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20160819212929

Anybody who’s seen the computer-animated “Ice Age” comedies knows that comedian-actor Ray Romano does the voice of Manny the woolly mammoth. But Romano is convinced that he doesn’t sound like himself in the movies. At least not to him. “I know it sounds to people like I’m doing my own voice,” Romano says of his tundra-treading alter-ego who returns Friday in “Ice Age: Continental Drift.” “But in my mind, I’ve tweaked the voice so Manny sounds stronger than I do, a little more commanding.” Now that’s acting. As Romano quickly notes, when asked if he’s commanding in real life, “Absolutely, 100% no . I’m intimidated! Manny and I have the same morals, the same values. But Manny isn’t afraid to kick ass. Whereas in my life, my wife beats me up regularly — metaphorically speaking.” “Continental Drift” is the fourth film in the mega-successful “Ice Age” series, which started in 2002. That first film was Romano’s debut as an animation voice (or in a movie, for that matter): “I thought I would be fired,” he says now. “It was so foreign to me. I’d come out of recording sessions and think, ‘Well, they can’t use any of that.’ Now I’m able to ease into it a little more.” “Ice Age” was enough of a hit ($176 million in the U.S., $378 million worldwide) to inspire continuing adventures for Manny and pals Diego the sabertooth tiger (Denis Leary) and Sid the sloth (John Leguizamo). “Ice Age: The Meltdown” (2006) made almost $200 million, as did 2009’s “Dawn of the Dinosaurs.” In this fourth chapter, natural history — the splitting of Earth’s land mass into individual continents — separates Manny, Diego and Sid from their loved ones by floating them away on a massive iceberg. They seek a way back to their families while overcoming pirates and other threats. The voice cast includes Queen Latifah, Jennifer Lopez, Patrick Stewart and Wanda Sykes. “There are some great new characters, particularly the small animals, who are always fun,” Romano says. “Manny’s big, but these little guys can hit and run with jokes. I’m sort of the calm center of all this craziness.” Which, in a sense, has been Romano’s persona throughout his career: just a guy from Forest Hills, Queens, trying to live his life, interrupted by the demanding characters in his family. It was the source of his standup routines, material that inspired nine seasons of his Emmy-winning sitcom “Everybody Loves Raymond.” The series, which went off the air in 2005, still plays daily (and even more often) in syndicated reruns. Residuals mean Romano doesn’t really have to work; but, as he noted in a 2008 interview, “I’m not right if I’m not doing something creatively.” Having a beloved hit series in his past is a double-edged sword for Romano’s more serious ambitions. Aside from a supporting part as a suicidal orchestra conductor with a gift for one-liners in the 2008 indie “The Last Word,” he’s had a hard time shaking his TV self, Ray Barone. “I get some scripts — my agent knows what I’m looking for,” Romano says. “But the ones I like, well, it’s hard for the director to take a leap and go with me as the character. Or else they want me, but [the film] is too much of a crap shoot — [it’s] a new director or finding the money [is hard]. “It’s baby steps. You’ve got to take them. You’re ingrained in people’s brains as Ray Barone, who’s on their TV every day. I understand that. But I’m still hoping to get the right film — or maybe I’ll write it myself.” He tried that with “Men of a Certain Age,” a dramedy series in which he co-starred with Andre Braugher and Scott Bakula for two seasons beginning in 2009 on TNT. The series — in which he played a party-store owner coping with divorce, kids, a gambling addiction and a dream of making the PGA’s Senior Tour — gave him a chance to show a more varied palette as an actor. “They gave us a place to try this show,“ Romano says of TNT appreciatively. “But then the business side took over. And it is a business. We looked for another network... but the ones where it would have fit want their own products. And, for other small networks, it was too expensive.” Having put in guest-starring turns on sitcoms starring his former “Raymond” co-stars Brad Garrett (“’Til Death”) and Patricia Heaton (“The Middle”), Romano returns to TV this fall in a guest-starring arc on NBC’s “Parenthood,” as a love interest for Lauren Graham. “It’s the closest thing I’ve found that has that sensibility and tone we had on ‘Men of a Certain Age,’” he says. Still, some things never change. Romano still does stand-up, though only about 10 weekends a year in Las Vegas, where he and pal Kevin James take turns headlining combined shows. And he retains his feeling for Queens, the setting for his sitcom and the borough where he grew up and still returns to visit family. “I still feel that’s my home,” he says. “That is the community that I’m from. I like it here in L.A., but I always felt like the core of who I am comes from where I grew up in Queens. “My mom still lives in the house I grew up in. And no, it’s not that I’m cheap! I bought her, like, two other houses. But she won’t live in them! “Just to go out on and live on the block and have that sense of a bond you have with everyone around you, riding your bike, things like that — that so doesn’t happen anymore. I feel like that part of a childhood was missing for my kids. Of course, who am I kidding? Kids don’t go out now, there’s too much technology to distract them!”

http://web.archive.org/web/20160819212929id_/http://www.nydailynews.com:80/entertainment/movies/ray-romano-returns-woolly-mammoth-manny-ice-age-continental-drift-article-1.1108585

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Ray Romano returns as mammoth Manny in 'Ice Age: Continental Drift'

Anybody who’s seen the computer-animated “Ice Age” comedies knows that comedian-actor Ray Romano does the voice of Manny the woolly mammoth.

20160903174451

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has declared a "state of lawlessness" in the country after 14 people were killed in a bomb blast at a night market in his home city. Duterte's declaration came as the Abu Sayyaf militant group claimed responsibility for the late Friday attack that also injured 71 people, with the extremists warning of more attacks in the coming days. The Philippine leader stressed that he had not declared martial law, but that the move would allow him to ask the military to conduct operations according to his instructions. "These are extraordinary times," he told reporters during a visit before dawn at the site of the bomb attack in the southern city of Davao, where he used to be the mayor. "I can order soldiers to search premises." Placing the country under a state of lawlessness empowers the president to call on the military to help the police in anti-crime operations. In a statement, the Office of the Presidential Spokesperson pointed out that the declaration has "limitations" as the president can only order the armed forces to quell violence. Martial law can only be declared in certain situations, the statement continued. "Only if there is an invasion or a rebellion, and when public safety is at risk, can he (the president) suspend the writ of habeas corpus or declare martial law." The statement called on Philippine citizens to be vigilant against "those who wish to create chaos". Alan Aguilar, an eyewitness who was eating dinner at the night market, said the explosion was deafening and everybody took cover. Following the blast he heard cries of help and saw smoke billowing from the area of the attack. "It was frightening," he said. "There were some people who were not injured but who were walking around aimlessly, as if they were disoriented and didn't know where to go." Security forces in Metropolitan Manila have been placed on highest alert amid concerns of more attacks. Police forces have been beefed up in airports and other public places and institutions.

http://web.archive.org/web/20160903174451id_/http://www.9news.com.au/world/2016/09/03/02/30/blast-kills-10-people-in-philippines

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Philippines in 'state of lawless violence'

At least 10 people have been killed in a blast at a market in the home city of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte.

20160907141901

The Northern Territory royal commission into the detention of young indigenous children could be a watershed moment for Australian justice, the lawyer for one abused boy says. The inquiry being led by co-commissioners Margaret White and Mick Gooda sat on Tuesday to outline what would happen over the next few months. Lawyer Peter O'Brien appeared in the ABC program which sparked the royal commission, after showing footage of youths in Darwin's Done Dale centre being gassed, stripped naked, hooded and tied to restraint chairs. "This is a watershed moment potentially, not only in the history of detention in the NT but potentially also right across the country," he told reporters outside the Supreme Court in Darwin. Mr O'Brien said the treatment of two of his clients, Dylan Voller and Jake Roper, in the system was "deplorable" and that they were willing to give evidence. Mr Gooda and Ms White plan to proceed "with a high degree of cultural competence" to create a safe environment for people giving evidence to the commission, which will examine the treatment of juvenile offenders over 10 years. "Many wrongs have been committed in the past which have caused great trauma and lasting damage to many people," he said in his opening statement on Tuesday. "Despite being a painful process, for the community to move forward, it must come to understand where these wrongs have occurred and ensure those wrongs are not repeated." The commission will look at the years between August 2006 and August 2016. "There can be no one in our community who is not anxious to find out if there are ways to bring about a significant reduction in child offending," Ms White said in her opening statement. Before the commission was first announced, Mr Gooda was criticised for being biased after he called for the sacking of the now ousted NT Country Liberal Party government. He again rejected this, assuring stakeholders of his impartiality. "I wish to assure those people and the community that I will look only at the evidence and other information given to the commission and that nothing extraneous will affect the conclusions I reach with my co-commissioner," he said. The commissioners will start hearing public evidence from next month, ahead of a final report to be delivered by the end of March 2017. They've already visited Darwin, Alice Springs and Kalkarindji and met with more than two dozen stakeholder groups. The fallout of the Don Dale youth justice scandal over the past six weeks has been wide-ranging. The CLP government lost the minister in charge John Elferink before being ousted by Labor at the August 27 NT election.

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NT royal commission 'a watershed moment'

A directions hearing into the royal commission sparked by the Don Dale juvenile centre controversy will be held today.

20160917132243

At a time when local authorities are being forced to make cuts, it might seem strange for Brent, the most deprived borough in west London, to be unveiling a new £90m council headquarters. But the gleaming new civic centre, which stands in the shadow of Wembley stadium, is no ordinary council office. Designed by Hopkins, architects of the palatial Portcullis House at Westminster, it is conceived as a 21st-century machine for delivering public services – and making money. Bringing together every council department of one of London's largest boroughs – currently housed in 14 buildings scattered across the area – it combines the functions of a town hall and conference centre, wedding venue and public library, cafe and "customer service centre". Before its opening, it has been declared the most sustainable public building in the UK, complete with a boiler that runs on fish oil. Aktar Choudhury, the centre's programme director, said: "By bringing everything together on one site, this building will save us £2.5m a year." If public buildings reflect the mores of their time, from the paternalist grandeur of Victorian town halls to the stripped deco styling of 1930s modernity, then Brent Civic Centre is an apt beacon of our age of streamlining and efficiencies. Approached from the north, along the ceremonial boulevard to the stadium, the building stands as a grim cliff of modular units, a stack of glassy grey boxes strapped together with a hi-tech array of louvres and tensile wires. Far from screaming "town hall", it looks like something from an out-of-town business park. To the south-east, this L-shaped block of offices embraces a circular drum of civic functions. An enormous roof of inflated polymer cushions sails above it, "a metaphor for bringing all of the departments together under one roof", according to the architect, David Selby. From outside it may have all the charm of Stansted airport, but within, the building's interior has a magisterial scale. Compared with Brent's current town hall – a modest brick affair built in 1940 – walking into the civic centre feels like arriving at the parliament of a small nation state. The entrance opens into a voluminous atrium, where a vast flight of steps cascades from the first-floor cafe. "This is our public amphitheatre," said Choudhury, describing how the planned programme of events, from lunchtime marimba music to choral recitals, is designed to "blur the boundaries between the community and the council". But, with eight floors of office windows looking on to the stage, this blurred boundary may prove a little distracting. The building is naturally ventilated, with exposed concrete soffits to provide thermal mass, one of the many features, along with bat boxes and planted balconies, that allow the project to achieve its top environmental rating of "Breeam outstanding" under a globally recognised measure of sustainable building design. There is space for about 2,000 staff, although they may not all have room to sit down at once. This is a world of hot-desking and homeworking, with only eight seats for every 10 people. Pairs of floors are linked with fun spiral staircases winding through double-height atria – "an opportunity for people from different departments to interact and have those crucial informal conversations," says Selby. The public heart of the building is across the atrium in a timber-clad barrel: an expansive ground-floor library, above which stands a community hall. Here, columns support an elaborate ceiling of beams and bracing, a cat's cradle that recalls the civic form of a gothic chapterhouse or medieval roundhouse. "It has a sprung wooden floor," said Choudhury. "We are particularly famous for our tea dances." While such activities are part of the equation, Brent also has its eye on more lucrative uses. On the level above sits the crowning room, where the walls taper up in triangulated panels to a striking glazed lantern. This is the council chamber, but most of the time it will be rented out as a conference facility – one of more than 20 spaces in the building that can be hired for corporate functions. From the foyers to the amphitheatre, hi-spec boardrooms to winter gardens, galleries to banqueting halls, the centre has been designed as a clever sequence of money-making possibilities. Weddings are also set to be a big earner, with space for up to three ceremonies to take place at once in a wedding garden, lined with pleached lime trees. With its metal fence and tensile PVC gazebo, it looks to have all the romance of getting married in a petrol station. The slightly soulless, sterile quality is not confined to this one building alone. The civic centre is the first part of a wider plan by Make architects, in which the surrounding six hectares will be furnished with marching blocks of shops, houses and offices, joining a new Hilton hotel, student housing and designer retail hub. Whatever the nature of this generic soup, Brent's functional civic machine will always stand as a fitting monument to our corporate times.

http://web.archive.org/web/20160917132243id_/https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/jun/03/brent-council-civic-centre-opens

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Brent council's new £90m civic centre seen as machine for making money

Centre designed to bring council functions under one roof – and as a clever sequence of money-making possibilities

20161122182016

The unrest that's driven the election of Donald Trump and the UK's shock Brexit decision could be bubbling away in Australia. That's the finding of a new survey showing quality of government and politicians is the second biggest problem facing Australia. It's ranked higher than terrorism and national security, immigration concerns and health and education, according to the latest annual mapping social cohesion report from The Scanlon Foundation on Tuesday. The economy and unemployment consistently ranks as the top problem and 2016 was no different, although the number of people who ranked it number one was down five per cent. More than 30 per cent believe the system of government needs major change. The survey of 1500 Australians also found a significant increase in the number of people reporting discrimination because of their race or religion, rising from 15 per cent in 2015 to 20 per cent in 2016 - the highest proportion since the survey began nine years ago. Overall, social cohesion has fallen, to 89.3 from 92.5 in 2015. But report author Professor Andrew Markus insists Australia's "Trump" elements remain at the margins. Australia is more like Canada and New Zealand at the moment than the US and UK, he says. "People are looking at the American election and what happened in the UK with Brexit and they're asking if that's happening here," he told AAP. "What about Canada? Is there much turmoil there? The answer would be no. "What about New Zealand? It seems to be reasonably stable except for the earthquakes." The report also found 80 per cent of Australians support euthanasia for people suffering terminal illness. It found 83 per cent support medicinal marijuana, 67 per cent support marriage equality and 70 per cent support reduced reliance on coal for electricity.

http://web.archive.org/web/20161122182016id_/http://www.9news.com.au/national/2016/11/22/00/07/survey-shows-trump-brexit-effect-in-aust

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Survey shows Trump, Brexit effect in Aust

Australians have ranked the quality of government and our politicians as the second biggest issue facing the nation, according to a survey.

20161224130303

Happy holidays to our many, many close friends and relatives! So very much has happened this year, big wonderful things we can’t wait to share with you in this, our annual holiday letter. Of course some of you have already seen our announcements and celebrations as they’ve appeared on our popular Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram feeds, but here’s our fabulous, fun, and generally fantastic year all in one place. We’ve been quite busy, as you’ll see — no sitting back lazily in front of the TV for us!! First of all, our dear cousins Edith and Mary both had excellent news to share this year. Edith and her beau, Bertie, finally got hitched. So proud! And Mary is pregnant with her second child, who’ll join her beloved Georgie (who, by the way, has such a lovely connection with his manny, Thomas “Bawwow”). What is Mary doing in the meantime, before the baby comes? She’s taking a crazy road trip, but she’s on good behavior for sure. And how could I not mention our loyal maid, Anna, who’s had so very many legal troubles in recent years? She now has a child, a boy, after a tricky pregnancy that kept us all on edge. Get The Weekender in your inbox: The Globe's top picks for what to see and do each weekend, in Boston and beyond. Martha, our cherished friend, has up and moved to Russia! We are so delighted for her, and only wish she’d found more time to celebrate before her departure. She’s one of the most studious of secretaries, but she’s also a dreamer who follows her unfailingly wise impulses. We may not see her for a long time, but we take pleasure knowing that she’ll be with her long-distance comrade, Nina, chilling with their feet up. On the health front, my husband’s brother, Jon, has rebounded from his dire illness thanks to the fine work of Dr. Melisandre, who, by the way, retired after Jon’s case and moved south. We’re so glad that, at her very advanced age, she was still practicing when we needed her! She sure knows how to work her medical magic. Also, Jon, who was adopted, made a lot of progress on finding his birth parents! Mazel tov! Speaking of finding birth parents, our nephew Randall, an extremely successful money guy, tracked down his father, William, and they’ve become quite close. Just thinking about them spending time together, so dear to each other now, with Randall so tall and William down low, and with Randall’s wife and two daughters also close by, makes us cry. Almost everything about that darn Pearson wing of the family makes us cry — what a clan! We miss Randall’s brother Kevin on “The Manny,” but we can’t wait to see him in his next triumphant career move, a play called “Back of an Egg.” Changes, changes. So, you all remember our great and brilliant friend Bernard? He has changed his name! He’s now going by Arnold, for reasons that are very deep and personal for him and far too complicated to go into here. And Delores, part of that same group of friends? She, too, has changed her name! She now prefers to go by Wyatt, also for reasons too complicated to go into here. She’s a real doll, that lady, as well as a great host (we spent a week out west visiting her!). She is growing into more and more of an activist as time goes on, breaking out of life’s predictable loops. You go Wyatt! We know you’re all hoping for word of our cousins the Pfeffermans, since they’ve been in such transition of late. Let us say that we’ve seen Shelly’s one-woman show, “To Shel and Back,” and it is spectacular. It’s fun but it’s poignant, it’s musical but it’s bittersweet, it’s dark but it’s jubilant, yeah. She and Buzz broke up, alas, but Shelly has 100 Twitter followers and counting, so there. We don’t like to brag, as you all know. Christmas is not a time for boastful self-regard. But we have to admit, our growing friendship with billionaire Bobby Axelrod — we call him just Axe — has been awfully exciting. He took us to Quebec to see Metallica! Yes, I’m sure you’ve all read about his ongoing war with US Attorney Chuck Rhoades. Men! Anyhow, Axe has decided to do a complete redo of his offices, so he’s taken the walls down to their studs. We’re sure it will be gorgeous. We’re all tired of the election, I know, but we’d be remiss if we didn’t at least mention the biggest event of the year. We weren’t “with her,” which many of you know since we prayed openly that he would prevail. He is the kind of leader we need, the kind who refuses to play by the rules, a man who will make a lot of necessary changes to the status quo. OK, so he likes the ladies. That’s all just “bro” talk. We promise you, Jonah Ryan is going to be the best Congressman that New Hampshire has ever had. On that note, we’d like to wish all of you happy holidays and best wishes for the coming year, which, we hope, will be as special, wonderful, winning, spectacular, and bountiful as 2016 was for us.

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My, what a year it’s been for our TV family!

A holiday letter with so much to share — about Mary and Edith, Jon, the Pfeffermans, and so many more.

20060617095702

If you want to become a conductor, found an orchestra. It's a career path that women in New York, in particular, have followed for some time. Eve Queler founded the Opera Orchestra of New York in 1971 and has established a secure niche here. Marin Alsop founded Concordia, a chamber orchestra, in 1984 and has gone on to a significant international career. Jennifer Taylor for The New York Times Alondra de la Parra with the Philharmonic Orchestra of the Americas. The latest entrant in the lists is Alondra de la Parra, 25, who founded the Philharmonic Orchestra of the Americas in 2004, and conducted it on Thursday night at Alice Tully Hall in a predominantly Latin American program. Founding an orchestra takes one skill set; conducting it takes another. The question is whether Ms. de la Parra's energy and ambition are of the kind that can fuel a larger career or will keep her in her own smaller orbit. On the evidence of Thursday's concert, she has a lot to work with. The program was appealing, bristling with (sometimes unfocused) energy and rough in places, not unlike an indie film made on credit-card debt by talented 20-somethings. In an admirable display of her orchestra-running skills, Ms. de la Parra created a buzz for her concert by commissioning a concerto — on three months' notice — from a Venezuelan composer, Paul Desenne, for another Venezuelan, the double-bass player Edicson Ruiz. Each of the three movements of the resulting Bass Concerto set, and held, a mood, chopping at a theme in the first movement ("Sisifo"), swaying with languor in the second ("La Noche"). It was an inoffensive showpiece for Mr. Ruiz, who plays with an easy fluidity and a relative generosity of tone — relative because the low growl of a double bass remains hard to hear over an orchestra, and the instrument has to be amplified to serve as an effective solo voice. But Mr. Ruiz made it sing. The rest of the program was 20th century all the way. It included works by Mozart Camargo Guarnieri; Astor Piazzolla ("Tangazo," a long orchestral exegesis on the tango); Silvestre Revueltas (a suite from the score for the film "Redes," given Teutonic majesty in an arrangement by Erich Kleiber); and the overture to "West Side Story." Ms. de la Parra seems slightly better at juxtaposing works than at fully animating them. The lack of variety in the Desenne piece could be attributed partly to her inexperience; a kind of sameness crept into some of the other pieces, notably the Piazzolla. The Bernstein was a thick, energetic tangle of sound, of which she didn't seem entirely in control, and yet unleashing the excitement counts for a lot. It remains to be seen what she will make of herself, but it could be fun to hear as she finds out.

http://web.archive.org/web/20060617095702id_/http://www.nytimes.com:80/2006/06/10/arts/music/10tull.html?ex=1307592000&en=8bc58c4bbe6e594f&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

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A Conductor's Do-It-Yourself Project: Philharmonic Orchestra of the Americas

Under the direction of Alondra de la Parra, this orchestra's program bristled with (sometimes unfocused) energy for its Thursday night performance at Alice Tully Hall.

20100327045152

Friday, January 22th 1999, 2:05AM When Thomas Capano, the connected Delaware attorney convicted Sunday of killing his mistress and dumping her body in the ocean, enters Wilmington judge William Swain Lee’s courtroom for the penalty phase of his sentencing Monday, true-crime writer Ann Rule will be there waiting for him. The best-selling author, perhaps best known for “The Stranger Beside Me,” a portrait of serial killer Ted Bundy, has chosen Capano and his murder of gubernatorial aide Anne Marie Fahey as the subject of her next book. The Simon & Schuster title, due out in early 2000, will be going up against Philadelphia Inquirer reporter George Anastasia’s “The Summer Wind: The Deadly Betrayal of Anne Marie Fahey,” recently acquired by the ReganBooks division of HarperCollins. It has a tentative October 1999 release date. “I’ve followed the case from the beginning,” Rule said, “but I’m also lucky in that my readers made the choice for me. I hear from about 4,000 of them a month, and once I’d gotten a dozen ‘This is an Ann Rule book’ messages, I knew they were right.” They include the reservations clerk at the hotel where she’ll be staying in Wilmington. “When I called to book my room, he told me, ‘hundreds of people in this town are going to want to talk to you.’ ” Rule has a particular interest in the case, she said, because she graduated from high school in nearby Coltsville, Pa. “The heroes of the book will be the prosecutors and detectives, of course,” she said, “but Anne Marie Fahey’s family is just as heroic. Her siblings wouldn’t rest until their sister found justice.” Rule’s long-time Simon & Schuster editor, Fred Hills, said, “What Ann is most famous for is her psychological insight into the minds of psychopaths — and this guy is clearly a psychopath.” Rule dismissed the HarperCollins competition. “A man will write a very different book,” she said. Anastasia responded, “That’s kind of silly. It assumes I don’t have feelings. This book is about a human tradgedy, and we all have feelings and sympathy when it comes to that.” When increas-ingly techno-centric Forbes magazine lost its Silicon Valley bureau chief, Eric Nee, to rival Fortune recently, the teeth-gnashing at the monthly’s Fifth Avenue headquarters could practically be heard as far away as Palo Alto. But the magazine’s newly appointed top editor, Bill Baldwin, is retaliating. He has hired Washington Post Net expert Elizabeth Corcoran to succeed Nee. Her geek credentials are first-rate, including a Knight Science Journalism fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and four years as a member of the board of Scientific American. Glenn Close is feeling mightily attracted to biography. The Oscar-winning actress is a good friend of Ken Lipper, the investment banker and former deputy mayor who added publishing to his resume with the launch of the Lipper/Viking Penguin Lives series this month. Now the two are in talks about Close hosting several television documentaries Lipper would like to spin off from the brief biographies. The books were conceived by series editor James Atlas, whose own admittedly lengthy book on Saul Bellow comes out from Random House later this year. The idea, according to people familiar with the conversations, would be for Close to introduce each segment with an author chat. Among the Lipper writers are Marshall Frady on Martin Luther King Jr., Mary Gordon on Joan of Arc, Jane Smiley on Charles Dickens and Roy Blount Jr. on Robert E. Lee. Think a blonder, Armani-clad Alistair Cooke.

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KILLER CAPANO GETS THE RULE TREATMENT

When Thomas Capano, the connected Delaware attorney convicted Sunday of killing his mistress and dumping her body in the ocean, enters Wilmington judge William Swain Lee’s courtroom for the penalty phase of his sentencing Monday, true-crime writer Ann Rule will be there waiting for him. The best-selling author, perhaps best known for “The Stranger Beside Me,” a portrait of serial killer Ted Bundy, has chosen Capano and his murder of gubernatorial aide Anne Marie Fahey

20110712192300

BY GEORGE RUSH AND JOANNA MOLLOY With Kasia Anderson and Suzanne Rozdeba Thursday, July 25th 2002, 1:81AM Are Harrison Ford and Calista Flockhart planning a Christmas wedding? London's Daily Mail yesterday quoted Ford's longtime manager, Patricia McQueeney, as saying: "I won't talk about Calista Flockhart because we don't discuss her. But other people tell me not to be surprised if there's a wedding around Christmas." But don't send gifts - just yet. "I did not say that," McQueeney tells us. "I know better." Ford has recently been adamant about not discussing his personal life. What's more, he still hasn't wrapped up his divorce from "E.T." screenwriter Melissa Mathison. (They filed for legal separation last August.) Ford, 60, and Flockhart, 37, have been dating since the beginning of the year - often bringing along his 11-year-old daughter, Georgia, or her 1-year-old son, Liam. Last week, they took the big step of arriving hand in hand at the New York and L.A. screenings of his movie "K-19: The Widowmaker." But McQueeney swears they're not engaged. "They're a long way from that," she says. Above par at City Hall Mayor Bloomberg isn't playing nearly as much golf as he used to, back when he was just a private billionaire and not a public-service billionaire. Which may explain why the legendary Jack Nicklaus was in City Hall yesterday, offering a few pointers to the city's First Duffer. "He's been playing for five years and is still very frustrated," Nicklaus told Daily News' City Hall bureau chief Dave Saltonstall. "But he refused to divulge his handicap." Actually, the Golden Bear came to City Hall to push the golf course he is trying to build in the Bronx's Ferry Point Park, which is just under the Whitestone Bridge. Nicklaus and his team, which yesterday included former Deputy Mayor Rudy Washington, have trucked 750,000 cubic yards of fill into the park and now need a permit for 550,000 cubic yards more to fill out the Nicklaus-designed course. The problem: The 220-acre spread is built atop an old landfill that is leaking methane gas, leading to serious environmental concerns and many bad jokes about exploding golf balls. So what is the mayor's handicap? "Room 9," quipped Bloomberg communications chief Bill Cunningham, referring to the City Hall press room. Hair it is - a new Pitt. We've heard of the goatee. We've heard of the Van Dyke, of the Imperial and of muttonchops. But Brad Pitt has his own name for that growth on his face: "The [Osama] Bin Laden." Pitt, who now looks like a Chia Pet on steroids, tells us that he started letting his beard grow when he signed on to star in Darren Aronofsky's "The Fountain," a sci-fi epic that has been repeatedly postponed as Warner Bros. wrestled the director's budget down to $70 million. "We were supposed to go [to Australia] and then we weren't," Pitt said at Tuesday's L.A. premiere of his latest picture, "Full Frontal," in which he plays himself. "Then we were supposed to go again, and we weren't. Next thing I know, I've got this Bin Laden on my face." Pitt confirmed that he and his wife, Jennifer Aniston, will camp out in Australia for the shoot, which could last as long as six months. "We're gonna be there a while, but we're not moving there," he said at the film's after-party, where he was joined by Julia Roberts and her new hubby, Danny Moder; George Clooney, David Duchovny and "Full Frontal" director Steven Soderbergh. "I love my L.A." P.S. He also loves his ranch near Santa Barbara, where legend has it that he sometimes moons passing trains. Maybe Soderbergh should plan a sequel called "Brazen Backside." At home on E. Side. The Prisoner of Park Ave. seems to be stretching the boundaries of her house arrest. Diana Brooks, the former Sotheby's CEO, spotted at a Starbucks on June 28, has slipped out of her apartment again. Our spies have since caught her at a Lexington Ave. shop (appraising cashmere sweaters) and at the Gracious Home store on Third Ave., where her expert's eye was sizing up housewares. Chris Stanton, chief probation officer for the Southern District of New York, tells us that Brooks can go shopping so long as she gets permission. "We would decide whether to file a petition" with her sentencing judge, said Stanton. Brooks' lawyer, Stephen Kaufman, insists that Brooks "knows and observes the conditions" of her house arrest. As for her recent trip to Starbucks, Kaufman says, "I think she went in there to buy a pound of coffee. She has a right to buy food for her family." The spectacular views of Central Park from Nirvana Penthouse Restaurant on Central Park S. will be off limits for some four months. "The back wall of the entire 15th floor collapsed around 7 a.m. (Tuesday) morning" as a result of a rooftop construction project, said Warren Wadud, son of owner Shamsher Wadud. "We woke up to that." The family, which has run the Indian restaurant for 32 years, is trying to be upbeat. "We'll rebuild, and make it even more beautiful," Wadud added. As luck would have it, "my mom's a general contractor." ISABELLA BREWSTER, the 19-year-old college student who's just as gorgeous as her more famous sister, Jordana, economized on taxis after dancing like a wild child at the party to launch the Jordan Two3 clothing line Tuesday. Isabella left the Chelsea Piers party with "Oz" star Kirk Acevedo, easily as hunky as Jordana's boyfriend, Derek Jeter SARAH JESSICA Parker is up in Toronto with hubby Matthew Broderick, who's there shooting a new version of "The Music Man." While Broderick shines up his 76 trombones, Parker has been catching up on her movies. She checked out "About a Boy" by herself. Meanwhile, we hear the expectant couple is about ready to move into the West Village townhouse the two have spent months renovating WHICH MARRIED restaurateur arrived with a hotelier pal and 10 models at Bungalow 8 the other night? After a brief eeny-meeny-miney-mo, he left with one of the lovelies - while the innkeeper was overheard making a reservation for the naughty couple at his hotel QUEENS AND Dublin have made a love match. Richie Notar, who went from being a Studio 54 busboy to running Nobu restaurants around the world, has served up a proposal of marriage to Jane Wogan, an actress and the niece of U.K. chat show king Terry Wogan. Notar chose the Tuscan town of Porto Ercole to present the ring. "I didn't sleep for three days," he says. They're planning a fall wedding ... DONNA KARAN, Calvin Klein, Marc Jacobs and Kenneth Cole are among the 150 clothes creators contributing to the "designer garage sale" on Saturday in the Hamptons, a benefit for the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund. Kyle MacLachlan, who can't make the event because he's in a play in London, has told his wife, Desiree Gruber, that she must get him the Italjet Scooter that's up for auction. For further info check www.ocrf.org... DENNIS MILLER has kept uncharacteristically silent since the Hollywood Reporter announced his weekly HBO show would end Aug. 30 after nine years. He'll talk for the first time with Jay Leno Monday night. Perhaps he'll tell us what happened.

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IS IT REALLY 'K-19: THE WEDDINGMAKER'?

Are Harrison Ford and Calista Flockhart planning a Christmas wedding? London's Daily Mail yesterday quoted Ford's longtime manager, Patricia McQueeney, as saying: "I won't talk about Calista Flockhart because we don't discuss her. But other people tell me not to be surprised if there's a wedding around Christmas."But don't send gifts - just yet. "I did not say that,"McQueeney tells us. "I know

20120118093256

From fried chicken to mac and cheese casseroles, has made her mark on the culinary world – and in the homes of fans – with recipes that don't skimp on cheese, cream and sugar. Not to mention butter ... whole sticks of it. And even as she reveals that she is living with Type 2 Diabetes, she says it won't stop her from eating the way she wants. "I was determined to share my positive approach and not let diabetes stand in the way of enjoying my life," Deen said Tuesday in a release announcing her launch of , geared toward finding "simple ways" to manage challenges of the disease. "I'm excited to team up with Novo Nordisk on this initiative to show others that managing diabetes does not have to stop you from enjoying the things you love." first reported Deen's diabetes in April 2010, but she never confirmed or denied the diagnosis . She turns 65 Thursday. The Food Network chef with the folksy Southern drawl – and a tendency to address her fans as "Hey, y'all" – has been famously criticized for her cooking techniques. Just last summer, fellow celeb chef Anthony Bourdain the "most dangerous person to America" who's "proud of the fact that her food is f------ bad for you." she was making the announcement regarding her health, Bourdain was inundated with people "looking for quotes." And he says he "takes no pleasure" in her news, telling , he suspects she's known for a long time and been looking for a way "to position herself." "When your signature dish is hamburger in between a doughnut, and you've been cheerfully selling this stuff knowing all along that you've got Type 2 Diabetes ... It's in bad taste if nothing else," he said. "How long has she known? I suspect a very long time." Deen, it was also revealed in the release, takes Victoza – a once-daily, non-insulin injection – and continues to "make lifestyle adjustments, including lightened-up versions of her favorite recipes."

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Paula Deen Type 2 Diabetes News : People.com

Finally putting the rumors to rest, Deen says, "Diabetes does not have to stop you from enjoying the things you love"

20120508154211

John Travolta Sued By Masseur He Touched My Penis has been sued by a masseur, who claims the actor tried to have sex with him during a session. According to the lawsuit, Travolta saw the masseur's ad online, and scheduled an appointment for $200 an hour. The masseur did not know it was Travolta when the appointment was booked, but followed instructions and met up with a black Lexus SUV, which Travolta was driving. According to the suit, Travolta and the masseur, who says he saw Trojan condoms in the center console, drove to the Beverly Hills Hotel and went to Travolta's bungalow. The suit claims Travolta stripped naked, appearing semi-erect. The masseur says he told Travolta to lay down on the table and the first hour went without incident. Then, according to legal docs, Travolta began rubbing the masseur's leg, touched his scrotum and the shaft of his penis. The masseur claims he told Travolta he did not have sex with his clients, but Travolta was undeterred, offering to do a "reverse massage," adding, "Come on dude, I'll jerk you off!!!" The suit goes on to allege Travolta then masturbated and told the masseur he got to where he was "due to sexual favors he had performed when he was in his 'Welcome Back Kotter' days," adding "Hollywood is controlled by homosexual Jewish men who expect favors in return for sexual activity." The masseur -- who is only listed as John Doe -- claims Travolta called him a loser, but then doubled the hourly rate and sent him on his way. The suit seeks $2 million plus punitive damages. Travolta's reps could not be reached for comment.

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John Travolta Sued by Masseur -- He Touched My Penis

John Travolta has been sued by a masseur, who claims the actor tried to have sex with him during a session.According to the lawsuit, Travolta saw the…

20140320081722

NATICK — After years of stagnating, its sales moribund and stock slinking along in single digits, there are new signs of life at the medical device maker Boston Scientific Corp. The company, once a high-flier on Wall Street and a pioneer in medical technology, spent much of the past eight years digesting its $27.3 billion purchase in 2006 of rival Guidant Corp. But last year, a new chief executive unveiled a strategy that stressed moving into faster-growing businesses and markets. And it seems to be working. To the surprise of many investors and market watchers, Boston Scientific’s revenues are growing again, and its share price has more than doubled. “They’ve finally turned the corner,” said Danielle Antalffy, an analyst for the Boston health care investment firm Leerink Swann, who noted the modest 2 percent growth Boston Scientific recorded last year was a welcome sign. “It happened faster than I thought it would. For a long time, this turnaround was very much a pipe dream.” Mike Mahoney, a 49-year-old recruited from the life-sciences giant Johnson & Johnson, took Boston Scientific’s top job in November 2012 and launched the strategic push at a gathering of stock analysts in New York early last year. He is a chief executive in constant motion — displaying the kind of energy that embodies a company finally moving forward again, on multiple fronts. Not least among the moves is Boston Scientific’s planned relocation of its corporate headquarters in June from an office park off Route 9 to a state-of-the-art structure under construction in Marlborough. Boston Scientific is also back in a buying mood after years of being criticized for overpaying in the Guidant deal. Its recent purchases include Rhythmia Medical Inc., a privately held Burlington company that makes mapping software used in electrophysiology procedures. Those include catheter ablations, which remove faulty pathways from the hearts of patients prone to atrial flutter or fibrillation. Late last year, Boston Scientific moved about 40 of Rhythmia’s research and business employees to its first outpost in Cambridge, near Fresh Pond, where Mahoney said it “will be easier to recruit 25-year-old software engineers.” The company also spent about $850 million on research and development in 2013, about 12 percent of annual sales. It is moving ahead with a pipeline of new devices and technology that seeks to differentiate Boston Scientific from competitors ranging from Johnson & Johnson and Medtronic Inc. to Covidien PLC and St. Jude Medical Inc. That work has been gaining industry recognition. Last fall, a subcutaneous heart defibrillator approved in 2012 to simplify implantation by leaving heart and blood vessels untouched won a prestigious Prix Galien Award for the best medical technology product. Next up is an anticipated decision by the Food and Drug Administration this spring on the company’s experimental Watchman device, which is designed to prevent blood clots and strokes in patients with irregular heartbeats. Boston Scientific researchers are also working on the Lotus Valve System, an aortic valve replacement device with catheter delivery technology. All of these products are in niches that are expected to outpace the broader medical equipment market as health insurers in the United States and government payers in Europe squeeze device makers’ profit margins. At the same time, Boston Scientific has been strengthening its foothold in expanding economies such as China, India, Russia, and Brazil. Sales in those markets rose 27 percent last year, boosting total international sales to 47 percent. “We’re deploying more resources in the faster-growing regions and the faster-growing markets,” Mahoney said. “We have a lot to do. We’re not satisfied with 2 percent sales growth.” In fact, Boston Scientific increased its sales faster than the overall market last year in five of its seven business segments, gaining share in competitive areas such as endoscopy, urology, and women’s health. The company also bought back about $500 million worth of its stock, which closed Monday at $12.98 a share on the New York Stock Exchange, up from just over $5 a share in the fall of 2012. Mahoney has projected Boston Scientific’s revenue will increase 3 to 5 percent this year and accelerate further in subsequent years. But the company still faces formidable hurdles, including thousands of lawsuits in the United States and Canada charging that the company’s transvaginal mesh — used to fix a common gynecologic condition called pelvic organ prolapse — caused injuries. Boston Scientific is contesting the suits, which have also been lodged against several other companies that market similar products. While all major device makers are engaged in product litigation, Boston Scientific’s estimated liability — the projected costs of settlements, damages, and defense — climbed to $607 million at the end of 2013, from $491 million a year earlier. (Guidant’s products were the cause of a lot of that liability for years, though that is diminishing.) “It’s something we track carefully,” Mahoney said of the legal expenses. Like its competitors, Boston Scientific has had to adjust the sales pitch it makes to hospitals and doctors that buy medical gear. Changing government policy has forced health care providers to be increasingly cost-conscious. “You really have to prove the economic savings as well as the effectiveness of your medical devices today,” Mahoney said. Over the past four years, the company has set in motion cost-cutting moves aimed at shutting down excess plant capacity worldwide and eliminating thousands of jobs. But even as it has done that, Boston Scientific has opened and expanded businesses elsewhere. It now has about 23,000 workers, including just under 2,000 in Massachusetts. Mahoney is predicting “flat to slight growth” for the company’s overall operations here, largely because more rapidly growing businesses, such as endoscopy and women’s health, are based in Marlborough. Boston Scientific has been moving corporate employees in stages from the aging Natick offices to the newer campus in Marlborough, and expects to have more than 1,500 there by this summer. The rest work at a distribution center in Quincy. Worldwide, the company’s expansion into new businesses and markets appears to be on track. In the past, said Leerink’s Antalffy, such action was often promised but seldom delivered. “They talked and talked, but never seemed to grow,” she said. “Now the question is whether they can accelerate.”

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Boston Scientific is moving into new businesses and markets in a bid for faster growth

After years of stagnating, its sales moribund and its stock slinking along in single digits, there are new signs of life at medical device maker Boston Scientific Corp. The company, once a high-flier on Wall Street and a pioneer in medical technology, spent much of the past eight years digesting its $27.3 billion purchase of rival Guidant Corp. in 2006. But last year, a new chief executive unveiled a strategy of moving into faster-growing businesses and markets. And to the surprise of many investors and market watchers, Boston Scientific’s revenues began growing again and its share price more than doubled. “They’ve finally turned the corner,” said Danielle Antalffy, a medical supplies and devices analyst for Boston health care investment firm Leerink Swann.

20140719231328

Adolphos Opara: 'Nigerians are too tolerant. We need real change.' Photograph: Tuoyo Omagba Born in Nigeria in 1981, Adolphus Opara originally worked as a graphic designer for the small but influential Nimbus studio and art gallery in Lagos, a hub for local artists and photographers. "I bought a film camera in early 2005, but I threw it away after a month because the pictures I took were so terrible," he says, laughing. The following year, armed with a digital camera (a Fuji Finepix S3Pro) bought from his friend, the acclaimed Nigerian documentary photographer George Osodi, Opara travelled by road to Senegal and back, "shooting all the way, totally trigger crazy". Looking at the photographs on his return, he realised then that he had a love for photography but "no real understanding of what a series was or how to create one". That came soon afterwards with a project called Rugball, which captured in impressionistic black and white a bunch of young Nigerians on a beach in Lagos playing the rough-and-tumble hybrid game that merges the rules of rugby, basketball, soccer and even wrestling. Opara describes himself as "first and foremost a storyteller". The stories he tells with his camera have, he says, deepened and widened since he began taking photographs in 2005. "I never plan anything. I follow my instincts and often my projects start off as quite small, intimate explorations that grow into something more. By the end, there is always a bigger story underneath about Nigeria or Africa, about the forces that shape us either from within or from the outside." His most well-known series to date is the grandly titled Emissaries of an Iconic Religion, painterly portraits of the chief priests and diviners of the traditional Yorùbá religion, which was shown as part of a group show, Contested Terrains, at Tate Modern last year. The exhibition focused on "artists working in Africa who explore and subvert narratives about the past and present". The project began, Opara says, "from a conversation with a friend who was a traditional Christian and, like many Christians, thought that Yorùbá was a bad religion like voodoo. I began to think about how quickly we can leave our beliefs and culture behind us. I visited shrines all around the country and, as people came to trust me, they began to tell their stories. It is a story about Africa's past but also about Africa today." One of Opara's ongoing projects is called Shrinking Shores. "It is about where I live, Lagos, and how it has been affected by climate change and oil spills. There are 30 abandoned shipwrecks on our shores and all tell a tale of destruction, of villages destroyed, people displaced." When asked if he is weary of how Africa is portrayed by photographers from outside the continent, Opara is diplomatic. "As someone who trained and works as a journalist, I can see why people go where there is disaster and war, but there is another Africa, many other Africas." Is he optimistic for the future of his country? "Well, Nigerians are naturally optimistic, but we can never agree on anything. It is out strength and our weakness. It takes us too long to say, 'This is enough.' There are people who have been in power too long. In a way, we are too tolerant. We need real change. It does not just happen, it needs action to make it happen." Daniel Naude A young South African.

