkommando, a legion made up of desperate opportunists and even more desperate fighters, is planning an uprising. In his search for ritual and absolution, Saul attaches himself to one person, then another, then another, carrying the boy’s corpse around like the sins of man, and in this way Nemes overcomes his cramped cinematic gambit to allow us to gradually see the whole camp and the people in it.
The film has been nominated for a foreign language Oscar, Hungary’s first; it’s considered the front-runner to win. That, obviously, is a triviality next to the experience of “Son of Saul” itself. The film errs here and there, such as when it seems to step off the high wire separating actuality from allegory to explain the title — suddenly, we’re required to calculate the odds of coincidence more than we should. But on the whole it’s daring and committed, and in Röhrig’s tremendously focused performance, it honors all the saints we’ll never know. And that’s worth any risk.
Directed by László Nemes. Written by Nemes and Clara Royer. Starring Géza Röhrig. At Kendall Square, West Newton. 107 minutes. R (disturbing violent content, some graphic nudity). In Magyar, Yiddish, and German, with subtitles. | Unbearably powerful ‘Son of Saul’ is hard to look at — and even harder to turn away from. |
I'm standing in a lift. It all seems normal enough. I lean against the brushed steel of the elevator as it purrs along to a monotonous voice declaring, "Lift going up." Somewhere on my journey between the ground floor and second floor of London's Hayward gallery, something surreal takes over. The harmless voice of the lift is hijacked by the resonant tones of a monkey describing its intimate personal life to me. Welcome to the demented cosmos of artist David Shrigley.
My first glimpse of the peculiar is his work Ostrich. A stuffed bird, mounted on a podium and neatly decapitated, provides an insight into the brilliant, comic and raw absurdity of this exhibition. If Michael Jackson and Bubbles were to open a department store, this is probably what it would look like: a headless squirrel, a stuffed terrier holding an "I'm Dead" sign, a slice of Black Forest gateau and a vase of toenail clippings. Modern art is always the subject of debate. Is it really art? Or can anyone just casually nail a Rich Tea biscuit to a wall, charge people to view it and declare it a satirical take on the ways of the world?
There's the absurd: a giant teacup the diameter of a rose bush, brimming with what looks like Earl Grey. Then there's the visual pun: a stepladder that has been stepped on and destroyed. And there are insider jokes for artists – a two-minute animation of a finger flicking a light switch, a mocking tribute to Martin Creed's The Lights Going On and Off.
But every now and again there is a connection between art and reality that is more than just a joke. I see a selection of miniature framed photographs on a wall. To look at them, I'm forced to crouch down and lie on the floor, earning disapproving glances from gallery visitors. They all symbolise smallness. Images of thumbs, pinkies and other tiny implements are displayed. Then, moving into obscurity, Shrigley adds a picture of Evo Stik adhesive. He's got me looking, and that's what it's all about. There are keys on hooks, signs saying "Look at me", a metal gate telling me not to linger. I crawl through a tiny gateway and peer through a hole in the wall to spy on inflatable worms. It's like being Alice in Wonderland. Drink me, eat me! And Shrigley is the White Rabbit.
I am drawn in by a work called Dead and Dying. This is a mass of little bodies made of clay. You could find it comic or tragic. They are deformed, each one only three inches long, each moribund figure a sombre grey. Some are praying, kneeling on their scrawny and feeble knees. Their distorted hands clutch their damaged heads, their melancholic faces gouged out by Shrigley's hand. It offers an angle on the world – that pain and anguish occur too regularly, that death is omnipresent. It's reminiscent of Pompeian plaster casts, the final positions of the poor souls who perished there. His clay victims seem just as powerful.
Shrigley is best known for his cartoons, and one wall displays more than 50 of them. The sketches are naively drawn, but the meaning and the punchlines are adult. One bears the title, "The lecture you gave was not well received", over a crowd of stickmen shouting "Boring", "Rubbish" and, "I want to kill you." This mirrors the way Shrigley presents his art, and the way he expects us to react as an audience. Boring it is not. Rubbish? Well, you decide. And don't worry David, I don't want to kill you.
• Read all the young critics competition-winning entries here
• Freddie Holker runs a blog for teenagers who write about the arts at angrywordsblog.blogspot.com/ | Is David Shrigley's show a modern Wonderland? Freddie Holker, winner of the Guardian's 2011 young arts critics competition, gives his verdict |
FORTUNE — Dexia is a little-known Belgian bank that has recently made headlines because it is struggling with funding problems, meaning that investors are reluctant to loan the bank the short-term money that it needs for day-to-day operations. It’s a problem that several of Europe’s banks have been facing, but the situation has gotten so bad for Dexia that it may need a government-sponsored rescue — its second since 2008.
“Dexia is the first casualty of the inertia over Europe’s sovereign debt crisis,” writes Otto Dichtl, director of financials at Knight Capital. Dichtl adds that France and Belgium have guaranteed all of Dexia’s existing debt and could completely restructure the bank in response to funding pressures.