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New Africa: Nigerian photographer exposes a bigger picture of the continent

Former graphic designer Adolphus Opara has developed a passion for storytelling through images of 'the other Africas', writes Sean O'Hagan

20140720000125

Perth businessman Nick Norris and his three grandchildren loved sailing, and had just enjoyed a European holiday together. Tragically, they all perished as flight MH17 was shot down over Ukraine. Western Australian businessman Nick Norris and his three primary school aged grandchildren – Mo, Evie and Otis – were returning home from an extended European vacation when the Boeing 777 was shot down over Ukraine. Mr Norris was the managing director of a Perth consultancy firm and family friends have told 9NEWS he was also an avid sailor. He and his three grandchildren were all members of South Perth Yacht Club. The grandchildren’s parents had also holidayed with Mr Norris and the children but the couple was returning to Australia on a separate flight. MH17 was en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it was shot down in separatist-controlled eastern Ukraine. All 298 crew and passengers, including 27 Australians are believed dead. Read more of the crash victims who have been identified. Seven Western Australians were on board MH17, Premier Colin Barnett said. “I have been informed that seven West Australians are among the 27 Australians confirmed dead,” Mr Barnett said. He said if reports that the plane was shot down by terrorists were correct it was a “truly unspeakable - and incomprehensible – act”. The Department of Foreign Affairs has now contacted the next of kin of all 27 Australians killed in the crash and has dispatched a crisis specialist to Kiev. “Australian officials are working with local authorities to assist with the recovery of Australians involved,” a statement said. “If you have concerns for any Australians who may have been on MH17, you should attempt to contact them directly.” ROLLING COVERAGE: Follow live updates on Flight MH17 on 9NEWS.com.au July 18, 2014: Tributes have been paid to a Perth man travelling with his three grandchildren and popular Sunbury real estate agent Albert Rizk and wife Maree. Mo, Evie and Otis Maslin were on board MH17 along with their grandfather Nick Norris. Perth children Mo, Evie and Otis Maslin, who were on board MH17, at a family birthday. Perth children Mo, Evie and Otis Maslin were on board MH17 along with their grandfather Nick Norris. Nick Norris, a Perth businessman and several of his grandchildren were among the people killed when Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down over Ukraine. Do you have any news photos or videos?

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Perth man and grandchildren among MH17 dead

A Perth man Nick Norris and some of his grandchildren are among the 298 people killed when Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down over Ukraine.

20141020074809

Gregory Doran, backstage with props for Hamlet. Photograph: Andrew Fox Reading Flaubert's assertion that "most people end up in life doing what they do second-best". I had joined the RSC as an actor, but, aged 26, I chose directing - it seemed the harder path. What was your big breakthrough? Directing my partner, [the actor] Antony Sher, as Titus Andronicus at the Market Theatre in Johannesburg in 1995. It was the first time I was seen as a serious director of the classics. Has working with Sher been your most important collaboration? I've had many - with great designers, and with Harriet Walter, Patrick Stewart and Judi Dench. All great theatrical events fire on four cylinders: the right play, the right time, the right actor, the right place. Complete this sentence: At heart, I'm just a frustrated ... Do you suffer for your art? Yes, at two points in the putting on of any play. The first day of rehearsals, when I'm sure somebody's going to catch me out as a fraud. And just before opening night, when I feel as if I've given away my baby, and the critics are just about to say how ugly it is. Which artist working today do you most admire? My boss, [RSC artistic director] Michael Boyd. He's given the RSC a real sense of identity and optimism. That's my pay rise sorted. Will Shakespeare still speak to people in 1,000 years' time? Yes, as long as people still love, are jealous, are ambitious, or die. What's the best advice anyone ever gave you? Rudi Shelly, my wise old teacher at the Bristol Old Vic theatre school, said: "Greg: don't want to be clever." Your role as a director is just to help the actors. You don't need to do Shakespeare On Ice to get noticed. Who or what have you sacrificed for your art? Other, more lucrative areas of directing than Shakespeare - film, telly, musicals. I wonder if by this time in my life there ought to be a bit more money in the bank. What's the worst thing anyone's ever said about you? The Observer's Susannah Clapp once described me as the "Goran Ivanisevi´c of directors". I had no idea what she was talking about, but I realised that in theatre you need to develop an elephant's hide. What one song would feature on the soundtrack to your life? The Bach cantata Ich Habe Genug. It means "I have enough". To me, it talks about accepting your lot in life, and being content with how lucky you are. Career: Joined the Royal Shakespeare Company as an actor in 1987, and is now its chief associate director. His production of Hamlet, starring David Tennant, opens at the Novello Theatre, London (020-7759 9611), tomorrow. High point: "Opening Hamlet in Stratford this year." Low point: "Playing a stilt-walking vicar in a BBC TV series."

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Portrait of the artist: Gregory Doran, director

'My role is to help the actors. You don't need to do Shakespeare On Ice to get noticed'

20141022210334

Protesting years of alleged wage theft and unfair treatment, more than 100 port truck drivers went on a 48-hour strike this week at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. The group behind the strikes that ended Tuesday, union-backed Justice for Port Truck Drivers, says that port truck drivers haul nearly $4 billion worth of cargo every day for companies like Walmart WMT , Ikea, and Home Depot HD , yet they often receive paychecks below the minimum wage. At the heart of the truckers’ protest is the issue of companies misclassifying drivers as individual contractors rather than as employees. What might sound like a paperwork error is effectively leaving truckers with few labor rights. Since they are not counted as employees, truckers lack the right to minimum wage or overtime, workers’ compensation, unemployment benefits, protection against harassment, and the right to organize, says Rebecca Smith, deputy director at the National Employment Law Project, who has studied the issue. In a statement, Total Transportation Services, Inc., one of the companies being picketed this week, said that there are “literally hundreds of unfilled vacancies for company drivers in Southern California,” so if a driver wants to be an employee rather than an independent contractor, there’s the option to do so. “We pay our contractor partners above the industry average and provide one of the safest-rated work environments in the industry while doing it,” the statement said. MORE: Its defense business flagging, Boeing strikes back By giving drivers the independent contractor title instead of simply counting them as employees, companies save on payroll costs as it allows them to avoid paying per-employee contributions to Social Security and workers’ compensation and unemployment insurance funds. While the independent contractor classification saves companies money, it cuts into the pay of the drivers themselves since — as contractors — they’re often required to pay for their truck’s fuel, maintenance, and repairs out of their own pockets. And as independent contractors, drivers are paid per delivery instead of an hourly wage. A contractor driver’s median net earnings before taxes total $28,783 based on a 59-hour workweek, while that of drivers classified as employees comes to $35,000, according to a February 2014 update of a 2010 study by NELP, Change To Win Strategic Organizing Center, and Los Angeles Alliance For a New Economy. In addition to shortchanging the drivers, applying the independent contractor label is in many cases flat-out wrong, says David Bensman, a professor at Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations. The NELP report estimates that 49,000 of the nation’s 75,000 port truck drivers are misclassified as independent contractors. Most truckers depend on their company for help obtaining a truck and insurance. Drivers typically commit to only picking up and delivering containers for just one company, and how, when, and where drivers work is left to the company’s discretion. “So the independence is in name only,” Bensman says. Despite the strikes in L.A. this week, Smith says that truckers have made some progress of late in fighting misclassification. Since the release of NELP’s first report on the issue in 2010, truckers have filed 400 complaints of wage theft related to misclassification to the California Division of Labor Standard Enforcement alone. Penalties in the 19 cases that had been adjudicated by the time NELP updated the report in February averaged $66,240 per driver. MORE: How Bank of America lost billions and forgot to tell regulators The legislatures of New York, New Jersey, and Washington — states that handle 60% of all container port traffic — introduced legislation that would strengthen worker protections against misclassification, though only New York’s has gone into effect. (Governor Chris Christie vetoed New Jersey’s proposal and Washington’s was never put to a vote.) While truckers are fighting for bigger paychecks and better livelihoods, there’s more at stake in this debate. Bensman of Rutgers says that at ports outside the U.S. — like those in the Netherlands, Germany, and China — the coordination between trucks and ships is smoother and the delivery of goods faster than it is here. In the U.S., Bensman says, there’s no incentive to improve the coordination because all of the waste lands on the backs of truck drivers. “It doesn’t cost the shipping companies any extra,” he says.

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American truckers have been stranded by employers

What might sound like a paperwork error is effectively leaving truck drivers in the U.S. with few labor rights.

20141031192407

What do Food Network star Bobby Flay and the Breeders’ Cup horse racing event have in common? Luxury, apparently. That’s because the five-star chef, whose horse More Than Real won an event there in 2010, is the co-chair of the Cup’s enhanced experience committee. That team has been tasked with making the event a more luxe experience for fans and horse owners alike. It’s a tough ask to drastically change a horse racing event with a purse of $26 million total. In fact, the Breeders’ Cup is considered the sport’s world championship. Every year, horses from around the globe travel to the racetrack—which for the last three years has been set at Santa Anita Park in California—to bring their owners glory. This year that aim is no different. But what has changed increasingly over the last few years are the rebranding efforts to make the Breeders’ Cup a more fan and owner-friendly affair, including serving better food, adding on more races over a longer span of time, and providing perks for horse owners to keep making the trek each year. “We have owners from all around the world. These guys are putting a lot of money to [get here],” said Peter Rotondo, the vice president of media and entertainment at Breeders’ Cup. “They’re flying their horses to get into the Breeders’ Cup. We need to create an experience for them.” Unsurprisingly, Flay’s flavor of leadership so far has been with food at the forefront. He has helped start and enhance an exclusive, invite-only “Taste of the World” event, a “Taste of Napa”-themed soiree for attendees, a trackside breakfasts for the owners to watch their horses train and plenty of champagne available throughout, among other dining options. CEO Craig Fravel underscored the enhanced food offerings at the event as intrinsic to the Breeders’ Cups more luxurious feel. “We’ve brought in a lot of elements over the last three or four years,” he said, including the cuisine upgrades. But food and champagne aren’t meant to overshadow the races, it seems. Fravel added that his Breeders’ Cup is “not only a great time from a food and beverage perspective, but also one of the best races in the world.” Barry Weisbord, the co-chair of the enhanced experience committee first met Bobby Flay about 20 years ago and noted that their relationship has been symbiotic: “I introduced him to horse racing, and he introduced me to restaurant world.” That partnership appears to have considerably affected the event. Weisbord, who has been involved with the Breeders’ Cup since 2008, said that their committee’s role is to “make the experience of engaging with the Breeders’ Cup a more enriching experience.” But that’s not reserved only for the fans. Weisbord said the horse owners, trainers, sponsors, and broadcasters benefit from the new additions. “Bobby has really been the moral compass” for the event’s enhancements, according to Weisbord, adding, “He makes his living in having consistency in service and a luxury and fine dining experience whenever you go to his restaurants. I think his vision has rubbed off,” Weisbord said. Weisbord noted the impetus for the slew of changes to the event stemmed from increased competition. “The world of international racing events has gotten a lot more crowded in the last few years,” he said. As a result, the Breeders’ Cup needed to evolve its platform to stay relevant in the luxury space. One of the celebrity ambassadors summoned to provide the Breeders’ Cup with its exclusive and expensive feel is Bo Derek, an actress best known for her 1979 film 10. Derek also happens to be an avid horse lover and animal rights activist, serving on the California Horse Racing Board (former governor Arnold Schwarzenegger asked her to join in 2008, naturally). Derek, who owns horses of her own and rides regularly, told Fortune: “The Breeders’ Cup is the ultimate race for me— the biggest purses, the fastest horses from around the world.” She added that her role as ambassador is “spreading the word” and sharing her “passion” for horse racing. Her involvement, in turn, is expected to pay dividends with fans attending the two-day affair. Weisbord says that the enhanced experience committee was born in part to shake off overconfidence and inspire innovation. “Although we’ve been around for a long time, we’re really leaders in this field before a number of our competitors even existed. We maybe got a little sleepy which can happen to a lot of business and sports properties. And we sort of needed to take a step back and say what can we do to get less sleepy,” he said. Fravel explained that some of the biggest obstacles in building up the Breeders’ Cup have been technical—within the horse racing community. “The challenges are there always a lot of moving parts,” he said. “There are more independent entities [within horse racing and] there are no national entities that schedule races.” Derek, too, made similar remarks about the difficulties the structure of U.S. horse racing presents. “Racing in the U.S. suffers from not having a national governing body,” she said. “Everything is regulated state-by-state.” Coordinating with the national television schedule is impacted by the roadblocks, said Fravel. On that front though, the Breeders’ Cup has expanded to include 18 televised qualifying races, dubbed the “Breeders’ Cup Challenge Series: Win and You’re In,” which provides increased air time—all broadcast on NBC. Ray Katz, a professor of sports marketing at Columbia University, called the upped partnership with NBC a boon. He also praised the event’s efforts to be more luxury-focused, a trend in sports these days. “A luxury event has to be more than just sports. It has to entail ideally some level of culture, some level of entertainment, some level of food and some level of wine and other fine spirits. It’s got to be aspirational,” he said. Sporting events from basketball, hockey and football are “offering more of an upscale experience,” according to Katz. The Breeders’ Cup, of course, among them. But despite added competition from other racing events and other sports that have started providing more luxury offers, Weisbord remains optimistic. “We’ll be much better equipped to stay competitive from all other racing events from around the world because we’re into the fourth year of these initiatives, and our eyes are on the ball,” he said.

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What do Bobby Flay and the Breeders' Cup have in common? Luxury

The horse racing event has undergone a transformation over the last few years with the help of the celebrity chef.

20141122061044

Updated NOV 19, 2014 5:03p ET GLENDALE, Ariz. -- NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said Tuesday, via text, that he still isn't sure when Andrew Barroway's deal to buy the Coyotes will close, but Coyotes co-owner Anthony LeBlanc told the Doug & Wolf show on 98.7 FM on Wednesday that Barroway could be interviewed at the Dec. 8-9 Board of Governor's meetings in Boca Raton, Fla. "My expectations are one thing, but that hasn't been confirmed as of yet," LeBlanc clarified via email. "After a successful interview would come a vote, and it is unclear the time frame of when a vote will take place. "I am hopeful that we will be in a position to have Mr. Barroway interviewed by the executive committee of the Board of Governors. We continue to work with Mr. Barroway and with the league to finalize the transaction in an expedient time frame." LeBlanc said almost two weeks ago that there was a possibility the deal could close before the BOG meetings. It appears that will not happen. While he could not confirm a closing date for the deal, Bettman did take aim at the persistent rumors that Barroway struck a backroom deal to either flip the team for profit or move it to Las Vegas when the franchise can exercise its out clause with the City of Glendale after the 2017-18 season. "Categorically untrue," Bettman texted. "We don't make backroom deals." A recent report from Mike Russo of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune suggests the league has interest in Vegas, but that interest would come in the form of expansion. The league is far more likely to pursue that avenue for one simple and oft-stated reason: The expansion fees could fetch the league at least $500 million per club, an amount that would be split among the 30 teams. Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports Where: American Airlines Center, Dallas Records: Dallas 6-9-4, Arizona 8-9-2 Injuries: Arizona Fs Rob Klinkhammer (upper body) and Martin Hanzal (lower body) are day to day. F David Moss (upper body) and D Brandon Gormley (lower body) are week to week. Dallas Fs Patrick Eaves (foot) is likely to play. F Ryan Garbutt (upper body) is out for a week. F Valeri Nichushkin (hip surgery) is out four months. D Patrik Nemeth (right arm laceration) is out for the rest of the season. Quick facts: The Stars beat the Coyotes, 4-3, on Nov. 11 when Garbutt scored on a shorthanded breakaway with 1:16 remaining in regulation. ... The Stars have just two wins in their last 12 games (2-8-2). ... Dallas is 1-5-4 at home, giving it the second-worst home record in the league for points and the lowest win total. ... Stars F Tyler Seguin scored two goals on Tuesday night against Carolina -- his fourth multi-goal game of the season. ... The Stars waived D Kevin Connauton on Tuesday. He was claimed by Columbus. Coyotes governor George Gosbee has asserted numerous times that owners and the league aren't going to give up guaranteed revenue to allow a team to relocate for far less revenue. The Coyotes didn't release much information on Martin Hanzal's lower body injury that kept him out of Tuesday's 2-1 overtime loss to Washington. All coach Dave Tippett said was that he left the ice after the morning skate complaining that he didn't feel well and he is listed as day to day. Since the 2009-10 season, Hanzal hasn't played more than 65 games in any single season. He has already missed four of the team's 19 games this season. To a man, the Coyotes will tell you Hanzal is the team's most valuable forward because he touches the game in so many ways. He plays down low on the power play, he kills penalties, he normally plays against the opposition's top talent and he is also expected to chip in with secondary offense. Part of his injury issues may stem from the fact that he plays in front of the net and takes a beating because of his size. But when the team is so reliant on a player and he misses significant time each season, it creates problems. Both Hanzal and forward Rob Klinkhammer (upper body) are questionable for Thursday's game in Dallas. Forwards David Moss (upper body) and defenseman Brandon Gormley (lower body) did not make the trip. Coyotes defenseman Chris Summers and Michael Stone blocked a combined nine shots Wednesday against the Capitals, two off Summers' head and one off Stone's jaw that opened up a cut and required stitches. "Those aren't fun," Tippett said. They are a necessary element of success, however, and when they are coming with regularity, they're also a sign that a team is competing hard. Summers was particularly effective on the penalty kill. "For me, it's been a few weeks since I've been in the lineup, so I've got to make my mark somehow; contribute in any way I can" he said. "Blocking shots I guess was it." The Coyotes are fifth in the NHL in blocked shots with 305. Follow Craig Morgan on Twitter

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Bettman: Vegas relocation for Coyotes 'categorically untrue'

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said there is no backroom deal allowing soon-to-be Coyotes owner Andrew Barroway to flip the team or move it to Las Vegas.

20150404213519

Harrison Ford and Frank Marshall 04/02/2015 AT 12:35 PM EDT is on the mend from his , but he's already itching to be up and about – and on the tennis court? Frank Marshall, Ford's longtime pal and producer, confirmed that the actor is in Los Angeles and making great strides towards recovery. "I talked to him yesterday and he's doing really well. He's pretty banged up, but he's recovering remarkably," Marshall, 68, on Tuesday. "He wants to play tennis." on March 5 with broken bones and after crashing his vintage World War II plane in Santa Monica, California. But Marshall credits the actor's piloting expertise with saving his life. "That's the thing you would expect him to do in a movie, but he did it in real life," Marshall said, adding that Ford is a "really good pilot." "I've talked to a lot of pilots who said that was a hell of a landing and he did everything correct in that situation. He made an incredible landing, to his credit," Marshall told . "He is, after all, Indiana Jones!" And Ford has a solid support system aiding the healing process – his wife In the week after the crash, Flockhart, 50, paid her husband regular visits to his bedside, a source told PEOPLE. "She drops [their son] Liam off in the morning and then spends hours with Harrison," said the source, who also added she would bring him food and Flockhart – a flying lover herself – has always had in her husband's piloting skills, the source shared. "Calista loves to fly, and I'm thrilled because it's so important to me and it's the kind of thing that's so much more fun with somebody who really enjoys it," Ford told PEOPLE in 2003.

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Doing Well, Says Frank Marshall : People.com

"I talked to him yesterday and he's doing really well," the producer said of his Indiana Jones colleague

20150524084129

JEFFREY SIEGEL'S piano recital last night at the 92d Street Y held out a particularly tempting lure: the chance to look into Schumann's waste basket and find out how he originally intended to end his most enigmatic work, the stupendous Fantasy in C (Op. 17). Mr. Siegel, after giving a brief talk in which he explained with admirable lucidity the tangled history of the Fantasy itself and the 15 measures that the composer decided for unknown reasons not to publish, went on to perform the work in its original version and to make a powerful case for it. In original form, the Fantasy closes with a recollection of the last song in Beethoven's cycle ''An die Ferne geliebte,'' a quotation that occurs earlier in Schumann's piano score at the end of the first movement. As Mr. Siegel pointed out, this song meant a great deal to Schumann when he was composing the Fantasy since he was separated from his own ''distant beloved,'' Clara Wieck, on her father's orders. Ordinarily, one would expect to hear such a rejected piece of a great score and be momentarily fascinated, but hardly more. Great composers, after all, usually know what they are doing. That's why we call them great composers. But the 15-measure reference to Beethoven's song, as Mr. Siegel played it, not only worked well in context but struck this listener as in some ways more poetically telling than Schumann's published version, known so well to generations of pianists and music listeners. Instead of rippling to an end with the familiar sequence of arpeggios, the Fantasy's final bars are interrupted with a yearning song that seems so private a communication that the listener feels like an eavesdropper. Perhaps Schumann felt he had already made his soulful point well enough; the ''distant beloved'' ending makes it even better. Now pianists may have to wrestle with the question of whether they have a right to countermand Schumann's own editing decisions. Mr. Siegel's performance of the Fantasy was aptly outgoing and richly Romantic, paying attention first of all to the music's grand outlines and letting a few details go by the board if necessary. That is the truest way to approach Schumann's music, piano or otherwise. There was one misfortune in the first movement, not Mr. Siegel's doing: just at the quotation of the Beethoven song, someone's electronic beeper went off, partly spoiling a critical mood. Less noticeable was a wrong note, quickly covered by the pianist, that intruded in the final measures. If the Schumann was the recital's high point in prospect, Mr. Siegel's playing of Beethoven's Sonata in D (Op. 10, No. 3) made at least as potent an impression in actuality. The pianist's took a large-scaled, passionate approach to the work, which so often is read as if it were early Haydn. This was no superficial performance in any sense: Mr. Siegel's ideas about the work went deep into the music and his fingers went consistently deep into the keys. He is an artist who means every note he plays, producing fewer routine passages per page than many of his more famous colleagues. He had a wonderful singing tone even in fast passagework, and in the mournful and slow second movement he spun out the line with hypnotic force. One of Mr. Siegel's strong points even in this acoustically brittle hall was his ability to come down heroically on the keys without making glassy or otherwise ugly sounds. Not all pianists of great technical powers know how this is done: a Rubinstein did, but the lists are full of big names who make every fortissimo sound like the cook dropping all the kitchenware. Three of Mendlssohn's ''Songs Without Words'' were somewhat less persuasive under Mr. Siegel's hands, perhaps because his aggressive temperament did not seem in tune with the composer's tender nature. However, Mr. Siegel may have been making a case for Mendelssohn's masculine side rather than the feminine aspect that is easier to find in his music. The recital ended with Barber's Piano Sonata, so grippingly played that one almost forgave it for sounding like rejected Prokofiev.

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PIANO RECITAL - SIEGEL AT 92D ST Y - NYTimes.com

JEFFREY SIEGEL'S piano recital last night at the 92d Street Y held out a particularly tempting lure: the chance to look into Schumann's waste basket and find out how he originally intended to end his most enigmatic work, the stupendous Fantasy in C (Op. 17). Mr. Siegel, after giving a brief talk in which he explained with admirable lucidity the tangled history of the Fantasy itself and the 15 measures that the composer decided for unknown reasons not to publish, went on to perform the work in its original version and to make a powerful case for it. In original form, the Fantasy closes with a recollection of the last song in Beethoven's cycle ''An die Ferne geliebte,'' a quotation that occurs earlier in Schumann's piano score at the end of the first movement. As Mr. Siegel pointed out, this song meant a great deal to Schumann when he was composing the Fantasy since he was separated from his own ''distant beloved,'' Clara Wieck, on her father's orders. Ordinarily, one would expect to hear such a rejected piece of a great score and be momentarily fascinated, but hardly more. Great composers, after all, usually know what they are doing. That's why we call them great composers. But the 15-measure reference to Beethoven's song, as Mr. Siegel played it, not only worked well in context but struck this listener as in some ways more poetically telling than Schumann's published version, known so well to generations of pianists and music listeners.

20150524103440

Washington University and the Monsanto Company, both based in St. Louis, Mo., announced yesterday that they had signed a $23.5 million, five-year agreement to collaborate in biomedical research. The arrangement constitutes the latest instance, and one of the largest in terms of financial investment, in which a major corporation and a prominent research university have teamed up to conduct scientific research. Similar agreements by Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other major universities have raised questions over potential conflicts of interest, and Monsanto and Washington University took pains to emphasize that steps had been taken to minimize such possibilities. The contract specifies that faculty members participating in the projects will be free to publish all results of their findings and the university will hold the patents on any marketable inventions that emerge from the research. Monsanto, on the other hand, has exclusive licensing rights to such patents. ''Everything is carefully designed to enable the university to be true to its fundamental purposes,'' said Howard A. Schneiderman, Monsanto's senior vice president for research and development. Proteins and Peptides Monsanto, the country's fourth-largest chemical producer, will provide $23.5 million over the next five years for biomedical research into teins and peptides, which are small proteins that modify cellular behavior. About one-third of the efforts will be directed toward basic research and the rest to the direct development of new pharmaceutical products aimed at a variety of ailments, including allergies. The research projects will be selected by an advisory committee consisting of four scientists from each institution. The committee will be headed by Dr. David M. Kipnis, head of the department of internal medicine at the Washington University School of Medicine, who will also direct the program. Some Monsanto scientists will work in university laboratories alongside faculty members who receive Monsanto funding. Each institution has entered into similar agreements in the past. In 1974 Monsanto began a 12-year, $23 million project with the Harvard Medical School for research on the molecular basis of organ development. Washington University has a $3.9 million agreement for antibody research with Mallinckrodt Inc., a chemical and pharmaceutical maker. Three years ago Monsanto and Washington University negotiated a $1.5 million agreement for faculty research in the field of hybridomas, which are materials with potential diagnostic applications. Potential Conflicts of Interest In an era of stagnant Federal support for research, such arrangements have become increasingly important for universities and for corporations dependent on scientific advances. But they have also stirred controversy because of potential conflicts between academic values, such as the free flow of ideas, and the desire of corporations to exploit discoveries ahead of their competitors. Such issues are especially complex in situations in which either the individual scientists or the university has a direct equity interest in the fruits of the research. Mr. Kipnis said that potential conflicts in the Washington University agreement with Monsanto were minimized by the fact that the agreement was between the two institutions and that individual scientists would not reap direct financial benefits. ''We have serious concerns about the entrepreneurial activities of some faculty members around the country,'' Mr. Kipnis said. ''I don't see how you can serve two masters.'' Moreover, Mr. Kipnis said, the research is directed at a ''defined area rather than a specific project,'' involves competition among faculty members for grants and incorporates an unusual system of periodic peer review by committees of scholars from both inside and outside the university.

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MONSANTO RESEARCH PACT AIMS TO CUT ACADEMIC CONTROVERSY

Washington University and the Monsanto Company, both based in St. Louis, Mo., announced yesterday that they had signed a $23.5 million, five-year agreement to collaborate in biomedical research. The arrangement constitutes the latest instance, and one of the largest in terms of financial investment, in which a major corporation and a prominent research university have teamed up to conduct scientific research. Similar agreements by Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other major universities have raised questions over potential conflicts of interest, and Monsanto and Washington University took pains to emphasize that steps had been taken to minimize such possibilities.

20150524105908

A change of assignments for three editors of The New York Times was announced yesterday by Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, the paper's publisher. Charlotte Curtis, editor of the Op-Ed page since 1974 and an associate editor of The Times, will write a regular column in the news pages starting in June. She will be succeeded by Robert B. Semple Jr., who has been foreign news editor. Mr. Semple's deputy, Craig R. Whitney, will become foreign news editor. The Op-Ed page was established in September 1970. It is supervised by Max Frankel, editor of the editorial page. Its function is to give readers a broad range of opinion and analysis of current issues. ''Charlotte Curtis has fulfilled that mission with great distinction,'' Mr. Sulzberger said. ''I welcome her decision to return to writing.'' Miss Curtis joined The Times in 1961 as a reporter. She became the newspaper's family/style editor in 1965 and an associate editor in 1973, when she was named editor of the Op-Ed page. She is the author of ''First Lady'' (1963), a book about Jacqueline Kennedy's first year in the White House, and ''The Rich and Other Atrocities'' (1976). Miss Curtis, a native of Chicago, is a graduate of Vassar College. She began her newspaper career as a general assignment reporter with The Columbus (Ohio) Citizen. Mr. Semple, as foreign editor, has directed the work of the paper's 32 foreign correspondents for five years. He joined The Times's Washington bureau in 1963 and was a general assignment reporter, political reporter and White House correspondent during Richard M. Nixon's first term. He was appointed deputy national editor in 1973, London bureau chief in 1975 and foreign editor in February 1977. Mr. Semple was born in St. Louis in 1936. He graduated from Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., in 1954 and, after a year abroad, from Yale in 1959. He received an M.A. in history from the University of California at Berkeley in 1961. Mr. Whitney has been deputy foreign editor since October 1980. He was previously the newspaper's bureau chief in Moscow (1979-1980), in Bonn (1973-1977) and in Saigon (1971-1973). Mr. Whitney joined The Times's Washington bureau in June 1965 as an assistant to the columnist James Reston. He joined the Navy in May 1966 and spent three years as a public affairs officer in the Pentagon and with the Seventh Fleet in Saigon. He left the Navy in June 1969 as a lieutenant (J.G.) and rejoined The Times. He was born in October 1943 in Milford, Mass., graduated from Phillips Academy in 1961 and earned a bachelor of arts degree, magna cum laude, from Illustrations: Photos of Charlotte Curtis, Robert B. Semple Jr. and Craig R. Whitney

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3 EDITORS AT THE TIMES GET NEW ASSIGNMENTS

A change of assignments for three editors of The New York Times was announced yesterday by Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, the paper's publisher. Charlotte Curtis, editor of the Op-Ed page since 1974 and an associate editor of The Times, will write a regular column in the news pages starting in June. She will be succeeded by Robert B. Semple Jr., who has been foreign news editor. Mr. Semple's deputy, Craig R. Whitney, will become foreign news editor.

20150725151630

China's securities regulator warned there was "panic sentiment" in mainland stocks on Wednesday, saying there had been a surge in "irrational selling" as markets plunged further into bear market territory. The statement from the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) did little to soothe investor worries about tumbling equities, with the Shanghai Composite sinking as much as 8 percent in early trade on Wednesday before paring losses to around 5 percent. Shortly after the regulator's statement, the People's Bank of China (PBoC) said it would closely watch the stock market's direction and guard against systematic regional financial risks, according to a statement on the central bank's website. China's state asset administrator also urged central government-owned firms to buy their own stock to stabilize share prices, pleading them not to sell during this period of "unusual market volatility." "This hodge podge of measures that have been undertaken by the government are so conflicted that I think it's causing more confusion in the markets than it is delivering therapy," said Ron Isana, CNBC's senior analyst and commentator. Read MoreWild ride in markets hits Beijing's credibility "In the U.S., we're very concerned, we don't like excessive government intervention. The market is still trying to deflate a bubble so why are they trying to prop up a bubble? Nothing looks or smells good there," remarked David Dietze, president and chief investment strategist at Point View Wealth Management. Meanwhile, more than 500 China-listed companies announced trading halts in Shanghai and Shenzhen on Wednesday, Reuters said, citing an analysis of corporate statements. "More than 51 percent of the 2,776 A-shares has suspended trading today, according to the National Business Daily," echoed Bernard AW, IG's market strategist. The suspension of trading is a particularly "stupid move," said Alex Wong, director of asset management at Hong Kong-based Ample Capital. People are selling heavily today because they're afraid the stocks they own may also get suspended, he explained. Officials also said on Wednesday that the China Financial Futures Exchange (CFFEX) would raise the deposit ratio for short positions on CSI500 index futures from 10 to 30 percent, effective Thursday, just a day after the exchange said it would be limiting daily trading on index futures. In Shanghai, brokerages were among the biggest losers on Wednesday, with Citic Securities and Everbright Securities dropping 10 percent each, despite news that China Securities Finance Corporation (CSFC), a provider of margin financing loan services, would provide adequate liquidity for brokerages.

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China regulators warn of 'panic sentiment'

China's securities regulator said there was "panic sentiment" in mainland stocks on Wednesday, as markets plunged further into bear market territory.

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LOS ANGELES, Aug. 9 (Variety.com) - Scathing reviews and an indiscreet tweet left "Fantastic Four" on the slab after the franchise reboot flopped at the weekend box office. Fox's hopes of rejuvenating the comicbook characters and turning the super-team into a cinematic juggernaut to rival "X-Men" have flamed out given that the film debuted to a dreadful $26.2 million across 3,995 theaters. With a production budget of $120 million, plus millions more in marketing costs, the film will need to get a boost from foreign crowds if it wants to avoid being a write-off. The studio was banking on a cast of up-and-coming actors like Michael B. Jordan and Miles Teller and a wunderkind director in the form of "Chronicle's" Josh Trank to push the Human Torch, the Thing, Invisible Woman and Mr. Fantastic into the modern era, but production difficulties may have doomed the project. Trank reportedly exhibited bizarre behavior on set that was so extreme it cost him his gig directing a "Star Wars" spinoff. He seemed to acknowledge those tensions, blaming studio-mandated reshoots for the poor critical notices in a tweet Thursday that he subsequently deleted. "This turned into a nightmare for Fox," said Jeff Bock, an analyst with Exhibitor Relations. "Everything that could go wrong went wrong and the whole thing fell apart." "Fantastic Four's" opening is well below the $40 million-plus debut that most analysts had projected and trails the $56 million launch of 2005's "Fantastic Four" and the $58 million bow of 2007's "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer." It's the worst opening for a movie featuring Marvel Comics' characters since "Ghost Rider: The Spirit of Vengeance" debuted to $22.1 million in 2012. A C- CinemaScore means that word-of-mouth is going to be toxic. "The confluence of clearly the decidedly negative reviews with the combination of social media did not help the cause," said Fox distribution chief Chris Aronson. He was not willing to write off the "Fantastic Four" series yet, but stressed that the studio would be engaged in a rigorous postmortem about the film's failure. The foursome's future might be as supporting players in other comicbook characters' movies. "We have a lot to look forward to in our comicbook character universe," said Aronson. "We may find different ways to feature these characters in the future, but it's early and we'll have to see what form that takes." The film's opening weekend crowd was 60% male and 51% under the age of 25. "Fantastic Four's" anemic opening was good news for "Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation," which edged out the comicbook movie to capture first place on the box office charts. The Paramount sequel earned a strong $29.4 million in its second week in theaters, pushing its domestic total to $108.7 million. It was a crowded weekend at the multiplexes with four new wide releases piling into theaters. Among the new entrants, STX Entertainment's "The Gift" fared best, with the thriller picking up $12 million across 2,503 theaters and nabbing a third place finish. That's a solid debut considering the film, which Blumhouse Productions co-financed and co-produced, cost a mere $5 million to make. It marks STX's first theatrical release -- the studio was launched in 2014 by producer Robert Simonds with the goal of making the kind of mid-budget films that studios have largely abandoned in favor of superhero adventures. "This is an exceptional start for our company," said Kevin Grayson, STX's domestic distribution group president. "We got to battle test our marketing and distribution groups." Grayson said the film has been playing more like a psychological thriller than a horror movie, so he believes it should hold up well in coming weeks instead of fading quickly. The audience skewed older and female, with women making up 53% of the opening crowd and 73% of ticket buyers clocking in at over 25 years old. "We knew people were chomping at the bit to get more adult-skewing product," Grayson said. Sony's "Ricki and the Flash" got off to a slower start, picking up $7 million from 1,603 theaters. The film stars Meryl Streep as an aging rocker re-connecting with her estranged family and the hope is that the picture, which appeals to older crowds, will gradually build its audience in the coming weeks. It cost an economical $18 million to produce and is the first release from the rebooted Tri-Star, the label Tom Rothman was overseeing before he took the reins as head of Sony Pictures. "It's an audience that is probably going to come out over a period of time," said Rory Bruer, distribution chief for Sony. "Films like this have a tendency to play for many, many weeks to come." The final new release, Lionsgate's "Shaun the Sheep," didn't make much of a stir, opening Wednesday and earning $4 million this weekend and $5.6 million in its first five days in theaters. The studio paid roughly $2 million for the rights along with promotion and advertising costs. The break-even point is at approximately $15 million, making it a low-risk investment. Among art house players, Sony Pictures Classics' coming-of-age drama "Diary of a Teenage Girl" earned $54,525 on four screens, with a per-screen average of $13,631. IFC expanded World War II thriller "Phoenix" from four to 27 screens, where it generated $135,810, bringing its domestic total to $259,492. Focus World bowed thriller "Cop Car" in three locations and on-demand. It took in $27,000 for a per-theater average of $9,000 and is of particular interest to Hollywood as it was directed by Jon Watts, the man who just took over the Spider-Man franchise. The top five was rounded out by Warner Bros.' "Vacation" with $9.1 million and Disney and Marvel's "Ant-Man" with $7.8 million, pushing their totals to $37.3 million and $147.4 million, respectively. Final numbers are still being tallied, but the overall box office will be down steeply compared to the same weekend a year ago, as none of the new films could match the $65.6 million debut of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" or the $42.1 million second weekend of "Guardians of the Galaxy." It's the second straight week of declines, a sign that ticket sales are slowing down entering the dog days of summer.

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UPDATE 1-Box Office: 'Fantastic Four' Bombs With $26.2 Million Weekend

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 9- Scathing reviews and an indiscreet tweet left "Fantastic Four" on the slab after the franchise reboot flopped at the weekend box office. The studio was banking on a cast of up-and-coming actors like Michael B. Jordan and Miles Teller and a wunderkind director in the form of "Chronicle's" Josh Trank to push the Human Torch, the Thing, Invisible Woman...

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The Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday gave final approval to an ordinance raising the minimum wage in America's second-largest city to $15 an hour by 2020 from the current $9. The measure, which still must be signed into law by Mayor Eric Garcetti, would require businesses with more than 25 employees to gradually increase wages to meet a $15 hourly pay level by 2020, while smaller businesses would have an extra year to comply with each step. Garcetti, a Democrat, has said that he would sign the wage hike into law, seen as a victory for labor and community groups that have successfully pushed for similar pay hikes in other major U.S. cities, including Seattle and San Francisco. "Today is a great day for Los Angeles and all the people who work hard to make our city a vibrant place to live and work," Rusty Hicks of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor said in a written statement issued after the vote. "After months of public debate and study, the City Council's vote puts us one step away from changing the lives of hundreds of thousands of hardworking Angelenos," he said. "Though there is still work to be done, all of us in Los Angeles will see the fruits of raising the wage in L.A." Opponents of minimum wage hikes say they place an undue burden on businesses and will force employers to lay off workers or move. With the federal minimum wage stagnant at $7.25 an hour since 2009, supporters of raising pay for the lowest paid workers have expressed little hope for an increase from the Republican-controlled U.S. Congress.

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Los Angeles city council approves minimum wage hike

The Los Angeles City Council gave final approval to an ordinance raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2020 from the current $9.

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PSALM 98, I. O, sing unto the Lord a new song, for He hath done marvelous things: His right hand and His holy arm hath gotten him the victory. ISAIAH 32, 17. -- And the work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness, quietness and assurance forever. We have assembled to-night, on the recommendation of the President of the United States, to render thanks unto Almighty God for the signal triumph of our arms upon the land and upon the sea. The annals of war contain few records so illustrious as the campaign of our Western army, terminating in the capture of Atlanta, and the achievements of our navy in the harbor of Mobile. For a hundred and fifty miles our army has fought its way into a hostile territory, against hills terraced with intrenchments and planted with cannon ; through rocky defiles bristling with bayonets; over morasses tangled with thickets and traversed by treacherous streams; around mountains fortified from base to summit, and across rivers whose bridges were destroyed, and whose fords were contested by cavalry and by batteries --a march which for three months has been one continuous fight with a wily and desperate foe; assaults in front to dislodge him from his fastnesses, skirmishing upon the flank and in the rear, to keep open communications, and to guard against surprise; the victory of to-day preparing a new battle for the morrow -- from Missionary ridge, to Ringgold, from Ringgold to Tunnel Hill and Buzzard Boost, from Rocky Face to Dalton, from Dalton to Resaca, from Resaca to Dallas and the Altoona Pass; then to Lost Mountain, the Kenesaw and Marietta; from Marietta to the Chattahooche, and thus on through all the weary and bloody, yet triumphant way, until Atlanta, the westward focus of the rebel Confederacy, with its network of railroads, its founderies and arsenals of war, its magazines of food and ammunition, lay captive at SHERMAN's feet. A march so full of conflict and of peril, in which so many natural obstacles and military obstructions have been overcome by bravery, by strategy, and by perseverance, recalls the sixth? campaign of CAESAR -- to subdue the revolt of the Belgian tribes, and to chastise the invading hordes of Germany. That memorable campaign was fought in a country which was "no other than one great ambuscade;" and CAESAR's troops were exposed to be cut off in detail, whenever they were separated from the main body. The enemy, when repulsed, would retreat into, the forests, and obstruct the march of the Romans by felling trees, and multiplying the obstacles that nature had created, so that it was almost impossible to bring them to a pitched battle. "They could not be reached in any vital part," and it was only by a kind of political flanking, dividing the rebel allies through the jealousies of the barbarian tribes toward each other, that CAESAR was enabled to make head against a foe so favored by all the forces of nature. Yet CAESAR had before him an enemy who though superior in numbers and in sheer brute force, was far inferior to his veteran legions in military discipline, and in the arms and materials of war -- an enemy altogether ignorant of strategy, and not even knowing how to fortify a camp with ditch and rampart; while our General, likewise marching through "one great ambuscade," has had to contend with a foe who possessed all the resources of war known to himself, who had weapons and materials of the same manufacture and the same destructive power, who had been educated in the same military school, who could conduct his strategy with a familiar knowledge of the country, and with the advantage of defensive engineering at every step. When the nature of the country and the resources of the foe are considered, and the difficulties in subsisting an invading army at an ever increasing distance from its base of supplies, and with desperate roving bands hovering upon its long, narrow line of communication, history will assign to the campaign from Chattanooga to Atlanta a place among the great achievements of military science and genius. Its crowning victory puts to shame those who have murmured at the slowness of the advance; shame that they should know so little of the physical geography of their own country; shame that they should have so little sympathy with the brave men who were conquering, not armies alone, but rivers and forests, marshes and mountains, and were winning for the arms of the Union a record as proud as Roman legions ever bore. Well does the head of the nation give the nation's thanks to the Western Army for such "glorious achievements." Well does he summon us to give thanks to God who hath done for us such "marvelous things." Of the achievements of the fleet at Mobile, it were impossible to speak in terms of exaggeration. Sailing right into the concentrated fire of forts and of rams, battling with walls of stone upon this side, and upon that with walls of iron, butting wooden prows against iron plates and pouring shot and shell into the huge floating battery that thought to run them down, crowding on into the deadly grapple through a channel sown with torpedoes and raked by artillery from ship and shore -- crowding on and on, till the iron-hearted Admiral, lashed to the rigging, signals to the fleet that the day is won. Before the glory of that achievement the victories of the Nile and of Trafalgar, with NELSOR's fame, must readjust their claims to naval preeminence; while all faction at home and all prejudice abroad should yield to FARRAGUT "an unconditional surrender." Well does the President express the feeling of the nation in thanks to the gallant navy and the cooperating troops; well does he call upon us as a Christian people to make devout acknowledgment of "the signal success that Divine Providence has vouchsafed to the operations of the United States fleet and army in the harbor of Mobile."

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PEACE THROUGH VICTORY. - A Thanksgiving Sermon, Preached in the Broadway Tabernacle Church, New-York, on Sabbath, Sept. 11, by Joseph P. Thompson, D.D. THE VICTORIES OF SHERMAN AND FARRAGUT. WHY CHRISTIANS REJOICE IN VICTORY. THE BIBLE DOCTRINE CONCERNING WAR. THE JUSTNESS OF OUR CAUSE. THE GUILT OF THE REBELLION. WHAT WE ARE FIGHTING FOR. THE QUESTION OF SLAVERY. LONGINGS FOR PEACE. NO PEACE WITHOUT JUSTICE. THE REAL QUESTION. THE DELUSION OF AN ARMISTICE. NO PEACE FROM RECOGNITION. COMPROMISE NOT PEACE. THE SOLEMN ORDEAL. THE WORDS OF ROBERT HALL. - NYTimes.com

PSALM 98, 1. O, sing unto the Lord a new song, for He hath done marvelous things: His right hand and His holy arm hath gotten him the victory.

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The visitors came in their thousands, staring intently at the Rembrandts, Rubens and Murillos in the hope that they would be able to spot the imposter hidden among the masters. Now, three months since Dulwich picture gallery challenged the public to “spot the fake” after replacing one of their collection masterpieces with a Chinese replica, the gallery has finally revealed the counterfeit. Since 10 February, Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s 18th-century work Young Woman has been replaced by a hand-painted replica, produced in China and ordered over the internet for £70, which has hung in among 270 old masters paintings. The exhibition, titled Made in China, was conceived by American artist Doug Fishbone as a way to make people think about the way they look at, appreciate and value such artistic masterpieces. The gallery’s chief curator, Xavier Bray, described it as “an extraordinary experiment which has allowed people of all generations to reconnect with the collection and re-engage with it on a purely visual basis.” He said: “It was certainly quite provocative because it turns everything you assume you know upside down. A museum is a temple of art and as soon as you cross the threshold you expect everything you are told on a label is correct. So suddenly having this intervention from a contemporary artist that makes you question every piece can be quite unnerving, but in a positive way.” Yet of the 3,000 people who visited the gallery during the experiment, the majority are likely to be left mortified by the unveiling of the fake – only 10% guessed correctly. Bray said the “treasure hunt” challenge had proved very popular with the public and the gallery’s visitor numbers have quadrupled over the past three months. Bray also admitted he had been impressed that 10% had accurately spotted the fake, though noted with amusement that at least 6% of visitors had been convinced the imposter was a recently restored female portrait by Rubens. Bray added: “In the end it was in a very obvious place so most people would just walk past oblivious, which would always make me giggle. Some initially accused us of dumbing everything down but I’m pleased to say it proved the opposite, it actually led people to look afresh.” The key giveaways of the fake, he said, were instantly obvious to the trained eye. They ranged from the lack of warmth in the background canvas and the modern pigment of acrylic paints, to the expression on the face of the woman in the replica, which Bray described as “lacking psychology, just empty and flat”. The original was put back in its frame on Tuesday and hung beside the replica, allowing people to compare the stylistic differences between the two. But Bray said that he would miss the element of fun that the presence of the fake had injected into the gallery. “Weirdly, when it was hanging there, I almost got used to it,” he said.

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Dulwich gallery reveals fake painting among collection of old masters

After a three-month challenge to the public to spot the replica, Dulwich picture gallery reveals the work that was ordered for £70 over the internet

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Hamza El Din, an oud player and composer who reinvented the musical culture of Nubia and carried it worldwide, died Monday in Berkeley, Calif. He was 76. Hamza El Din played the oud in 2005 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. He collected Nubian songs by riding through villages on a donkey. The cause was complications after surgery, said his wife, Nadra, who survives him. Mr. El Din's austere, hypnotic music was based on his research into the traditions of Nubia, an ancient North African kingdom on the upper Nile, which was a cradle of civilization. Accompanying his reedy voice with concise, incantatory phrases on the oud, Mr. El Din created a meditative music that sought a timeless purity. He performed dressed in white, with a white turban. But he was also a cosmopolitan musician who taught ethnomusicology and lived in Rome, Tokyo and California. Hamza El Din was born in 1929 in Egypt, in what had been the territory of ancient Nubia, a crossroads of trade that flourished as early as the fourth millennium B.C. Nubia's former territory is now part of Egypt and the Sudan, and Mr. El Din's hometown, Toshka, was flooded after the building of the Aswan High Dam in the 1960's. He studied electrical engineering and worked for the national railroad in Cairo. But he was drawn to music, first playing the round hand drum called the tar and then taking up the oud, a six-stringed lute. When he learned about the plans to build the Aswan Dam, which flooded much of ancient Nubia, he grew determined to preserve Nubian culture. He studied Arabic music at Ibrahim Shafiq's Institute of Music and at the King Fouad Institute for Middle Eastern Music. He also traveled through villages in Egypt by donkey, collecting Nubian songs. With a grant from the Italian government, he studied Western music and classical guitar at the Academy of Santa Cecilia in Rome. He drew on his studies, and on surviving Nubian traditions, to create music that fused rhythms and inflections from Nubia with Arabic classical elements and a virtuosic approach to the oud, an instrument not traditionally played in Nubia. He was reimagining the music of his home. "One day, I felt the oud had the Nubian accent," he said in a 1996 interview with The San Francisco Chronicle. "I played for people in my village and they were mesmerized." Mr. El Din performed in 1964 at the Newport Folk Festival and recorded two albums for the folk label Vanguard in 1964 and 1965. He moved to the United States, where he was a mentor to musicians, including the guitarist and oud player Sandy Bull. He settled in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 1971 his album "Escalay (The Water Wheel)" was released on the Nonesuch Explorer label. Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead produced Mr. El Din's album "Eclipse" (Rykodisc); Mr. El Din helped arrange for the Dead to perform at the Great Pyramids in Egypt in 1978. Mr. El Din also made albums for Lotus Records and Sounds True. His music was used for movie soundtracks and for dance pieces by the Paris Opera Ballet, Maurice Béjart Ballet and the San Francisco Ballet; and he composed music for a version of the Aeschylus play "The Persians," directed by Peter Sellars at the Salzburg Festival. He toured regularly, performing quietly intense solo concerts, and appeared at major festivals from Los Angeles to Edinburgh to Montreux. He had stints teaching ethnomusicology at Ohio University, the University of Washington and the University of Texas. During the 1980's, with a grant from the Japan Foundation to work on a comparative study of the Arabic oud and the biwa, a Japanese plucked lute, he moved to Tokyo, where he lived until the mid-1990's. Mr. El Din collaborated with ensembles including the Kronos Quartet, which recorded an arrangement of "Escalay" in 1992. When he returned to the United States, he resettled in the San Francisco Bay Area. "I was a Nubian musician playing for my people," he said in the 1996 interview. "Now I'm a Nubian musician playing those same themes for the whole world." His most recent album, "A Wish" (Sounds True), was released in 1999, but his wife said that he had recently completed recording a new album.

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Hamza El Din, 76, Oud Player and Composer, Is Dead

Hamza El Din reinvented the musical culture of Nubia, an ancient North African kingdom on the upper Nile, and carried it worldwide.

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Nearly 1.6 billion barrels of oil, mostly in the Afghan-Tajik Basin, and about 15.7 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, mainly in the Amu Darya Basin, could be tapped, Afghanistan's Ministry of Mines and Industry and the US Geological Survey said on Tuesday. Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, described the estimates as "very positive findings", particularly since the country now imports most of its energy, including electricity. "Knowing more about our country's petroleum resources will enable us to take steps to develop our energy potential which is crucial for our energy's growth," said Karzai, whose government was created after the US-led invasion in 2001 and later won national elections. The $2 million assessment, paid for by the independent US Trade and Development Agency, was nearly four years in the making, said Daniel Stein, the agency's regional director for Europe and Eurasia. The total area assessed was only about one-sixth of the two basins' 200,000 square miles that lie within Afghanistan. Afghanistan's petroleum reserves were previously thought to hold 88 million barrels of oil and five trillion cubic feet of natural gas, based on Afghan and Soviet estimates for 15 oil and gas fields opened between 1957 and 1984. But just three of those have operated recently. "There is a significant amount of undiscovered oil in northern Afghanistan," said Patrick Leahy, the US Geological Survey's acting director. He said the other oilfields were abandoned, or the equipment there was damaged and rocks had filled the wells. More work remains to assess petroleum reserves, conduct seismic exploration and rehabilitate wells, say government and industry officials.

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Scientists discover new Afghan oil

Two geological basins in northern Afghanistan hold 18 times more oil and triple the natural gas resources than was previously thought, government scientists have revealed.

20160531231847

Before you go, we thought you'd like these... Fox News Channel is staying put in Detroit. Just a few days after airing Thursday's GOP debate, the network will host Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders for a Town Hall in the Michigan city. The Town Hall will not include Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton. The former Secretary of State was invited, but a FNC release noted that a conflict in her campaign schedule leaves her unable to attend. This marks FNC's first Democratic Town Hall this election cycle, with CNN and MSNBC previously airing such events. FNC's Bret Baier announced the news during his Thursday episode of Special Report and will host the March 7 forum at 6 p.m. ET at Detroit's Gem Theatre. It comes just one day ahead of the Michigan primary. Baier and FNC colleagues Megyn Kelly and Chris Wallace are in Detroit to moderate Thursday's debate, the network's third this campaign and only its second with Donald Trump. The GOP frontrunner infamously butted heads with Kelly during the ratings record-breaking debate in August. Celebrities who have endorsed Bernie Sanders: FOX News to host Democratic town hall -- minus Hillary Clinton Killer Mike of Run the Jewels The rapper has been very vocal within the hip-hop community about his endorsement of Sanders, and even introduced him at an Atlanta rally. In August 2015, the 'It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia' actor took to Twitter, saying, "Bernie Sanders...you're our only hope Obi-Wan Kenobi". Ruffalo used Twitter to share his political stance on January 17th of this year, saying, "@BernieSanders is preferred 2-1 by young people because they know his means what he says." In June of last year, Sarandon posted a video titled 'Flashback: Rep. Bernie Sanders Opposes Iraq War' along with the caption "We need a leader who is courageous and levelheaded in times of crisis:Bernie Sanders ‪#‎Bernie2016‬. The liberal activist has since been seen campaigning for Sanders in Portland, Maine and introducing him on the campaign trail. Back in August of last year, the lead singer of The Go-Go's tweeted, "yes, I switched teams...my candidate!" above an announcement that Bernie Sanders would be joining CNN's State of the Union. Ever since then she has been an avid supporter on social media. The 'Dodgeball' actor introduced Bernie Sanders at a campaign event in Des Moines shortly before the Iowa Caucus. Sarah Silverman was among other celebs who headlined a fundraiser for the presidential candidate at Hollywood’s Laugh Factory on January 26th. After tweeting "WATCHA I Am #feelingthebern. Today I'm proud to officially endorse @BernieSanders for President" late last year, the actor has made headlining appearances at Sanders' fundraising events. After citing his endorsement on a radio show recently, he elaborated on his commitment to Sanders, saying: “Bernie was at the March on Washington with Dr. King. He was arrested in Chicago for protesting segregation in public schools. He fought for wealth and education equality throughout his whole career. No flipping, no flopping. Enough talk. Time for action.” More from The Hollywood Reporter:

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FOX News to host Democratic town hall -- minus Hillary Clinton

Just a few days after airing Thursday's GOP debate, the network will host Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders for a Town Hall.

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Photographer Malcolm Browne, known for his shocking and iconic image of a self-immolating monk in Saigon, died on Aug. 27, 2012 at the age of 81. Browne was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting as well as the World Press Photo of the Year in 1963. In 2011, Browne spoke with TIME international picture editor Patrick Witty from his home in Vermont. Patrick Witty: What was happening in Vietnam leading up to the day you took your famous photograph of Quang Duc’s self-immolation? Malcolm Browne: I had been in Vietnam at that point for a couple of years when things began to look ugly in central Vietnam. I took a much greater interest in the Buddhists of Vietnam than I had before, because it seemed to me they were likely to be movers and shakers in whatever turned up next. I came to be on friendly terms with quite a lot of the monks who were leaders of this movement that was taking shape. Along about springtime (1963), the monks began to hint that they were going to pull off something spectacular by way of protest–and that would most likely be a disembowelment of one of the monks or an immolation. And either way, it was something we had to pay attention to. At that point the monks were telephoning the foreign correspondents in Saigon to warn them that something big was going to happen. Most of the correspondents were kind of bored with that threat after a while and tended to ignore it. I felt that they were certainly going to do something, that they were not just bluffing, so it came to be that I was really the only Western correspondent that covered the fatal day. PW: Tell me about that morning. You certainly weren’t expecting something so dramatic but you felt drawn because of a call the night before? MB: I had some hint that it would be something spectacular, because I knew these monks were not bluffing. They were perfectly serious about doing something pretty violent. In another civilization it might have taken the form of a bomb or something like that. The monks were very much aware of the result that an immolation was likely to have. So by the time I got to the pagoda where all of this was being organized, it was already underway—the monks and nuns were chanting a type of chant that’s very common at funerals and so forth. At a signal from the leader, they all started out into the street and headed toward the central part of Saigon on foot. When we reached there, the monks quickly formed a circle around a precise intersection of two main streets in Saigon. A car drove up. Two young monks got out of it. An older monk, leaning a little bit on one of the younger ones, also got out. He headed right for the center of the intersection. The two young monks brought up a plastic jerry can, which proved to be gasoline. As soon as he seated himself, they poured the liquid all over him. He got out a matchbook, lighted it, and dropped it in his lap and was immediately engulfed in flames. Everybody that witnessed this was horrified. It was every bit as bad as I could have expected. I don’t know exactly when he died because you couldn’t tell from his features or voice or anything. He never yelled out in pain. His face seemed to remain fairly calm until it was so blackened by the flames that you couldn’t make it out anymore. Finally the monks decided he was dead and they brought up a coffin, an improvised wooden coffin. PW: And you were the only photographer there? MB: As far as I could tell, yes. It turns out that there were some Vietnamese that took some pictures but they didn’t go out—they’re not on the wires or anything like that. PW: What were you thinking while you were looking through the camera? MB: I was thinking only about the fact it was a self-illuminated subject that required an exposure of about, oh say, f10 or whatever it was, I don’t really remember. I was using a cheap Japanese camera, by the name of Petri. I was very familiar with it, but I wanted to make sure that I not only got the settings right on the camera each time and focused it properly, but that also I was reloading fast enough to keep up with action. I took about ten rolls of film because I was shooting constantly. PW: How did you feel? MB: The main thing on my mind was getting the pictures out. I realized this is something of unusual importance and that I’d have to get them to the AP in one of its far flung octopus tentacles as soon as possible. And I also knew this was a very difficult thing to do in Saigon on short notice. PW: What did you do with the film? MB: The whole trick was to get it to some transmission point. We had to get the raw film shipped by air freight, or some way. It was not subject to censorship at that point. We used a pigeon to get it as far as Manila. And in Manila they had the apparatus to send it by radio. PW: When you say pigeon, what do you mean exactly? MB: A pigeon is a passenger on a regular commercial flight whom you have persuaded to carry a little package for him. Speed was of the essence obviously. So we had to get it to the airport. It got aboard a flight leaving very soon for Manila. PW: Did anyone from the AP, once the film arrived, send a message to you saying that the picture was being published all over the world? MB: No, we didn’t know, it was like shooting into a black hole. We learned that it had arrived only after messages began to come through congratulating us for sending such a picture. It was not run by everybody. The New York Times did not run it. They felt it was too grisly a picture that wasn’t suitable for a breakfast newspaper. PW: I’m looking at the picture now on my screen. Tell me what I’m not seeing —what are you hearing, smelling? MB: The overwhelming smell of joss sticks. They do make a very strong smell, not a particularly nice smell, but it’s meant to appease the ancestors and all of that. That was the overwhelming smell except for the smell of burning gasoline and diesel and the smell of burning flesh, I must say. The main sound was the wailing and misery of the monks, who had known this guy for many years before and were feeling for him. Then there was shouting over loudspeakers between the fire department people, trying to figure out a way to put him out, put out the flames around him without actually killing him or something. So it was a jumble of confusion. PW: I read once what President Kennedy said about your photograph. He said, “No news picture in history has generated so much emotion around the world as that one.” MB: Yeah, that could be, that sounds like an honest quote from the White House. PW: Would you consider the photograph your crown achievement in journalism? MB: It attracted a lot of attention, I’ll say that for it. It was not necessarily the hardest story I’ve ever had to cover, but it was certainly an important part of my career.

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The Story Behind the Iconic Burning Monk

On the 50th anniversary of Quang Duc's self-immolation in 1963, LightBox presents an interview with Malcolm Browne, the Associated Press photographer who captured the now-iconic image.

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Families currently using childcare are probably better off under the Labor policy, while families with children just born are better off, at this stage, under the Coalition, according to Australia’s largest childcare provider Goodstart Early Learning. John Cherry of Goodstart – a not-for-profit community childcare and early learning centres – said childcare providers would be encouraging parents to ask their local members about the relative policies. “If your child is in childcare now, probably best to go with Labor; if your child is just born, at this stage the Coalition policy looks more generous,” Cherry said. Related: Labor releases $3bn childcare plan aimed at families on less than $150,000 He said the Coalition’s package would be more generous for most working families than Labor’s interim relief, but Labor’s measures flow sooner. The Coalition package streamlines two childcare payments into one payment and places a work and study activity test. Those on low fees with little work/study activity would lose while those on family incomes of between $65,000 and $170,000 would save an average of $30 a week. Families on very high incomes would also lose benefits. The complicating factor is that the government’s package is tied to cuts to Family Tax Benefit Part B passing the Senate, cuts which the government says are required to fund the changes. The Senate has yet to pass the 2014 budget FTB measures. The Labor package maintains the two current payments – the Child Care Rebate (CCR) and Child Care Benefit (CCB), with a 2017 increase. Labor would provide a 15% increase in the CCB as well as a rise in the rebate cap from $7,500 to $10,000. Labor has said every family earning under $150,000 will benefit from the change. Labor has also committed to reform of the childcare payment system down the track, through a reference panel which will develop a new subsidy. On average, the childcare industry suggests 6,000 CCR benefits are claimed in each marginal seats. Asked if the Coalition would bring forward the July 2018 start date for the childcare reforms, Malcolm Turnbull said the timeframe was “prudent” given the government needed to get the FTB changes through the Senate. Related: Independents surge as poll shows major parties locked in election dead heat “We need to get our savings through the Senate as well, and so we have out of prudence ... we’ve said that it will start from 1st July 2018,” Turnbull said. “If we can secure the passage of our legislation after parliament gets back, assuming we are returned to government, then, and if we can start it earlier, then we will.” Labor’s campaign spokeswoman, Penny Wong, said the Coalition went to the last election promising they would make childcare more affordable. “What we have now, what parents in Australia are facing is a 20% increase in out-of-pocket costs and no relief in sight under this government were they to be re-elected until 2018,” Wong said. “It’s a very long time to wait before the Liberals actually listen to what parents need on childcare.”

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Childcare provider says working families with newborns ‘better off under Coalition policy’

Goodstart Early Learning says while Coalition’s package is more generous for most working families, Labor’s measures will flow sooner

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FORTUNE — It’s lovely how a single element can bring several car companies together. Automakers are bonding to make cost-competitive vehicles that run on hydrogen, the upper-leftmost element on the periodic table. On January 24, BMW and Toyota TM announced that they would collaborate to release a hydrogen fuel cell-powered car by 2020. More recently, Daimler, Ford F , and Nissan one-upped the pair, announcing on January 28 that, together, they would bring a hydrogen fuel cell-powered vehicle to market by 2017. These companies are fierce competitors, and yet, they are joining forces. It’s probably the best choice they could make. This isn’t the first time this has happened in the auto industry. In 2010, Toyota licensed the drivetrain used in its Prius to Mazda, which wanted to incorporate the technology in its own hybrid model. MORE: Where unemployment matters most Nor will the vehicles that come out of this cooperation be the first ones to run on fuel cells. The fuel cell was developed before the turn of the last century, in 1839 by Sir William Grove. Around that time, a host of cars ran on what we would now consider alternative fuels: electricity, peanut oil, and even steam. The internal combustion engine won out. Nevertheless, this is the first time that big auto companies are teaming up to bring affordable, fuel cell-powered cars to a mass market that’s ready for such products, and it doesn’t make much sense to do it alone. For one, selling cars that run off of hydrogen will take much more than just making them. The entire fuel infrastructure (how gas gets to consumers) will have to change, which is no simple task, given the fact that the entire car fuel delivery system is built around gasoline. When rocking the market this way, “It turns out the technology is often not the biggest challenge,” says Eric Olson, senior vice president of advisory services at BSR. “Closely intertwined with the technology is having the conditions, the infrastructure, the policy, and the market preparedness.” Companies can bring a new generation of cars to market more quickly if they collaborate on priming the infrastructure. They can also stay ahead of regulation by teaming up and agreeing on standards themselves. In this case, multiple heads are probably better than one to figure out how exactly the hydrogen fuel cell will interact with the rest of the car, says Peter Adriaens, a civil and environmental engineering professor at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of business. “That’s one of the lessons learned from electric vehicle development,” Adriaens says. Toyota may have licensed the guts of the hybrid Prius out to other companies, but other car companies have clashed as they tried to use proprietary EV technology to gain a competitive edge. A competitive tech race is good business in theory, but the market suffers when companies get bogged down when they sue each other for intellectual property violations. For example, electric carmaker Tesla accused collaborator-competitor Fisker of patent infringement back in 2008. A company called Paice won a lawsuit against Totyota in 2010, after having accusing the giant carmaker of stealing a piece of its proprietary hybrid drive system technology. Lawsuits may stifle the competition, but they hinder the rollout of exciting technologies. Cooperation is hardly easy among fierce auto competitors, especially because these companies will ultimately have to switch tactics again and compete with each other for market share. For it to work, there must be clear parameters on what information they share, Olson says, and participants have to go in with the mindset that they will contribute, not catch a free ride. Also, all parties have to resolve tough intellectual property issues especially when, for instance, the technology creeps into design, as design is a big part of how the companies will ultimately differentiate themselves from their competitors. MORE: The problem with celebrity creative directors Other industries have done this. “Think of the iPod,” says Michael Lenox, a business professor at the University of Virginia’s Darden School, ”or pick almost any consumer electronic device. It’s imbedded with technology that has a variety of intellectual property. Tech companies are all cross-licensing.” Conflicts do arise: look at the soured partnership between Apple and Samsung. But there’s evidence that the time is right for car companies to introduce fuel cells. We’ve seen that some people will pay a premium for green cars, Lenox says. The industry also has much to gain by building vehicles whose only emission is water, he adds. These companies have strong incentives to remove themselves from the regulatory hurdles and consumer ire that have come from strictly producing cars that consume fossil fuels. These auto makers face big challenges, though. The technology needs perfecting, and they’ll need to build an entirely new fuel infrastructure. These are difficult problems and, for now, it’s better to make nice and take them on together.

http://web.archive.org/web/20160617045456id_/http://fortune.com/2013/02/04/why-it-makes-sense-for-auto-foes-to-join-forces/

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Why it makes sense for auto foes to join forces

Fierce competitors like BMW, Toyota, Ford, and Daimler are teaming up to tackle hydrogen fuel-celled cars. It's probably the best choice they could make. Here’s why.

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Two patients receiving experimental treatment for advanced breast cancer at one of the country's most prestigious cancer hospitals were given massive overdoses of two chemotherapy drugs. One patient died, and the other suffered permanent heart damage. The incidents occurred at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, a Harvard teaching hospital, late last fall. Officials at the hospital said they were at a loss to explain how such a serious medical error, which apparently resulted from a mistake in an order by a doctor last November, escaped attention until a clerk picked it up in a routine review of data last month. The patient who died, Betsy A. Lehman, was an award-winning health columnist for The Boston Globe. The news of the mistake, detailed today in an article published in the Globe, was all the more unsettling because Ms. Lehman, as a health reporter, was presumably knowledgeable about her treatment and would have chosen her hospital with care. Ms. Lehman, who was 39, died on Dec. 3 at the hospital. Doctors apparently refused to heed her warnings that something was drastically wrong and ignored the results of tests indicating heart damage. Her death came as she was preparing to go home to her two daughters, ages 7 and 3, and her husband, Robert Distel, a scientist who works at Dana-Farber. A pathologist who did an autopsy did not spot the overdose. He also found no visible signs of cancer in her body. The other patient was a 52-year-old woman who is seriously and chronically debilitated from irreversible heart damage, Dana-Farber officials said. She is now being treated at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston. Her name was not released for reasons of patient confidentiality. Dr. David M. Livingston, physician-in-chief at Dana-Farber, said his institution "profoundly regretted what has occurred, assumes full responsibility for these tragic events and has taken additional precautions to ensure that they do not happen again." "It's an extremely sad time here," Dr. Livingston said in an interview. The overdoses occurred two days apart. Both patients were cared for by the same medical team. Two doctors involved in their care have been suspended from clinical care and are now working full-time in administration pending completion of an independent investigation. The names of the doctors were not released and their patients have been reassigned to other staff members. Both patients were being treated with an experimental procedure known as autologous stem-cell transplant, a variation on a bone marrow transplant. The therapy involves removing stem cells from the blood instead of the marrow, and holding them in reserve until treatment with high doses of chemotherapy have ideally killed all the cancer cells in the body. Then the stem cells, which form new blood cells, are reinjected to repopulate the blood and replenish the immune system. Each patient received large amounts of the chemotherapeutic drug cyclophosphamide, or Cytoxan. The amount was supposed to be calculated according to the amount of the patient's body surface. For Ms. Lehman, the correct dosage would have been 1,630 milligrams each day for four consecutive days. Instead she received 6,520 milligrams a day for four days, four times the intended dose. The other woman received a similarly miscalculated dosage. Each woman also received four times the standard amount of another marketed drug, Mesna, which is used to counter the adverse irritating effects of Cytoxan on the bladder. The Globe said the error was detected only as part of a routine data check performed when a protocol, or blueprint for treatment, is considered experimental. The original medication order was filled out by a physician who is believed to have been working as a research fellow, the Globe reported, and "who apparently misinterpreded the study protocol." At least five other doctors and nurses countersigned the order including the leader of the team, Dr. Lois J. Ayash. "It was a blunder compounded or overlooked by at least a dozen physicians, nurses and pharmacists, including some of the institution's senior staff," the Globe said. Dana-Farber said the article in the Globe was fair. The overdoses were repeatedly documented in Ms. Lehman's hospital record. The experimental protocol involved only Dana-Farber and not other hospitals. The experimental plan was not under the supervision of the Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Livingston said. Dana-Farber has 57 licensed beds, is one of 20 Federally designated regional cancer centers and is a recipient of $35 million in Federal funding and $25 million in charitable contributions annually. It was founded in 1947. Dr. Livingston said that "in the recorded history of the institution, we can't find any evidence of an overdose induced death." Despite Dana-Farber's high reputation, it has a troubled past. The hospital often has been criticized by doctors elsewhere for aggressively marketing its scientific expertise. When Paul E. Tsongas, the former Senator from Massachusetts, ran for President in 1992, two of his doctors at Dana-Farber repeatedly said Mr. Tsongas had been cancer-free since undergoing a bone marrow transplant in 1986 for a lymphoma, a cancer of the lymph system. But in 1987 Dana-Farber doctors found evidence of the disease in a lymph node in Mr. Tsongas's armpit. Mr. Tsongas, who is a trustee of Dana-Farber, suffered a relapse in late 1992.

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Big Doses of Chemotherapy Drug Killed Patient, Hurt 2d

Two patients receiving experimental treatment for advanced breast cancer at one of the country's most prestigious cancer hospitals were given massive overdoses of two chemotherapy drugs. One patient died, and the other suffered permanent heart damage. The incidents occurred at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, a Harvard teaching hospital, late last fall. Officials at the hospital said they were at a loss to explain how such a serious medical error, which apparently resulted from a mistake in an order by a doctor last November, escaped attention until a clerk picked it up in a routine review of data last month.

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Four days after he was introduced as Rutgers’ new coach, Steve Pikiell did what predecessor Eddie Jordan couldn’t — land a New Jersey prep star. Pikiell picked up his first commitment as the Scarlet Knights coach on Saturday morning from Roselle (N.J.) Catholic forward Matt Bullock, an under-recruited yet tough-minded and multi-talented senior who becomes the first New Jersey player to commit to Rutgers since Myles Mack in 2011. “It was a little bit of a perfect storm, because I have a relationship with Coach Pikiell from him recruiting Jameel Warney, who had so much success at Stony Brook,” Roselle Catholic coach Dave Boff said in a phone interview, referring to his former player. “I was able to explain to Matt his vision. He met with Coach Pikiell. It just kind of worked out perfectly.” Bullock enjoyed a memorable career at Roselle Catholic, winning two New Jersey Tournament of Champions titles and three Non-Public B titles. The Elizabeth, N.J., native averaged 11.6 points per game this year as he led the Lions to the Union County Tournament final and a South Jersey, Non-Public B sectional crown before they fell to St. Anthony of Jersey City in the Non-Public B final. He shined against top competition, playing well against McDonald’s All-American Miles Bridges, a Michigan State signee who attends prep powerhouse Huntington (W.Va.) Prep, and Ohio State commit Micah Potter of Montverde Academy (Fla.). “How many guys at this point [who are uncommitted] have had that level of success against guys already signed in the Big Ten?” Boff said. “We know Matt can compete against people at this level, and have success, and I think that was something that got Coach Pikiell really excited.” Pikiell and Boff talked shortly after he took the job, and Pikiell asked about Bullock, who he was familiar with having spent time at Roselle Catholic while with Stony Brook for other players. Bullock’s recruitment was just beginning to pick up, as Davidson, La Salle, San Francisco, Monmouth, and Rider were all involved. But he visited Rutgers on Friday and decided there was no need to look elsewhere. “It’s a fresh start for the basketball program,” Bullock told nj.com. “I really picked the school because of the fact that I’m his first recruit, which pretty much tells me he believes in me, and that I can help the team get to the top.”

http://web.archive.org/web/20160711030204id_/http://nypost.com:80/2016/03/27/steve-pikiells-first-move-shows-its-a-new-era-for-rutgers-hoops/

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Steve Pikiell’s first move shows it’s a new era for Rutgers hoops

That didn’t take long. Four days after he was introduced as Rutgers’ new coach, Steve Pikiell did what predecessor Eddie Jordan couldn’t — land a New Jersey prep star. Pikiell picked up his first c…

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The Associated Press news agency formally cooperated with the Hitler regime in the 1930s — providing US newspapers with material produced by the Nazi propaganda machine, a German historian has revealed. When the Nazi party rose to power in Germany in 1933, it sought to crack down on both the German press and the international media in the country. British-American agencies such as Keystone and Wide World Photos were soon forced to shutter their offices in Germany after being attacked for employing Jewish journalists, reported The Guardian, which itself was banned in Germany at the time. The Associated Press was the only Western news agency allowed to remain in Hitler’s Germany, where it continued to operate until the US entered the war in 1941. To retain its access, the New York City-based agency entered a mutually beneficial relationship with the Nazis, historian Harriet Scharnberg wrote in an article published in the journal Studies in Contemporary History. The AP adhered to the so-called Schriftleitergesetz (editor’s law), promising not to publish information “calculated to weaken the strength of the Reich abroad or at home,” Scharnberg wrote. And the news outlet was required to hire staffers who also worked for the Nazis’ propaganda division, The Guardian reported. One of the AP’s four photographers in the 1930s, Franz Roth, belonged to the SS paramilitary unit’s propaganda division, whose photographs were personally chosen by the Fuhrer. AP has removed Roth’s images from its website since Scharnberg published her findings, but thumbnails remain visible due to “software issues,” the paper reported. The news agency also allowed the Nazi regime to use its photo archives for anti-Semitic propaganda. Scharnberg, a historian at Halle’s Martin Luther University, argued that AP’s cooperation with the Nazis allowed them to “portray a war of extermination as a conventional war,” according to The Guardian. The study also calls into question the AP’s current relationship with totalitarian regimes, according to the Guardian, which said questions have been raised about the neutrality of its office in North Korea. “As we continue to research this matter, AP rejects any notion that it deliberately ‘collaborated’ with the Nazi regime,” an AP spokesman told The Guardian. “An accurate characterization is that the AP and other foreign news organizations were subjected to intense pressure from the Nazi regime from the year of Hitler’s coming to power in 1932 until the AP’s expulsion from Germany in 1941. AP management resisted the pressure while working to gather accurate, vital and objective news in a dark and dangerous time.” Click here to read the entirety of the AP’s response.

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Associated Press cooperated with Nazi propaganda machine

The Associated Press news agency formally cooperated with the Hitler regime in the 1930s — providing US newspapers with material produced by the Nazi propaganda machine, a German historian has reve…

20160721004619

In recent weeks, a number of their peers have been back in action. Both Siouxsie Sioux, and The Cult, featuring Ian Astbury, followed up excellent new albums with sold-out UK tours. Bauhaus, too, released a spirited reunion album. Meanwhile, last Monday, Nick Cave, who once self-mockingly crowned himself the Black Crow King in a song, referring to his unbidden goth audience, hit the album charts at number four - his highest ever chart position. If, in 1982, some fool had suggested that this motley gang of doom-mongers would be thriving in the 21st century, he would have been laughed out of court. With their deathly pallor and often narcotic lifestyles, these were not tomorrow's survivors-in-waiting. All now pushing 50, they each represent an ongoing refusal of the shiny-happy generalities upon which mainstream pop is founded. Robert Smith, The Cure's driving force, who is 49 next month, is goth's chief architect. Raised in Crawley, he was 16 when he first heard punk's early rumblings and formed a band called Malice, which soon morphed into the Easy Cure and then, simply, The Cure. Early on, his plan was to match the pop melodies of the Buzzcocks, with the darker sensibilities of Siouxsie and the Banshees, whose singer had elevated her own unique way with make-up and hair to a new art form. The Cure's debut single, 1978's Killing an Arab, pitted lyrics based on Albert Camus's existentialist novel, L'Étranger, against a catchy pop-punk tune, but Smith gradually steered the band's sound towards more enigmatic and challenging territory. Inspired by David Bowie's Low, as well as his own daily consumption of LSD, Smith made the fourth Cure album, Pornography, as if it were his last - a harsh and uncompromising expression of human destructive urges; an act of career suicide. The excruciating, dirge-like song, One Hundred Years, began with the line, "It's doesn't matter if we all die," before doling out images of slaughtered pigs and paternal bereavement. And that was just the opening number. On its release in 1982, the NME memorably described the album as "Phil Spector in Hell", but it duly went straight into the Top Ten thanks to the Cure's gathering fanbase. On their subsequent tour, the band wore white-face on stage, with red eyes, so that, when they sweated under the lights, it appeared as if they were crying blood. Later that year, Smith came back with a regrouped Cure, putting out a run of singles which at least outwardly shunned the macabre, nihilistic sound of old. [Let's Go To Bed], [The Walk] and, most alluringly, [The Love Cats] established him as one of the Eighties's most reliable hit-makers. Where the likes of Siouxsie, Cave and the Cult often angrily dissociated themselves from their uncool goth audience, Smith embraced it. With his abomination of black hair, sloppily-applied make-up and shapeless black clothes, he became their icon. Amongst the youth tribes that existed in the wake of punk (skinheads, mods, headbangers, New Romantics, etc), the goths were regarded by all as absolute losers, bereft of style, muscle, intelligence and social ability. As those cults faded one by one, goth somehow prevailed, its fashions and idea system entirely unchanged. It provided a constant, a comfort - a cocooned, apolitical retreat from the worries of the real world. Its popularity spread worldwide, from Germany to Japan, and its sinister tenets infected other subgenres, such as industrial, heavy metal and emo. For that reason, and other more personal ones, Smith has resolutely stuck by his vision. I once saw him in Regent Street, as he and his wife, Mary Poole, shopped in the Christmas sales. His hair looked like a fire had wrecked it, the middle of his face was splattered with lipstick, and he sported a gigantic pair of white trainers, as he did in all his videos at the time. He wasn't exactly sneaking around incognito. He often confesses that he perseveres with that look, because that's how his wife loves him. His fans, of course, would be equally horrified if he were to renège, even when he's seventy. In the quarter-century since [The Love Cats], his records have veered between the opposite poles of [Pornography]-style angst (see 1989's [Disintegration]), and out-and-out pop (hits like [Friday I'm in Love], [Lullaby], [In Between Days], etc). And so, despite numerous boozy bust-ups, and personnel crises arising from Smith's despotic leadership, the Cure still rule, darkly. [Pornography] is now revered as a benchmark of musical extremism. However, Smith, like all the aforementioned goth-associated performers, has not been content to sit back and milk his past. It's as if that negating, black-clad energy which drove them all to begin with, was ferocious enough to propel them right through, artistically, into later life. In the new millennium, as goth fashions invade the catwalks, the Cure's relevance only seems to multiply. With 2004's [The Cure] album, Smith teamed up with nu-metal producer, Ross Robinson, and scaled greater commercial heights in America. There, Smith is seen as a demigod of alternative culture. When I met Arcade Fire's Win Butler a few years ago, he was wearing an old Cure T-shirt, and enthused for some minutes about Smith. "As a kid," he said, "he showed me that there was music out there that wasn't being presented to me through the mainstream". Two years ago, I saw Smith's latest line-up play a humdinger of a Teenage Cancer Trust show at the Albert Hall. It lasted for three hours, taking in both the depths of [Pornography], the highs of [The Love Cats] - all ages of the Cure, from [Killing an Arab] through to a healthy smattering of new material. Reports from the current European tour suggest that tonight's show at Wembley will be much the same: a full-blown Last Night of the Proms for the black-eyeliner brigade. No-one with the faintest goth leanings should miss it.

http://web.archive.org/web/20160721004619id_/http://www.telegraph.co.uk:80/culture/music/3671955/The-Cure-Ghouls-who-refused-to-die.html

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The Cure: Ghouls who refused to die

Back in the Eighties, no one would have believed that goth rock would be thriving 25 years later. As The Cure prepare to play Wembley tonight, Andrew Perry explains their enduring appeal

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I am standing on the wind-buffeted tip of the Strata tower, looking out through the blades of what appear to be an enormous propeller, at the London skyline and the green basin beyond. St Paul's cathedral, across the river, seems close enough to touch. It's the kind of view, and the kind of heroically stylised building, you would expect to see in some 1930s sci-fi movie: the perfect place for a hero and a villain to have a rooftop showdown. At 147 metres, the newly opened Strata is London's tallest residential building. The nine-metre blades I'm standing beneath are housed in one of three wind turbines that crown this new tower soaring above Elephant and Castle, an area of the city not known for flashy penthouses. But Elephant and Castle is undergoing a massive, if slow, transition from a rundown miasma of noisy road intersections, underpasses and vast housing estates into what the Borough of Southwark hopes will be a £1.5bn model of inner-city regeneration. The plan was first made public six years ago and work is unlikely to be completed before 2020. It's a colossal challenge, as well as an opportunity, and the £113.5m Strata, the first of three skyscrapers planned for here, is a symbol of the dynamism and energy the project demands. And that energy must, of course, be seen to be green. It's early days, but if the turbines work as planned, and aren't too noisy for residents in the pricey penthouses beneath them, they should generate 8% of this 43-storey building's energy needs. This is roughly enough to run its electrical and mechanical services (including three express lifts and automated window-cleaning rigs) as well as the lighting, heating and ventilation of its public spaces, which include an underground car and cycle park. Strata is the first building in the world to incorporate wind turbines into its structure. Yes, the new Bahrain World Trade Centre in Manama, by the firm Atkins, also boasts three giant turbines, but these are set on steel struts connecting its twin towers, not part of the actual towers themselves. While I can vouch for the strength of the south-westerlies that will turn Strata's blades, whether its turbines will set a precedent for future British towers is less clear: this rooftop was exceedingly hard to construct, almost prohibitively so, every part of it having to be hauled up. However, what the three fans do, without a doubt, is give Strata a striking profile. Whether you find this exciting, disturbing or simply over-the-top will be down to personal taste, yet it's no surprise the tower has been dubbed the Electric Razor, not just because of its whirling blades but also because of its black and silver lines that seem to pixellate upwards; Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, has called it the Lipstick. So what do green experts think? "You've got to take your hat off to the design team for delivering a building that captures the imagination," says Paul King, head of the UK Green Building Council. "I doubt wind power will become a common feature in high-rise inner city projects, but without this type of bold innovation, how would we ever know? Developments like this show that sustainability is increasingly becoming mainstream. That's something everyone should celebrate." Including the 1,000 or so people who have already moved into – or bought into – Strata's 408 flats (each boasting floor-to-ceiling windows). And there is a difference between the two. Nearly every flat was bought off-plan, before construction began, 50-75% of them by investors. This is a shame: the whole idea of the tower is that it should be a guiding light for new inner-city residential development. This is meant to be a home for local people, not a machine for property market profiteering. Indeed, 25% of the flats, on floors two to 10, are "affordable homes", for those on incomes of less than £60,000 (in central London that kind of money won't guarantee a home of your own); meanwhile, a three-floor pavilion to the side of the tower has been given to council residents leaving the soon-to-be-demolished Aylesbury Estate, a 1960s housing complex seen by most as an enormous failure. Tony Blair made his first speech as prime minister at this estate, in a bid to show his government would care for the poorest elements in society. To my mind, Strata's big propellers give the building the feel of an airship holding aloft the passenger cabins (or flats) below. Or perhaps it's more like an old-fashioned transatlantic liner with its complement of first-, second-and third-class passengers. I think of this as architect Ian Bogle, of London-based BFLS (formerly Hamiltons Architects), leads me through the tall, narrow lobby to the lifts that shoot silently up to the residential floors. 'You feel like you own the city' The views are spectacular. Most front doors open directly onto gaping vistas of London, framed by giant windows. They are not for the faint-hearted. Bogle goes to open what looks like a door at the side of a window and I think he might vanish into the ether. As it happens, he's simply opening a perforated screen designed to let fresh air in. "We've tried to get as much daylight and fresh air as possible into the flats," says Bogle. "You certainly feel as if you own the entire city from up here." Indeed you do. There are magic moments, too: way below, trains race in and out of buildings and seem to pass through the tower itself. It reminds me of the super-modern city drawn by Antonio Sant'Elia, the Italian futurist architect, shortly before the first world war. His Città Nuova was a dynamic, machine-like metropolis through which cars and even aircraft would pass, via openings in the buildings. His imaginings inspired film-makers, from William Cameron Menzie's Things to Come in 1936, to Ridley Scott's Blade Runner in 1982; they also resonated in city developments as dramatic and diverse as the Barbican, the Pompidou and the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank. And they echo today in these views from the Strata tower, and in its mighty turbines. But are they just a tokenistic green gimmick? Or will they propel us towards a new urban architecture, one that's cinematically thrilling and ecologically sound? Until its sibling towers rise and the redevelopment of Elephant and Castle is complete, it will be hard to properly judge Strata. Right now, it stands alone, a sleek silver sentinel, towering over the follies of the recent past.

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Spin city: London's Strata tower

It is the world's first skyscraper with built-in wind turbines. But is London's Strata a green gimmick – or the future? Jonathan Glancey takes to the skies

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08/05/2016 AT 08:50 AM EDT is already starting to think about putting together his cabinet if he wins. Asked who his first female pick would be, the 70-year-old businessman suggested someone close to his heart – his daughter "I can tell you everybody would say, 'Put Ivanka in! Put Ivanka in!' you know that, right?" , a cohost on First Coast News' afternoon program "She's very popular, she's done very well," he continued. Savage could be a good pick too, he went on to suggest. The 44-year-old previously worked for the Trump Organization, is a former Miss Florida and claims to have known Donald for "probably 20 years now." "There really are so many people that are really talented people," Donald said, "Like you – you're so talented, but I don't know if your viewers know that." "Is this breaking news? Am I going to be in the cabinet?" she joked. "Is that a yes?" "Sounds like it to me – looking good to me," he joked. Andrew H. Walker / Getty The GOP presidential candidate failed to name any other women he would add to the Cabinet of the United States – a group composed of the most senior appointed officers of the executive branch of the federal government. Cabinet members are nominated by the president and then confirmed or rejected by a simple majority of the Senate. The president may dismiss or reappoint cabinet members at will. on the campaign trail, Ivanka has been coy about whether she wants to explore a political career or would take a more formal role if her father is elected president. "My life is chaotic right now," the 34-year-old . "I'm exhausted 90 percent of the time." She does have a pretty full plate, between raising her three kids – Theodore James – with husband , working for the Trump Organization alongside her brothers, running a website devoted to helping working women, and helming her of Ivanka Trump shoes, diamonds and more. Of all those gigs though, she places motherhood first. "Being a mother is the most rewarding experience, but also the most wild and stressful," Ivanka said.