Despite the government guarantees, bond investors are abandoning Dexia as well as France and Belgium sovereign debt. French and Belgian bonds were trading lower than the German benchmark, and credit default swaps on both countries have widened. Meanwhile, investors are dumping Dexia shares.
Clearly a Dexia rescue isn’t a solution, but the beginning of a larger problem. For starters, a government bailout and restructuring could actually impair the bank. “The key problem for Dexia in this respect is the likely significant difference between book values of many of its assets compared to actual trading levels,” Dichtl writes. This means that selling assets right now could crystallize losses and threaten Dexia’s solvency.
And rescuing Dexia is the start of a larger, painful acknowledgment that governments may no longer be in control of Europe’s debt issues.
If we’ve learned anything from 2008, it is that government acknowledgement of severe problems — even in the form of intervention — will make investors even less willing to fund other institutions that are perceived as troubled. It begins with a lack of faith in one institution, not unlike what we saw when the markets forced Bear Stearns into the arms of JPMorgan. And then you see a chain reaction of liquidity problems and government rescues as investors shun a wider circle of intertwined lenders and borrowers. In Europe, this could mean that the markets force radical (and unwieldy) restructurings of both banks and of sovereign debts.
In the case of Europe’s banks, we could easily see problems at financial institutions swamp the balance sheets of Europe’s governments, an event that the fragile global economy is ill equipped to absorb. For example, Dexia’s total liabilities alone mount to 1.5 times Belgium’s gross domestic product and 1.2 times Belgium government debt, according to Knight Capital. Banco Santander’s total liabilities equal 1.1 times Spanish GDP.
Societe General’s total liabilities are equal to 58% of French GDP and BNP Paribas’ total liabilities equal 97% of French GDP. Total liabilities at SocGen, BNP, and Credit Agricole amount to 2.4 times French GDP and 2.6 times French government debt.
The point, as Knight points out, is that Europe’s banks could soon be a terrible liability on these sovereign economies; and we won’t see confidence restored without a comprehensive policy response that addresses both financial sector and sovereign risk. Without that radical policy response, Dexia could be the spark that turns Europe’s long-smoldering banking problems into a conflagration. | Dexia isn’t a household name in banking a la Bear Stearns or Merrill Lynch, but that may soon change as the Belgian lender faces another government-sponsored rescue. |
02/12/2016 AT 12:00 PM EST
Five-year-old Quinn is a deep thinker.
She thinks a lot, for example, about love. While staring out of car windows. And her mom, Sloane Heffernan, is not allowed to take those stories with anything but absolute seriousness. "She gets so mad if I even crack a smile," Heffernan wrote on Facebook. "I've learned to take her 'stories' seriously."
In the clip, which has notched over 15,000 views on Facebook, Quinn discusses her boy problems and opines that maybe she's a little too young for a relationship.
Mom Sloane tells PEOPLE: "Quinn is 5 going on 25! She is a precocious little girl who is wise beyond her years. She has this boyfriend who she claims she's already kissed on the playground. Then another little boy started pursuing her this week and suddenly things got complicated!
"I was driving her home from preschool on Wednesday (hence the ashes on her head) when she started telling me about her 'boy troubles.' She is a born actress, so she did not hesitate when I asked if I could record the conversation.
"According to her, she broke up with the first little boy and said 'I should have told you this a long time ago!' "
Quinn: A natural philosopher and a born heartbreaker. | Quinn has already experienced the ups and downs of love |
02/15/2016 AT 04:20 PM EST
might play coy about whom she's dating, but she is willing to confirm she's on the market.
on Monday, where she seemed reluctant to dish on her love life.
Asked if she's seeing anyone special these days, a visibly flustered Hudson laughed, "I'm – no one."
"I'm no one?" DeGeneres joked before asking if she is indeed single.
"I am single," the actress confirmed with an uncomfortable giggle.
Meanwhile, Hudson continues to be romantically linked to
after the pair were spotted enjoying a candlelit dinner together at Pace restaurant in Los Angeles on Wednesday.
Hudson, 36, and Jonas, 23, "were seated at a corner table on the outdoor patio for four hours," according to
. "They were among the last patrons to leave the restaurant just after midnight, and were then seen leaving together in a limo SUV."
The rumored couple, who were
in September, were previously seen together over
weekend in San Francisco after taking a brief
"[Kate and Nick] stopped talking for a little bit just because they were sort of in different mindsets, but that happened for only a few weeks," a source
"[The] age gap is a little bit of a concern," explained the source. "There's definitely an attraction there, and they're just trying to figure out how to make sense of the situation."
Jonas recently spoke highly of Hudson in his
interview, calling the actress "amazing" and even admitting that he and Hudson are "a bizarre match-up to a lot of people."
"Kate's incredible," he said in the
, also adding, "We had an unbelievable connection as two humans who just admire things about each other, and see something in each other that's beautiful."
In January, the two were spotted on a getaway at California ski resort Mammoth Mountain. | Kate Hudson confirms on the The Ellen DeGeneres Show that she is dating |