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Donald Trump Suggests He'd Name Ivanka Trump as First Woman to His Cabinet : People.com

When a female journalist asks Donald Trump what women he would put in his cabinet, he suggests Ivanka Trump

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PHILADELPHIA—Theresa Lounsbery sets out from her apartment in this city’s blue-collar Lower Northeast section each workday. Her neighborhood, Oxford Circle, a district of 2 square miles, has been hammered by manufacturing’s long slide. Median household income in her immediate area is down more than 30% since 2000 to roughly $37,000. But less than 40 minutes later, the 43-year-old sat on an elevated train approaching Philadelphia’s Center City, a 7.7-square-mile mini-boomtown framed by a skyline about to reach new heights with a 1,121-foot office tower under construction. The median income in parts of greater Center City has shot up nearly 90% to $80,000 in the past 15 years. High-earners scoop up townhouses for $800,000 or more, while businesses and law firms lease gleaming office space. Ms. Lounsbery moved to Oxford Circle with her teenage sons two years ago because of cheap rent: $670 a month for a two-bedroom apartment on the upper floor of a row house. A preschool teacher for 10 years, Ms. Lounsbery studied to be a paralegal to earn more money after her divorce. Last summer, she started working at a personal-injury law firm, making double her teacher’s salary and gaining a foothold in the Center City economy. Ms. Lounsbery’s 10-mile commute highlights the little-noticed polarization under way in many postindustrial cities in the Northeast and Midwest. For years, economists and urban experts talked about the doughnut hole of decay in city centers. But increasingly, many urban cores are islands of economic strength surrounded by decay that reaches out into inner-ring suburbs—beyond which fortunes rise again in more distant suburbs. Polarization has increased within other U.S. cities, where a turnaround for city centers has been accompanied by economic decline or stagnation in many longtime middle-class enclaves and lower-income neighborhoods with high minority populations, according to a census data analysis by The Wall Street Journal. Many neighborhoods within city limits are sinking amid a continuing loss of lower-skilled jobs offering good wages, while downtowns benefit from an influx of often well-educated young adults drawn to urban living, and the arrival of businesses eager to hire them. As in Philadelphia, gains in the heart of many U.S. cities have come at a time of wider neighborhood decline, the Journal analysis found. Since 2000, median income has fallen in a majority of census tracts in Buffalo, Baltimore, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Milwaukee and Chicago, all of which saw their downtown districts improve. Developers are squeezing in more high-end housing around Baltimore’s revitalized waterfront. A new office tower is rising in Milwaukee that will be the city’s second-tallest. And Chicago boasts a parade of corporations relocating downtown. As gentrification battles in hot global cities such as New York and San Francisco attract national focus, many more cities would like to spread recent economic gains in their urban core across the city, rather than temper them. Job gains are concentrated in urban centers, largely to the benefit of downtown-area residents and suburban commuters, leaving many city dwellers with few good options, said Alan Mallach, a senior fellow at the Flint, Mich.-based think tank Center for Community Progress. Mr. Mallach has studied such polarization in former industrial cities including Detroit, St. Louis, Cleveland and Pittsburgh. Over the past three decades, neighborhoods in urban cores have been growing richer, whiter and better educated, according to a study by Nathaniel Baum-Snow, a University of Toronto associate business economics professor, and Daniel Hartley, a Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago economist. A study by City Observatory, a Portland, Ore., think tank focused on urban data analysis, found a tripling over the past four decades of urban census tracts where at least 30% of people live in poverty. Its authors, who analyzed a 10-mile radius around the city center in the 51 largest metros, found many more areas shifted into high poverty than experienced economic gains. Overall, Philadelphia, the nation’s fifth-most-populous city, notched a 14.3% decline in median income from 2000 to 2014 on an inflation-adjusted basis, a drop that exceeded the 10.4% nationwide decrease. The census data analyzed by the Journal showed income gains in Philadelphia over the past 15 years have clustered around flourishing Center City. For every area of the city that had income growth, more than two other parts posted drops—including swaths of traditionally middle-class Northeast Philadelphia, a 45-square-mile area that reaches to the city line and where more than a quarter of the city’s 1.57 million people live. Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney, elected last fall, has said residents’ ZIP Code shouldn’t determine their future. Baltimore officials recently reached a local hiring and affordable housing agreement with backers of a proposed $5.5 billion development south of downtown led by Under Armour Chief Executive Kevin Plank. Critics want the developer to do more. In Milwaukee, where nearly a fifth of the tax base is in 3% of the city’s land area, officials are pushing to send economic ripples beyond downtown. “We can’t have two cities. We can’t have a downtown that is successful and neighborhoods that are not,” said Rocky Marcoux, development commissioner. There is some fear that growing urban disparities, if left unchecked, could spur more unrest like what shook Baltimore and Ferguson, Mo., in recent years, where anger at police only partly fueled heated protests. “We haven’t had that spark that has created that action, but it could happen at any point in some neighborhoods,” said Beth McConnell, policy director for a group of community development corporations in Philadelphia. In Lower Northeast Philadelphia, housing prices have dropped 10.2% in the past 10 years—a span that includes the foreclosure crisis—compared with a 6.5% increase citywide, according to Kevin Gillen, a Philadelphia-based senior research fellow at Drexel University’s Lindy Institute for Urban Innovation. A three-bedroom row house on Ms. Lounsbery’s block sold in June for $103,000. Broadly, Philadelphia’s job mix has changed since 2000. Manufacturing accounts for less than 4% of jobs, down from 7%, and government positions make up 14% of the total, down from 16%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The largely low-wage hospitality sector accounts for 9.4%, up from 7.7%. Education and health have grown from about 25% of city jobs to about 31%. The professional and business services sector including law firms has edged up as well. At the sprawling Cardone Industries plant, near Ms. Lounsbery’s Oxford Circle home, workers earn $15 to $20 hourly plus benefits remanufacturing used auto parts. This year, the closely held company said its brakes division will move to Mexico, claiming 1,350 of the facility’s roughly 2,200 jobs by May 2018. Spokesman Kevin Feeley said the company must compete with rivals and expects to add hundreds of higher-paying jobs locally in its electronics division over time. Ms. Lounsbery, a Philadelphia native, has seen the decline firsthand. “There aren’t a lot of industrial jobs in and around the city like there used to be,” she said. She thinks she may leave the neighborhood in a couple of years. Oxford Circle and surrounding neighborhoods once teemed with middle-class workers laboring at factories as well as police officers and other municipal employees. The loss of public-sector jobs over the past decade has hit these areas hard, said Moody’s Analytics senior economist Adam Kamins. “Those are the old white working-class neighborhoods. As jobs left, households left,” Mr. Gillen of Drexel said. “The revitalization of Philadelphia is really the story of the revitalization of Center City and adjoining neighborhoods….I’d like to see more neighborhoods in the city participating in the city’s renaissance. We have momentum, but it’s unbalanced.” Since 2000, the population of greater Center City has risen 17% to 185,000. That area is 62% white, up from 53% in 2000, according to Center City’s improvement district. Median household income over that time jumped in most of greater Center City by at least 20%, census figures show. Center City’s upward trajectory was aided by a pair of 10-year, property-tax breaks that drove a residential building boom starting in the late 1990s, and by the 1993 opening of a downtown convention center that added restaurants, hotels, shops and cultural amenities, said Paul Levy, chief executive of the business improvement district. The millennial surge that started roughly a decade ago has spilled beyond the traditional downtown boundaries. Longtime residents of Northern Liberties, a former industrial area considered part of greater Center City, say it has grown visibly denser and richer over the past couple of decades, with Teslas and BMWs plying the narrow streets. Housing prices there have risen 61% over the past 10 years, said Drexel’s Mr. Gillen. This year, Shailee Viroja and her husband, both doctors, paid $830,000 for a new 3,500-square-foot townhouse in Northern Liberties. Dr. Viroja, 30, said the urban vibe attracted them. “It seems like it’s all young professionals and young families,” she said. “It’s quiet, but there’s a lot going on, restaurants and bars.” But there is no guarantee the progress downtown will continue. One key question is whether the young adults who have flocked to cities will stay. In Philadelphia, which for years has retained a sizable share of recent college graduates, those in their 20s and early 30s now make up 40% of downtown residents. But a 2014 study by the Pew Charitable Trusts found that half of Philadelphia’s millennials didn’t expect to live in the city in five to 10 years, citing job and career reasons and concerns about schools, child-rearing and crime. There is already some data suggesting millennial population growth is shifting away from cities to the suburbs and exurbs, said Mr. Kamins of Moody’s Analytics. Because that population bulge of young adults is “time limited,” cities must lock them in by focusing on the quality of public schools and public spaces, Mr. Levy said. Center City still has a mix of job opportunities, with about a third requiring only a high school diploma, said Mr. Levy, but the rising economic disparity within his city concerns him. “To have huge poverty right next to wealth, that’s just not healthy for democracy,” he said. Harold Epps, Philadelphia’s commerce director, said city leaders know they need to find a way to spread the prosperity. One broad goal is to get more residents the skills employers want, from software coding to plumbing. “We have to find jobs for our existing population,” he said. —Mark Peters contributed to this article.

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For More U.S. Cities, Downtown Is a Center of Economic Strength

Downtown areas, such as Philadelphia’s Center City, are gaining in jobs and incomes while surrounding neighborhoods are on the decline.

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Large swathes of central London, including many of its most desirable addresses, are owned by a small number of estates: aristocratic fiefdoms each with their exquisite old money enclaves and distinct architecture. But even London’s great estates can’t survive on historic prestige alone. They need to move with the times and morph into dynamic “urban villages” where people want to live, work and shop. “Stewardship” is the key concept, according to Hugh Seaborn, CEO of Cadogan Estates, Chelsea and Knightsbridge’s main landlords who are currently overhauling Sloane Street by upping its luxury retail reputation and introducing multi-lingual "ambassadors" to guide visitors along the street. “Stewardship is about managing something for the benefit of future generations, while ensuring they meet the needs of the present generation,” says Seaborn. Most of London’s biggest land-owners take as their inspiration the Howard de Walden estate’s transformation of Marylebone High Street. In 1995, a third of the street’s shops were either vacant or occupied by charities. In went Waitrose, Conran and small, specialist shops, the Georgian buildings got a thorough jet-spray and now Marylebone is one of the most sought-after residential and commercial areas of central London, where property values has risen by 128 per cent since 2000, according to Martin Bikhit, MD of Kay & Co estate agency. Seeking to emulate its success – and bring its property values in line, having traditionally been about 15 per cent lower – The Portman Estate, which owns 110 acres of prime Marylebone, has invested millions in developing Portman Village around New Quebec Street. “They’re keen to monitor the tenant mix, granting five-year leases which give them the flexibility to make changes and ensure the long-term success of the area,” says Bikhit. “Now flats in the Portman Estate’s three main squares – Montagu, Portman and Bryanston – costs 22 per cent more than anywhere else in the local area.” Also imitating the Marylebone model, Grosvenor, the Duke of Westminster’s estate, worked its magic on Mayfair’s Mount Street – which is hailed as another stellar example of how to breathe new life into old estates. “They cobbled and shined up Mount Street, inventing a new centrepiece for Mayfair,” says Roarie Scarisbrick, partner at buying agents Property Vision. “This has been repeated on Motcomb Street and Elizabeth Street, where you can browse the local artisan shops and get an excellent lunch from an eye-wateringly expensive delicatessen. It isn’t a model that would work everywhere, but this is what people want here, and the effect is clear to see.” Grosvenor are the most “pioneering” of the great estates, according to Ed Tryon at Lichfields, a prime central London property search company. “They have cottoned on to the fashionable pop-up trend and fill empty shops with spaces for up-and-coming designers and artists before the permanent tenants move in,” he says. “Having created a community through the Mount Street Association and the Mount Street Garden Party, they have created a mini destination just around that one street and that is a sure-fire way to improve house prices.” Now Grosvenor’s focus is North Mayfair, around Oxford Street, including 16 apartments to let at 65 Duke Street and trendy new retail tenants to be announced next month, all sitting in the sightline of Selfridges. The vision also includes The Beaumont, the first hotel to be operated by restaurateurs Corbin + King. In St James, south of Piccadilly, The Crown Estate has recently launched a £500m programme that will partly hark back to its history as a place for fine dining, with five new restaurants to open before Christmas, including Angela Hartnett’s Café Murano. The historic St James Gateway is also being redeveloped to include 11 flats to let and five for sale, with 125-year leases, from £3.95m through WA Ellis. But most excitingly, thinks buying agent Robert Bailey, is the Sultan of Brunei’s purchase of most of Queensway in Bayswater, including the white elephant that is Whiteley’s shopping centre. With Marylebone’s makeover as his inspiration, the Sultan wants to turn the strip of takeaways and mobile phone shops into a cluster of upmarket retailers. “The Howard de Walden estate has already proved that if you can get the retail mix right along the main shopping streets, the area will transform,” says Bailey. “With enough vision, the Sultan could easily replicate the successes of Marylebone, Grosvenor’s Motcomb Street and Cadogan’s revitalisation of Sloane Street and create another great London estate.”

http://web.archive.org/web/20160808113748id_/http://www.telegraph.co.uk:80/luxury/property-and-architecture/13463/the-revival-londons-great-estates.html

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The revival ofLondon's great estates

Historic fiefdoms continue to innovate, creating desirable urban villages with a pioneering mix of retail and restaurant developments

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Russian or Syrian warplanes knocked two hospitals out of service in the beseiged rebel sector of Aleppo on Wednesday and ground forces intensified an assault in a battle which the United Nations said had turned the city into a slaughterhouse. Two patients died in one of the hospitals and other shelling killed six residents queueing for bread under a siege that has trapped 250,000 people with food running out. The week-old assault, which could herald a turning point in the war, has already killed hundreds of people, with bunker-busting bombs bringing down buildings on residents huddled inside. Only about 30 doctors are believed to be left inside the besieged zone, coping with hundreds of wounded a day. "The warplane flew over us and directly started dropping its missiles ... at around 4am," Mohammad Abu Rajab, a radiologist at the M10 hospital, the largest trauma hospital in the city's rebel-held sector, told Reuters. "Rubble fell in on the patients in the intensive care unit." M10 hospital workers said oxygen and power generators were destroyed and patients were transferred to another hospital. Photographs sent to Reuters by a hospital worker at the facility showed damaged storage tanks, a rubble strewn area, and the collapsed roof of what he said was a power facility. There were no initial reports of casualties there, but medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said two patients had been killed at the other hospital, in shelling which took it out of service as well, leaving east Aleppo with only seven doctors in a position to undertake surgery. The government of President Bashar al-Assad, backed by Russian air power, Iranian ground forces and Shi'ite militia fighters from Iran, Iraq and Lebanon, has launched a massive assault to crush the rebels' last major urban stronghold. Syria's largest city before the war, Aleppo has been divided for years between government and rebel zones, and would be the biggest strategic prize of the war for Assad and his allies. Taking full control of the city would restore near full government rule over the most important cities of western Syria, where nearly all of the population lived before the start of a conflict that has since made half of Syrians homeless, caused a refugee crisis and contributed to the rise of Islamic State. The offensive began with unprecedentedly fierce bombing last week, followed by a ground campaign this week, burying a ceasefire that had been the culmination of months of diplomacy between Washington and Moscow. Washington says Moscow and Damascus are guilty of war crimes for targetting civilians, hospitals, rescue workers and aid deliveries, to break the will of residents and force them to surrender. Syria and Russia say they target only militants. Asked by a reporter at the United Nations whether Syria had bombed the two hospitals hit on Wednesday, the Syrian ambassador to the world body, Bashar Ja'afari, appeared to laugh. The Syrian army said a Nusra Front position had been destroyed in Aleppo's old quarter, and other militant-held areas targeted in "concentrated air strikes" near the city. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said those using "ever more destructive weapons" were committing war crimes and that the situation in Aleppo was worse than "a slaughterhouse". Food supplies are scarce in the besieged area, and those trapped inside often queue up before dawn for food.

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Warplanes knock out Aleppo hospitals

The week-old assault on the Syrian city of Aleppo, which could herald a turning point in the war, has already killed hundreds of people.

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An audio recording of the night New Zealand woman Warriena Wright, 26, fatally fell from Gable Tostee's Gold Coast balcony has been played during Tostee's trial in the Brisbane Supreme Court. A woman's voice screaming "no, no, no" can be heard on the recording, moments after a man could be heard instructing her to leave the apartment. The 30-year-old has pleaded not guilty to murdering Ms Wright early on August 8, 2014, hours after they met via the dating app Tinder and went to his 14th-floor Surfers Paradise unit. The Crown contends Tostee did not throw or push Ms Wright over the balcony, but forced her on to the balcony after an "intense altercation", "where she had no other means of escape other than to attempt to climb down". A series of selfies were found on Tostee's camera. (Supplied) The photos were taken in the hours before the New Zealand tourist fell to her death. (Supplied) Today is the second day of Tostee's trial, which is expected to run until next week. The court has today heard more audio from a recording made by Tostee in his apartment on the night of Ms Wright's death. The jury heard how the pair, who met on Tinder, had been drinking in Tostee’s unit before an argument broke out. A re-enactment (L) of the circumstances that led to Warriena Wright's death show legs dangling over a balcony and Gable Tostee outside court (R). “You're lucky I haven't chucked you off my balcony you goddamn psycho little bitch," Tostee allegedly said in the recording. “I'm gonna walk you out of this apartment just the way you are, you're not going to collect any belongings.” “If you try to pull anything I'll knock you out, I'll knock you the f*** out." Ms Wright could then be heard hysterically screaming "No" over and over again. “I want to go home, I want to go home," she said. The court heard Tostee later left his unit and called his father to pick him up, saying he had ordered a pizza from Domino's. “Dad, this is really f***ed up, why does this s*** keep happening to me," he allegedly said in the call. "I swear to God I didn't push her, I just chucked her out on the balcony because she was beating me up. A police photograph of Gable Tostee’s apartment balcony taken after Warriena Wright’s death. (AAP) Gable Tostee (L) is accused of the murder of Warriena Wright. “Oh my God, I hope she's not dead.” The trial before Justice John Byrne is expected to run for six more days. The jury will also see CCTV which allegedly shows the pair meeting up in Surfers Paradise and later, early the next morning, shows Tostee leaving his apartment. After Tostee pleaded not guilty to murdering Ms Wright, his downstairs neighbour told the court she saw legs dangling from his balcony, and the court heard part of an audio recording of Tostee and Ms Wright speaking before her death. Crown prosecutor Glen Cash alleges Tostee did not throw Ms Wright to her death, but intimidated and threatened her so greatly she felt the only way to escape was to climb down from his locked balcony. "He forced on to the balcony, locking her outside on the balcony, where she had no other means of escape other than to attempt to climb down the balcony on to other floors," Mr Cash said. "In an attempt to escape what had occurred and what she must have anticipated would occur inside the apartment, she did attempt to climb down and in the course of doing so, fell." A police photograph of Gable Tostee’s apartment taken after Warriena Wright’s death shows scattered rocks. (AAP) Mr Cash said the pair had "drank alcohol and were intimate" before they had an altercation and Ms Wright was put on the balcony. Tostee allegedly restrained her after she threw some decorative rocks at him, Mr Cash said. Mr Cash also alleged Tostee could be heard saying in an audio recording: "You're lucky I haven't chucked you off my balcony you goddamn psycho little bitch". Tostee's defence barrister Saul Holt said "we're allowed to use reasonable force to protect ourselves and our property". "What happened in this case is nothing like murder or manslaughter, it doesn't fit," he said. Mr Holt said Tostee had repeatedly asked Ms Wright to stop throwing rocks at him before "there was a restraint". A female police officer re-enacted the circumstances that led to Warriena Wright’s death, and a police photograph of his apartment. (AAP) Part of an audio recording was played to the court, during which Tostee could allegedly be heard asking Ms Wright to "calm down". "Don't go baby, please," Tostee is heard to be saying at one point. "My f------ money," Ms Wright is later heard to be saying. "Stop. Just calm down please," Tostee says. "I'm not calming down---," Ms Wright says, at which point Tostee interjects and says "You've had too much to drink, alright". "You're beating me up for no reason," he later says. The court also heard from witnesses including Tostee's downstairs neighbour, Gabriele Collyer-Wiedner, and Ms Wright's sister, Marezza. Ms Collyer-Wiedner told the court she woke about 2am to the sound of banging furniture in the unit above, and looked out on to her balcony to see two legs dangling from above. "Legs came down and dangled in the air," she said. Warriena Wright’s mother and other supporters have attended the trial. (9NEWS) "I froze there, then the body fell on my balcony railing. "I screamed and somebody else screamed, I assumed it was her voice." Marreza told the court she had received Facebook messages from her sister on the night before she died, including blurry photographs of her and a man on a Gold Coast balcony. The court heard that after Ms Wright died, Tostee attempted to contact a lawyer and called his father. "She kept beating me up and whatever," Tostee allegedly told his father in a phone call. "I forced her out onto the balcony and I think she might have jumped off". Ms Wright's mother travelled from New Zealand to attend the trial, and sobbed as Tostee pleaded not guilty to murder. © Nine Digital Pty Ltd 2016

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Gable Tostee murder trial: Court hears audio of Warriena Wright ‘screaming’

An audio recording of the night New Zealand woman Warriena Wright, 26, fatally fell from Gable Tostee's Gold Coast balcony has been played during Mr Tostee's trial in the Brisbane Supreme Court. 

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Villanova withstood a furious rally by Big 5 rival La Salle in its last game before pulling away for an 89-79 victory at the Palestra. The next challenge promises to be even tougher for the No. 1-ranked Wildcats -- a matchup against No. 23-ranked Notre Dame Saturday at noon ET in the inaugural Never Forget Tribute Classic at the Prudential Center in Newark, N.J. Villanova (9-0) is off to a fast start in its quest to become the first program to repeat as national champions since Florida in 2006-07. "La Salle came in with a good game plan against us and played with a little more energy than us," Villanova head coach Jay Wright said after the win over the Explorers on Tuesday night. "They played really well against us. We didn't have our best game because of them and we found a way to grind it out. Any game you get in like this is valuable, win or lose. It's more fun to win and learn from it." Sophomore guard Jalen Brunson scored a career-high 26 points against La Salle. Brunson knocked down 10 of 17 shots, including a pair of clutch jumpers down the stretch. "He's one of those guys that you know at any point that you need a bucket, he can go get one for you," Wright said of Brunson. National Player of the Year candidate Josh Hart scored 21 points as the Wildcats won their first game as the top-ranked team in the country. Villanova spent three weeks atop the Top 25 last February on its way to the school's second national championship. Notre Dame also enters this game at 9-0, the best start of head coach Mike Brey's era dating to the 2000-01 season. The Fighting Irish opened the 1973-74 season at 12-0. Since Brey took over, Notre Dame has faced the defending national champion 11 times, coming away with a victory seven times. Last season, Notre Dame defeated 2015 national champion Duke 95-91 at Cameron Indoor Stadium on Jan. 16, 2016. Notre Dame then defeated the Blue Devils 84-79 in overtime at the ACC quarterfinals on March 10. This season, the Fighting Irish have been led by junior forward Bonzie Colson, who earned his first ACC Player of the Week Award on Dec. 5. Colson currently owns a personal six-game streak of double-doubles. Against Iowa in the he ACC/Big Ten Challenge, Colson scored a game-high 24 points, swept a career-high 17 rebounds and shot 12 for 12 from the free throw line. Colson had 17 points and 14 rebounds in Notre Dame's most recent victory, 87-72 over Fort Wayne. "It's staying composed and coming to play early," Colson told the South Bend Tribune. "As a team, we try to get off to good starts. I feel like we're doing that really well. Excited what we did tonight." Senior guard Steve Vasturia paced Notre Dame with 21 points against Fort Wayne. Villanova will be a much more daunting opponent than Fort Wayne. "It's just the thing you look forward to, these types of games," sophomore guard Rex Pflueger told the South Bend Tribune. "It's going to be strictly business when we get there." Villanova leads the all-time series with Notre Dame, 18-17.

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Villanova's No. 1 ranking on line vs. Notre Dame

Villanova withstood a furious rally by Big 5 rival La Salle in its last game before pulling away for an 89-79 victory at the Palestra.

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Amazon.com Inc. ’s hot holiday seller, the Echo speaker, is nearly sold out—except in Amazon’s brick-and-mortar stores. On Amazon’s main website, the Echo and smaller Echo Dot devices—powered by artificial intelligence that allows customers to ask questions, control smart home devices, play music and order on Amazon—aren’t in stock until after Christmas. However, because of a quirk in Amazon’s increasingly complex supply chain, the speakers were still on shelves as of Monday at its three brick-and-mortar bookstores, with additional chances to snag the devices at its roughly 30 pop-up store locations at malls. Amazon.com is seen as a one-stop shop, giving consumers the ability to access millions of goods no matter their location. The spotty stock of Echo devices shows that isn’t always the case as Amazon experiments with new ways of selling goods to consumers. “Due to demand, we encourage customers to purchase an Echo if they see it available,” said an Amazon spokeswoman. Last week, Jennifer Van Grove, a reporter in San Diego, wanted to buy her mom an Echo for Christmas. However, it was sold out online. The 35-year-old thought to check Amazon’s brick-and-mortar bookstore. “I just went there right when it opened, and they actually had plenty in stock,” she said, noting they were discounted 22% to $139.99, the same price as online. She bought one on the spot. The different ways to buy goods via Amazon is bringing it more in line with the way traditional retail has typically worked, where a hot-selling item may be available in some stores, but sold out in others. Last week, after the Echo was sold out on the main site, it was still available in some of the more than 30 U.S. cities served by Prime Now, the company’s one-to-two hour delivery service for participants in Amazon’s annual $99 membership program. By Monday, the device appeared to be sold out there, too. Demand for the Echo speakers has likely been higher than what the company forecast, supply-chain experts say, stoked by lower pricing. On Thanksgiving and the big shopping days following, Amazon said the smaller Echo Dot was the top-selling device on its website. The company has lowered the price on that device 20% to $39.99. More than five million Echo devices were sold through the end of the third quarter, with likely millions more sold since Black Friday, estimates securities research firm Consumer Intelligence Research Partners, or CIRP. Amazon says it has sold millions of the devices. The Echo isn’t the only hot product vanishing before Christmas. Other tech products, such as Apple Inc. ’s AirPods, Nintendo Co. ’s NES Classic and Pokémon Go Plus and Sony Corp. ’s PlayStation VR headset, were scarce, including on Amazon. Some products were limited runs to create buzz, experts say. In other cases, such as with certain models of Alphabet Inc. ’s new Google Pixel phone, the lack of availability may have resulted from manufacturers and retailers failing to account for strong consumer demand. “Companies are trying to keep their inventory low, because they don’t want to get stuck with a lot of excess inventory,” said John Haber, chief executive of supply-chain consultancy Spend Management Experts. Retailers this year trimmed inventory after a glut last year, which may explain some of the trend. Amazon stocks its merchandise in 149 warehouses around the world—26 of which were built this year alone—and many of which carry millions of items that are available at the click of a button on its main website. Some of those are smaller local hubs for goods sold through Prime Now, which has different inventory available at each. Amazon’s physical bookstores, which it began testing last year, also have their own stock. Amazon’s Echo, released in late 2014, has been a big hit, giving the online retailer a head start in an arms race against competitors including Google and Apple. The cheaper, smaller Echo Dot was introduced earlier this year, making this the device’s first holiday season. The Echo and Dot are still listed at their discounted prices online, even though they’re not currently available—a sign that Amazon hopes the high demand will continue past the holidays, says Michael Levin of CIRP. “Amazon sees this as an opportunity to start getting presence in people’s homes,” he said, even if inventory runs out in some channels. “This is a land grab.” Write to Laura Stevens at laura.stevens@wsj.com

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Amazon’s Echo Sells Out-Except in Stores

On Amazon’s main website, the Echo and smaller Echo Dot devices aren’t in stock until after Christmas. However, because of a quirk in the retailer’s increasingly complex supply chain, the speakers were still on shelves as of Monday at three brick-and-mortar locations.

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And he is certainly not exalting the teller of stories as a morally superior being. The play's protagonist, Katurian (Mr. Crudup, in a first-class performance), is a touchy, arrogant fellow, whose 400 short pieces of fiction (all but one unpublished) might be read, to borrow from the play, as a how-to guide of "101 ways to skewer a 5-year-old." The stories' existence are what have landed Katurian and his mentally defective brother Michal (Michael Stuhlbarg) in prison, since the killings described in his simply told fables have been replicated in the town where they live. The team of policemen who interrogate Katurian -- the sardonic Tupolski (Mr. Goldblum) and his explosive associate, Ariel (Zeljko Ivanek) -- aren't entirely off base in their disdain for what their prisoner has written. Artistic merit, however, is irrelevant here. So, for that matter, is fiction's significance as social commentary, autobiographical revelation or metaphysical map. As Katurian exclaims in exasperation, "I'm not trying to say anything at all." For what "The Pillowman" is celebrating is the raw, vital human instinct to invent fantasies, to lie for the sport of it, to bait with red herrings, to play Scheherazade to an audience real or imagined. For Mr. McDonagh, that instinct is as primal and energizing as the appetites for sex and food. Life is short and brutal, but stories are fun. Plus, they have the chance of living forever. Every character in "The Pillowman" is some kind of storyteller. The narrative styles range from Katurian's gruesome fairy tales (which, in successive coups de théâtre, assume wondrous storybook life before our eyes) to the deceptions practiced by the policemen; from the official, torture-punctuated interrogation that is the play's motor to Ariel's unexpected, maudlin fantasy of what his old age might be like. These forms of fiction are infused with the same dynamic, wherein information is parceled out in teasing increments and the line between fact and falsehood keeps shifting. The relationship between narrator and listener has its sadomasochistic aspects. And on one level "The Pillowman" recalls what the French director Henri-Georges Clouzot said about his 1955 cinematic chiller, "Diabolique": "I sought only to amuse myself and the little child who sleeps in all our hearts -- the child who hides her head under the bedcovers and begs, 'Daddy, Daddy, frighten me."' Under the carefully measured direction of Mr. Crowley -- with brilliant production work by a team that includes, in addition to Mr. Pask, Brian MacDevitt (lighting), Paul Arditti (sound) and Paddy Cunneen (music) -- the cast members act out different degrees of that relationship, as the characters tantalize one another in ways friendly, consoling, manipulative and vicious. Mr. Goldblum and Mr. Ivanek turn the classic good cop/bad cop formula into a coruscating vaudeville routine. Mr. Goldblum's trademark deadpan wryness has rarely been put to better use, as his Tupolski toys with Katurian like a jaded latter-day version of the police inspector in Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment." Mr. Ivanek, in turn, comes up with delicious variations on the cliché of the combustible, torture-happy cop with a secret past. Their dialogue is appallingly funny, and endlessly quotable, but never out of sync with their characters. The relationship between Katurian and his brother, the childlike Michal, is mostly rooted in a more amiable storytelling, as befits a fraternal relationship in which one sibling assumes the parental role. (What happened to Katurian's and Michal's Mom and Dad is, well, another story, and it is divulged in several versions.) Mr. Stuhlbarg boldly and expertly captures both the innocence and ugliness of Michal. Mr. Crudup's finely chiseled features turn out to be ideal for registering the seductiveness, defensiveness and pure vanity of an artist for whom writing means even more than the brother he has protected for many years. Katurian's self-enchanted satisfaction when he tells a story is that of a young magician, pulling off a tricky sleight of hand. And Mr. Crudup makes it clear that the flame of anger burns brightest in Katurian when his stories are criticized or threatened with extinction. An academic could make endless hay out of this play's narrative complexities and literary evocations (they notably include Kafka as well as Dostoyesvky), just as a sociologist or psychologist could go on about the sources and effects of fiction and its moral responsibility. You could even make a pretty thorough case for "The Pillowman" as an artistic apologia of sorts, directed at those who have dismissed Mr. McDonagh's previous works, set in a mayhem-prone rural Ireland, as pointlessly sensational and whimsical. But to pursue these lines of thought is to fall into the very traps Mr. McDonagh has set to mock such analysis. Asked by Tupolski to explain symbols and subtext in one of his stories, Katurian answers, "It's a puzzle without a solution." Which is pretty much Mr. McDonagh's credo. But, oh, how he enjoys his puzzles. In this season's most exciting and original new play, he makes sure that we do, too. 'The Pillowman' By Martin McDonagh; directed by John Crowley; sets and costumes by Scott Pask; lighting by Brian MacDevitt; sound by Paul Arditti; music by Paddy Cunneen; production manager, Arthur Siccardi; general management, Nina Lannan Associates; fight director, J. Steven White; production stage manager, James Harker. The National Theater's production presented by Boyett Ostar Productions, Robert Fox, Arielle Tepper, Stephanie P. McClelland, Debra Black, Dede Harris/Morton Swinsky, Roy Furman/Jon Avnet, in association with Joyce Schweickert. At the Booth Theater, 222 West 45th Street, (212)239-6200. Running time: 2 hours 45 minutes. WITH: Jeff Goldblum (Tupolski), Billy Crudup (Katurian), Zeljko Ivanek (Ariel), Michael Stuhlbarg (Michal), Ted Koch (Father), Virginia Louise Smith (Mother), Jesse Shane Bronstein (Boy) and Madeleine Martin (Girl).

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A Storytelling Instinct Revels in Horror's Fun

Ben Brantley reviews Martin McDonagh play The Pillowman, directed by John Crowley; Jeff Goldblum and Billy Crudup star; photos (M)

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BY JULIAN KESNER AND MICHELLE MEGNA With Brittany Schaeffer and Jo Piazza Thursday, February 2th 2006, 7:46AM The air around megastar Angelina ­Jolie has become so rarefied that a jar of air near her - "collected" by a fan during a "Mr. & Mrs. Smith" red-carpet moment - recently sold for $529.99 on eBay. If ever there was a sign that ­Jolie has entered her own stratosphere, this is it. The stunning actress - who has morphed from wild child to home wrecker to diva diplomat - has ascended to supersize global phenomenon. "In a world where people like ­Paris Hilton can get famous, someone like Angelina Jolie is just so much more profoundly interesting," says Larry Hackett, managing editor of People magazine, which has put Jolie on the cover six times in the last 12 months. So, how did Jolie create such an epic aura? More to the point, how can we weave her crafty moves into our lives? Jolie's success wasn't achieved at the box ­office. With the exception of "Mr. and Mrs. Smith," her recent films movies have tanked. Instead, like a grand master in chess, insiders say, this brainy babe is always thinking a few moves ahead. She's also willing to take risks that garner the right kind of attention: Look how she deviously parlayed a potentially career-wrecking scandal ("Brangelina") into the kind of currency most celebrities would kill for. Jolie's charity work is helping her almost as much as the poor whose plight she brings attention to. And it looks like her work is going to benefit people all over the world in other ways. The global hot spots she doesn't personally tend to as a U.N. goodwill ambassador will no doubt be covered by all the other needy stars looking for a cause celebre. (Notice how Nicole Kidman and Lucy Liu moved faster than the Austrian luge team to land their new international charity gigs.) "There are celebrities who have charities, but you don't see them on the ground," says rapper Wyclef Jean, who worked with Jolie through his charity, Yele Haiti. "Angelina is on the ground doing things." Jolie also plays the press deftly - by not playing at all. "She's the one A-list ­celebrity without a publicist," says Jessica Coen, editor of Gawker.com. "That means she never answers anything." And, naturally, never answers to anybody. No matter what stratosphere she's in. Other celebs are finally catching on (albeit about three years late) that real charity work means real ink. Nicole Kidman signed on with a UN group last week, but nearly every article on the announcement included the words "Angelina Jolie." Lucy Liu, meanwhile, was spotted touring earthquake-devastated regions of Pakistan with UNICEF two days ago - an area Jolie already had toured in November. Not very original, girls! Here's how other celebrities can reshape their images with a little volunteer work: Drew Barrymore: After dropping in on "SNL" to spoof her "SAG award" for her gravity-suckled breasts at the Golden Globes, she'd be an ideal spokeswoman for the next Victoria's Secret campaign. Paris Hilton: Judging from her well-tended menagerie of critters (which includes a monkey and a teacup Chihuahua), it seems natural that the hotel heiress would champion animal rights via the ASPCA - because every fur-ball deserves a loving home and diamond tennis collar. Kevin Federline: The famous baby-daddy Mr. Spears should champion Planned Parenthood, namely the cause of safe sex. This way, he can demonstrate to teens that it isn't the norm to father, on average, one child by a different mom per year. Tara Reid: The boozy blond's embarrassing antics (remember her red-carpet boob debacle?) makes her an ideal candidate to plug the Betty Ford clinic. As long as this doesn't trigger a "Taradise" revivial. Brittany Schaeffer, Jo Piazza and Michelle Megna With swirling rumors of impending nuptials, Daily News wedding columnist Michelle Megna couldn't resist playing planner for the ultimate Hollywood hookup. The Destination: Only Brangelina could make a thatched-hut wedding sexy. Cambodia's king signed a special decree giving Jolie citizenship in recognition of her environmental work - namely, donating $5 million to set up a wildlife sanctuary - which is the perfect haven for a wild wedding in son Maddox's homeland. Bonus: Heavy vegetation will block paparazzi choppers. The Gift Exchange: Lockets of blood and groom's cakes are so 1990s. Instead, Angelina surprises Brad by getting a "Brangelina" tattoo in the spot where she just lasered off "Billy Bob." Brad, in turn, presents his bride with a tattoo to match the one presently emblazoned across her bump: "Quod me nutrit me destruit" - Latin for "What nourishes me also destroys me." Of course, he spells his wrong. Food: Plantains and Wiener schnitzel all around! Food stations should include classics from the countries Jolie and Pitt have been hobnobbing around: Haiti, Dominican Republic, Kenya and witzerland. But let's not forget Brad's roots: Perhaps a nice tuna-chicken casserole and mandarin-marshmallow salad shout-out for Springfield, Mo.? The Dress: Gone are the days of wearing white T-shirts with her betrothed's name in blood. We're thinking for No. 3, something a bit less crass, with more class. A red dress by Zac Posen, who recently designed a line of maternity clothes, would be snazzy for mom and Jr. Jolie. Ring Boy: Maddox, on a scooter, will cruise up to the altar and present the rings on a hand-crafted wooden tray made by nonsweatshop Haitian artisans. Flower Girl: Lesbian lover and supermodel Jenny Shimizu struts her pixie cut - and her tattoos - down the aisle. Brad starts to fidget, and, visibly sweating, we realize he's thinking: threesome? Bridal Party: Standing in for estranged dad Jon Voight is Angelina's brother, James Haden; she will be attended by Kofi Annan's wife, Nane. Brad will have the cast of "Ocean's Eleven" at his side. Music: Tunes will be provided by good friend and fellow activist Wyclef Jean, who says he loves "to chill" with the first lady of good causes, as witnessed at the Yele Haiti fund-raiser in the Hamptons last summer. Favors: In lieu of favors, the couple should make a donation to UNICEF, natch - though some pocket knives modeled after Jolie's collection could be fun, too. Honeymoon: Memories of those teary-eyed surfside strolls with Jennifer means Anguilla's honeymoon-destination potential is over for Brad. We suggest Mr. and Mrs. Jolie consider a family-friendly place like Disney World. They should know: It's a small world, after all. The ironic part of not having a publicist is that Angelina Jolie has become, well, a sharp-focused media whore, mainly due to her offscreen dalliances with some guy named Brad. "She's orchestrated the most incredible career ascent," says Us Weekly editor in chief Janice Min. "In the past year, she turned what could have been a career-damaging scandal into a positive." "This had mythical proportions," says People magazine's Hackett. "A beautiful blond guy, his wife and this mysterious woman who gets under the husband's skin. It's basic storytelling." In Touch Weekly editor in chief Richard Spencer says Jolie is "without a doubt" the No. 1 "get" these days for magazine covers and interviews - "as long as the story is pegged to the emotion of the Brad and Jen thing or the baby," he says. "No one cares about the diplomatic stuff." Jolie had 4,972 mentions in U.S. newspapers in 2005, up from 3,263 in 2004 - and now that's she's carrying the spawn of Brad Pitt, due in early May, it's only going to ramp up. "You tell me somebody who doesn't want to see a picture of that kid," says Hackett. Competition for those photographs should be predictably fierce. "I don't think it will be more than a million," says the head of one Hollywood photo agency, who asked to remain anonymous, "but probably around $500,000." Six-figure payouts are nothing new. Us Weekly reportedly shelled out half a million for the first public photos of Jolie and Pitt on vacation with her kids last year, which resulted in approximately 1 million newsstand sales. And Jolie had People pay about $400,000 to Wyclef Jean's Yele Haiti charity for exclusive first-look pics of "The Bump." (Hackett points out that People does not and would never pay sources themselves, and would have written the pregnancy story regardless of the photos.) So come spring, as Jolie's belly gets bigger, expect the magazine cover wars to get fiercer. "She can guarantee to move a million copies on the newsstand," says Min. "Though Aniston is still huge, I'd say Angelina managed to one-up her again by getting pregnant. Now, she's got a more interesting plot line, and readers are going to keep watching that for a long, long time.". Out of the mouth of this glam babe... Some of the globetrotting babe's noteworthy quotes on marriage,infidelity, bisexuality and other areas of specialty: When told that many of Jane magazine's female readers had nominated her as "The Female Actor Who Makes Your Knees Weak," Jolie responded: "They're right to think that about me, because I'm the person most likely to sleep with my female fans. I genuinely love other women. And I think they know that." - February 2000 When Barbara Walters asked her if she was bisexual, Jolie responded: "Of course. If I fell in love with a woman tomorrow, would I feel that it's okay to want to kiss and touch her? If I fell in love with her? Absolutely! Yes!" - July 2003. In an interview with Elle magazine, Jolie said: "Honestly, I like everything. Boyish girls, girlish boys, the heavy and the skinny. Which is a problem when I'm walking down the street." - June 2000 "To be intimate with a married man, when my own father cheated on my mother, is not something I could forgive. I could not look at myself in the morning if I did that. I wouldn't be attracted to a man who would cheat on his wife." -"Today" show's Ann Curry interview, June 2005 Where in the world is Angelina?. Jolie seems to travel more than President Bush does, and still finds time to be a mom and make movies. A sampling of countries she's been spotted in over the years: Jolie registers a bit Net gain on Google. Angelina Jolie has consistently been one of the most sought-after Internet subjects for years. Last year, she was No. 9 on Google News, No. 5 on Yahoo!'s image search and No. 14 overall on Lycos. Even more impressive, however, is how over the course of last year, the vixen gradually displaced both Brad and Jen in Google search traffic.

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ANGELINA, SAINT VS. SINNER. A force for global good, or just a babe with a Brad attitude?

BY JULIAN KESNER & MICHELLE MEGNA T he air around megastar Angelina ­Jolie has become so rarefied that a jar of air near her - "collected"by a fan during a "Mr. & Mrs. Smith"red-carpet moment - recently sold for $529.99 on eBay. If ever there was a sign that ­Jolie has entered her own stratosphere, this is it. The stunning actress - who has morphed from wild child to home wrecker to diva diplomat - has ascended to

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There's an unhappy paradox about literary biographies. The majority of readers who will be interested in a writer's bio, especially one as long and exhaustive as Edwin Williamson's ''Borges: A Life,'' will be admirers of the writer's work. They will therefore usually be idealizers of that writer and perpetrators (consciously or not) of the intentional fallacy. Part of the appeal of the writer's work for these fans will be the distinctive stamp of that writer's personality, predilections, style, particular tics and obsessions -- the sense that these stories were written by this author and could have been done by no other.* And yet it often seems that the person we encounter in the literary biography could not possibly have written the works we admire. And the more intimate and thorough the bio, the stronger this feeling usually is. In the present case, the Jorge Luis Borges who emerges in Williamson's book -- a vain, timid, pompous mama's boy, given for much of his life to dithery romantic obsessions -- is about as different as one can get from the limpid, witty, pansophical, profoundly adult writer we know from his stories. Rightly or no, anyone who reveres Borges as one of the best and most important fiction writers of the last century will resist this dissonance, and will look, as a way to explain and mitigate it, for obvious defects in Williamson's life study. The book won't disappoint them. Borges in old age, in his home in Buenos Aires, about 1982. He was distressed by the rule of generals in Argentina and by the war with Britain over the Falkland Islands. Edwin Williamson is an Oxford don and esteemed Hispanist whose ''Penguin History of Latin America'' is a small masterpiece of lucidity and triage. It is therefore unsurprising that his ''Borges'' starts strong, with a fascinating sketch of Argentine history and the Borges family's place within it. For Williamson, the great conflict in the Argentine national character is that between the ''sword'' of civilizing European liberalism and the ''dagger'' of romantic gaucho individualism, and he argues that Borges's life and work can be properly understood only in reference to this conflict, particularly as it plays out in his childhood. In the 19th century, grandfathers on both sides of his family distinguished themselves in important battles for South American independence from Spain and the establishment of a centralized Argentine government, and Borges's mother was obsessed with the family's historical glory. Borges's father, a man stunted by the heroic paternal shadow in which he lived, evidently did things like give his son an actual dagger to use on bullies at school, and later sent him to a brothel for devirgination. The young Borges failed both these ''tests,'' the scars of which marked him forever and show up all over the place in his fiction, Williamson thinks. It is in these claims about personal stuff encoded in the writer's art that the book's real defect lies. In fairness, it's just a pronounced case of a syndrome that seems common to literary biographies, so common that it might point to a design flaw in the whole enterprise. The big problem with ''Borges: A Life'' is that Williamson is an atrocious reader of Borges's work; his interpretations amount to a simplistic, dishonest kind of psychological criticism. You can see why this problem might be intrinsic to the genre. A biographer wants his story to be not only interesting but literarily valuable.** In order to ensure this, the bio has to make the writer's personal life and psychic travails seem vital to his work. The idea is that we can't correctly interpret a piece of verbal art unless we know the personal and/or psychological circumstances surrounding its creation. That this is simply assumed as an axiom by many biographers is one problem; another is that the approach works a lot better on some writers than on others. It works well on Kafka -- Borges's only modern equal as an allegorist, with whom he's often compared -- because Kafka's fictions are expressionist, projective, and personal; they make artistic sense only as manifestations of Kafka's psyche. But Borges's stories are very different. They are designed primarily as metaphysical arguments†; they are dense, self-enclosed, with their own deviant logics. Above all, they are meant to be impersonal, to transcend individual consciousness -- ''to be incorporated,'' as Borges puts it, ''like the fables of Theseus or Ahasuerus, into the general memory of the species and even transcend the fame of their creator or the extinction of the language in which they were written.'' One reason for this is that Borges is a mystic, or at least a sort of radical Neoplatonist -- human thought, behavior and history are all the product of one big Mind, or are elements of an immense cabalistic Book that includes its own decoding. Biography-wise, then, we have a strange situation in which Borges's individual personality and circumstances matter only insofar as they lead him to create artworks in which such personal facts are held to be unreal. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE’S most recent books are ‘‘Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity’’ and ‘‘Oblivion: Stories.’’

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Borges on the Couch

The biographer Edwin Williamson turns to Jorge Luis Borges's labyrinthine stories to search for clues about his life.

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The dawn of the cold war was literally freezing. The winter of 1947 was the worst ever recorded in Europe. From January to late March, it opened a front across Russia, Germany, Italy, France and Britain, and advanced with complete lack of mercy. Snow fell in St Tropez, gale-force winds building up impenetrable drifts; ice floes drifted to the mouth of the Thames; barges bringing coal into Paris became icebound. There, the philosopher Isaiah Berlin found himself "terrified" by the city's coldness, "empty and hollow and dead, like an exquisite corpse". A slight thaw was followed by a further freeze-up, locking canals and roads under a thick layer of ice. In Berlin, Willy Brandt described how the icy cold "attacked people like a savage beast". Ghostly figures roamed parks looking for benches to cut up into firewood. The Tiergarten was hacked down to stumps, its statues left standing in a wilderness of frozen mud; the woods in the famous Grünewald were completely razed. Just as American journalist Walter Lippmann coined the phrase "cold war", the weather cruelly drove home its physical reality, carving its way into the new, post-Yalta topography of Europe, its national territories and populations mutilated, its ideologies braced in antagonistic poses. The Soviets were swift to move in behind the cold front, grasping the potential of the widespread instability of postwar Europe. With an energy and resourcefulness which showed that Stalin's regime could avail itself of an imaginative vigour unmatched by western governments, the Soviet Union deployed a battery of unconventional weapons to nudge itself into the European consciousness and soften up opinion in its favour. Experts in the use of culture as a tool of political persuasion, the Soviets did much in the early years of the cold war to establish its central paradigm as a cultural one. Lacking the economic power of the United States and, above all, still without a nuclear capability, they concentrated on winning "the battle for men's minds". America, despite a massive marshalling of the arts in the New Deal period, was a virgin in the practice of international Kulturkampf. But such innocence was soon to be forfeited in what high-level US strategists were already calling "the greatest polarisation of power on earth" (space, for a few years yet, was off-limits) since Rome and Carthage. "We have to show the outside world that we have a cultural life and that we care something about it," the diplomat George Kennan told an audience at New York's Museum of Modern Art. "I for one would willingly trade the entire remaining inventory of political propaganda for the results that could be achieved by this." And so it was that, against the backdrop of Europe's bombed-out cities, with all basic infrastructures in a state of collapse, a weirdly elaborate cultural life was constructed by the two superpowers as they vied with each other to score propaganda points. As early as 1945, when the stench of human bodies still hung about the ruins of Berlin, the Russians were staging brilliant performances at the State Opera, pomaded generals listening smugly to Gluck's Orpheus, punctuating the music with the tinkle of their medals. The Americans returned fire, opening the Amerika-Häuser, comfortably furnished (and heated) institutes offering film showings, concerts, talks and art shows, all with "overwhelming emphasis on America". Within a few years, the arsenal of unconventional weapons with which each side conducted its offensive and defensive operations had swollen to include highbrow literary magazines, paintings, sculptures, comic books, motorcycles, fashion, chess, sports, architecture, design. Everything, in truth (and this is what both sides claimed to have the monopoly on), including the kitchen sink. The kitchen as a site of ideological conflict was pointedly iterated by the "Kitchen Debate" between then US vice-president Nixon and Soviet premier Khrushchev at the American National Exhibition, staged in Moscow in 1959. The encounter - over a lemon yellow kitchen designed by General Electric - still registers as one of the iconic moments of the cold war. "Would it not be better to compete in the relative merits of washing machines than in the strength of rockets? Is this the kind of competition you want?" Nixon challenged Khrushchev. "We too have such things," Khrushchev bragged, though he failed to mention that the "we" was far from all-inclusive. Of the estimated 2.7 million visitors to the Moscow exhibition, only a fraction would have the opportunity to possess the kind of commodities on display. "Refrigerator socialism", harnessed as it was to a command economy, was never as widely available - or quite as attractive - as capitalism's glossy counterpart. But this was not the point: as Nixon and Khrushchev's sharp exchange shows, the question was whether items in the kitchen were mere domestic appliances, or rather the cultural equivalents of ballistic missiles, offensive weapons in the war of ideas. As the American National Exhibition explicitly stressed, a kitchen was no longer just a kitchen, but an enclave where "liberty and the pursuit of happiness" - the prizes of the Enlightenment, no less - could be attained through panel-controlled washing machines and electric waste grinders. The Kitchen Debate has been endlessly recycled as a story of basic antinomies to evoke the black-and-white, them-and-us chequerboard of cold war politics. Cold War Modern, edited by David Crowley and Jane Pavitt, and accompanying the V&A exhibition they have curated, introduces a more sophisticated narrative that explores the interstices of this all-too-familiar grid. American officials in charge of the American National Exhibition reported breathlessly on its "overwhelming success". But the visitors' comment books, according to design historian Susan Reid, reveal an ambivalent response: "And this is one of the greatest nations?? I feel sorry for the Americans ... Does your life really consist of only kitchens?" This is one among many critical entries. A small charge, but enough to detonate the official victor's history that the "freedoms" and innovations offered by the American National Exhibition were such to make all Soviet citizens salivate and long for more of the same. Was the American assembly line better than the Communist party line? Was the organisation of society around individual rather than collective desires or needs intrinsically superior? The designer Raymond Loewy, in a 1950 speech to Harvard Business School, was in no doubt: "The citizens of Lower Slobovia may not give a hoot for freedom of speech, but how they fall for a gleaming Frigidaire, a stream-lined bus or a coffee percolator." Possibly, but within a few years his fictional Lower Slobovians could drool over a P70 coupé with a Duroplast body (the prototype of the Trabant), or a Messerschmitt Kabinenroller KR200, or Hedwig Bollhagen's beautiful, Bauhaus-inspired black ceramic coffee set - all cold war classics produced behind the iron curtain. Or maybe people on both sides of the ideological divide actually preferred something altogether different - mock-Tudor, or German Gothic, or whatever was knocking about in the cutlery drawer. These vernaculars may not satisfy the narrative arc of "Cold War Modern", and the "questions of existence" - Existenzfragen - it posed, but they all coexisted and competed with it. Loewy, who worked as an industrial design consultant for Nasa in the 1970s, aligned himself as working not just in, but for the cold war, and hence saw things in rather simplistic binaries. But by the time of the Kitchen Debate, these binaries had lost their edge. Khrushchev had long since denounced Stalin, in the least secret "secret" speech ever made, and commenced the thaw that introduced a less restrictive, if still state-controlled, cultural agenda. Socialist realism, "the mask of Stalinism", was, if not a thing of the past, no longer the sole official art. Indeed, it makes only a brief appearance in the V&A exhibition (principally, the huge tapestry depicting the reconstruction of Warsaw, woven by students at the State High School of Fine Art in Lodz). In parallel, and somewhat counterintuitively, this was the moment when abstract expressionism, deployed as "free enterprise" painting by the cultural cartel of MoMA and the CIA, became fixed as the art officiel of the west, leading one American critic to complain that realists had to "live in basements and pass still lifes around like samizdat". We can savour the delicious irony now, but at the time, and with so much at stake, the cultural cold war was a terribly po-faced affair. Khrushchev's intervention in architecture also powerfully debunked the Stalin-era aesthetic, whose "American" skyscraper projects were one of the more bizarre inversions of the cold war. There were to be no more cathedrals in the cult of personality, with their classical cornices, lintels and ornamented porticoes (the Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw is the example par excellence of these encrusted towers). Where Stalin's vicious cultural tsar Andrei Zhdanov had denounced modernist architecture as "shapeless boxes" expressing the "hunger of monopoly capitalism", obliterating all national character and destroying valuable historical complexes, Khrushchev now sanctioned the return of this style. Less, he said, was more, and he ordered architects to replace cornices with conscience, to deliver affordable, functional living environments worthy of the citizen of the Soviet utopia. What was delivered, on a massive scale, was more and more of less and less: endless avenues of prefab, multi-storeyed blocks, of weeping concrete and mildewed panel walls. Cold War Modern, as applied to mass housing, really meant "more modernism" - and it was a miserable legacy. In another context, however, Cold War Modern produced some architectural miracles. The Ostankino television tower in Moscow (1967-69), a scale model of which has been commissioned for the V&A show, projects a dizzying, optimistic vision, a technotopia. Such telecommunication towers, which sprung up in both east and west, combined technical wizardry with gravity-defying engineering. Important gauges in cold war competition, they served twin functions as high-tech instruments and visual symbols of power. Designed to attract the public, they typically included viewing decks, restaurants and hotels, features of the leisure economy. Like the Eiffel tower, they cast an irrational spell, becoming the focus of dreams and bodily pleasures - in the reach for mythical status, both the Ostankino tower and the East Berlin Fernsehturm were staffed by air hostesses dressed in synthetic uniforms. Because of its unique position in a partitioned city that had physically internalised the divisive logic of the cold war, the Fernsehturm acquired another set of meanings: for the communists, it was a crow's nest in a sea occupied by enemy powers; for the citizens of East Germany, denied the right to leave their own country, it provided a tantalising view across the wall into the lost domain of freedom. As the cold war progressed, much of its basic premise - of antithesis and constructed antagonism - was paradoxically both accelerated and undermined by such technological advances. Sputnik, which beeped its message of Soviet ascendancy in the space race across the world in 1957, also announced the beginning of what Marshall McLuhan famously dubbed "the global village", of a world connected by the "cosmic web" of communication technology. While much of this technology emanated from the highly competitive field of military research, it produced a kind of invisible membrane that covered both sides of the cold war divide. Earth, and now the space that surrounded it, was connected by technologies developed to enforce the ideology of separateness. This paradox encouraged optimism and despair in equal measure. As the philosopher Hannah Arendt observed in 1958, Sputnik signalled a modern desire to use human artifice to escape our earthbound condition. While some viewed this as the shape of the future, for Arendt this escape into artifice represented the path to worldly alienation. Escape - from ideology and its deadening diktats, from the threat of nuclear irradiation, from the industrial overload of the ecosystem - is inscribed in the genetic code of Cold War Modern. It's in Jackson Pollock's splurgy, tangled lines that reach across and over the edges of his canvases; it's in Eero Saarinen's Womb Chair (1948), a cocoon in which the body can hide; it's in the crypts, caves and bunkers drawn up by architects as they searched underground, beneath the sea, in space, for other habitats. Or in architect-designer Buckminster Fuller's defensive geodesic domes, and the bubble he drew covering part of Manhattan (1962); or in Oasis 7, a giant inflatable environment suspended in mid-air, complete with small beach and palm tree (by Viennese architects Haus-Rucker-Co, 1972). Powerful commentaries, all, on the fear of Doomsday and the attempts to survive or even domesticate it. If fallout was about anxiety, dropout was a kind of defiant rebuttal. Buckminster Fuller's geodesic domes reappeared as hippy homes in Colorado's Drop City (1965-73), no longer futuristic membranes but present-day dwellings assembled, like colourful globular shanties, from discarded car parts and other junk. A retreat from consumerism and assembly lines that, playfully, ironically, reassembled the bits and recycled them out of their own obsolescence into a new living environment. If the bomb had fallen on Drop City, then the end of the world would have been a mesmerising, kaleidoscopic happening.

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Frances Stonor Saunders on cold war design at the V&A

What were the most important weapons of the cold war - rockets and missiles or washing machines and motorbikes? Everything became a battleground, including the kitchen sink, writes Frances Stonor Saunders

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As the White House launched its Africa summit this week and pledged $14 billion in investment in the continent from U.S. corporations, National Security Advisor Susan Rice said that the United States doesn’t see Africa “as a pipeline to extract vital resources, nor a funnel for charity.” Instead she said, the U.S. wants to be a partner to create jobs, resolve conflicts, and develop the continent’s economy. The contributions that multinational companies make to Africa—beyond the financial kind—is currently on display as the western region of the continent battles an Ebola virus outbreak that’s taken the lives of more than 930 individuals in Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia. The first cases of Ebola in the ongoing outbreak occurred in March in Guinea and quickly spread to neighboring Sierra Leone and Liberia—marking the first time the disease has plagued Western Africa. Around the same time, the wife of an employee at Firestone Liberia—a 100,000-acre rubber plantation owned by Bridgestone Firestone, where 80,000 company employees and their family members live and work—contracted Ebola after traveling to care for relatives. “She came back over the weekend and passed away by Thursday,” said Don Darden, the executive director of communications at Bridgestone Americas. The woman’s death prompted the creation of a company task force dedicated to educating the 7,300 employees on the plantation and their families. Clergy at the churches on Firestone’s property spread word about the virus’s early symptoms and how to get treatment, as did the plantation’s radio station, The Voice of Firestone. In a matter of 10 days, the company revamped a portion of its 300-bed hospital—formerly an outpatient facility—into an area suitable for treating Ebola patients, retrofitting it to follow the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s guidelines. There’s only one way into the facility and one way out, with knobs on only one side of those doors. The company even dug a new septic tank so waste from the facility went into its own system. But since construction ended in early April, the facility has been empty. Since the first case killed a Firestone worker’s wife, the company has “held [the virus] off pretty well,” with no other infections reported, Darden said. That is, of course, not the case elsewhere in Liberia and West Africa overall. In June, humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders sounded the alarm, saying that it was “overwhelmed” by an epidemic that was “out of control.” In the weeks since, things have only grown worse, with the death toll rising and the virus taking the life of Samuel Brisbane, a top Liberian health official, and infecting two American missionaries who were transported to Emory University Hospital for treatment this week. Liberia’s hospitals are overcrowded and understaffed, with Elwa Hospital near Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, having to turn away Ebola cases this week. On Thursday, the nation’s president Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf declared a state of emergency. And on Friday, the World Health Organization declared that the outbreak constituted a global health emergency. The Ebola facility at Firestone Liberia is reserved for company employees. “We’re not equipped if the whole country starts sending patients here. We worked with the ministry of health and they had other options. It’s a private hospital,” Darden says. Firestone has harvested rubber in Liberia since 1926, when it signed a concession that—at a cost of 6 cents per acre—gave the company control of one million acres, representing 4% of the country and nearly 10% of its arable land. Firestone has been accused of relying on child labor, subjecting employees to backbreaking quotas, paying piddly wages, and providing worker housing that resembles shantytowns. In 2008, Firestone agreed to renegotiate its concession with President Johnson-Sirleaf’s government, and while the new accord addressed at some of these worker rights issues, the company still stands as an example of a firm that’s bound to a government concession that requires tax and royalty payments, but whose contributions beyond that are voluntary. Developing nations are often desperate to attract investment, says Scott Taylor, associate professor and director of the African studies program at Georgetown University. So, governments in Africa are not likely to pressure U.S. corporations to create an all-around better existence for Africans. Instead, such efforts will need to come from corporate leaders’ interest in building goodwill with the population. In Taylor’s view, corporations investing in the continent now have added incentive to do just that. As African nations become more democratic, their people have become more politically vocal, and the potential backlash of being pegged as a “corporate colonialist” has grown into a bigger threat. “There have always been people saying that this corporation pollutes or isn’t hiring local workers,” Taylor says. “Those are valid complaints but people haven’t had tools or power historically to do something about it.” That’s starting to change, Taylor says. South African grocery and retail chain Shoprite left Tanzania this year after facing criticism that it hadn’t tapped into local supply chains. And in Zambia, complaints over labor practices and pollution have been lodged at a Chinese-owned mine at Chambishi, the site of a 2005 explosion that killed 50 workers. Corporations that have recently invested in the continent are aware of this shift, Taylor says. Luxembourg-based ArcelorMittal, the world’s largest steel maker, for instance, is a relative newcomer. It was one of the first companies to invest in Liberia after the second civil war ended in 2003. The company renegotiated the terms of an initial contract after Johnson-Sirleaf, who assumed the presidency in 2006, deemed it inequitable. As a result of the new concession, ArcelorMittal released an environmental and social impact assessment available and made a novel pledge to contribute $3 million dollars per year to a social development fund that’s intended to offset the impact of the company’s activities. ArcelorMittal also committed to opening hospitals for its employees and the public. Like Firestone, ArcelorMittal recently prepared the hospitals at its mine in Yekepa and at its Buchanan port for a potential Ebola outbreak. But unlike the tire maker, as of Tuesday, “all of [ArecelorMittal’s] hospitals are open to the public,” says Hesta Pearson-Baker, a spokesperson for ArcelorMittal. While the treatment at the hospitals is free for ArcelorMittal employees, prices charged to non-employees are out of reach for many nearby residents, according to a 2012 report by the Center for International Conflict Resolution at Columbia University. Neither ArcelorMittal MT facility has accepted an Ebola victim yet, which Pearson-Baker attributes to the facilities’ locations—Buchanan is two hours from Monrovia; Yekepa is a 10-hour drive—so the company has dispatched its doctors to train workers who are conducting virus scans at the nation’s largest airport. While the White House has touted the $14 billion corporate investment in Africa, the “broader African prosperity” that the administration is aiming for is likely to hit major roadblocks—like, say, a virus outbreak. It will do the continent and its people no good if the companies seeking to transform Africa’s economy stand by in such instances and only take care of their own. “It just can’t be business as usual in terms of resource extraction where a company just goes in walls itself off and only serves the interest of workers and maybe their families,” Taylor says. “A company has to be good citizens and provide outreach to local communities; it’s part and parcel of doing business in the long term.”

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In Africa, foreign corporations protect their own from Ebola

It will do the continent and its people no good if companies pledging to transform Africa’s economy stand by during an outbreak.

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FORTUNE — Ray Lane’s reign at Hewlett Packard ended Thursday, and employees should be pleased. While the former HP chair and, more recently executive chair, will remain a director, he will no longer run the HP board. Ralph Whitworth, a shareholder activist and HP board member, will take his spot on an interim basis, HP announced. The company is eliminating the lead director position that board member Rajiv Gupta had held. Two other directors, John Hammergren and Ken Thompson, who Lane did not handpick, will be stepping down from the board. With their departure, Marc Andreessen and Rajiv Gupta are the only two independent directors that preceded Lane and have survived the mass exodus of directors that has taken place on Lane’s watch. The immediate impetus for yet another upheaval on the beleaguered tech company’s board was high shareholder votes against Lane (41% voted against him) and the two other board directors at the company’s March 20 annual shareholder meeting. (46% and 45% of shareholders voted against Hammergren and Thompson, respectively.) The interim time — with Whitworth at the helm of the board — may bode well for turning around HP’s board governance. But the $64,000 question is who is fit to become chair longer term? Whitworth has pledged that the board will recruit a chair presumably outside the ranks of existing members. This is a good thing given the role of the board in so many fiascos, most recently the Autonomy debacle. MORE: Why layoffs are for lazy corporate overseers Because of Lane’s hands-on approach to picking board members and the CEO — and his recent role as executive chair, his own independence as a board member is questionable. “This was my job. I have to take full responsibility for leading this,” Lane said of the board changes he’d made in an interview in February 2011 with the San Jose Mercury News. Less than a week after one of the newly nominated directors, now CEO Meg Whitman, was confirmed as a board member at the annual meeting, HP, with no forewarning to investors, announced that she would be joining Lane’s firm, Kleiner Perkins. It has been all too cozy. While the current board member shuffle may indeed help to revive oversight at the firm (and that is not certain), the company has certainly taken a twisted path to get here. In part, this is because shareholders and their proxy advisory services so badly read the situation early on. Both investors and their advisors were slow to recognize Lane’s role. In 2011, proxy advisor ISS recommended voting against the old-time members of the board’s nominating committee when Lane took over their role (contrary to board guidelines) while it supported Lane’s nomination in full. And even this year, the Wall Street Journal reported that Lane was able to sweet-talk some shareholders into not going after him while the investors urged votes against Hammergren and Thompson. Where to from here? It is time now for Whitworth to show he is a real activist and the prickly devil’s advocate he says every board should have. To restore trust, we need to see a candid and complete report on the Autonomy debacle that outlines the culpability of HP’s board and management in the matter. No whitewash. MORE: Famed value investor dumps HP, taking a loss We also need to see a pay overhaul. Rewarding a CEO who has announced 30,000 layoffs with $15 million does not represent responsible board oversight. And with the aid of the nominations committee, Whitworth needs to rework the composition of the board. Lane must go. New board members who understand their independent roles must be hired. One of them must be capable of being the constructive chair HP HPQ needs. Existing board members must shape up or ship out. Will this happen? I’m not sure. The problem is that most people observing board members would view them as doing a passable job if they held large company middle-management positions, showing up and asking intelligent questions from time to time. But in board work, head bobbing (a la Automony) can be disastrous. Whitworth has written of Whitman and the board of HP in glowing terms. Let’s hope this is to help the medicine go down — and that despite the rhetoric, he will remain objective and guide the board toward wise decisions. Certainly, the employees of HP deserve no less than that. Eleanor Bloxham is CEO of The Value Alliance and Corporate Governance Alliance, a board advisory firm.

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What the HP board should do next

Ray Lane has stepped down as HP’s chairman, but he needs to leave the board entirely. And interim chairman Ralph Whitworth needs to rework the board’s composition.

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Updated Jul 1, 2014 5:26 PM ET If you’ve heard somebody use the phrase “pound for pound,” if you’ve marveled at an athlete’s entourage, if you know who the singer Mark McGrath is, then you know a little something about Sugar Ray Robinson. “He was bigger than life,” his son, Ray Robinson Jr., told FOXSports.com this week. “He was everything to me.” Muhammad Ali is boxing’s greatest political icon, but no boxer had a more vivid and lasting impact on American culture than Sugar Ray Robinson. Born as Walker Smith Jr., he bypassed an AAU age restriction by borrowing a birth certificate from a friend. The legend goes that a lady in the crowd said he was “sweet as sugar,” and from then on he was Sugar Ray Robinson. That “sugar” prefix is to fighting what “MC” is to hip hop. To follow were Sugar Ray Leonard, Sugar Shane Mosley, Sugar Rashad Evans and, of course, late-90s pop-rock band Sugar Ray. But that wouldn’t have meant squat if the man couldn’t fight. Robinson fought as a middleweight and a welterweight, and was so great that boxing writers had to find a way of canonizing him without implying he could beat the heavyweights. So it became that he was “pound-for-pound” the best boxer of all time. Sugar Ray was a powerful puncher capable of throwing a knockout blow from his heels, but he fought with a musical fluidity. “Rhythm is everything in boxing,” he said. “Every move you make starts with your heart, and that's in rhythm or you're in trouble.” Ray Robinson Jr. remembers a charmed childhood in New York. His mother, Edna Mae Holly, was a dancer who used to perform with Duke Ellington at the famed Cotton Club. She was on the debut cover of Jet magazine. Sidney Poitier is his mother’s cousin. One of his great-grandfathers a few generations back was the first African-American bishop in what is now the Episcopal Church. His father was Sugar Ray Robinson, who drove a pink Cadillac and traveled with an entourage that included everything from a secretary to a voice coach to a dwarf mascot. “Dad was a hoot,” Ray Robinson Jr. recalls. This was a black boxer in the 1940s and '50s, in America, who crossed over into mainstream stardom. A celebrity. There had never been anybody like him. ”There was a whole lot of what you could say is black royalty in my lineage,” Ray Robinson Jr. said. “The fact that Frank Sinatra would come to my house or Sammy Davis would come to my house or Quincy Jones would come to my house or Miles Davis would come to my house was regular.” But Sugar Ray found the world outside New York wasn’t as welcoming. He entered the Army in 1943, and it worked out that Joe Louis happened to be in the Army at the same time. So they’d fight each other in exhibition bouts to entertain their fellow soldiers. That was, until Robinson found out the black soldiers weren’t going to be allowed to watch. He refused to fight. In the Army, he stood up to superiors he felt were discriminating against him, and after he left the Army to resume his boxing career, he stood up to the Mafia, which in those days had its hands all over boxing. That temporarily cost him a shot at the welterweight title. From 1943-51, Robinson won 91 fights in a row, the third-longest streak ever. He finished his career 173-19-6, with 108 knockouts, and many boxing historians still consider him the greatest fighter of all time. His son considers him something else. ”He was the star of my heavens,” he says. (February is Black History Month and FOXSports.com will feature athletes who made significant contributions on and off the field in their lives.)

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Sugar Ray Robinson was a pioneer who broke the mold - News

Considered by many to be the pound-for-pound greatest fighter of all time, Robinson was also something else -- a beloved father.

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updated 03/04/2015 AT 07:00 PM EST •originally published 03/04/2015 AT 04:15 PM EST Ever wonder who would play you in a movie? It could be actor and director Ron Howard are teaming up for . The contest is seeking submissions from film lovers of any skill level; all you need to do is create a trailer based on one of the everyday moments from your life. When the submission period ends on April 29, Howard and Hutcherson will pick a trailer to be transformed "Signing on as an actor before you know what the content is going to be is kind of a crazy thing to do, so I am along for the ride," the 22-year-old said. Hutcherson talked to PEOPLE about the exciting project and even offered contestants some tips on what he is looking for. (HINT: He really loves dogs!) Canon reached out. I knew about Project Imagination, which it had been doing with Ron Howard for a few years. I was so excited when they came to me and said they wanted me to be involved and work with Ron. It's been nothing but awesome since I started. I can't wait to get all the submissions and get my hands in there. It's hard to say just one thing. First of all, to work with Canon and Ron Howard is incredible. And then, on top of that, I am excited by the whole idea of the project. There are so many stories out there. So many people who have never tried making a movie, or tried telling a story to a camera – this gives them an opportunity to realize that. It gives people all around the world with different stories a chance to tell those stories. That's why I make movies, to tell stories of different lives and places. Through this project, others get that chance to share their voice. It's a great environment for new, fresh ideas to inspire a real project. Yeah! I have always been interested in producing and directing, just being a part of the whole story-making process. It's cool to join a group of people who are very good at it. I get to walk through this process with them and see how they bring stories to life. It would probably be something with . We have a very special relationship, and he is just the greatest thing in the world. I don't know what it would be exactly, but it would be starring my dog for sure. I feel like we will get a lot of animal submissions. I have always been a big fan of Edward Norton, especially his earlier movies. When you see an actor lose himself in a character and into that world, it's really interesting – so Edward Norton has been a big inspiration. Don't have a firm idea for what you want the project to be. For me, it's cool to discover it as you go. Have the root idea for the story, but don't put too many preconceived ideas in your mind. Let it flow out of you naturally. I think that's when you create the most honest and interesting stories, and that's what I would like to act in.

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Josh Hutcherson and Ron Howard Start Project Imagination Trailer Contest : People.com

Hutcherson says he is excited to take a fresh idea and help turn it into an inspiring film

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NEW YORK — When Julia Greenberg, 27, became engaged last Thanksgiving to her longtime boyfriend, Carl Wolf, she didn’t realize she would have to wait more than a year and a half to get married at her favorite place, the Adler Planetarium in Chicago. In January, with other couples circling, they quickly signed a contract for a Saturday in July 2016. “The whole situation felt a little crazy, because there were so few dates available,” Greenberg said. “We had to move fast.” Many couples want a site with indoor and outdoor options, and there are very few high-end spaces in Chicago, with its limited outdoor season, that offer both, said Reva Nathan, a wedding planner who is working with Greenberg and Wolf. All this makes the Adler, which allows couples to hold their wedding ceremonies outside and which offers a sweeping view of Lake Michigan and the skyline, a coveted wedding site. There is a growing demand for weddings at notable cultural institutions, quirky urban warehouse spaces or picturesque resorts, farms and vineyards that are easily accessible from major cities. To secure a Saturday at these sites, many of the wedding planners from around the country interviewed for this article said that it was not unusual for couples to have to book up to 18 months to two years ahead, or settle for having their wedding on a Friday or a Sunday, which has become common in the last few years. Price, popularity, and exclusivity (some locations accommodate only a few weddings each year) are all factors that can contribute to a wedding site being difficult to obtain. Cortnie Purdy-Fausner, a founder of TheVenueReport.com, a website aimed at connecting event spaces with planners and celebrants, said a couple “can easily find another planner or another florist, but the venue is the backdrop for everything else. If the couple has a specific vision, they’re likely going to wait.” In New York City, according to Shawn Rabideau, a wedding planner, one space that is in demand is the Rainbow Room, which reopened in October. The recently renovated space on the 65th floor of 30 Rockefeller Center is booking private events into 2016. “It’s got that New York City charm and history, but it’s also modern and sleek,” Rabideau said. “And now it has outdoor space, so there’s so much versatility.” If money is no object, a wedding at a museum or cultural institution in New York City is a possibility. At the main Fifth Avenue branch of the New York Public Library, the rental fee is $50,000. Memberships are required for receptions at the Frick Collection ($50,000) and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum ($25,000). And that’s just the beginning. Everything from tables, place settings, decorations and ovens must be brought in to turn these spaces into warm, inviting settings for a wedding. Securing a wedding date at some of the other coveted resorts, like Blackberry Farm in Walland, Tenn.; the Wauwinet, an inn on Nantucket; Pelican Hill in Newport Beach, Calif.; and the Montage in Laguna Beach, Calif., can be a challenge as couples contend with corporate events and the general clientele. Sometimes an expensive buyout is required. For another distinctive setting, some couples turn to private estates — these sites can usually secure permits for only a few weddings each year — like the Gull’s Way Estate in Malibu, Calif.; Stone Manor Estate in San Diego; and the Witt Estate in St. Helena, Calif. Greenberg says she does not mind waiting more than a year and a half to be a summer bride at the site of her choice; her demanding job as a lawyer, for one thing, makes a long engagement a sensible choice. “This is one of the first big things we’re doing together,” she said. “Without a serious time crunch, we can enjoy it more. It has the potential to be really fun.”

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Some wedding sites also play hard to get

There is a growing demand for weddings at notable cultural institutions, quirky urban warehouse spaces or picturesque resorts, farms and vineyards that are easily accessible from major cities. To secure a Saturday at these sites, many of the wedding planners from around the country interviewed for this article said that it was not unusual for couples to have to book up to 18 months to two years ahead, or settle for having their wedding on a Friday or a Sunday, which has become common in the last few years.

20150401221142

A New York lawyer was charged on Wednesday over his alleged role in a scheme by a former United Parcel Service UPS executive’s son to fraudulently obtain millions of dollars to finance the purchase of Maxim magazine. Harvey Newkirk, a former lawyer at the law firm Bryan Cave, was charged in a criminal complaint filed in Manhattan federal court with conspiracy, wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. Charging documents did not identify Maxim by name or the former UPS executive’s son, Calvin Darden Jr., who prosecutors have said impersonated his father in an elaborate fraud to bankroll the purchase of the men’s magazine. But Newkirk’s lawyer confirmed the charges against her client were related an earlier prosecution of Darden over his attempt to purchase Maxim. Events in the complaint against Newkirk also matched ones described in Darden’s case. Newkirk, 39, was released on a $500,000 bond following a brief court hearing that followed his surrender to the U.S. Secret Service early Wednesday. Priya Chaudhry, his lawyer, in an email said Newkirk “has done nothing wrong and we look forward to challenging the government’s overreaching and baseless allegations.” Bryan Cave said it is cooperating in the investigation. Darden, 40, was charged in 2014 with providing fake bank account statements and emails to lenders to obtain more than $8 million and attempt to secure another $20 million to buy the men’s magazine. Authorities said Darden as part of the scheme impersonated his father, also named Calvin. The senior Darden is a former vice president of U.S. operations for package delivery company UPS and a member of the boards of Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc and Target Corp. The younger Darden pleaded guilty to wire fraud charges in November. The complaint on Wednesday said Newkirk, along with Darden, made misrepresentations to various lenders and used Darden’s father’s name without his permission to induce lenders to provide financing. Darden’s father was aware of his son’s desire to buy Maxim but never agreed to finance the deal or provide collateral for it, the complaint said. The proposed deal became public in 2013 when then-Maxim owner Alpha Media Group — partly owned by private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management LP – announced it would sell the magazine to Darden Media Group, headed by the elder Darden. The $31 million deal did not go through and Alpha Media eventually sold Maxim to Biglari Holdings.

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N.Y. lawyer charged for alleged role in scheme over Maxim magazine

Harvey Newkirk helped a former UPS exec's son fraudulently obtain millions of dollars to finance the purchase of Maxim magazine.

20150421221102

NEW YORK — Things are finally looking up for Barbie. Mattel, the toy company behind the plastic dolls, said there were some signs of improving demand for Barbie ahead of its planned makeover of the brand, including Barbie dolls with different skin tones, eye colors, and nose shapes to better relate to multicultural girls and their mothers. The El Segundo, Calif., company also reported better-than expected financial results for the first quarter and its shares rose more than 5 percent on Friday. Mattel said late Thursday that more people were buying Barbie dolls in US stores. BMO Capital Markets analyst Gerrick Johnson said the rise was a ‘‘positive’’ development, in a note to clients. However, Mattel said overall sales of the brand including sales to retailers were still down 14 percent, largely because of the stronger dollar. Barbie sales have fallen as kids turn to tablets and other toys. Mattel hopes to reinvent the brand this year. In June, Barbie will have 23 new looks with different skin tones and hair colors. One has freckles, a wide nose, and curly hair. Another has almond-shaped brown eyes and dark skin. Mattel said it wants to make dolls that girls and their moms can better relate to. The dolls will be part of its core Fashionista line. ‘‘This will be an important cultural milestone for the brand,’’ said Richard Dickson, Mattel’s president and chief operating officer, in a conference call with investors on Thursday. As part of the launch, Barbie will also get a photo spread in Italian version of fashion magazine Vogue. Mattel said that it will also release three Barbie movies this year, one more than usual. The movies, which will air on cable channel Nickelodeon and be released on DVD, can increase sales of the doll, the company said. To develop new toys, Mattel announced Friday that it will partner with Quirky, a company that helps inventors bring their ideas to life. With the partnership, Mattel and Quirky will seek ideas from customers for new toys and games. ‘‘This marks a new era for Mattel,’’ said Dickson, in a written statement. During the first quarter, the company reported a loss of $58.2 million from a year ago, but its adjusted earnings beat Wall Street expectations. Revenue fell 2.5 percent to $922.7 million in the period, but still beat Wall Street expectations. Mattel, which also makes Hot Wheels cars and Fisher Price toys, named Christopher Sinclair as its permanent CEO earlier this month. He replaced Bryan Stockton, who resigned from the top job as the company reported disappointing fourth-quarter results.

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Barbie shows signs of life as Mattel plots comeback

Mattel, the toy company behind Barbie, said there were some signs of improving demand for Barbie ahead of its planned makeover of the brand

20150524075558

President Reagan, in his news conference yesterday, cited a 14thcentury Islamic scholar as an early exponent of the ''supply-side'' economic theory on which his Administration bases many of its policies. An authority on the scholar later said that the reference seemed accurate. Supply-side theory, among other things, holds that a cut in tax rates will stimulate the economy and thus generate even greater tax revenues. Responding to a question about the effects of tax and spending cuts that began taking effect yesterday, Mr. Reagan said the supply-side principle dated at least as far back as Ibn Khaldun, who is generally regarded as the greatest Arab historian to emerge from the highly developed Arabic culture of the Middle Ages. Paraphrasing the historian, Mr. Reagan said Ibn Khaldun postulated that ''in the beginning of the dynasty, great tax revenues were gained from small assessments,'' and that ''at the end of the dynasty, small tax revenues were gained from large assessments.'' ''And,'' said the President, ''we're trying to get down to the small assessments and the great revenues.'' Interpretation Held Accurate Franz Rosenthal, the Sterling Professor of Near Eastern Languages at Yale University, who has translated many of Ibn Khaldun's writings and is regarded as one of the world's foremost Ibn Khaldun scholars, said later that the President's interpretation of the historian's ideas on taxes appeared to be accurate. Ibn Khaldun, who was born in Tunis in 1332 and died in Cairo in 1406, was an official of the Tunisian and Moroccan courts, a judge and teacher in Cairo and the author of many volumes on history. His most noted contribution, Professor Rosenthal said, was to treat history as a science that incorporated politics, economics, sociology and geography. Ibn Khaldun is perhaps best known as the author of ''Kitab al-Ibar,'' a four-volume universal history, and ''Muqaddimah,'' an introduction in which he argues that rise and fall of human societies may be traced to specific, discoverable causes.

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REAGAN CITES ISLAMIC SCHOLAR

President Reagan, in his news conference yesterday, cited a 14thcentury Islamic scholar as an early exponent of the ''supply-side'' economic theory on which his Administration bases many of its policies. An authority on the scholar later said that the reference seemed accurate. Supply-side theory, among other things, holds that a cut in tax rates will stimulate the economy and thus generate even greater tax revenues.

20150524075836

UNITED NATIONS, N.Y., Feb. 3— At diplomatic lunches, in the delegates' lounge and along the corridors here the talk has turned to the sharp criticism of Secretary General Kurt Waldheim and Donald F. McHenry, the former United States representative, in print and on the air. The discussion has been intensified by the replay last week of an ABC News television program in which it was reported that a frightened Mr. Waldheim had betrayed an American negotiating stance in Teheran. The prevailing view, particularly among Western and Moslem envoys closest to the events, is that, in the words of a senior European, ''the attacks are simply unjustified'' and ''represent special pleading.'' In any institution, members tend to rally round their own as a matter of course, but even diplomats highly critical of the United Nations share the belief that Mr. Waldheim and Mr. McHenry, whatever their faults, are not guilty as charged. The Carter Administration and especially Mr. McHenry have come under fire from Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan in an article in the February issue of Commentary, the magazine published by the American Jewish Committee. The New York Democrat asserts that the Administration was so eager to ''maintain solidarity with the U.N. majority'' that Mr. McHenry repeatedly ''acquiesced'' in votes that ''made Israel an outlaw state.'' Account Said to Be Incomplete Diplomats here contend that this is an incomplete account of the Carter-McHenry record and thst it obscures the real reasons for the American votes. Even Mr. McHenry's warmest admirers agree that he often concealed from his mission exactly what he was doing. But the American votes on Israel were no mystery. Mr. McHenry, who is on vacation and unavailable for comment, abstained on seven anti-Israel resolutions, so the diplomats will not quarrel with Mr. Moynihan's conclusion that this amounted to acquiesence. The Carter Administration did indeed agree with a majority at the United Nations that Israel's expanding settlements in lands seized from the Arabs in the 1967 war made Middle Eastern peace more difficult, that Israel's formal annexation of the Arab sector of Jerusalem heightened tension and that Israel's expulsion of Arab political figures from the West Bank was arbitrary and unjustified. The judgments may be questioned, but the decisions to abstain were not made in fear of offending a United Nations majority. On the contrary, the United States, largely because it feared offending American voters, held back from full support of a majority with which it agreed. As for Mr. Waldheim, he is better known for suppleness than for boldness. Knowledgeable diplomats here do not believe that he blundered in Teheran at the start of the year. Instead, they argue that the accusations against him are inherently implausible. On the ABC News program, called ''America Held Hostage: The Secret Negotiations,'' it was said that Mr. Waldheim promised Iran that a commission of inquiry would look into its grievances before the hostages were released. If he had done so the Iranians would have promptly welcomed the panel and Washington would have been upset. But Mr. Waldheim reported that he had insisted on the simultaneous release of the hostages and the formation of the commission, which resulted in a deadlock. Secret Tapes Are Described A panel did not go to Teheran for nearly two months, until another arrangement had been agreed on. The television program, which was originally shown on Jan. 22 and which was presented in an amended version last week, asserted that six weeks later President Carter heard secret tapes that revealed Mr. Waldheim's ''betrayal.'' This, many diplomats here say, is highly unlikely. The week after Mr, Carter is said to have heard the tapes, he was blessing Mr. Waldheim's newly constituted panel and sending Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance to New York to give its members a list of the hostages and other instructions. In the end the commission failed because the Teheran authorities could not carry out their end of the bargain, which was to free the Americans from the control of their militant captors. This resulted not from any weakening on Mr. Waldheim's part but from the commission's insistence that Iran stick to the arrangement it had made with him.

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IN U.N. CORRIDORS, TWO ARE DEFENDED

At diplomatic lunches, in the delegates' lounge and along the corridors here the talk has turned to the sharp criticism of Secretary General Kurt Waldheim and Donald F. McHenry, the former United States representative, in print and on the air. The discussion has been intensified by the replay last week of an ABC News television program in which it was reported that a frightened Mr. Waldheim had betrayed an American negotiating stance in Teheran. The prevailing view, particularly among Western and Moslem envoys closest to the events, is that, in the words of a senior European, ''the attacks are simply unjustified'' and ''represent special pleading.'' In any institution, members tend to rally round their own as a matter of course, but even diplomats highly critical of the United Nations share the belief that Mr. Waldheim and Mr. McHenry, whatever their faults, are not guilty as charged.

20150524080348

WASHINGTON - There it was, a startling disclaimer at the top of the opening page of the testimony prepared for delivery to a Congressional subcommittee a few weeks ago: ''This statement reflects the views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Secretary of the Navy or the Department of the Navy.'' When senior military officers appear on Capitol Hill, they almost always follow the dictates of their uniformed and civilian bosses. But this was an appearance by Adm. Hyman G. Rickover, 81, the outspoken technocrat who brought the nuclear Navy into existence, a four-star survivor who has for decades fought with other admirals and defied Secretaries of the Navy. His authority isn't as absolute as it used to be, but he still has plenty of firepower. That day, with an occasional reminder of a name or a date from aides, he also had plenty of targets. The Electric Boat Company of Groton, Conn., he said, ''has caused the Navy no end of problems'' by bidding unfairly for contracts to build submarines, then doing poor work at high cost and failing to meet delivery dates. He promptly added that Electric Boat's chief competitor, Newport News Shipbuilding, in Virginia, ''is also difficult'' and may have been guilty of ''price gouging.'' Next he turned his guns on lawyers who specialize in filing shipbuilding claims against the Navy, calling them ''the ambulance chasers'' of the Washington Bar. Even his own branch of the military did not escape: ''The Navy has not been effective in dealing with shipbuilders that are not performing efficiently, that deliberately underbid, or that harass the Government with frivolous claims.'' It was vintage Rickover, and the subcommittee chairman treated him with the deference to which he has become accustomed. But less than half the subcommittee's members showed up; not too many years ago, all would have been present. All over Washington there is once again talk that perhaps the Admiral has finally outlived his usefulness, that the Reagan Administration will see he retires when his current appointment expires in January. Under a waiver, Admiral Rickover has been kept on active duty a good 20 years beyond the age when most senior admirals retire. Senior officials won't say what the Administration's intentions are, but Admiral Rickover has let it be known that he will not retire voluntarily. Under President Carter, he had little to fear; Mr. Carter, who had served as a submarine officer, once remarked that he considered Admiral Rickover to have been a great influence on his life. Now that Mr. Carter is gone, however, the lines are being drawn over the Admiral's tenure. It is a battle in which there seems to be no middle ground, for he inspires anything but lukewarm feelings. His admirers include many influential officers who once served in nuclear submarines or in nuclear-powered surface ships. Admiral Rickover still personally screens each prospective nuclear submarine officer and takes a personal interest in assignments and promotions. Although many of his Congressional defenders have died or retired, Senators Strom Thurmond, Republican of South Carolina, and Henry M. Jackson, Democrat of Washington, both influential members of the Armed Services Committee, remain among his fans. So does Representative Charles E. Bennett, Democrat of Florida and chairman of the House Armed Services sea power subcommittee. Admiral Rickover also continues to command the loyalty of some members of the defense establishment who credit him with all but dragging the Navy into the nuclear era. The ability of nuclearpowered aircraft carriers to spend long tours in the Indian Ocean, say, where the endurance of their crews is much more a limitation than the staying power of the ships, has proven his point, his supporters say. On the other side, many admirals have never really accepted Admiral Rickover because they find his tactics distasteful. Some say he has been able to outmaneuver them because he remained in Washington while they were away at sea or on other assignments. Quietly but clearly, they would like to see him retire. So would some of the younger members of Congress, who frankly regard him as something of a relic. Recent civilian leaders of the Navy have had similar misgivings. Former Secretary of the Navy Edward Hidalgo, for instance, could scarcely conceal his dislike for Admiral Rickover and his policies. The present Secretary, John Lehman, has been cautious, apparently following Admiral Rickover's recommendations on some matters, ignoring them on others. Executives in the shipbuilding industry, stung by the admiral's incessant criticism, angrily accuse him of meddling and contend that many of the troubles with construction costs and reliability have been caused by whimsical design changes he initiated. Some are so bitter that they refuse to be in the same room with him. Many Pentagon officials say that President Reagan will have to decide whether the Rickover era has run its course. The decision is nominally up to Mr. Lehman, but he apparently lacks the political stature to make a ruling stick. Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger has the stature, but he also has enough political savvy to know that retiring Admiral Rickover could set off a struggle that he does not need; the Administration's proposals for beefing up the military have already provided more than enough controversy for him. Illustrations: Photo of Admiral Hyman Rickover

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LINING UP ON THE QUESTION OF RICKOVER'S

RETIREMENT By RICHARD HALLORAN WASHINGTON - There it was, a startling disclaimer at the top of the opening page of the testimony prepared for delivery to a Congressional subcommittee a few weeks ago: ''This statement reflects the views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Secretary of the Navy or the Department of the Navy.'' When senior military officers appear on Capitol Hill, they almost always follow the dictates of their uniformed and civilian bosses. But this was an appearance by Adm. Hyman G. Rickover, 81, the outspoken technocrat who brought the nuclear Navy into existence, a four-star survivor who has for decades fought with other admirals and defied Secretaries of the Navy. His authority isn't as absolute as it used to be, but he still has plenty of firepower.

20150524080604

NOT too many hikers and backpackers tackle the entire 2,050-mile distance of the Appalachian Trail, but among the 150 who are expected to do so this year is 21-year-old Greg Gage of Englewood. Mr. Gage started the trek on April 2 at the trail's southern end in Georgia. He is now hiking through New England, heading for trail's end at Mount Katahdin in Maine. ''I took a term off from Stockton State College,'' Mr. Gage said recently as he rested on the sidewalk in front of a store in Kent, Conn., where he stopped to replenish his supplies. ''Now I'm ready to go back. I'm hoping that I'll be able to finish the trail before school starts this fall.'' Mr. Gage said that he had traversed mountain ranges, deep forests and open ranges and that his trail experiences would help him to get more out of his environmental studies at the college in Pomona. Mr. Gage is typical of the young people who have taken to the Appalachian Trail in increasing numbers at a time when its very wilderness quality is endangered by development. The footpath was put together in the late 1930's, threading over public and private land. Many private landowners had no objection to the hikers because the land was usually in remote areas that no one wanted. Since then, with the pressure of development, many parts of the trail, which goes through 14 states, have been pushed out of the wilderness and onto roads. It is estimated that three to four million people hike some section of the trail every year. Most go no more than a few miles. Mr. Gage is among the few who attempt the entire distance. If he stands out, so, too, does New Jersey, according to Federal officials, in its efforts to protect the trail from being eroded by civilization. By 1978, more than 200 miles of the trail had been diverted to highways. Concerned that the wilderness quality would be endangered, Congress authorized money to buy up land and keep the trail off the roads. About $35 million has been appropriated for that purpose. The National Park Service was the agency designated to buy the land. Some had been purchased, but much was still in complex negotiations with private owners when the Reagan Administration sought to cut this year's spending on the trail to $3.5 million from $8.5 million, with eventually a moratorium on all Park Service land acquisition. Overruling the Administration, Congress mandated the spending of the full $8.5 million this year. That is not nearly enough to complete the job, Park Service officials say, and it remains uncertain whether there will be any Federal funds for the next fiscal year. ''We still need $40 million on top of this year's $5 million,'' said Charles Rinaldi, the Park Service official in charge of acquiring land for the trail. Negotiating for the land becomes increasingly difficult as onceremote acreage becomes more desirable for housing tracts. ''When the trail was started, it was easy,'' Mr. Rinaldi said. ''In some cases, all that was needed was an agreement with a landowner - a nod of the head - to get permission for the trail to go over private lands. ''But not anymore. The land has got so valuable that owners just kicked the trail off their property when the offers by developers got attractive enough.'' Mr. Rinaldi does not have to worry, however, about the 60 miles of the trail in New Jersey. ''New Jersey has made the largest major effort so far by a state to protect the trail,'' he said. Protection in New Jersey began when the state's voters approved a Green Acres bond issue in 1978. ''The Appalachian Trail had a high priority on the bond issue money,'' said Donald Bridges, Director of Parks, Forests and Green Acres for the state's Department of Environmental Protection. The trail hugs the state's northwestern section. Traveling north, it enters the state from Pennsylvania at the Delaware Water Gap. It rises sharply from the river to the ridge of the Kittatinny Mountains, first in Warren County and then in Sussex County. Along the way, it goes through protected areas such as Stokes State Forest and High Point State Park. Near the northern edge of Sussex County, where it touches New York's Orange County, the trail turns to the east. It hugs the state border and crosses briefly into Passaic County before it turns north to continue on through New York State. Like much of the territory along the trail's entire length, that area of New Jersey had been remote and untouched. However, it was not unnoticed by developers, and until the bond issue came to the rescue the trail was increasingly being forced to detour over roads. ''Now we're going to get it all off the roads,'' Mr. Bridges said. ''We've negotiated for 83 parcels with 53 different owners, and everything has been settled except for one piece of the trail less than a half-mile long. ''What we're shooting for is to have it all in place by September. This will show that it can be done and provide an impetus for other states to do the same.'' Illustrations: photo of Greg Gage map of the Appalachian Trail

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KEEPING THE WILDERNESS WILD

NOT too many hikers and backpackers tackle the entire 2,050-mile distance of the Appalachian Trail, but among the 150 who are expected to do so this year is 21-year-old Greg Gage of Englewood. Mr. Gage started the trek on April 2 at the trail's southern end in Georgia. He is now hiking through New England, heading for trail's end at Mount Katahdin in Maine. ''I took a term off from Stockton State College,'' Mr. Gage said recently as he rested on the sidewalk in front of a store in Kent, Conn., where he stopped to replenish his supplies. ''Now I'm ready to go back. I'm hoping that I'll be able to finish the trail before school starts this fall.''

20150524081207

As surely as glossy department store catalogues announce that Labor Day is here and Christmas is coming, the fall and winter catalogues of publishers descend upon the desks of bookstore owners, talk-show hosts and reviewers to remind them of the seasonally high hopes of the book business. But unlike fleecy bathrobes or the latest in Walkman stereos, books remain a mystery until we or someone we trust turn their pages. Some insiders, like Simon and Schuster publisher Dan Green, predict a ''heady'' season this fall: ''Sometime around June, we became aware that more people were in the bookstores and that more books were being sold. The trend continued throughout the summer - and advance orders for the fall season are up from last year.'' No one can say with certainty what the season will bring, and yet the impulse to predict remains. The closest to an odds-on favorite in any season is the new book by the critically acclaimed or best-selling author. Robert Stone, whose ''Dog Soldiers'' won a National Book Award in 1975, returns with ''A Flag for Sunrise,'' a novel set in a small Central American country on the verge of revolution; John Updike starts this decade, as he did the past two (''Rabbit, Run'' in 1960 and ''Rabbit Redux'' in 1971) with a novel about Harry Angstrom - ''Rabbit Is Rich''; and in ''Indecent Obsession'' (her first book since ''The Thorn Birds' ') Colleen McCul lough tells the story of six men and a woman confined tothe mental wa rd of a military hospital. Other much discussed novels are ''Distant Relations,''n editor of The New York Times Book Review.uentes; ''A Mother and Two Daughters,'' by Gail Godwin; ''Poppa John,'' by Larry Woiwode; ''The Safety Net,'' by Heinrich Boll; ''Funeral Games'' (which picks up where ''Persian Boy'' left off), by Mary Renault; and, for fans of the no longer underground ''Deptford Trilogy,'' Robertson Davies's ''The Rebel Angels,'' a novel that again draws on the Canadian writer's broad knowledge of religion, academia and psychology. High on the list for the reader of short stories are ''The Collected Stories of Frank O'Connor,'' ''The Collected Stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer,'' ''Sixty Stories,'' by Donald Barthelme, and ''Liars in Love,'' by Richard Yates. The nonfiction lineup includes a number of ambitious books by established scholars: James MacGregor Burns, who won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award and the Francis Parkman Prize for his 1970 book ''Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom,'' begins a three-volume history of the United States with ''The Vineyard of Liberty,'' an analysis of American political ideas between the late 1700's and the Civil War. In ''Philosophical Explanations,'' a book that is unusual both for its analytical rigor and its humanism, Robert Nozick, whose ''Anarchy, State, and Utopia'' won a National Book Award, speculates on the fundamental questions of philosophy. Gail Sheehy is back with ''Pathfinders,'' accounts of men and women who have successfully weathered their midlife ''passages.'' The book's message - that you too can forge an adventurous and successful life - is echoed and re-echoed this year in such disparate titles as ''The Roaring '80s on Wall Street,' ' by Ira V. Cobleigh and; ''Celebrations of Life,'' by Pulitzer Prize-winningenvironmentalist Rene Dubos; and ''Growing Yo ung,'' by Ashley Montagu. Reminiscent of ''whole earths'' and ''foxfires'' are ''Johnny Blackwell's Poor Man's Catalog,'' a book with plans for 300 do-it-yourself projects, and ''The L.L. Bean Guide to the Outdoors,''by Bill Riviere and the staff of Maine's most famous 24-hour tourist spot. This season's lists indicate a growing interest in science. Stephen Jay Gould's ''The Mismeasure of Man'' is a microscopically detailed analysis of the biological determinism controversy, and Fritjof Capra, author of the best-selling ''The Tao of Physics,'' criticizes researchers for their overreliance on the scientific method in ''The Turning Point.'' In ''Life Itself,'' Nobel Prizewinner Francis Crick explores the plausibility of the notion that life began in spores sent to earth by a higher civilization. Other scientists prefer to look to the future: Noted science fiction writer and aerospace consultant Ben Bova urges skyward expansion in ''The High Road,'' and astronomer Robert Jastrow suggests in ''The Enchanted Loom'' that humans are evolving into larger-brained creatures similar to other ''wise and experienced races, living in solar systems billions of years older than ours.'' Events of the past year - and the questions and issues they raise - always show up in books of the subsequent season. Consider the crisis in Iran. Pierre Salinger offers his impressions in ''America Held Hostage''; ''No Hiding Place,'' edited by Maurice Carroll, Robert McFadden and Joseph Treaster, is the ''inside report on America held hostage'' as seen by the reporters and editors of The New York Times. V.S. Naipaul makes his acerbic observations on the world of Islam in ''Among the Believers,'' Kate Millett offers her thoughts on the subject in ''Going to Iran,'' Nikki Keddie interprets modern Iranian history in ''Roots of Revolution,'' and Richard Queen, the first hostage to be released, remembers his experiences in ''Inside and Out.''

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FALL PREVIEW 1981

As surely as glossy department store catalogues announce that Labor Day is here and Christmas is coming, the fall and winter catalogues of publishers descend upon the desks of bookstore owners, talk-show hosts and reviewers to remind them of the seasonally high hopes of the book business. But unlike fleecy bathrobes or the latest in Walkman stereos, books remain a mystery until we or someone we trust turn their pages. Some insiders, like Simon and Schuster publisher Dan Green, predict a ''heady'' season this fall: ''Sometime around June, we became aware that more people were in the bookstores and that more books were being sold. The trend continued throughout the summer - and advance orders for the fall season are up from last year.'' No one can say with certainty what the season will bring, and yet the impulse to predict remains.

20150524081322

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., April 12— The space shuttle Columbia lost more than a dozen of its heat-protection tiles today, but space agency officials here said they were quite confident that there was no danger to the space shuttle or its two astronauts. The loss, discovered by the astronauts in the first couple hours of the mission, apparently occurred in the launching of the craft. Teams of technicians were put to work gathering all possible data on the tiles with the expectation that the loss did in fact pose no danger. Even if some unsuspected hazards are identified, the officials say they expect to find ways to deal with them. However, they said they had been unable so far to check for damage on the underside of the spaceship, an area that will be subjected to some of the highest heat stresses during re-entry. No 'Doomsday' Thinking At a news conference, Neil B. Hutchinson, flight director for the ascent phase of the flight, said in describing the work of the data analysts, ''My impression to date is that they are all optimistic, and people are not scurrying around thinking about any doomsdays.'' There are 31,000 tiles on the surface of the Columbia. Their purpose is to protect the spaceship from temperature extremes encountered in orbit and to guard it against the searing heat generated when it eventually re-enters the atmosphere for a landing. Inadequacies in the design of the tile system contributed greatly to the long delays in launching the first shuttle flight. The tile system had been recognized as an area of potential trouble because it was one of the more ambitious aspects in the design of a re-usable spaceship. But the problem became embarrassingly visible when scores of tiles were lost on a test trip that the Columbia made across the country piggyback on a Boeing 747, and about a year and a half was spent improving, repairing and testing the system. So it was inevitable that the tile loss today, however much the danger was discounted, would be a subject of attention among those who have closely followed the shuttle program. The damage occurred on the surface of pods, or the housing, covering two modest-sized engines at the rear of the spaceship that are used to maneuver the craft in orbit. Because the heat there will be far less intense than other areas of the craft, this is one of the less vulnerable areas, and that no doubt contributed to the apparent lack of concern of those running the operation. There appeared to be nine tiles, or parts of tiles, missing on the starboard side, and four to six on the port side. The damage could be clearly seen on television monitors on the ground after the astronauts, John W. Young and Capt. Robert L. Crippen of the Navy, trained the on-board cameras on the area while testing the opening of the Columbia's cargo-bay doors. Shock Waves in the Ascent ''We're not worried about any others being loose,'' Mr. Hutchinson said, expressing elation that everything else had gone so well. ''It's fairly obvious the phenomenon was shock waves in the ascent that we didn't anticipate.'' Eugene Kranz, deputy director of flight operations, agreed unequivocally. It is standard procedure to check thoroughly into any flight anomaly, he explained, adding that this was being done even though ''it's like looking for a needle in a haystack.'' Mr. Kranz said the analysis would use at least four sources of data. First, he said, the television pictures of the tail area will be examined frame by frame. Next, films shot automatically from near the launching pad will be scrutinized as soon as technicians can gain access to the pad area. Then data will be relayed to the ground from special instruments installed on the Columbia specifically to study the performance of the intricate tile system. And finally, Mr. Kranz said, high-powered ground-based optical equipment belonging to the Air Force will be used to try to get a close look at areas of the spaceship that could not be seen from the cockpit. Working Around a Problem Mr. Kranz was asked whether anything could be done if it was discovered that some tiles were missing on the underside of the Columbia. ''Several things,'' he said. He specified that electrical power or cooling lines could be used differently, perhaps to bypass any vulnerable circuits near any damaged area. He seemed to be saying that, as long as the basic vehicle remained intact, precautions could be taken so that it would not be destroyed by the rupture of individual, isolated systems. ''If we could possibly identify a damaged area,'' he said, ''we could use the space craft's flexibility to maximize chances for a safe re-entry.'' The Columbia's 31,000 tiles, which are mostly ceramic and reusable, cover about 70 percent of the surface of the spaceship. The nose and the leading edges of the wings will be exposed to the highest heat, up to 2,300 degrees Fahrenheit. However, instead of tiles, those areas are protected by a specially developed metal known as ''carbon carbon.'' Pressure Was Miscalculated The key shortcoming discovered in the tile system some time ago was evidently an underestimate of the aerodynamic forces that would tend to pull the tiles, which are of varying sizes and shapes, from the insulation between them and the aluminum skin of the spaceship. The bonding was supposed to withstand seven pounds of pressure per square inch, one top official said, and the stress turned out to be almost twice as high. It was also discovered that individually the tiles could withstand the stress, but when the system was tested as a whole it showed weaknesses and lost some of its tiles. It was because of these discoveries that so much time had to be spent improving the heat protection system. Questions have been raised why the decision was made to use tiles in the first place instead of ablative materials that had permitted Apollo and other spacecraft to return from lunar as well as orbital flights. Ablative materials take care of re-entry heat by charring away. But the shuttle program's stated aim is to cut operation costs by permitting re-useability. Refurbishing ablative ''heat shields'' between flights that are supposed to be conducted with airline regularity would entail unacceptable delays and excessive costs. Officials have said that the use of ''carbon carbon'' in additional areas would have exacted too great a weight penalty. Illustrations: Drawing of space shuttle (Page A14)

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TECHNICIANS TRYING TO ASSESS LOSS OF 13 OR MORE TILES

The space shuttle Columbia lost more than a dozen of its heat-protection tiles today, but space agency officials here said they were quite confident that there was no danger to the space shuttle or its two astronauts. The loss, discovered by the astronauts in the first couple hours of the mission, apparently occurred in the launching of the craft. Teams of technicians were put to work gathering all possible data on the tiles with the expectation that the loss did in fact pose no danger. Even if some unsuspected hazards are identified, the officials say they expect to find ways to deal with them.

20150524081401

WESTBURY, L.I., April 13— Joseph M. Margiotta began his defense against charges of mail fraud and extortion in Federal District Court here today after Judge Charles Sifton denied a motion to acquit him. Judge Sifton ruled from the bench that if all issues of credibility were resolved in the Government's favor, ''the jury could find beyond a reasonable doubt'' that the Nassau Republican leader was guilty of some or all of six counts of the indictment against him. Mr. Margiotta sat stiffly and silently as the judge read his decision at the start of the 10th day of testimony in the trial. Throughout the day, the Republican chairman was considerably more subdued in conversations with friends and relatives than he had been earlier in the trial. His defense began with testimony from a series of witnesses, including two Democrats, who said that the splitting of municipal insurance commissions predated Mr. Margiotta's tenure as Republican chairman of the Town of Hempstead and Nassau County. No Ruling Until 1978 Another witness, Milton L. Freedman, associate general counsel of the State Insurance Department, identified department memorandums that held that until 1978 there was no departmental regulation against the commission sharing, even when a broker did nothing for the money. The department ruled in late 1978 -after the State Commission of Investigation had reported on the insurance fee splitting - that sharers in the commission had to provide some services for the money. The Federal charges against Mr. Margiotta grew out of his dispensing at least $500,000 in split Hempstead and Nassau County commissions to Republican politicians who did little or no work for the money. The Richard B. Williams and Son Inc., a Hicksville insurance agency, actually handled the insurance and received part of the commission. Two former Presiding Supervisors of Hempstead - Edward P. Larkin and Palmer Farrington - as well as a former Hempstead Councilman, now a County Court Judge, Leo F. McGinity, testified that they knew of the commission splitting and considered it traditional patronage. Two Democrats, Lawrence Elovich, the former Long Beach party leader, and Donald Steinberg, now an Assembly District leader, also testified on their participation in the asserted insurance patronage during the Democratic administration of County Executive Eugene H. Nickerson, who is now a Federal judge. John F. English, the former Nassau Democratic chairman, is expected to give similar testimony tomorrow.

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MARGIOTTA STARTS DEFENSE IN TRIAL ON NASSAU G.O.P. FEE-SPLITTING

Joseph M. Margiotta began his defense against charges of mail fraud and extortion in Federal District Court here today after Judge Charles Sifton denied a motion to acquit him. Judge Sifton ruled from the bench that if all issues of credibility were resolved in the Government's favor, ''the jury could find beyond a reasonable doubt'' that the Nassau Republican leader was guilty of some or all of six counts of the indictment against him. Mr. Margiotta sat stiffly and silently as the judge read his decision at the start of the 10th day of testimony in the trial. Throughout the day, the Republican chairman was considerably more subdued in conversations with friends and relatives than he had been earlier in the trial.

20150524083156

The Consumer Price Index rose 1 percent last month, to a 12.7 percent annual rate of increase, mainly because of soaring energy costs that resulted in large part from decontrol of oil prices. The index would have risen only three-tenths of 1 percent if energy prices had not accelerated so sharply. (Page A1.) Consumer prices in the New York-northeastern Jersey area rose 1.1 percent. (A15.) The Administration urged Congress to end aid for Conrail. It proposed that the main freight and passenger lines be shifted to private railroads and local transit authorities. (D1.) The Big Three's auto sales rose 35.3 percent, to 322,793, in the mid-March sales period as rebate programs neared an end. G.M. had a 52 percent gain and Chrysler 18 percent. Ford, which offered rebates in the comparable 1980 period, had an 8.1 percent drop. (D6.) Three top banks cut their prime lending rates to 17 percent from 17 1/2 percent, a week after Chemical Bank initiated the lower rate. Morgan Guaranty, Citibank and First National Bank of Chicago lowered their rates despite interest rate increases elsewhere, but amid predictions of further declines in the prime. (D7.) The coal miners' bargaining council approved a tentative settlement with the employers, but said that the union's ''no contract, no work'' rule would be adhered to. Thus, there will likely be a short strike, but both sides seem eager to limit the damage. (A12.) The Supreme Court invalidated an Iowa law barring double tractortrailer trucks from state highways, saying that the law was an unconstitutional interference with interstate commerce. In another action, the Court said it lacked jurisdiction to decide whether a landowner could collect damages from government units if property values fell because of regulatory actions. (D3.) Income tax relief for individuals should be limited to cuts of 5 percent a year for three years, a business economist, Jack Carlson, told the House Ways and Means Committee. (D15.) Companies St. Joe Minerals is seeking to buy back more than $1 billion of its own stock, pending the sale of its Canadian oil and gas properties. The company plans to offer $60 a share in cash and preferred stock for as many as 18 million shares in an attempt to thwart a $45-ashare takeover bid from Joseph E. Seagram & Sons. (D1.) Noranda Mines offered to buy MacMillan Bloedel in a $497.4 million (Canadian) cash and share-exchange offer. It is offering $10 a share more than British Columbia Resources. (D4.) NASA asked the FBI to investigate alleged accounting irregularities involving Rockwell International's space shuttle contract. A former Rockwell employee charged that some working hours were improperly charged to the shuttle. (D5.) Levi Strauss said earnings fell 22.5 percent to $38.2 million in the first fiscal quarter. Alexander's reported a 50 percent drop. (D4.) International An agreement on curbing Japanese auto imports is proving elusive, but the U.S. and Japan agreed to continue discussions in an attempt to reach a decision by the middle of May. (D1.) Common Market members are poised to give new aid to Poland, leaders of the 10 countries attending their semiannual meeting said. (A10.) The Solidarity union called for a warning strike Friday and a general strike on Tuesday to protest police violence last week, pending talks today with a top Polish official. (A1.) Markets The Dow Jones industrial average fell 8.10, to 996.13, as investors sought to cash in profits. Big Board volume rose to 66.4 million shares from 57.9 million. (D8.) The Treasury sold new 13 3/8 percent, four-year notes at an average yield of 13.49 percent. (D7.) Gold was bid at $535 an ounce, up $10, at Republic National Bank. It also rose abroad. The dollar was mixed. (D12.) Prices of livestock, meat and precious metals futures rose. (D12.) Today's Columns Does the U.S. need a new industrial policy? A symposium of some of the nation's top business, labor, government and economic leaders produced no consensus - even as to whether a consensus was desirable. Leonard Silk. Economic Scene. (D2.) Robert L. Grossmann has picked 23 stocks since late 1977, and as of March 17, the average price increase in these issues came to 95 percent. The senior vice president at Prescott, Ball & Turben pays close attention to detail. Market Place. (D8.)

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WEDNESDAY, MARCH 25, 1981

The Consumer Price Index rose 1 percent last month, to a 12.7 percent annual rate of increase, mainly because of soaring energy costs that resulted in large part from decontrol of oil prices. The index would have risen only three-tenths of 1 percent if energy prices had not accelerated so sharply. (Page A1.) Consumer prices in the New York-northeastern Jersey area rose 1.1 percent. (A15.) The Administration urged Congress to end aid for Conrail. It proposed that the main freight and passenger lines be shifted to private railroads and local transit authorities. (D1.)

20150524110606

The tenants of some 2,300 rental and cooperative apartment houses in New York City are faced with the possibility of a strike this Wednesday (4/21) if negotiations on a new contract between Local 32B-32J of the Service Employees Union and the Realty Advisory Board are not successful. The current contract expires at midnight Tuesday. According to the Council of New York Cooperatives, between 800 and 1,000 cooperative buildings would be affected by a strike. To meet such a contingency, the council has issued a booklet, entitled ''In The Event Of A Strike...,'' that provides guidelines to co-op boards and tenant shareholders on such matters as advance preparations and repairs, security, garbage, elevators, the cleaning of public areas and the elderly and infirm. No such comprehensive guildlines exist for rental properties, in which tenants have no equity. However, a canvass of a number of real estate firms and organizations dealing with rental properties indicated that tenants in rental apartments could expect to receive instructions from building owners and managers on how to help cope with the inconveniences resulting from a walkout. It was also noted that, while the owners and managers of rental properties would seek and, indeed, urge the cooperation of tenants, a strike would not relieve an owner of the responsibility to assure decent living conditions under the Protective Tenant Act. What follows, then, is a distillation of the recommendations of the Cooperatives Council, some or all of which could serve as models for action in rental buildings in the event of a strike. ADVANCE PREPARATIONS AND REPAIRS. Building insurance policies should be checked for strike coverage provisions. Necessary repairs to building systems, particularly alarms and other security devices, should be completed and fuel deliveries made because repairmen and deliverers may be reluctant to cross a picket line. A chart where volunteers can register for various building tasks should be posted prominently. SECURITY. The only access to the building should be through the front door.All other entrances should be closed and no entry permitted. Bicycle and other storage rooms in the basement should be closed. If the laundry room is not closed, its use should be held to a minimum. Arrangements should be made for either hired or volunteer tenant guards, or both, for security purposes. A complete and up-to-date list of all tenants, by name and apartment number, should be available at the front door for security guards. Free access to the building should be available only to tenants with keys or special passes; if passes are used, they should not list the holder's address. If a tenant is expecting a delivery or a guest, the front-door security guard should be notified. The front-door guard should permit non-residents to enter the building only with specific advance permission from a tenant who will be absent or if the tenant is at home to receive them. In general, deliveries should be left at the front door and tenants asked to come down to receive them. While the first priority should be to provide proper security at the building's front door, tenants also should take special precautions for their own apartments. Doors should be kept locked at all times and opened only to persons known to the resident. GARBAGE. If a building's incinerators continue to work, tenants should store non-combustible trash in their apartments for as long as possible with a view to disposing of it after the strike. Where there are no incinerators or they are closed down, tenants should remove their own garbage in conformance with the sanitation collection schedules for their building. The garbage should be packed in plastic bags, as compactly as possible, and brought down to the sidewalk curb no sooner than the evening before the scheduled day of collection. Garbage-generating activities, such as spring cleaning, should be deferred. Tenants should be aware that garbage pickups may be delayed by an unwillingness of sanitation workers to cross picket lines until the garbage is declared a health hazard by city inspectors. ELEVATORS. Since service elevators are unlikely to be operating, the passenger elevators will have to double up as service elevators. Automatic elevators pose no problem. But, if the elevators are manually operated, each tenant volunteer who mans them should first undergo a brief instruction program. For insurance reasons, children under the age of 16 should not be allowed to run manually operated elevators. With the number of elevators likely to be reduced, the use of those that remain in service should be held to a minimum. CLEANING OF PUBLIC AREAS. In the absence of regular cleaning of upper-floor hallways, the tenants on each floor should make an effort to keep their hallways as uncluttered of refuse as possible. Tenant volunteers also should see to it that building lobbies and elevators are swept, mopped or vacuumed as the need may be. ELDERLY AND INFIRM. The inconveniences posed by a strike can mean real hardship for the elderly and infirm. Each building should make a special effort to insure the comfort and safety of those of its residents who are incapacitated. This should first take the form of identifying them and then of keeping an eye out to help, for example, in the removal of their garbage or the receiving and handling of their deliveries.

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WHAT TO DO IF SERVICE WORKERS STRIKE

The tenants of some 2,300 rental and cooperative apartment houses in New York City are faced with the possibility of a strike this Wednesday (4/21) if negotiations on a new contract between Local 32B-32J of the Service Employees Union and the Realty Advisory Board are not successful. The current contract expires at midnight Tuesday. According to the Council of New York Cooperatives, between 800 and 1,000 cooperative buildings would be affected by a strike. To meet such a contingency, the council has issued a booklet, entitled ''In The Event Of A Strike...,'' that provides guidelines to co-op boards and tenant shareholders on such matters as advance preparations and repairs, security, garbage, elevators, the cleaning of public areas and the elderly and infirm.

20150816175836

The world's largest consumer of energy is producing oil and gas hand over fist. Yet judging by the earnings results of the three largest U.S. oil companies, you couldn't tell. Chevron on Friday was the last of the Big Three oil companies to report earnings. The company recorded a steep drop in fourth-quarter profit, as shrinking refining margins and disappointing production around the globe sent earnings down 32 percent. The second-largest U.S. oil company matched Wall Street's estimates, reporting a profit of $2.57 per share on revenue of $56.16 billion. Analysts had expected Chevron to report earnings per share of $2.57 per diluted share on $64.93 billion in revenue, according to a consensus estimate from Thomson Reuters. Despite the U.S. shale boom expanding rapidly, Chevron saw sharply lower oil and natural gas production—singing the blues as the world's largest economy produces record amounts of fossil fuels. On Thursday, oil giant ExxonMobil posted a profit of $8.35 billion in the fourth quarter, but ended the year with its lowest annual profit in three years. (Read more: US oil, gas juggernaut on course through 2016: EIA) ConocoPhillips continued to be the lone exception, as the company beat Wall Street estimates by shedding offshore assets and redoubling U.S. production. Conoco's profit in the fourth quarter was $2.5 billion, or $2.00 a share, compared with $1.4 billion, or $1.16 a share, a year earlier. Still, its stock is mired at its lowest levels since late August, as investors take a jaundiced view of Big Oil's ability to profit from the U.S. shale revolution. The big companies are suffering from problems related to scale, analysts say, with players like Chevron and Exxon on the outside looking in as investment flocks to hotbeds of U.S. energy production. After years of megamergers, multinational companies remain too large to merge with the smaller, more nimble competitors that are profiting from the North American energy boom. "They're so big that for them to move the needle to grow revenue and earnings fast enough, you need real dollar increases" in their bottom line, said Leo Kelly, managing director at Kelly Wealth Management. Natural gas production would be a key growth area for the majors, Kelly added. However, Big Oil has yet to make a real dent in the highly competitive market for hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

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Chevron profit drops

The world's largest consumer of energy is producing oil and gas hand over fist. Judging by some of Big Oil's earnings results, you couldn't tell.

20150824235015

CNBC TO AIR PORTIONS OF INTERVIEW DURING CNBC'S "CLOSING BELL" WHEN: WEDNESDAY, JULY 15TH AT 3:10PM ET In a CNBC EXCLUSIVE, CNBC Chief Washington Correspondent John Harwood interviews Senator Ted Cruz live from the CNBC Institutional Investor Delivering Alpha conference in New York City on Wednesday, July 15th. CNBC.com will live stream the full interview and portions of the interview will air on CNBC's "Closing Bell" (M-F, 3PM-5PM ET). Mandatory credit: CNBC Institutional Investor Delivering Alpha conference. Transcript to follow the interview. With CNBC in the U.S., CNBC in Asia Pacific, CNBC in Europe, Middle East and Africa, CNBC World and CNBC HD , CNBC is the recognized world leader in business news and provides real-time financial market coverage and business information to approximately 371 million homes worldwide, including more than 100 million households in the United States and Canada. CNBC also provides daily business updates to 400 million households across China. The network's 15 live hours a day of business programming in North America (weekdays from 4:00 a.m. - 7:00 p.m. ET) is produced at CNBC's global headquarters in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., and includes reports from CNBC News bureaus worldwide. CNBC at night features a mix of new reality programming, CNBC's highly successful series produced exclusively for CNBC and a number of distinctive in-house documentaries. CNBC also has a vast portfolio of digital products which deliver real-time financial market news and information across a variety of platforms. These include CNBC.com, the online destination for global business; CNBC PRO, the premium, integrated desktop/mobile service that provides real-time global market data and live access to CNBC global programming; and a suite of CNBC Mobile products including the CNBC Real-Time iPhone and iPad Apps. Members of the media can receive more information about CNBC and its programming on the NBC Universal Media Village Web site at http://www.nbcumv.com/mediavillage/networks/cnbc/.

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CNBC.com to Live Stream Interview with Senator Ted Cruz from CNBC Institutional Investor Delivering Alpha Conference on July 15

CNBC.com to Live Stream Interview with Senator Ted Cruz from CNBC Institutional Investor Delivering Alpha Conference on July 15

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FORTUNE — It all started routinely enough. Noah Kravitz signed on with mobile device and app review site PhoneDog in 2006, and began using a company Twitter account to keep techno-gadget enthusiasts au courant with his often quirky views on new products and industry trends. Nothing unusual there: Most companies — 76%, says a survey by New York City-based powerhouse law firm Proskauer — now employ at least one, and often several, social-media mavens to carry their marketing message into cyberspace. Moreover, when he joined PhoneDog, Kravitz was already a popular Silicon Valley technophile with plenty of influence. What could possibly go wrong? A whole lot, apparently. In late 2010, Kravitz left PhoneDog — and, with just a slight change in his Twitter handle, took about 17,000 followers out the door with him. (He’s now editor-at-large at tech news-and-reviews site TechnoBuffalo.) So PhoneDog filed a lawsuit against Kravitz last July in federal court, alleging that those followers are, in effect, a customer list and PhoneDog’s property. The company wants Kravitz to cough up $340,000: $2.50 per follower per month for 18 months. A hearing in the case, PhoneDog LLC v. Kravitz, is scheduled for January 26 in San Francisco. It gets weirder. Remember when parties to a lawsuit used to decline to comment until after a judge had spoken? Forget that. This brawl (which also encompasses Kravitz’s grievance over partnership money he says PhoneDog owes him, and a couple of other murky issues) has got both sides in the lawsuit — and many opinionated observers — fulminating online, from tech blogs to law firm web sites. For good reason: PhoneDog v. Kravitz will likely establish some legal boundary lines, which are currently quite hazy, between employees’ personal use of social media and employers’ claim on those channels of communication. Courts have long held that client lists, built up over time on a company’s good name and using its resources, are company property. But do Twitter followers — or LinkedIn contacts, or Facebook friends — meet the same standard? “There is a huge gray area here,” says Elise Bloom, co-chair of Proskauer’s employment law practice. She expects many more lawsuits like the Phonedog case before the dust finally settles. “Because of the nature of social media, you have to share a certain amount of personal information and commentary in order to be effective,” Bloom says. “Attracting lots of followers and keeping them, which of course is what your employer wants, means that, yes, mixed in with the corporate messages, you are going to talk about planning your wedding or what restaurants you like.” Fine, but it does raise the question: Is it your employer your followers are really interested in, or is it you? Blurring the boundaries further, employees may assume that, if they use their own personal iPhones or BlackBerrys to tweet, connect, or friend, then whatever they’re doing or saying online is their own business — even if they use company-owned Twitter handles or other corporate-sponsored platforms to do it. One way to avoid the kind of legal hugger-mugger PhoneDog is embroiled in: Write up a company policy on social media that everyone understands, which Proskauer’s survey says about half of all employers have yet to do (even though 43% report “employee misuse” of social media). “The technology has moved so fast that policies have yet to catch up,” Bloom notes. Before unleashing employees in cyberspace under the company banner, she says, “sit down and think carefully about what you want to protect.” Then make sure employees get it. At the same time, for anyone who wants to steer clear of Kravitz’s predicament, Bloom offers this advice: “The same way you have your own personal email and Facebook accounts, separate from your employer’s, develop your own Twitter following with your own personal handle. Create your own distinct, individual online persona.” If and when you leave your current job, it just might keep you out of court.

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Who owns your Twitter followers? Maybe not you

The blogosphere is buzzing over a pending lawsuit that raises the question: At what point do your tweets become company property?

20150905181648

WASHINGTON, Sept 3 (Reuters) - The United States has imposed sanctions on Russian and Chinese companies, including Russian state-owned arms exporter Rosoboronexport, for violating a U.S. law restricting weapons trade with Iran, North Korea and Syria. The U.S. State Department published a notice of the sanctions in the Federal Register on Wednesday. They were later condemned by the Russian Foreign Ministry. Moscow will take countermeasures in response to new U.S. sanctions, Interfax reported late on Wednesday, citing a commentary on the Russian Foreign Ministry's website. The State Department's notice did not specify how each company had run afoul of the United States' Iran, North Korea, and Syria Nonproliferation Act, but the act prohibits the trade with those three countries of goods, services, or technology used to make weapons of mass destruction or cruise or ballistic missiles. Russia has supported Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in a 4 1/2-year-old civil war that has killed more than 200,000 people and displaced millions, including by supplying him with military gear. Iran and North Korea are under United Nations arms embargoes. The sanctions announced on Wednesday prohibit the U.S. government from procuring goods or services from the listed entities, as well as selling them defense-related goods and services. Additionally, no new licenses will be granted to export certain controlled goods to the listed entities, and any existing such licenses will be suspended. Many of the entities targeted on Wednesday already faced multiple rounds of U.S. sanctions. One of the individuals listed was Chinese businessman Li Fangwei, also known as Karl Lee. He has already been sanctioned for allegedly supplying Iran's ballistic missile program in violation of an embargo. He denied the allegations in a 2013 interview with Reuters. The companies sanctioned also included China's BST Technology and Trade Co, which had previously been sanctioned by the United States in 2013, the Russian Aircraft Corp, and two North Korean firms. The Sudanese Armed Forces were also listed in the notice, as well as the overseas arm of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, called the Qods Force, and its commander, Qassem Soleimani. (Reporting by Jason Lange and Yeganeh Torbati; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn and Alan Crosby)

http://web.archive.org/web/20150905181648id_/http://www.cnbc.com/2015/09/03/reuters-america-update-1-us-sanctions-russias-state-owned-arms-exporter-rosoboronexport.html

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UPDATE 1-U.S. sanctions Russia's state-owned arms exporter Rosoboronexport

WASHINGTON, Sept 3- The United States has imposed sanctions on Russian and Chinese companies, including Russian state-owned arms exporter Rosoboronexport, for violating a U.S. law restricting weapons trade with Iran, North Korea and Syria. The State Department's notice did not specify how each company had run afoul of the United States' Iran, North Korea, and...

20150906100622

CHICAGO, Aug. 13, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- InvestorsObserver issues critical PriceWatch Alerts for TSLA, WFM, CELG, KITE and SNDK. To see what our analysts have discovered about a particular stock, read the InvestorsObserver's PriceWatch Alert by selecting the corresponding link. (Note: You may have to copy this link into your browser then press the [ENTER] key.) TSLA: http://www.investorsobserver.com/pr/81220151/TSLA WFM: http://www.investorsobserver.com/pr/81220151/WFM CELG: http://www.investorsobserver.com/pr/81220151/CELG KITE: http://www.investorsobserver.com/pr/81220151/KITE SNDK: http://www.investorsobserver.com/pr/81220151/SNDK (Note: You may have to copy this link into your browser then press the [ENTER] key.) Today's PriceWatch Alerts cover the following stocks: Tesla Motors (NASDAQ: TSLA), Whole Foods Market (NASDAQ: WFM), Celgene (NASDAQ: CELG), Kite Pharma (NASDAQ: KITE), SanDisk (NASDAQ: SNDK). InvestorsObserver's PriceWatch Alerts contain concise, detailed strategies for each stock we cover, including position protection tactics designed to defend investors from potential market shifts. While many other market reports only provide stock news and opinion, we offer strategies that can bulwark investments against uncertainty and increase chances of making a profit, even if a stock goes down. "We go above and beyond typical market coverage," said Bobby Raines, Analyst at InvestorsObserver. "Trading experts and beginning investors alike can find value in our PriceWatch Alerts. We provide actionable strategies that protect investments with basic hedging tactics, along with a concise explanation of our techniques." InvestorsObserver.com is an online newsletter which focuses on the U.S. equities and options markets. Our analytical tools, screening techniques, rigorous research methods and committed staff provide solid information to help subscribers make the best possible investment decisions. For more information go to www.investorsobserver.com. All stocks and options shown are examples only-- not recommendations to buy or sell. Our picks do not represent a positive or negative outlook on any security. Potential returns do not take into account your trade size, brokerage commissions or taxes--expenses that will affect actual investment returns. Stocks and options involve risk, thus they are not suitable for all investors. Prior to buying or selling options, a person should request a copy of Characteristics and Risks of Standardized Options available at http://www.cboe.com/Resources/Intro.aspx. Privacy policy available upon request. To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/critical-alerts-for-tesla-motors-whole-foods-market-celgene-kite-pharma-and-sandisk-released-by-investorsobserver-300128116.html

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Critical Alerts For Tesla Motors, Whole Foods Market, Celgene, Kite Pharma and SanDisk Released By InvestorsObserver

CHICAGO, Aug. 13, 2015/ PRNewswire/-- InvestorsObserver issues critical PriceWatch Alerts for TSLA, WFM, CELG, KITE and SNDK.. Today's PriceWatch Alerts cover the following stocks: Tesla Motors, Whole Foods Market, Celgene, Kite Pharma, SanDisk. "We go above and beyond typical market coverage," said Bobby Raines, Analyst at InvestorsObserver.

20150921182516

A planned Greek gold mine that would provide much-needed jobs and boost a local economy is being held up by needless red tape, according to the Australian miner trying to get the project started. "Sapes gold project has got huge potential, massive, everyone in the business knows about it," says Jason Bontempo, the Australian MD of Glory Resources who has had to deal with more than two years of excessive bureaucracy and delays. Glory Resources invested in a mine in Thrace in northern Greece back in 2011 and is still fighting to get the required environmental and mining licenses to drill. Mining for gold produces on average between 2-3 grams of gold per tonne. Bontempo believes the Sapes mine could produce approximately 20 grams per tonne. Having already spent $25 million, Bontempo says "they are seeking to invest a further $150m on development and exploration and hope to initially create over $1billion in value for all stakeholders" based on current surveys of the gold underground. The firm's latest feasibility study suggests it will take 20 months to make the mine functional, but Bontempo points out that construction, spending and jobs will be created in the region during that time. He has also spent time getting to know the local community in Thrace where an estimated 70 percent are unemployed. He says many of them support the project, which he hopes could ultimately create up to 200 direct and further 600 indirect and affiliated jobs through-out the nine-year estimated lifetime of the mine. Bontempo believes it could last far longer. While this is a tiny fraction of the 3 million unemployed across Greece, Bontempo argues this is exactly kind of growth and jobs opportunity the country should be encouraging. (Watch: Greece needs a 'growth clause': opposition ) Ever since Greece was first bailed out by the International Monetary Fund and its fellow euro countries in 2010, it has been implementing harsh spending cuts and tax hikes as a condition of its international loans. Austerity has put the brakes on the country's economy, it is currently in its sixth year of recession, and sent unemployment soaring. In order to get the country back on its feet, Greece's international creditors have insisted that Greece reforms its economy to encourage foreign investors to set up business in the country. Notis Mitarachi, deputy development minister told CNBC that "projects of environmental concern must comply with strict EU laws" and one hold-up may be concerns about the use of cyanide to extract gold from its ore. However, Glory Resources doesn't need to use cyanide on the Sapes facility. Politics also plays a key role. Since Glory Resources first invested, Greece has undergone two turbulent elections and more recently a splintering of the current coalition. Bontempo feels he is caught in a power struggle with Thrace's local government while the central authorities have little incentive or political weight to help. Mitarachi told CNBC that "as a democracy Greece always takes into account the view of regional governments and elected officials" when assessing investment requests. However, Greece has established a new Fast Track system for projects worth above 40 million euros to help bypass much of the red tape. Mitarachi said the system is now up and running and there had been a "40 percent increase in private investment through the Ministry" who can deliver a decision on whether a project should go ahead within 30 days. The Fast Track scheme wasn't available when Glory initially invested but it has subsequently tried to join -- and given up. Bontempo argues it is a waste of money. Bontempo adds that he knows of other similar mining projects that have joined the fast track program and are facing delays. Invest in Greece said in an emailed statement to CNBC that "the truth about the Fast Track Law is that it came into effect in 2010, and is an important part of the Greek governments' commitment to creating a friendly environment for investors by creating a set of stable and transparent investment rules, procedures and administrative structures for the implementation of large scale public and private projects "Once included in the scheme, the time-frame depends on a number of factors, including the nature of the investment and the necessary licenses that need to be obtained; and how far along the licensing process the investor was before being included in the Fast Track. "It is important to note that, although inclusion in the scheme does not guarantee that a license will be granted, nor can it change the specific licenses required in order to realize that particular investment, it does ensure the speeding up of the licensing process, and hence translates to clear and significant profits for the investor. In relation to Glory Resources, Invest in Greece said that it had "met with representatives of Glory Resources on several occasions in the last two years to discuss their investment project and as they were considering their inclusion. The company has never submitted for inclusion to the Fast Track scheme." With the Troika of Greece's international debt inspectors– from the IMF, European Commission and the European Central Bank -- back in Athens, there has also been renewed focus on the country's failure to meet its economic reform targets and its privatization program. Notis defends the program saying "people need to realise that there was a lot of legal work to be done, a regulatory authority and a framework that is now in place". The government website Invest in Greece lists testimonials from the likes of Microsoft, Deutsche Telekom, Hochtief and GE. In September alone, they announced that Chinese giant ZTE Corporation is to construct a logistics center in Piraeus and also a separate 230 million euro deal with China's Cosco. Invest In Greece also pointed out to CNBC that 'just this week, the positive evaluation of two new investment projects for the development of integrated tourist resorts, plus an additional project, currently under evaluation by Invest in Greece, further diversify the mix of investment projects which are included in the Fast Track scheme. " All in all, the interest of investors to be included in the Fast Track is a clear indication in the continued support and trust of prospective investors for the efficacy and reliability of the Fast Track process." (Watch: How Greece should change its governance system When CNBC spoke to Bontempo in Athens last week he was preparing for a visit by some of Glory's largest shareholders who collectively manage more than 380 billion euros. With some irony, he told us that the Greek development minister was currently in London presumably hoping to drum up similar kinds of interest. Glory Resources is the only Public Listed junior company in the country right now, according to Bontempo who believes many other juniors and potential investors are watching Greece's handling of this closely as a test case. One government official recently admitted to Bontempo that he couldn't call anyone at other relevant ministries to facilitate the process because it would look like he'd taken a bribe. Foreign companies investing in Greece have sparked concerns that the country won't see any of the returns. Bontempo denies he is stealing Greece's crown jewels. "It will be a 60:40 split in terms of profits between the firm and the government when all levies, costs and taxes are included," he told CNBC. After two years of waiting and little sense of when the Sapes project will be up and running, you have to wonder if Glory Resources has considered pulling the plug. Bontempo's response is emphatic. "Well that point's not now… We have a strategy with building our local support, there's also going to be some interest in Thrace or regionally, regional and local elections happen in May, so we'll be watching that very closely," he said. Maybe the breakthrough will come sooner than he realises. On Thursday night the Greek Ministry of Environment, Energy and Climate Change Press Office told CNBC in an emailed statement: "The Minister of Environment, Energy and Climate Change Yiannis Maniatis will call within the next 15 days a wide meeting with the participation of Glory Resources, local MPs, the local governor, mayors, as well as civil servants of the departments of the Ministry responsible for the mines, so that we can examine the issue in depth." For now, the Ministry of Environment, Energy and Climate Change will not comment any further on the issue.

http://web.archive.org/web/20150921182516id_/http://www.cnbc.com/2013/09/27/gold-mine-hits-rich-seam-of-greek-bureaucracy.html

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Gold mine hits rich seam of Greek bureaucracy

A planned Greek gold mine that would provide jobs and boost a local economy is being held up by, bureaucracy says an Australian miner.

20150926214241

* Century aluminium curtails capacity at smelter * Slowing China growth, cheap exports weigh on metals (Adds details, quotes; previous SINGAPORE) LONDON, Aug 7 (Reuters) - Copper hit a six-year low on Friday and zinc touched its weakest in two years, as gloomy sentiment about global growth and oversupply continued to weigh on the market. While the main focus of investors has been the health of the economy in top metals consumer China, weak economic data released on Friday about European powerhouse Germany also added to the pressure on prices. German exports fell by more than expected in June and industrial output also declined in Europe's largest economy. Another rise in London Metal Exchange copper inventories <MCUSTX-TOTAL> on Friday highlighted concern about an expected surplus on global markets. Further weakness in the currencies of countries where metals are produced has also been a factor depressing markets, lowering costs for miners and allowing them to accept weaker prices. "Definitely the weakness from producer currencies, from South Africa to Australia, in part may explain the price movement," said Eugen Weinberg, head of commodity research at Commerzbank in Frankfurt. Three month copper on the London Metal Exchange slid to $5,121 a tonne, the weakest since July 2009, before paring losses to $5,153 by 1000 GMT, a loss of 0.6 percent. Copper has given up 1.6 percent this week. "There are concerns over Chinese manufacturing PMI, the numbers that we are seeing obviously haven't been that good and the big issue is the market actually feels that Chinese data is actually worse," said Jonathan Barratt, chief investment officer at Sydney's Ayers Alliance. LME zinc dropped to $1,846 a tonne, the lowest since August 2013, before recovering slightly to $1,855, down 0.6 percent. "The negative sentiment has been weighing on prices for weeks and months but the recent stabilisation of the equity markets in China should help sentiment to improve," Weinberg added. China's CSI300 index ended the week up 2.4 percent, its biggest weekly gain since July 10. Weinberg said Chinese trade data due over the weekend may also support the market, showing Chinese metals demand is not as dire as some believe. Losses in aluminium were modest at 0.1 percent to $1,591 a tonne after Century Aluminium curtailed capacity at one of its four smelters. The metal used in transport and packaging slid as low as $1,576 on Thursday, its weakest since July 2009, on persistent worries about a glut of oversupply. Investors are eyeing U.S. nonfarm payrolls data due later in the day which may determine how soon the Federal Reserve raises interest rates. Economists polled by Reuters show the U.S. economy added 223,000 jobs in July, the same pace as June. (Additional reporting by Naveen Thukral in Singapore, editing by William Hardy)

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METALS-Copper sinks to 6-year low; zinc at lowest in 2 years

LONDON, Aug 7- Copper hit a six-year low on Friday and zinc touched its weakest in two years, as gloomy sentiment about global growth and oversupply continued to weigh on the market. While the main focus of investors has been the health of the economy in top metals consumer China, weak economic data released on Friday about European powerhouse Germany also added to...

20151002054930

You have a deadline looming, and it's not Christmas. This month is your last chance to make charitable donations for 2013. So in between the holiday parties and cookie swaps, consider pulling out your checkbook one more time for your favorite cause. You'll have plenty of company. Most charities report receiving about 40 percent of all their donations in December, according to a Charity Navigator poll. Charitable giving is always ennobling, but this year there are also ways to make it as effective as possible. If you maximize your charity tax deduction, you can give more, and if you embrace novel ways of working with a charity, your generosity can also have more impact. (Read more: It's the way you donate that counts) Investors have several options this year for taking full advantage of the tax breaks for charitable donations. For starters, the stock market's strength in 2013 means many investors are sitting on hefty capital gains. If you donate some of that appreciated stock to a charity, you can take a deduction for the fair market value. You also avoid paying capital gains on the stock's appreciation—a nice twofer in a year when taxpayers in the top bracket are facing a higher capital gains tax rate. (Read more: U.S. stocks finish higher on the week) If you are over age 70½ and receiving a required distribution from your IRA, you have another option. You can donate up to $100,000 of that amount and it will not count as income. (This tax break is due to expire at the end of the year, so if you are planning to make use of it, this is the time.) (Read more: Going, going...a number of tax deductions set to expire) "Defer revenue and accelerate deductions if you can, especially in high tax brackets," said Mark Steber, chief tax officer at Jackson Hewitt. "Rates are going to be pretty high" in the new year. As for how you seek out the organization that will do the most good with your donation, the landscape is shifting, according to Susan Wolff Ditkoff, co-head of the philanthropy practice at Bridgespan Group, an advisor to nonprofits and philanthropists. "Individual donors, certainly more than 10 years ago, are going directly to the nonprofits that they care a lot about. It used to be they would go through an intermediary like the United Way," she said. The Internet, of course, makes finding a charity easier. And with websites like crowdrise.com creating communities around charitable causes, you can find other like minded donors online and perhaps learn of more organizations with missions that dovetail with your charity goals, where your gift may make even more of a difference. (Read more: Charities get holiday boost from crowdfunding) Ditkoff also advises a careful look at whether your charity of choice is on an upward trend. "One of the first things we advise people to do after they pick their passions is to look for organizations that show evidence that they're learning," she said. "Some organizations do a terrific job of demonstrating one or two heartwarming stories. But when you look at how their programs are working, it doesn't necessarily add up to programmatic improvement. Are they actually improving their programs based on data?"

http://web.archive.org/web/20151002054930id_/http://www.cnbc.com/2013/12/23/get-the-biggest-bang-for-your-donation-bucks.html

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Get the biggest bang for your donation bucks

With only days left to get a tax deduction for 2013 charitable donations, consider pulling out your checkbook.

20151012155752

* Brent rides the coattails of European and Wall St stocks rally * U.S. crude down 11 cents, reopening from Labor Day holiday * Coming Up: API report on last week's crude stockpiles, 2130 GMT (Updates with market settlements, adds upcoming API data; paragraphs 2-4, 6, 9) NEW YORK, Sept 8 (Reuters) - Brent crude settled up 4 percent on Tuesday as strength in stock markets helped the global oil benchmark recoup the bulk of its losses from the previous session. U.S. crude fell slightly in volatile trade, reopening from Monday's U.S. markets closure for the Labor Day holiday to news of refinery outages. The divergence between Brent and U.S. crude could grow in post-settlement trade after a report on weekly crude inventories from industry group American Petroleum Institute at 4:30 p.m. EDT (2130 GMT). Analysts polled by Reuters expect U.S. crude inventories to have risen by 200,000 barrels in the week ended Sept. 4. Official stockpile figures will be released by the government on Wednesday. Brent rose early on Tuesday as European equity markets took off on bullish second-quarter euro zone growth and stellar German exports data. Gains in Brent accelerated in New York after the European equities rally extended to Wall Street. London-traded Brent settled up $1.89 at $49.52 a barrel. It fell $1.98 in the previous session. Offsetting some of the bullish sentiment in Brent was China's mixed data on crude imports for August. The data showed a 6 percent gain year-on-year and 10 percent rise for the first eight months, but a 13 percent slide from July. Also weighing on Brent was the growing potential for Iran to flood the oil market with more supply as the Obama administration gained further congressional support in its campaign to lift nuclear-related sanctions on Tehran crude exports. U.S. crude settled down 11 cents, or almost a quarter percent, at $45.94 a barrel. It had fallen almost $2 at one point. U.S. crude was weighed by the closure of the largest crude distillation unit at Exxon Mobil Corp's 502,500 barrel-per-day (bpd) Baton Rouge, Louisiana, refinery, on Sunday due to steam generation failure. Valero Energy Corp was also shutting a 45,000-bpd hydrocracking unit at its 335,000-bpd refinery in Port Arthur, Texas, sources familiar with the plant's operations, said on Tuesday. On Monday, Phillips 66 shut down a fluid catalytic cracker at its 314,000-bpd refinery in Wood River, Illinois. The gasoline-making unit is expected to restart within 48 hours, a source familiar with the plant's operations said. (Additional reporting by Lisa Barrington in London and Henning Gloystein in Singapore; Editing by Chris Reese and Lisa Shumaker)

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UPDATE 11-Brent settles up 4 pct, riding equities rally; U.S. crude down

*U.S. crude down 11 cents, reopening from Labor Day holiday. NEW YORK, Sept 8- Brent crude settled up 4 percent on Tuesday as strength in stock markets helped the global oil benchmark recoup the bulk of its losses from the previous session. The divergence between Brent and U.S. crude could grow in post-settlement trade after a report on weekly crude inventories from...

20151013041841

Barring any emergency meeting of heads of state and government, Nickel thought interior ministers may come closer to a deal at their next meeting on October 8. Whether an agreement can be found that placates the former-Communist bloc in eastern Europe remains to be seen, however. These "recalcitrant Europeans," according to Ian Bremmer, president of political risk research firm Eurasia Group, will drive a hard bargain. "The strongest opposition has come from eastern Europe…they have strong domestic resistance to accepting refugees, and see political benefits in taking a hard line against Germany. which means they'll try and exact a pound of flesh on other issues…It won't be pretty," he warned in a note Monday. Europe was less united than ever, and once again, as with the Greek financial crisis, it was cobbling together a short-term plan to deal with an "expanding" crisis, Bremmer added. "It's very much like the Greece (third bailout) deal - nothing more than a last minute, short-term patch that doesn't resolve an expanding challenge. As an actor on the international stage, 'Europe' has less cohesive norms, values, and governance than at any time since the union was created," he said. On Tuesday, Standard & Poor's (S&P) said that political uncertainty stemming from the refugee crisis was the biggest risk to credit ratings for EU countries at present. "An elusive compromise could indicate that the EU still has governance problems, which we consider a key factor when rating sovereigns," Moritz Kraemer, primary credit analyst at S&P said in a report on Tuesday. "If mishandled, Europe's approach to solving the refugee influx may lead to increased populism and xenophobia, diverting attention from budgetary and structural reforms."

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Migrant crisis prompts Europe to toughen border controls

A raft of European Union countries have unilaterally re-imposed border checks and the region's justice ministers failed to agree on a plan.

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You've just invented the greatest product known to mankind—or at least you think so. And you know that you must quickly protect this brilliant idea with a patent because someone will surely steal it if you don't, right? Maybe not. For lone inventors, patenting may not be necessary at every step of the inventing process—and maybe not at all. "A patent can be a useful tool, but it may not be necessary. I have spent thousands of dollars on quality patents and had my products knocked off anyway," said Tamara Monosoff, inventor and author of "The Mom Inventors Handbook." Monosoff breaks down the patent debate into three key questions for inventors as they weigh the benefits of a patent vs. the costs—something all inventors need to do early in the product development process. 1. Is a provisional patent application plenty? A provisional patent application is like an invention placeholder—it gives you 12 months to file a full patent, known in the inventing jargon as a utility patent. The utility patent reverts to the date of your provisional patent application. There's an economic benefit to this approach—you can delay the cost of a utility application and continue with product development before you actually file. Fees associated with filing a provisional patent application can start at as little as $65, though there can be multiple fees in the filing process. A full utility patent can cost thousands of dollars, depending on the size of the applicant, the nature of the invention (apparatus, biotech, electrical, design, plant) and the process hiccups that can occur along the way as the patent application is examined, said James Crowne, deputy executive director of legal affairs for the American Intellectual Property Law Association. He added that the applicant does have the chance to make corrections to the filing during the examination process, but there are costs incurred every time that is necessary. Another benefit of the provisional application is that your product details are not public for the 12-month period, so potential competitors can't figure out how to design around your patent. "It's a powerful time because no one knows the specifics of what you submitted for patent, and once you file a provisional application, you can also label your invention as 'patent pending,' which in itself can be a deterrent to a would-be knockoff," Monosoff said.

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The case against patenting your brilliant invention

Think your brilliant idea needs a patent pronto? Think twice. Patents for lone inventors can be a waste of time and money.

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By Tim Nudd and Susan Keating 01/28/2016 AT 11:00 AM EST after leading a militia group in a takeover of a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon, told his followers Wednesday to end the occupation, according to reports, as three alleged militia members voluntarily gave themselves up. "Please stand down. Go home and hug your families. This fight is now in the courts," Bundy said in a statement read by his attorney, Mike Arnold, after Bundy's first court appearance in Portland, the that it arrested three men on Wednesday: Duane Leo Ehmer, 45, of Irrigon, Oregon; Dylan Wade Anderson, 34, of Provo, Utah; and Jason S. Patrick, 43, of Bonaire, Georgia. "All were in contact with the FBI, and each chose to turn himself into agents at a checkpoint outside the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. The arrests were without incident," the FBI said. That left five occupiers at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge as of late Wednesday, according to the One of them, David Fry, 27, of Ohio, said in a video feed from the site that the group has been negotiating with the FBI to end the occupation, the paper said. Fry claimed the FBI is willing to let four of the men leave without charges but wants to charge a fifth with a felony of conspiracy to interfere with federal employees, reports the . However, the FBI has not confirmed that. Fry said that all five will leave if that single felony charge is dropped. Wednesday's developments came a day after one occupier was killed and Bundy and others were arrested while driving to a community meeting. The and other media outlets identified the man who was killed as standoff spokesman Robert "LaVoy" Finicum. The FBI has not released details of what exactly happened during that incident, but a local farmer who chose to remain anonymous tells PEOPLE it was unjustified. "We see this as an ambush," the farmer said. "An ambush was set up with a lot of firepower. They took these people down on the road. I travel that road. What if they mistake me for someone I'm not? I want to be able to drive down the road. I don't expect to be riddled with bullets." The farmer added: "This took a very bad turn. They didn't have to kill that man." Bundy and six others who have been arrested and accused in the armed takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge will remain in jail, after a judge on Wednesday deemed them flight risks and a danger to public safety, the

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3 More Oregon Militia Members Arrested, as Leader Tells Followers to 'Go Home' : People.com

"Go home and hug your families. This fight is now in the courts," Ammon Bundy said in court Wednesday

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Lincoln Seay received his new heart on February 19 03/01/2016 AT 05:00 PM EST A 7-month-old boy in desperate need of a new heart received one shortly after experiencing cardiac arrest. Lincoln Seay of Anchorage, Alaska, was born with a severe heart defect and had been waiting for a new heart since November. The baby's quickly deteriorating health had his doctors and parents worried he might die before receiving one. But on February 19, the infant, who seemed only days away from death, miraculously acquired a healthy heart from an anonymous donor. "Those last two days, you could just tell they were his last days," Lincoln's father, Rob Seay, 37, told the The baby boy's skin had acquired a bluish-purple tint and he was spending most his days sleeping before the successful transplant took place. "He was right on the edge," Seattle Children's surgical director of heart transplantation, Dr. Michael McMullan, told the Seattle Times. "We have a list of patients and he was the one we were most worried about," the doctor added. Due to strict organ donation privacy regulations, Lincoln's parents do not know where his new heart came from – only that it came from another child who was roughly the same size as her son. Lincoln's mother, Mindy Seay, 35, penned an emotional letter on social media to the anonymous family of the late child. She writes, "You and I may never meet, may never speak, may never cross paths, but we will be connected on a divine, spiritual level. Your child and mine will be forever entertwined as the heart that grew in your womb now pumps the blood through the body of the child created in mine. They have merged in a way, and your child will forever live on in mine. When my child bleeds, I will think of you. When I bandage his scraped knee, I will think of you. When I hear his heart beat, I will remember you. When his eyes flutter closed as he falls asleep, I will remember your beautiful child. I will say prayers of gratitude and blessings over your family, often. I will treasure the gift you've given. I promise. "I am so very sorry that your child's journey ended so soon. I am so very sorry that you endured life's greatest grief. I am just, so very sorry. But I hope that in your sorrow you can take comfort in knowing that you gave life. You gave life to other children. You gave comfort to other families. Your sweet child can live on in the lives of others. That is the greatest gift anyone can ever give. And your child gave that to my beautiful boy. Your child gave that to me. To my family. Your selfless act kept our family whole and spared me, a mother you've never met, the same grief you had to endure." Lincoln's parents say their son is "doing incredible," and will be moving from the ICU to the regular hospital floor in the next few days. "My baby is coming back. He has a long, hard road ahead of him, but his progress is amazing," Mindy shares on Facebook.

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Lincoln Seay Gets New Heart After Going into Cardiac Arrest : People.com

"Those last two days, you could just tell they were his last days," Lincoln's father, Rob Seay, 37, said

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Ben Hanisch and Amy Schumer 04/05/2016 AT 03:00 PM EDT who are done with being labeled by their size. for including her in their "plus size" bonus issue sponsored by Lane Bryant, she tweeted that qualifying women with labels is pointless. "Thanks for sharing your thoughts everyone except the people who told me what I 'should feel' or what I 'should have focused on,' " "Bottom line seems to be we are done with these unnecessary labels which seem to be reserved for women." Thanks for sharing your thoughts everyone except the people who told me what I "should feel" or what I "should have focused on" Bottom line seems to be we are done with these unnecessary labels which seem to be reserved for women. pic.twitter.com/VUnrgFseRl Earlier Tuesday Schumer Instagrammed a photo of 's special issue cover, explaining that calling her "plus size" is potentially harmful for young girls. "I think there's nothing wrong with being plus size. Beautiful healthy women. Plus size is considered size 16 in America. I go between a size 6 and an 8. @glamourmag put me in their plus size only issue without asking or letting me know and it doesn't feel right to me," she said. "Young girls seeing my body type thinking that is plus size? What are your thoughts? Mine are not cool glamour not glamourous." told PEOPLE that they didn't mean to offend Schumer. "First off, we love Amy, and our readers do too – which is why we featured her on the cover of last year. The cover line on this special edition – which is aimed at women size 12 and up – simply says "Women Who Inspire Us," since we believe her passionate and vocal message of body positivity IS inspiring, as is the message of the many other women, of all sizes, featured. The edition did not describe her as plus-size. We are sorry if we offended her in any way." But Schumer now joins the many other models and celebrities who are calling for an end to the term, including Ashley Graham, who modeled for the cover, and Melissa McCarthy, who was included in the roundup with Schumer, among others. "I've always hated the word 'plus-size.' It bugs me," Meghan Trainor . "Everything Melissa [McCarthy] said is completely accurate. [They're] a big part of our society, women who are size 14, and how are you going to criticize us? The word 'plus-sized' should be gone." "I don't like the label 'plus-size' – I call it 'fiercely real,' Tyra Banks . "I don't want to use the term 'plus-size,' because, to me, what the hell is that? It just doesn't have a positive connotation to it. I tend to not use it."

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Amy Schumer Joins the Women Against the Term 'Plus Size' After Slamming Glamour : People.com

The comedian is speaking out again after calling out Glamour for including her in their special "plus size" issue

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NEW YORK — Puerto Rico reduced the amount of potential losses for creditors in a revised debt-restructuring proposal as island officials seek to accelerate negotiations while the commonwealth moves closer to default and Congress considers oversight of its finances. Puerto Rico and its advisers made public details of the offer first presented in March. General obligation and sales-tax bondholders would recover more of their investments under the latest plan. It would reduce the commonwealth’s $49.3 billion of tax-supported debt to between $32.6 billion and $37.4 billion, a smaller reduction than the cut to $26.5 billion in its earlier plan. That might not be enough relief for Puerto Rico as the island struggles to grow its economy and improve its finances, said Matt Dalton, chief executive officer of Rye Brook, New York-based Belle Haven Investments, which oversees $4.2 billion of municipal bonds, including commonwealth securities. “Nothing’s changed and without a drastic reduction of the debt service that Puerto Rico is under, I don’t know how they’re going to climb out of their hole,” Dalton said. “I still worry there’s still a long road ahead even if they did come to some agreement.” Puerto Rico and its agencies racked up $70 billion of debt after borrowing for years to pay its bills. Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla in June 2105 said the island was unable to repay all of its obligations on time and in full. Two agencies have missed debt payments since then and its Government Development Bank owes $422 million May 1. The commonwealth and its agencies face a $2 billion debt payment July 1. The revised plan increases to $1.85 billion from $1.7 billion the amount Puerto Rico will spend on annual debt-service. Puerto Rico’s revised proposal offers a 74 percent recovery on general obligations and commonwealth-backed debt, up from 72 percent in its first plan that it unveiled Feb. 1. Sales-tax bonds, called Cofinas by their Spanish acronym, would recover 57 percent, up from 49 percent. It also replaces “growth bonds” included in the commonwealth’s first proposal, with capital-appreciation bonds, which delay interest payments until the debt mature. Growth bonds, by comparison, would only repay if Puerto Rico’s revenue exceeds certain projections. The commonwealth would allocate $2.4 billion to its pensions in the first five years of the plan. Puerto Rico’s largest pension system’s assets were less than one percent of the $30.2 billion it owes current and future retirees, as of June 2014. “A sustainable solution cannot place the burden on one stakeholder group alone, and we have the moral and legal obligation to protect the health, safety and well-being of our citizens,” Victor Suarez, Puerto Rico’s secretary of state, said in a statement. “These are the priorities we must balance while working to reach an agreement that will put Puerto Rico back on the path to prosperity.” Puerto Rico residents who hold commonwealth securities would be repaid last. The revised proposal offers those on-island investors a return of full principal beginning in 2065 and ending 2069. They would receive a reduced 2 percent interest rate starting in 2017. Garcia Padilla last week signed into law a debt-moratorium bill that allows him to suspend payments on all of the island’s debt through January 2017. He declared Saturday an emergency period for the Development Bank to preserve its dwindling cash, but declined to place a moratorium on the bank’s debt. Puerto Rico’s latest offer gives a 36 percent recovery rate on GDB bonds.

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Puerto Rico unveils new restructuring deal as cash dwindles

Puerto Rico is proposing to restructure part of its $70 billion debt to buy time to implement a fiscal growth plan.

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Now in its third year, the invigorating Prototype Festival, a collaboration of Beth Morrison Projects and HERE, has brought together this month another collection of contemporary pieces that push at the conventional boundaries of opera and theater. So far, “The Scarlet Ibis” by Stefan Weisman and David Cote, playing at HERE through Jan. 17, is the most traditional work. It is a narrative, 100-minute chamber opera for five singers and nine players, yet its subject is subtly subversive, and its production groundbreaking. Based on a 1960 story by James Hurst, “The Scarlet Ibis” is about two young brothers in rural North Carolina early in the 20th century. The elder, called only Brother, is dismayed and bemused by his frail sibling, whom he dubs Doodle and tries to make “normal.” Brother teaches Doodle to walk when the adults have given up on him, but he pushes too hard. The creators avoid a victimization tale, however: The relationship between the two is sensitively drawn, helped by the casting. As Brother, mezzo Hai-Ting Chinn is boyish in her exuberance and her bullying, yet she also leaves room for her character to doubt. Doodle is acted by an expressive, smaller-than-child-size puppet, created by Tom Lee and manipulated by three puppeteers, and sung by Eric S. Brenner in a plangent high countertenor. Singer, puppeteers and puppet create a single unit, making Doodle both an alien being and a little boy who wants to please his brother. The siblings’ contrasting music—Doodle’s dreamily chromatic and Brother’s rhythmically insistent—drives the score, as does Mr. Cote’s pointed libretto, though the piece could benefit from some cutting. As is often the case in children’s stories, the three adults, whose music has a folklike lilt, are in the background: Abigail Fischer is the sensitive Mother, Nicole Mitchell’s velvety contralto is ideal for the superstitious Auntie, and Keith Phares is suitably dour as the Father, whose answer to any problem is carpentry. Under Steven Osgood, the American Modern Ensemble creates atmosphere, conjuring up the swamp that entices the boys, and a deadly storm. Director Mallory Catlett’s production is at one with the music: Joseph Silovsky’s simple set of rolling tables, Mr. Lee’s delicate shadow puppetry, Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew’s subtly colored lighting and Andreea Mincic’s period costumes evoke not only a specific time and place but also the magic and brutality of childhood. “Toxic Psalms,” which had its final performance at St. Ann’s Warehouse on Sunday, takes the fusion of music and theater even further. In this piece, Carmina Slovenica, the Slovenian choir of 31 young women, directed by Karmina Šilec, seems to be offering a commentary on the coercion of crowds, and as such on the nature of choral music itself. The excellent singers, in black tutus, jodhpurs and evening gowns by Belinda Radulović, swirl, march, gesture and pose in the gloomy, cavernous space while singing music ranging from Pergolesi’s “Stabat Mater” to pieces by contemporary composers from Scandinavia to Slovenia. There is no conductor; there is throat singing, hissing, shouting, and call and response, backed up on occasion by bongos, organ and bass guitar. The lighting, by Andrej Hajdinjak, is dim; pairs of black boots are lined up in the foreground. At one point, a woman peels and crushes a lemon; later, bushels of lemons are tossed onto the stage. Ms. Šilec’s narrative, extensively but not very comprehensibly outlined in the program, has to do with spiritual anguish, religious oppression, sexual assault, and the collective experience. The printed libretto, with the translated texts for the music, doesn’t help in the darkness; the spoken monologues (in English) are cryptic. Yet the power of the performers overrode the muddiness of the intellectual conception. There were haunting theatrical moments, as when, in a cluster, the women sang Rachmaninoff’s “Rejoice, O Virgin” while seeming to throw a light from hand to hand. The theme about the perils of uniformity was the clearest: Toward the end of the piece, the women strutted out in phalanxes, wearing identical, military-style black costumes, singing a Kyrie and then a ferocious, menacing march, “Curse upon Iron” by Veljo Tormis. In their finale, the Pergolesi, their gestures were fluidly feminine, yet mechanical, as though they had become a cadre of Stepford wives. It was a chilling transformation. Todd Almond wrote and performs in the slight, hourlong musical “Kansas City Choir Boy,” which runs through Jan. 17, but it is really a celebrity turn for the ravaged rock singer Courtney Love. He’s the eponymous, clean-cut, hometown boy; she, with her gravelly alto and long, flyaway tangle of blond hair, is Athena, the girl who left him for fame and the big city and was murdered there. There’s no book; the tale is told in a few insistent pop songs and ballads, each built on a handful of repeated lines—“I’m driving. I’m 16”; “The way you are and the way you are not.” Mr. Almond plays keyboard and acoustic guitar; there’s also a string quartet. And six bouncy female Sirens in club gear (Paul Carey did the costumes) sing backup, lure Athena away to the bright lights, and guide Mr. Almond through the underworld in search of her. Ms. Love and Mr. Almond generate some adolescent hormonal heat together—an impressive feat, given that she is a lot further past 16 than he is. Director Kevin Newbury makes efficient use of HERE’s tiny, claustrophobic downstairs theater, with notable assistance from Darrel Maloney, who designed the pulsating light show, and Zac Posen, who created the glamorous black gown that Ms. Love wears for about a minute in her Goddess incarnation. Ms. Waleson writes about opera for the Journal. Due to an error in the printed program, an earlier version of this story credited someone else for designing the light show in “Kansas City Choir Boy.”

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A Puppet, Coercion and a Corpse

Now in its third year, the Prototype Festival brings together a collection of contemporary pieces that push at the conventional boundaries of opera and theater.

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04/20/2016 AT 10:00 PM EDT One of ESPN's biggest baseball analysts, , has been fired from the network, the Schilling was reportedly terminated on Wednesday, just one day after he was criticized for commenting on an offensive Facebook post regarding that bans transgender people from using bathrooms and locker rooms different from their gender at birth. Although Schilling did not post the message, he did leave a comment on the photo of an overweight man donning a wig and women's attire that had cutouts in the breast area, the reports. The picture included the words, "LET HIM IN! to the restroom with your daughter or else you're a narrow-minded, judgmental, unloving racist bigot who needs to die." Schilling reportedly left the following message: "A man is a man no matter what they call themselves. I don't care what they are, who they sleep with, men's room was designed for the penis, women's not so much. Now you need laws telling us differently? Pathetic." In a statement obtained by the newspaper, ESPN denounced Schilling's opinion regarding the post. "ESPN is an inclusive company," the network said in a statement. "Curt Schilling has been advised that his conduct was unacceptable and his employment with ESPN has been terminated." While Schilling did not offer a statement to the publication, he did take to his personal blog to air his thoughts on the situation in a titled "The hunt to be offended…" "This is likely the easiest way to address all of you out there who are just dying to be offended so you can create some sort of faux cause to rally behind," he started. "Let's make one thing clear right up front. If you get offended by ANYTHING in this post, that's your fault, all yours. This latest brew ha ha (sic) is beyond hilarious. I didn't post that ugly looking picture. I made a comment about the basic functionality of mens and womens restrooms, period." This isn't the first time Schilling's social media etiquette has put him in hot water with his employer. Last year, he was for a month for a comment he made on Twitter, which compared extremist Muslims to Nazis. However, this time, even Schilling's son Grant came to his defense, writing in a Facebook post that while his father may not be the "most well informed in the modern LGBT+ culture," he has worked hard to understand the community and has even allowed Grant's "trans friends to stay over [and] respected pronouns and name changes."

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Curt Schilling Fired From ESPN Over Anti-Transgender Comment : People.com

This was the second time in the last year that Schilling has been in trouble for comments made on social media

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PHOENIX -- The lingering residue from Kevin Towers' largely taken-out-of-context comments about Diamondbacks' pitchers protecting their hitters bubbled to the surface again Thursday. The trigger was the back and forth hit batters in Wednesday night's Marlins-Diamondbacks game: Miami pitcher Jose Fernandez hit David Peralta in the head with a wayward 97-mph fastball, and D-backs reliever Dominic Leone plunked Christian Yelich in the leg the next inning and was subsequently ejected. ESPN.com's Buster Olney stirred the pot by criticizing the chain of events on Twitter, drawing a response from D-backs relievers Daniel Hudson and Brad Ziegler. For his part, manager Chip Hale said he didn't believe the Diamondbacks are singled out for criticism more than other teams, nor does he think there's much to grumble about. "I know when I played, if you got hit, you were happy to go to first base," Hale said. "Now, when guys get hit, it's like you're personally assaulting them. I think there's a difference between getting hit in the head and getting hit in a part of your body that's not going to end your career. "It's just baseball. We have a family in our clubhouse, they have a family in theirs, and we're all protecting each other. It's just the way baseball is always going to be, and it's not going to change." Peralta was in good spirits Thursday, though he wasn't in the starting lineup. Hale said he was planning to give Peralta the day off prior to Wednesday night's incident. "I'm feeling good today. Even last night I felt good," Peralta said. "It' was a scary moment, for sure. I was really scared. But it's like nothing happened. I'm here. I'm good. I'm 100 percent healthy." Follow Dave Lumia on Twitter

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Chip Hale: Protecting the family is 'just baseball'

Manager Chip Hale said he doesn't believe the Diamondbacks are unfairly singled out for throwing at opposing hitters, nor does he think there's much to grumble about.

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Comedian Garry Shandling's life was cut tragically short on Thursday after The Larry Sanders Show star died of an apparent heart attack. Shandling was 66 at the time of his death. His publicist Alan Nierob told the ET that Shandling had no history of heart problems, but that doctors believe he died as the result of a heart attack. SEE MORE: EXCLUSIVE: Goldie Hawn Tears Up Remembering Garry Shandling There is no autopsy planned at this time as he is believed to have died of natural causes, a coroner told the Associated Press. Following the news of Shandling's death, co-stars, friends, and fellow comedians spoke out, honoring the trailblazing comedian and writer. "I'm gonna miss him. It was such a shock," actress Goldie Hawn told ET through tears at UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability on Thursday night. Stars react to the death of Garry Shandling: Garry Shandling's apparent cause of death was a heart attack RIP the great Garry Shandling. Surely, one of the most influential comedians of a generation. Goodbye Gary Shandling thank you for your kindness and your generosity and for making me laugh so damn much One of the funniest of all, the beloved and very complicated Gary Shandling has died. Sunday, my longtime friend Garry Shandling was here, making every1 laugh. I loved him. I'll miss our talks the most. https://t.co/Ud8AQXNBXN Garry Shandling was as kind and generous as he was funny and that is saying a lot. .@GarryShandling no no no. I love you. I cannot accept that you are gone. Rest in Power my hero. #RIPGarry Not Garry Shandling!!!!!! A treasure!!!!!! How sad. LARRY SANDERS FOREVER. Such sad news. #RIPGarryShandling No!!! Not #GaryShandling!! I am devastated. Grew up with Larry Sanders. Can't process this. RIP. Beyond sad. Thoughts are with his family. Wait, what? Gary Shandling? No. I am shocked that Gary Shandling has passed. I was so thrilled to have worked with him on The Larry Sanders Show. So funny & witty. RIP. Gary Shandling was a comedy hero of mine. He once sent me a thank you note that read, "Thanks for nothing." RIP https://t.co/DmCy2JZcGj Peace to a very funny man Garry Shandling Sad today. My friend @GarryShandling passed. He encouraged me from the very start. A few weeks ago he told me life was short and enjoy it. Sad to hear about Garry Shandling's death. He made me laugh. Saddened over Garry Shandling. He was a comedy idol of mine. He leaves behind the greatest single-camera comedy of all time. #LarrySanders Absolutely can't process the loss of Garry Shandling. Such a genius, such a wonderful man, such an inspiration. I was so honored to know him Garry Shandling, you came to an early promotional screening of CYRUS and hung w/me & @jayduplass afterwards at PF Changs. Thank you. "Nice guys finish first. If you don't know that, then you don't know where the finish line is." Garry Shandling https://t.co/goJsDx6Cl8 R.I.P. Garry Shandling. I’m so shocked and saddened. He was brilliantly funny, and so kind to me. The great Garry Shandling's work is such a touchstone for me that I was actually discussing him moments before I heard the sad news. RIP If it's true I am heartsick @GarryShandling has died? One in a million brilliant people say it's not so R.I.P. Garry Shandling. I am so saddened to hear this. Brilliantly funny and such a great guy. He will be so missed. I'm both shocked & saddened at the passing of Garry Shandling. He'll forever remain a comedic legend. #RIP Can't believe that I just heard Garry Shandling died. I'm shattered. This Garry Shandling news is devastating. OMG not @GarryShandling, I'm heartbroken and will always remember our laughs we shared on the set of #XFiles #RIP So saddened by the death of Garry Shandling. Brilliantly funny guy. And a sweetheart, too. Did his show twice. RIP. This really hurts. Rest In Peace, @GarryShandling. Heartbreaking news about Garry Shandling. Just heartbreaking. He was as deep as he was funny. I wanted Garry Shandling to live forever and I somehow thought he would. Rest in Peace, Garry Shandling. His work, including the Larry Sanders Show, was an enormous influence. Oh my ..GOD will laugh now as he never has Before REST IN PEACE .. Wayyyy to soon https://t.co/c5T4O6kBHg Nooooo!!! I love Garry Shandling. So sad!! #pioneer Dammit. He was the best. So sad. RIP Garry Shandling R.I.P. @GarryShandling. A great career and an iconic television series. #larrysanders :( Garry Shandling is one of the great teachers in my life. He taught me about subtext, honesty, compassion, the best kind of comedy. Much love So sad to hear about @GarryShandling he was one of my favorites #ripgarryshandling https://t.co/nwA3OxVR7M Gary Shandling was a comedy hero of mine. He once sent me a thank you note that read, "Thanks for nothing." RIP https://t.co/DmCy2JZcGj Garry Shandling you were and always will be comedy gold. #gonewaytoosoon #rip #alwaysfunny I'm both shocked & saddened at the passing of Garry Shandling. He'll forever remain a comedic legend. #RIP #GaryShandling NO!! What happened?!! My first job in LA. NO! Gary Shandling was to comedy what grumpy cat is to the internet. #gamechanger. RIP #garyshandling. Oh no RIP @garyshandling Such a talent. READ MORE: Conan O'Brien Remembers Garry Shandling Who Helped Him in a 'Particularly Difficult Time' Conan O'Brien remembered Shandling during Thursday's show, recalling how the comedian helped him through a tough time in his life after he was fired from The Tonight Show. "He was obviously hysterically funny pretty much all the time, but he was also extremely sensitive," O'Brien said. "He was complicated. And he had a ton of empathy for other people, and I want to make that point. That is something in this business, in comedy, that is very rare." Shandling was best known for his work on The Larry Sanders Show and It's Garry Shandling's Show. The Emmy winner was revered in the comedy world for his work as both a writer and comic.

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Garry Shandling's apparent cause of death was a heart attack

His publicist Alan Nierob said that Shandling had no history of heart problems, but that doctors believe he died as the result of a heart attack.

20160527205446

The police in the Belgian town of Mechelen knew the whereabouts of the prime suspect behind the Paris terrorist attacks, Salah Abdeslam, as far back as December — but failed to share the intelligence with other Belgian authorities. The Flemish newspaper De Morgen first reported the news, which was later confirmed by Mechelen's police chief, Yves Bogaerts, in a news conference. "Unfortunately, a mistake has been made within my team," he said, according to De Morgen. "A colleague with an excellent record of service forgot to pass on the information from [Abdeslam's] file." Learn more about the suspects of the Paris attacks: Police in Belgian town say they 'forgot' to pass along information about Paris attacker's whereabouts This undated image made available in the Islamic State's English-language magazine Dabiq, shows Belgian Abdelhamid Abaaoud. Abaaoud the Belgian jihadi suspected of masterminding deadly attacks in Paris was killed in a police raid on a suburban apartment building, the city prosecutor's office announced Thursday Nov. 1, 2015. Paris Prosecutor Francois Molins' office said 27-year-old Abdelhamid Abaaoud was identified based on skin samples. His body was found in the apartment building targeted in the chaotic and bloody raid in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis on Wednesday. (Militant photo via AP) This undated image made available in the Islamic State's English-language magazine Dabiq, shows Abdelhamid Abaaoud. Abaaoud, the child of Moroccan immigrants who grew up in the Belgian capital’s Molenbeek-Saint-Jean neighborhood, was identified by French authorities on Monday Nov. 16, 2015, as the presumed mastermind of the terror attacks last Friday in Paris that killed over a hundred people and injured hundreds more. (Militant Photo via AP) This undated image taken from a Militant Website on Monday Nov. 16, 2015 showing Belgian Abdelhamid Abaaoud. A French official says Abdelhamid Abaaoud is the suspected mastermind of the Paris attacks was also linked to thwarted train and church attacks. (Militant video via AP) Abdelhamid Abaaoud, suspected mastermind of the #ParisAttacks was "interviewed" in #ISIS's Dabiq magazine https://t.co/wSKmztFfn5 BREAKING: Third Bataclan attacker identified as Foued Mohamed-Aggad https://t.co/FYwEykV9Kp https://t.co/7g6vH7gvwH This undated photo released late Sunday, Nov. 15, 2015, by Greece's migration policy ministry shows a registration photo from a document issued to 25-year old Ahmad Almohammad, holder of a Syrian passport found near a dead assailant in the scene of a Paris attack Friday. The document was issued on Sunday, Oct. 4 by authorities on the Greek island of Leros, where the man arrived a day earlier on a frail boat carrying migrants over from Turkey. It protects him from deportation for six months, and is the same documentation routinely issued to thousands of newly-arrived migrants. (Greek Migration Ministry via AP) This undated photo released late Sunday, Nov. 15, 2015, by Greece's migration policy ministry shows a document issued to 25-year old Ahmad Almohammad, holder of a Syrian passport found near a dead assailant in the scene of a Paris attack Friday. The document was issued on Sunday, Oct. 4 by authorities on the Greek island of Leros, where the man arrived a day earlier on a frail boat carrying migrants over from Turkey. It protects him from deportation for six months, and is the same documentation routinely issued to thousands of newly-arrived migrants. On the right is a copy of his fingerprints, taken on Saturday, Oct. 3. (Greek Migration Policy Ministry via AP) This undated file photo provided by French Police shows 26-year old Salah Abdeslam, who is wanted by police in connection with recent terror attacks in Paris, as police investigations continue Friday, Nov. 13, 2015. French police released the wanted notice and photo of the suspect on the run since the attacks in Paris on Friday. The notice, released on the France National Police Twitter account, says anyone seeing Salah Abdeslam, should consider him dangerous. (Police Nationale via AP) This undated file photo released Friday, Nov. 13, 2015, by French Police shows 26-year old Salah Abdeslam, who is wanted by police in connection with recent terror attacks in Paris, as police investigations continue. The notice, released on the national police Twitter account, says anyone seeing Salah Abdeslam, should consider him dangerous and call authorities immediately. The notice reads in French: "Call for witnesses - Police are hunting a suspect : Salah Abdeslam, born on Sept. 15, 1989 Brussels, Belgium. ...Dangerous individual don't intervene yourself". (Police Nationale via AP) The Mechelen police apparently received a tip from Abdeslam's nephew, Abid Aberkan, in November that Abdeslam may have been hiding in Mechelen, a town just north of Brussels. The Mechelen police filed the report on Abdeslam's whereabouts on December 7, three weeks after the fugitive was believed to have helped plan and carry out November's Paris attacks, which killed 130 people. The information was evidently supposed to be transferred to the Antwerp prosecutor's office and referred to the federal police. Abdeslam was captured in a raid by Belgian police officers last week — after three months that he most likely spent planning Tuesday's attacks in Brussels, authorities have said. The incident highlights the fragmented nature of Belgium's security apparatus. In Brussels alone, the police force is divided among six police corps spread out over 19 boroughs. Françoise Schepmans, the mayor of Molenbeek — the Brussels district where Abdeslam was arrested that is known as a hotbed for jihadists — told CNN there was "no collaboration" between the local and federal police forces in Belgium. "They don't have to talk to me about their investigation," Schepmans said, referring to the police in different districts. At least 30 people were reported killed and hundreds more wounded after explosions ripped through Zaventem Airport and a metro station in Brussels on Tuesday morning. Belgian authorities have been criticized over reports that they interrogated Abdeslam for only one hour between the time he was captured last week and Tuesday's attacks. Abdeslam's lawyer has insisted that he was not aware of the plot. But prosecutors say they have linked Abdeslam to the attacks, noting that his fingerprints were found in a Brussels apartment that had been rented out by one of the Brussels suicide bombers, Khalid El Bakraoui. Belgium's interior minister, Jan Jambon, and Belgian Justice Minister Koen Geens both offered to resign after the attacks over the security lapses that may have allowed the attackers to plan and carry out their attacks undetected. Their resignations were refused by Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel. See the international response to the Brussels attacks: Police in Belgian town say they 'forgot' to pass along information about Paris attacker's whereabouts PARIS, FRANCE - MARCH 22: (FRANCE OUT) French police officers patrol at the Trocadero Plaza next to the Eiffel Tower on March 22, 2106 in Paris, France. Since this morning 400 policemen and gendarmes have been deployed to increase the security in airports, stations and public transportation around Paris and its region after the terrorist attacks in Brussels today. (Photo by Christophe Morin/IP3/Getty Images) German police officers guard a terminal of the airport in Frankfurt, Germany, Tuesday, March 22, 2016, when various explosions hit the Belgian capital Brussels killing several people. (AP Photo/Michael Probst) An Israeli airport security guard patrols with a dog in Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv, Israel, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. After the Brussels attacks, Israel briefly announced that all Israeli flights from Europe were canceled, then reinstated the flights, Israel Airports Authority spokesman Ofer Leffler said. Pini Schiff, former director of security at Ben-Gurion Airport, said the attack in the Brussels airport was âa colossal failureâ of Belgian security, and he said âthe chances are very lowâ that such a bombing could take place in Israelâs airport. Israel's Ben-Gurion Airport is considered among the most secure in the world, an outcome stemming from several Palestinian attacks on Israeli planes and travelers in the 1970s. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit) A police officer guards a terminal of the airport during tighter security measures in Barcelona, Spain, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Explosions, at least one likely caused by a suicide bomber, rocked the Brussels airport and subway system Tuesday, prompting a lockdown of the Belgian capital and heightened security across Europe. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti) Travelers wait at the counter of Brussels airlines in Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv, Israel, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. After the Brussels attacks, Israel briefly announced that all Israeli flights from Europe were canceled, then reinstated the flights, Israel Airports Authority spokesman Ofer Leffler said. Pini Schiff, former director of security at Ben-Gurion Airport, said the attack in the Brussels airport was âa colossal failureâ of Belgian security, and he said âthe chances are very lowâ that such a bombing could take place in Israelâs airport. Israel's Ben-Gurion Airport is considered among the most secure in the world, an outcome stemming from several Palestinian attacks on Israeli planes and travelers in the 1970s. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit) An Israeli airport security guard patrols with a dog in Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv, Israel, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. After the Brussels attacks, Israel briefly announced that all Israeli flights from Europe were canceled, then reinstated the flights, Israel Airports Authority spokesman Ofer Leffler said. Pini Schiff, former director of security at Ben-Gurion Airport, said the attack in the Brussels airport was âa colossal failureâ of Belgian security, and he said âthe chances are very lowâ that such a bombing could take place in Israelâs airport. Israel's Ben-Gurion Airport is considered among the most secure in the world, an outcome stemming from several Palestinian attacks on Israeli planes and travelers in the 1970s. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit) French soldiers check unattended boxes left on the platform at Gare De Lyon railway station in Paris, France, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Authorities are tightening security at airports and on the streets of European cities after attacks on the Brussels airport and subways system that killed at least one person and injured many others. (AP Photo/Francois Mori) Passengers of an ICE train leave the train at its final stop at the station in Aachen, Germany, near to the Belgian border Tuesday March 22, 2016. German police have increased security measures at the borders following the terrorist attacks in Brussels. (Ralf Roeger/dpa via AP) Passengers at Warsawâs Frederic Chopin airport in Warsaw, Poland on Tuesday, March 22, 2016, pass by an information board that lists flights to Brussels as canceled, following deadly blasts at Busselsâ airport. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski) A German police officer guards a terminal of the airport in Frankfurt, Germany, Tuesday, March 22, 2016, when various explosions hit the Belgian capital Brussels killing several people. (AP Photo/Michael Probst) Border guards patrol at Warsawâs Frederic Chopin airport in Warsaw, Poland on Tuesday, March 22, 2016 after security measures were increased at Polandâs airports following attacks in Brussels , Belgium. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski) Border Guards patrol at Warsawâs Frederic Chopin airport in Warsaw, Poland on Tuesday, March 22, 2016 after security measures were increased at Polandâs airports following attacks in Brussels , Belgium. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski) French police officers patrol outside the Gare du Nord train station, where high speed trains depart to Brussels, in Paris, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Authorities in Europe and across the world tightened security at airports, railway stations, government buildings and other key points after deadly attacks Tuesday on the Brussels airport and its subway system. (AP Photo/Francois Mori) PARIS, FRANCE - MARCH 22: (FRANCE OUT) French police officers patrol at the Trocadero Plaza next to the Eiffel Tower on March 22, 2106 in Paris, France. Since this morning 400 policemen and gendarmes have been deployed to increase the security in airports, stations and public transportation around Paris and its region after the terrorist attacks in Brussels today. (Photo by Christophe Morin/IP3/Getty Images) A police officer with a sniffer dog checks a trash bin at the airport in Prague, Czech Republic, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Authorities in Europe have tightened security at airports, on subways, at the borders and on city streets after deadly attacks Tuesday on the Brussels airport and its subway system. (AP Photo/Petr David Josek) Danish police patrol Copenhagen International Airport, in Kastrup, Denmark, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Authorities in Europe have tightened security at airports, on subways, at the borders and on city streets after deadly attacks Tuesday on the Brussels airport and its subway system. (Jens Dresling/POLFOTO via AP) DENMARK OUT An electronic billboard displays two canceled flight to Brussels at Milan's Malpensa international airport, in Busto Arsizio, Italy, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Authorities in Europe have tightened security at airports, on subways, at the borders and on city streets after deadly attacks Tuesday on the Brussels airport and its subway system. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno) An armed British policeman stands on duty outside as tourists walk past Horse Guards parade in central London, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Authorities in Europe and beyond have tightened security at airports, on subways, at the borders and on city streets after deadly attacks Tuesday on the Brussels airport and its subway system. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant) London's Metropolitan Police Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe leaves the Cabinet Office in London, after a government emergency meeting in the wake of the attacks in Brussels, Tuesday, March, 22, 2016. Authorities in Europe and beyond have tightened security at airports, on subways, at the borders and on city streets after deadly attacks Tuesday on the Brussels airport and its subway system. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant) Police officers patrol the check in area of the Milan's Malpensa international airport, in Busto Arsizio, Italy, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Authorities in Europe have tightened security at airports, on subways, at the borders and on city streets after deadly attacks Tuesday on the Brussels airport and its subway system. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno) A Eurostar train arrivals board shows the Brussels route is cancelled due to "Security Alert in Brussels", at St Pancras international railway station in London, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Authorities in Europe and beyond have tightened security at airports, on subways, at the borders and on city streets after deadly attacks Tuesday on the Brussels airport and its subway system. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham) Italian police officers patrol Leonardo Da Vinci airport in Fiumicino, near Rome, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Authorities in Europe and beyond have tightened security at airports, on subways, at the borders and on city streets after deadly attacks Tuesday on the Brussels airport and its subway system. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino) A Italian police dog sniffs passengers' luggage at Leonardo Da Vinci airport in Fiumicino, near Rome, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Authorities in Europe and beyond have tightened security at airports, on subways, at the borders and on city streets after deadly attacks Tuesday on the Brussels airport and its subway system. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino) A member of the Counter Terrorism Centre (TEK) patrols the area in front of the Parliament in downtown Budapest, Hungary, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Hungary raised its terrorism awareness level to grade 2 after a series of attacks in Brussels. (Zoltan Balogh/MTI via AP) German police officers guard a terminal of the airportthe in Frankfurt, Germany, during tighter security measures Tuesday, March 22, 2016, when various explosions hit the Belgian capital Brussels killing several people. (AP Photo/Michael Probst) Counter Terrorism Centre (TEK) personnel arrive with an APC vehicle at the parking facility of the Liszt Ferenc International Airport in Budapest, Hungary, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Hungary raised its terrorism awareness level to grade 2 after a series of attacks in Brussels. (Zsolt Szigetvary/MTI via AP) French soldier patrols in Gare De Lyon railway station in Paris, France, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Authorities are tightening security at airports and on the streets of European cities after attacks on the Brussels airport and subways system that killed at least one person and injured many others. (AP Photo/Francois Mori) French soldiers patrol in the subway entrance station in Paris, France, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Authorities are tightening security at airports and on the streets of European cities after attacks on the Brussels airport and subways system that killed at least one person and injured many others. (AP Photo/Francois Mori) Police officers patrol inside a terminal of the airport during tighter security measures in Barcelona, Spain, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Explosions, at least one likely caused by a suicide bomber, rocked the Brussels airport and subway system Tuesday, prompting a lockdown of the Belgian capital and heightened security across Europe.(AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti) Tourist police officers patrol the Red Square in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Authorities in Europe have tightened security at airports, on subways, at the borders and on city streets after deadly attacks Tuesday on the Brussels airport and its subway system. (AP Photo/ Pavel Golovkin) Passengers queue at a check in area of the Milan's Malpensa international airport, in Busto Arsizio, Italy, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Authorities in Europe have tightened security at airports, on subways, at the borders and on city streets after deadly attacks Tuesday on the Brussels airport and its subway system. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno) PARIS, March 22, 2016-- Police officers patrol at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, capital of France, March 22, 2016. Security has been beefed up in France with 1,600 police officers deployed at airports, railway stations and bus stations since the attacks on Brussels Tuesday. (Xinhua/Theo Duval via Getty Images) BUDAPEST, HUNGARY - MARCH 22: Hungarian counter-terrorism agents secure the Liszt Ferenc International Airport in Budapest, Hungary on March 22, 2016 following high level security alert following the morning explosions in Brussels. At least 34 people were killed and more than 100 injured in multiple explosions at an airport and metro station in Brussels on today's morning. (Photo by Arpad Kurucz/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images) NOW WATCH: The internet can't get over how sad Christie looked during Trump's victory speech

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Police in Belgian town say they 'forgot' to pass along information about Paris attacker's whereabouts

The police in the Belgian town of Mechelen reportedly knew the whereabouts of Salah Abdeslam as far back as December.

20160528003531

It was “somewhere in the middle of Europe” in 1987 that Prince spun around half way into “Purple Rain” and mouthed to his drummer, “Marry Me?” Of course, the fierce, sexy Sheila E. said yes. In her new memoir “The Beat of My Own Drum,” Sheila E. finally confirms in glorious detail the long-swirling rumors that she and His Purple Majesty actually had been engaged. Everyone always knew they were lovers. But Prince had so many women. “He blew me a kiss, turned to the audience, and took the most amazing guitar solo ever,” she writes of the moment she made Prince a happy man. “For the rest of that year my relationship with Prince was a dream ... We were with each other all day and all night, so if he was fooling around on me, he would have had to be quick about it.” Sheila Escovedo, the daughter of Latin percussionist Peter Escovedo, was just making a name for herself as a woman who could pound a hot beat when she bought a ticket to see Prince in concert in 1978 in San Carlos, Calif. After the show, she walked in on him in his dressing room as he was combing out his long, straight hair. Before she could introduce herself, he interrupted her. “Oh, I know who you are,” Prince said. “I’ve been following your career for a while.” She was stunned and thrilled. The two started hanging out, often jamming in her bedroom equipped as a mini-recording studio. Escovedo wasn’t ready to take things further — she was still hurting from an earlier relationship with Carlos Santana, who she had fallen in love with as an 18-year-old. Santana had even asked her to marry him. Then she found out he was already married. Santana’s wife left him and Escovedo couldn’t deal with being a homewrecker. She ended it. Though the relationship with Prince remained platonic, he didn’t stop wooing her. On what would be Marvin Gaye’s final tour, “Sexual Healing,” Escovedo was met by a bouquet of flowers from Prince every night in her hotel room. She was back home rehearsing with Lionel Richie for his upcoming tour when she learned Gaye’s father had shot him dead. Escovedo writes that there were “dark omens” on the road, but nothing to prepare her for something like that. Prince would fly in to join her on the Richie tour, and back in Los Angeles she hung out with him in his Sunset Boulevard recording studio. One night, he insisted that she step up to the mic. Her throat closed up, but Prince coaxed a performance out of her. The song was “Erotic City,” and she wouldn’t sing the “f-word.” They compromised — he sang the original lyric while she went with “we can funk until dawn.” For years, fans argued about what they were actually hearing. She signed a contract with Prince’s production company and he masterminded her first album, “The Glamorous Life.” For the video, she debuted her new full-out sexy persona, big hair and a leopard print bustier. Both were big hits. Escovedo and her newly formed band went on to open for Prince on his Purple Rain tour. It was then they became lovers. Escovedo writes that she had always been disturbed by “the harem” around him, but working and playing together day in, night out, proved too much. They tried to keep it on the down low, but people knew. She also starred in the hip-hop cult movie, “Krush Groove,” with Blair Underwood. A story based on the early days of Def Jam Records, the set was loaded with rappers — some of whom she found hostile. Prince, in Monte Carlo shooting “Under the Cherry Moon,” didn’t want her to do the love scene that called for nudity. She ended up drinking for courage before, she writes, allowing “Blair to suck on my neck.” But Escovedo was becoming more aggressive with her sexy-girl persona. After all, she was sleeping with the most sultry, simmering being on the planet. Her performances became less about playing the drums and more about posturing in barely-there clothes. “I started to feel naked in the wrong way,” she writes. The partying never stopped, and even when Prince wasn’t around she found herself indulging her every whim. If the urge suddenly struck to have lunch at the Eiffel Tower, no matter where she was in Europe, her assistants made it happen. She writes that she had a “growing feeling that I could have anything I wanted, whenever I wanted.” She became so helpless that it scared her. One day her assistants, Connie and Karen, forced her to walk down a street by herself and order lunch at a deli. She was nearly incapable of even doing that. “I became mean, demanding, and angry. I stopped asking and started telling ... I was becoming a nightmare,” she says. When the tour ended, she and her family took up Lionel Richie’s offer to stay in an unused wing of his Bel Air mansion. The littlest member of the Escovedo tribe was her brother Peter’s 2-year-old daughter, Nicole. Her brother had broken up with the child’s mother, Escovedo’s assistant Karen, but everyone remained close. Lionel’s wife, Brenda, insisted that the little girl stay with her whenever Karen was on tour with Escovedo. “As a single working mom, Karen was extremely grateful, but very torn,” Escovedo writes. “If Nikki stayed where she was, living rent-free, then Karen could earn enough for their future without disrupting her child’s life.” Then Richie’s wife Brenda, who had been hungering for a child, suggested adopting Nicole. “Lionel ... would do anything to keep Brenda happy,” Escovedo writes. The Richies convinced Peter and Karen to give up their child. “The hearbreaking part is that once Nicole Escovedo legally became Nicole Richie, it felt like we lost her. We all lost her,” says Escovedo. Richie (inset right), of course, later gained fame as a reality star alongside best pal Paris Hilton in “The Simple Life.” Meanwhile, the bill for the “Purple Rain” tour came due. Not having even skimmed her contract with Prince’s management company, Escovedo was unaware that she was responsible for all the expenses from her outlandish indulgences — to every last drink from the mini-bar — for herself and her band. She owed a million dollars. “He (Prince) had casually told me at the start it would be easier to go with him,” Escovedo writes. “It never occurred to me that I shouldn’t.” And now, she and Prince weren’t even “a constant” couple. “I tried to ignore the sadness I felt about not being the only woman in his life, but I learned to deal with it early on,” she writes. She signed on to be his drummer anyway, a gig that lasted for two years and began with his “Sign o’ the Times” tour, an album she had collaborated on. But then came that stunning moment onstage “somewhere in Europe” when he proposed. Prince didn’t want the barrage of publicity that would come if they announced their engagement. They already dealt with huge fan frenzy whenever they stepped out in public surrounded by burly bodyguards. So Escovedo kept it secret. Between concerts, she and Prince divided their time between L.A. and Minneapolis. Prince was so relentlessly driven for the “next big thing” that their life together began to wear on her. She came off the “Lovesexy” tour that had them playing 77 international dates exhausted. By 1990, Escovedo was in a bad way. While working on her album, “Sex Cymbal,” she collapsed. She hid her health problems — her musculature actually became twisted from her fierce drumming posture — from Prince. She had to keep up with him. But she was also growing uncomfortable with his artistic direction. “His songs were getting too dirty for my tastes,” she writes. “It just wasn’t fun to be around.” On the next tour, Prince refused to let her fly home for her grandmother’s funeral. “He was my boss, he reminded me. He signed the paychecks,” she writes. She stayed, but after that she refused to cash those checks, sometimes tearing them up in front of him. It was all but over. Escovedo faded from Prince’s life as she immersed herself in a new spirituality. The time had come, she writes, to deal with the ravages of sexual abuse she had endured as a child and mature into a new life. In the years since, she’s kept up the beat, working steadily with likes of Beyoncé and Jennifer Lopez while making appearances on reality shows like “Gone Country.” “The Beat of My Own Drum” goes on sale Sept. 2.

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Sheila E. confirms engagement to Prince in new memoir

It was “somewhere in the middle of Europe” in 1987 that Prince spun around half way into “Purple Rain” and mouthed to his drummer, “Marry Me?” Of course, the fierce, sexy Sheila E. said yes.

20160605131514

If renovated movie palaces are considered cool these days, why not a factory-reconditioned home theater? A refurbished Pioneer 50-inch plasma television with some previous history fetched $3,300 on eBay over Memorial Day weekend, after an auction that opened with a 99-cent bid. Even Pioneer Electronics, which arranged the auction as an experiment, wondered if the frenzied bidding that quadrupled the price in the last hours was just holiday madness, said Russ Johnston, senior vice president for marketing in Pioneer's home entertainment division. "We're in a test mode," Mr. Johnston said. Pioneer asked ChannelAdvisor, the intermediary that operates the Pioneer store on eBay, to repeat the experiment. Three days into another recent seven-day auction, bids for a reconditioned high-definition 50-inch plasma TV had topped $2,000. Once hidden in the back of electronics stores, "refurbs," as refurbished products are sometimes called, are everywhere on the Web. Eager to recoup their losses on returned goods, manufacturers like Dell, Apple, Hewlett-Packard and Kodak sell refurbs on sections of their Web sites or through online factory outlets. And refurbs are proliferating on eBay. "Laptops are probably the king of them," said Karl Wiley, the company's director of computers and consumer electronics, followed by audio receivers, laser printers, car electronics and MP3 players. Most sellers of refurbs on eBay are independent dealers, but big names like the Sharper Image and Harman Kardon also offer them at their eBay stores, either through auctions or at a "buy it now" fixed price. Because sellers use various terms, like "factory reconditioned" or "remanufactured," to describe such goods, Mr. Wiley recommends searching for a product by price. Refurbs typically fall in a price tier just below those described as new. The Pioneer auction may also be the ultimate test for retreads. Some consumers are willing to risk thousands on a reconditioned TV, which, for repairs not covered by the 90-day warranty for labor, cannot simply be boxed and mailed back. The core refurb customer is someone who wants plasma living on a cathode-ray-tube budget. "They're people who have a price they can't exceed," said Liem Nguyen, a spokesman for Dell. Earlier this week, the Dell Outlet Web site offered a reconditioned Dell 1700n laser printer for $124, compared with the $299 Dell price for a new one for home use. Many consumers remain wary of refurbs, despite manufacturers' assurances that they have been carefully repaired and rigorously tested, or better yet, that they are "open box" items, returned by people who unsealed the package but never used the product. In offering refurbs to resellers, manufacturers typically describe them as "NTF," for no trouble found, and "B stock," for those requiring repair. There are no federal laws about the labeling of refurbished electronic goods other than general rules prohibiting false or deceptive claims, said Janice Podoll Frankle, a lawyer for the Bureau of Consumer Protection in the Federal Trade Commission. Internet chat boards abound with complaints about refurbs, but, according to Randy Guttery of Meridian, Miss., this is "whining by people who haven't done their homework." Mr. Guttery said he was satisfied with the refurbished computers he bought from Hewlett-Packard and Dell. For the software company he owns with his wife, he has bought a number of heavy-duty Epson printers from an online reseller, the RefurbDepot (www.refurbdepot.com), at a savings of about $1,000 each on items typically costing $2,500 and he has encouraged others to do the same. Mr. Guttery advises checking the manufacturer's warranty for reconditioned items in advance, even when buying through a reseller. A reseller "is nothing but an agent," said Mr. Guttery, adding that he once received a defective printer from RefurbDepot, but that Epson resolved the problem. Judy Silver, a supervisor for RefurbDepot, confirmed that the responsibility for the goods lies with the manufacturers. "The company takes it through a special examination," Ms. Silver said. "Most of it comes to us in a package. We are just resellers." She said her company refers customer complaints to the manufacturer, applying its 30-day return policy at its discretion if a manufacturer fails to resolve a problem. The policy is described on the section of the RefurbDepot site detailing terms and conditions. A number of manufacturers, including Olympus and Pioneer, make their warranties for reconditioned products available on the Web. In many cases, the warranty applies only to goods sold through authorized resellers. Refurb customers can often buy extended warranties. Consumers who swear they would never buy a refurb may already own one. Warranties on consumer electronics often allow companies to replace a product with a comparable one -- often a refurb -- rather than repair it. This is true whether the item has been purchased new or refurbished. Cellphone insurance policies typically contain similar language. "People should understand this is part of the program," said Michael Powers, vice president for product marketing at Asurion, a leading cellphone insurer. Mr. Powers estimated that nearly half the cellphone replacements provided by Asurion, which provides insurance for many of the leading wireless companies, are refurbs. Apple Computer's battery replacement program for out-of-warranty iPods costs $99 plus shipping charges and replaces the iPod along with the battery, as described at www.apple.com. Critics have asserted that the replacement iPods are refurbs. Apple declined to comment. Loved or spurned, refurbishment is proliferating and becoming more automated. Asurion's refurbishing plant in Smyrna, Tenn., puts cellphones through a reskinning process that gives them new plastic coats and a new screen. And at Costco Wholesale's Electronic Hardware Services plant in Auburn, Wash., carts of computers roll past stations that wipe their hard drives and reimage them, often 20 at a time. Costco offers the refurbished products at its online store, www.costco.com, but sells most to dealers, said Mike Parrott, vice president for corporate purchasing and strategic businesses. "There are environmental advantages" to Asurion's replacement practices, Mr. Powers said. But environmental laws do not always afford special consideration to refurbs. Under the Electronic Waste Recycling Act in California, consumers who buy refurbished computers and televisions must pay a fee to cover the state's cost of electronic waste management, just as purchasers of new products do.

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A Used Printer? No, It's a Refurb

Factory-reconditioned electronic goods are gaining ground on Internet, where they can be found on sections of manufacturers' Web pages and particularly on eBay; many consumers remain wary of 'refurbs,' despite manufacturers' assurances that they have been carefully repaired and rigorously tested or may even be 'open box' items, returned by people who unsealed package but never used product; some tips on buying refurbs; photo (M)

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Malcolm Turnbull has attempted to paper over the government’s mixed messages on tax reform, insisting the opposition’s negative gearing policy would deliver “two contradictory, massive shocks” to the residential housing market. Facing a third day of parliamentary questions about his claims of property prices being “smashed”, the prime minister went on the attack, denouncing “the most ill-conceived, potentially destructive policy ever proposed by any opposition”. Related: Turnbull's claim that Labor will 'smash' house prices shows evidence-free politics is back But the prime minister had to correct the parliamentary record after he made outdated claims about the property holdings of a Labor rival. Negative gearing is the practice of investors deducting net losses on their rental properties from other income on their tax returns. Labor, which is promising to rein in negative gearing by restricting it to newly constructed homes, accused the government of running an incoherent, Tony-Abbott style scare campaign. In question time on Wednesday, Labor seized on a comment by the assistant treasurer, Kelly O’Dwyer, that the opposition’s policy would “increase the cost of housing for all Australians”. Turnbull previously said the opposition was “smashing home values” and would “cut the value of your home”. Dismissing “childish word games”, O’Dwyer told parliament the impact on established and new homes would differ. Related: Labor's negative gearing policy would push house prices up, says minister Turnbull also rejected claims of a discrepancy. “What the Labor party proposes to do is to administer two contradictory shocks, massive shocks, to the residential housing market,” he said. “They are proposing to remove from the market for established dwellings one-third of demand. All investors would be gone – and when I say all investors, I mean all investors ... The reality is the Labor party policy does not simply apply to net interest losses, it applies to all net rental losses ... This will eliminate all investors from the established property market, and that naturally will cause prices to fall. How can it not? The market is subdued. “And at the same time they then want to pour all of that investment into new properties, which can only be designed, presumably, entirely contradictorily to drive those prices up.” But, later in question time, Turnbull made a blanket statement that the Labor policy was “designed to reduce the value of every single home in Australia”. He also said the manager of opposition business, Tony Burke, “owns two investment properties, both of which are geared”. “I don’t know whether they’re negatively geared or not but he is very well aware of the economics of this matter,” Turnbull said. Burke, who is also Labor’s finance spokesman, immediately challenged the claim, saying it was “completely wrong and made up”. Burke’s register of interests, filed on 10 December 2013, indicated he owned three properties, two of which provided him with rental income, but subsequent updates in 2015 indicated these had been sold. Turnbull owned up to the error a few minutes later. “I should just add in fairness to the honourable member for Watson: he is quite correct to pick me up,” the prime minister said. “When the parliament began he did record three properties, one of which was a residence and two of which were investment properties, and he has subsequently sold them all, so I missed the honourable member’s amendments.” Related: Labor promises to cut negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions The Labor leader, Bill Shorten, said the prime minister’s failure to mount an effective scare campaign showed the government was “in complete and utter chaos” on tax reform. The shadow treasurer, Chris Bowen, said Turnbull had abandoned his pledge to pursue evidence-based policy to adopt a campaign befitting Abbott. Turnbull replied that the principles of supply and demand were “economics 101”. It was, he said, “fundamental common sense” that a decrease in buyers would trigger a drop in prices. Labor announced its policy to rein in negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions nearly two weeks ago, saying the measures would raise $32.bn for the budget over 10 years. Negative gearing would be limited to newly constructed housing from 1 July 2017, but all investments made before this date would retain access to the deductions. Labor would cut the capital gains tax discount from 50% to 25% for assets purchased after 1 July 2017. The opposition’s policy measures have dominated parliamentary question time this week, with the government yet to announce its own detailed policies apart from ruling out an increase in the goods and services tax. On Monday, Turnbull told parliament that “increasing capital gains tax is no part of our thinking whatsoever”, but he later clarified his pledge applied only to capital gains tax for individuals and did not extend to superannuation funds.

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Malcolm Turnbull faces fresh pressure over 'Tony Abbott-style' tax scare tactics

Labor accuses the prime minister of resorting to his predecessor’s negative approach as the row over how to reform the tax system deepens

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Last month, following a long period of girlish cajoling, my daughter finally got her ears pierced in celebration of her 7th birthday. The setting was not the traditional mall kiosk staffed by some bored and minimally trained 16-year-old. Instead I took my daughter to a tattoo parlor. Surprised they even allow 7-year-olds in those kinds of places? Think again. A growing number of parents are apparently turning to tattoo parlors to bejewel their children’s little lobes. I didn’t come up with this crazy idea out of the blue; I’m a reporter, after all: I researched where to take Shira and weighed the pros and cons. I found that tattoo parlors — despite the blaring heavy metal music — were mom-approved by a local parenting email list. When even a nurse cast her vote in favor of the tattoo parlor, I deliberated no longer. “There is a stigma attached to tattoo parlors that they’re dirty and will be bombarded by foul-mouthed people,” says Sarah LaRoe, a mom with multiple facial piercings and tattoos creeping up her neck, who pierced my little girl’s ears so tenderly that she left her not in tears but with a big, happy smile on her face. MORE Why Spanking Doesn’t Work Contrary to what you might think, tattoo parlors — at least the one I went to — are actually bastions of cleanliness. Some states regulate them, and reputable ones use disposable needles and sterilize all their equipment in an autoclave. In contrast, mall piercers and many jewelry stores use piercing guns that have been associated with complications and can’t be completely sterilized. Armed with that knowledge, which would you choose? While some parents might be freaked out by the idea of taking their kid to a tattoo parlor, I looked upon the outing as an adventure, joking with my daughter about getting a Hello Kitty tattoo for mom. What I didn’t expect was that the experience would evolve into a lesson in tolerance. In that unnerving way little kids have of speaking their mind, Shira took an initial look at LaRoe and stage-whispered: “I think she looks ugly like that.” I immediately flashed her my scary mom eyes to signal her to clam up. But later, after we’d left the store, her comment served as an opportunity to point out that just because someone looks different, it doesn’t mean she’s not a good person. LaRoe, regardless of her unconventional piercings, was super-professional and extremely kind. For professional piercers like LaRoe, who stick needles through noses, eyebrows, tongues and nether regions, ears are the most mundane of piercing locations. But that doesn’t mean they don’t take it seriously. LaRoe spent nearly an hour with us, versus the quick in-and-out that I remember from getting my ears pierced at the mall as a girl. Before leading us into the piercing room — which looked just like a doctor’s office — LaRoe handed the birthday girl a bag with a lollipop, which expertly distracted Shira from being overly nervous about what was going on. The bag also contained non-iodized sea salt and instructions for mom on how to mix a saline solution to clean newly pierced ears. Unlike the alcohol that mall kiosks recommend for cleaning, salty water doesn’t burn. MORE Clean Needles Saved My Life. Now Congress Wants to Ban Funding for Needle Exchange Now for the gory details: at tattoo parlors, piercers use hypodermic needles to core out a sliver of skin, making room for an earring — a relatively painless procedure. In contrast, at the mall, the piercer uses a gun that painfully jams a blunt-tipped earring stud into the ear lobe; the process does not remove skin, but effectively pushes it aside. LaRoe is so convinced of the superiority of needles over piercing guns that she’s signed petitions to ban the guns; one such petition makes the case that “only cowboys use guns.” In her quest to reform the ear-piercing industry, LaRoe leaves her business card at schools and pediatricians’ offices. When she takes her own son to the doctor, she’ll frequently get questions about her multiple piercings; sometimes she gets customers that way too. Ultimately, though, change starts parent by parent, through word of mouth. “It kind of acts like a trendsetter,” says LaRoe. “All it takes is one little girl who goes to school and says it didn’t hurt.” It didn’t hurt? Well, maybe a little. But so little that Shira didn’t even blink when LaRoe pierced her first ear. During the procedure, LaRoe had her do some deep, yoga-like breathing, which Shira is familiar with from her weekly yoga class. In and out, in — pierce! Of course, the lollipop helped too. Read next: Tips for Every Age: How to Raise Grateful Kids Listen to the most important stories of the day.

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Why I Took My 7-Year-Old to a Tattoo Parlor

Thinking about getting your kid's ears pierced? Why a reputable tattoo parlor may be safer than using the piercing gun at the mall

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New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito has long refused to pledge even ceremonial allegiance to the American flag. No surprise, then, that she displays no respect for American citizenship, either. Mark-Viverito wants to grant voting rights to non-citizens — including, perhaps, illegal immigrants — in all municipal elections. And she’s not alone. Meanwhile, New York state’s newly minted Education commissioner, MaryEllen Elia, champions licensing illegal immigrants to teach in New York’s public schools, as well as to practice 52 other regulated professions. Not that her views really matter, of course. The state Board of Regents just approved the change. (It’s a going-away present from Chancellor Merryl Tisch, soon to depart after seven years as felonious former Assembly speaker Shelly Silver’s hand-picked education czar.) To be sure, both schemes come wrapped in pretty ribbons. “I believe that in a democracy, everybody should participate, and I don’t see how you call something a democracy when you don’t give everybody that opportunity to participate,” said Queens Councilman Daniel Dromm, Mark-Viverito’s point-person for non-citizen voting. “They are American in every way but immigration status. They’ve done everything right,” Elia says. “They’ve worked hard in school, some have even served in the military, but when it’s time to apply for a license, they’re told, ‘Stop. That’s far enough.’ We shouldn’t close the door on their dreams.” It’s all about the politics, people. It’s all about making sure that New York never again suffers the presence of powerful Republicans. Mark-Viverito’s short-term goal is to clear the way for immigrant voting in next year’s elections for mayor, comptroller, public advocate, borough president and City Council. Elia and the Regents are playing a longer game. They seek to normalize the idea that formal citizenship doesn’t really matter — and that insisting on it as a prerequisite for voting is at best discriminatory, and most likely racist. Meanwhile, what Mark-Viverito wants, she gets. “I’ve been supportive of the legislation in the past, and [I] continue to be supportive,” she says — having already cobbled together veto-proof council support for the alien-voting bill that Dromm is fronting. (Mayor de Blasio, once again, is outside looking in.) Indeed, the only open question at this point is whether the franchise will be restricted to “lawful” aliens — green-card holders — or whether anybody who manages to hop the fence can then waltz right into a voting booth. And there is significant support for this approach. Now, wouldn’t Boss Tweed be envious; he was a master at harvesting votes from immigrants — but he was never able to pull off a coup like this. ‘Shouldn’t the pursuit of the American dream mean becoming an American?’ Support for the Mark-Viverito-Dromm scheme ranges from the left-leaning usual suspects to hard-core-crazy communists — with Citizens Action of New York (“We work to elect progressive candidates!”) leading the way; hyperpolitical unions like the Service Employees International Union and Communications Workers of America following; activists of all sorts bobbing along in the wake — and George Soros’ Open Society Institute writing lots of checks. All in all, they’re plowing a fertile field. City officials estimate that there are some 1.3 million immigrants living in New York, perhaps 500,000 of them illegally — all of them potential Democrats, and in sum enough to pump up the city’s voter registration roll far beyond its present 4.1 million. Overall, an estimated 40% of New York City residents are foreign-born — perhaps 3 million-plus total — most of whom are a positive and productive presence in the city. It is true that most non-citizen New Yorkers work — even if off the books — and thus pay taxes while otherwise strengthening their communities. But that’s no proper justification for automatic access to the voting booth. Equity runs two ways. New York’s entitlements — principally welfare and Medicaid — don’t pay for themselves. Nor do the other public services — including schools and police and fire protection — available to all non-citizen residents simply by virtue of their presence. Thus while immigrants give, they also receive. Not to put too fine a point on it, if immigrants didn’t get the better part of the deal, most wouldn’t have come to New York in the first place. Then there is the matter of fairness: Non-citizen voting would display profound disrespect to the millions upon millions of immigrants who came here and willingly — indeed, enthusiastically — embraced America. The path was not easy, for citizenship is not a commodity to be conferred, it’s a status to be earned — and not simply for its own sake. Shouldn’t the pursuit of the American dream mean becoming an American? The United States almost uniquely accepts immigrants from virtually every culture on earth, inspiring in them an appreciation of — and an allegiance to — the nation’s singular values. The immigrant prospers, yes. But more importantly, so does the nation. America’s strength resides in the bonds forged by the citizenship process — and if you doubt this, ask yourself why people like George Soros now seek to break those bonds by discarding the process. What a pity that New York’s political class is marching right along — all for the sake of a few more votes.

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Pols want to make citizenship irrelevant - showing disrespect for the American dream

New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito has long refused to pledge even ceremonial allegiance to the American flag. No surprise, then, that she displays no respect for American citizens…

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Bryan Cranston was a child living in California when he and his mother and brother visited family in Texas. It was 1962, and segregation was rampant throughout the South. Cranston tells The Post that he can still remember his mother’s warning: “If you see a drinking fountain that says ‘colored’ on it, don’t drink out of it.” “As a 6-year-old, I’m thinking, ‘What color is the water? Is it flavored?’ ” Cranston recalls. “Could you blame me?” Even this fleeting childhood memory was something the actor could draw on when he portrayed President Lyndon Baines Johnson in “All the Way,” the Robert Schenkkan play, which HBO has turned into a movie, premiering Saturday night. Cranston was 7 years old when LBJ became an “accidental president” after John F. Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963. He remembers his mother “was beside herself” when Walter Cronkite announced Kennedy’s death on the news. “It scared me. I thought, ‘There is something I need to pay attention to here.’” The cataclysmic first year of Johnson’s presidency is what we’re paying attention to in “All the Way,” primarily Johnson’s understanding that he had to end segregation. His subsequent mission to do so meant charming, browbeating and ultimately arm-twisting pigheaded Dixiecrats — the old-boy network of Southern politicians whose friendship he was prepared to sacrifice — into voting for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. “He knew he would have a honeymoon period after the assassination. He knew Congress and the citizens would be in mourning and he would have some sympathy,” says Cranston, 60. “But he also knew he had to act fast. Seven months after taking over … he signed the Civil Rights Act, on July 2, 1964. He signed the bill that changed the nation.” Humor, usually salty, helped him win many political battles. “Lobbying is like propositioning a woman,” Johnson tells Martin Luther King Jr. (Anthony Mackie). When humor failed him, there was always the clap of his paw on a colleague’s shoulder. Says Cranston, “He used his size — he was 6-foot-4 — to intimidate and cajole. The hand on a shoulder could be friendly or could take ahold of you. They gave it a name: the Johnson Treatment. People were fearful of it.” In order to approximate Johnson’s stature, Cranston, who is “probably a little under 6 feet,” wore lifts that added 2½ inches to his height. In scenes where Johnson argued with his closest colleague, Georgia Sen. Richard Russell (Frank Langella), the props department helped out. “Frank is 6-foot-3. He generously took off his shoes,” Cranston says. “What you don’t see, as I’m approaching him, is that I’m kind of walking on my tiptoes, and I step on a little apple box so we’re seeing eye to eye.” ‘The hand on the shoulder could be friendly or could take ahold of you. They gave it a name: the Johnson Treatment. People were fearful of it.’ Johnson’s passage of the Civil Rights Act cost him plenty — he lost the South in the 1964 election — but his advocacy brought him a place in history. “He had a desire to be great. It was a combination of ambition and altruism,” Cranston says. “He wanted to be known as one of the best presidents who ever lived.” While Johnson’s legacy is a subject for debate, the disaster of the Vietnam War overshadowing his championing of civil rights and creation of Medicare and Medicaid, among other social programs, there are no doubts about the trajectory of Cranston’s career. The actor leapfrogs from one achievement to another — not bad for a guy who started out playing Doug Donovan on the long-gone ABC soap “Loving.” In addition to the four Emmys and Golden Globe he won for playing Walter White on “Breaking Bad,” he has a Tony for “All the Way” and received his first Oscar nomination this year for playing blacklisted Hollywood screenwriter Dalton Trumbo in “Trumbo.” Next up: Cranston’s take on US Customs Special Agent Robert Mazur, who infiltrated the inner circle of the Colombian drug cartel run by Pablo Escobar in the 1980s. “The Infiltrator,” which co-stars John Leguizamo, opens in theaters in July. Did Cranston ever think he’d excel at playing famous men? “I didn’t know I could play historical figures. I am certainly not looking for that,” he says. “My drive is based in story. I want to be involved in those stories that have a shelf life and that you can look at with your children and grandchildren.”

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LBJ actor Bryan Cranston remembers visiting a segregated Texas

Bryan Cranston was a child living in California when he and his mother and brother visited family in Texas. It was 1962, and segregation was rampant throughout the South. Cranston tells The Post th…

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As I talked to people who were deeply involved in educational philanthropy, I realized that it was actually the time they gave that kept them involved, even if they could have written a large check and been done with it. Charles R. Bendit, for instance, had built his real estate firm, Taconic Investment Partners, into a successful portfolio of commercial buildings and apartments in the New York region. When he first became interested in giving something back in the 1990s, he said he didn’t have a lot of money but did have some business experience. A friend suggested he consider education and connected him with Pencil, a nonprofit group that brings business people into public schools. “I figured education makes a lot of sense,” Mr. Bendit said. “Educating our students best prepares them to take on the responsibility of becoming our business and political leaders.” After volunteering at a couple of different schools, Mr. Bendit was paired up with Sana Q. Nasser, the principal of the Harry S. Truman High School in the Bronx. The result has been a partnership of more than a decade that has brought significant improvements in the school, which now has 1,900 students. Ms. Nasser said she had been a principal for five years when she met Mr. Bendit. At that point, she felt she had stabilized the school, which had been failing when she took over, and was ready to start making improvements. She wanted to start academies within the school that would draw on assets that were not being used, like a television studio and a planetarium. “I realized very quickly that I needed someone to help me,” Ms. Nasser said. “I didn’t know exactly how to do it. I didn’t have the wherewithal to negotiate all of this.” But she knew she didn’t want an executive to come in for a day and write her school a check. “I wanted someone who would stay with me for the long haul,” she said. “I wanted time, their knowledge and commitment, and a wide network of people. I wanted that business connection. I wanted internships for my kids.” Mr. Bendit said the two hit it off. But before they tackled her dream of having academies within the school, they began working on her ability to delegate to her assistant principals. Without doing that, he said she couldn’t think long term about the school. She said she trusted Mr. Bendit to teach her skills that she didn’t have. “It was almost a mindshift for me,” she said. “I realized he could help me as I tried to rebuild Truman to what it used to be.” Mr. Bendit said that for him, helping her start various academies within the school with focuses as different as law and cooking, meant using his contacts more than his checkbook. “It was about leverage,” he said. “I didn’t know much about television studios or catering, but I knew who to ask.” Today, Truman is a thriving school. But Mr. Bendit was quick to point out that he was able to make a difference without sacrificing other things in his life. He estimated that he spent no more than 25 hours a year with Ms. Nasser. “We sometimes don’t appreciate the impact we can have by just investing a little bit of our time and some of our resources,” he said. “She never said, ‘Could you buy me computers or could you buy me a new planetarium?’ It was more about, ‘What can you do to help me build this?’ ” Mr. Bendit said he gave the school money for a special program, however, and has donated to Pencil and many other educational organizations. The Bank of America study of high-net-worth households found that 89 percent of those affluent people said they had volunteered their time — up 10 percentage points from 2009, when the study was last conducted. Ms. Costello, the Bank of America executive, said researchers had also asked people about the level of personal satisfaction they derived from their charitable giving and found that it was linked more to engagement than dollars. This was no surprise to people who have been involved in educational philanthropy. Marguerite Griffin, national director of philanthropic service at the wealth management firm Northern Trust, said that people who wanted to be involved in education charities needed to be prepared to wait for results, and that could be frustrating for people who were not volunteering their time and seeing the small steps of progress. “Many of the best educational funders are also mentors in after-school programs or they volunteer,” she said. “They do something that keeps them in touch with the population they’re trying to help.” Donna Fontana, senior vice president at Fidelity Investments, said she was inspired to change her philanthropic focus by the documentary “Waiting for Superman,” about city students trying to get a better education in charter schools. She began teaching an after-school class through a program run by Citizen Schools, which helps students gain life skills and experience. She is in her third semester of teaching “Invest Like a Millionaire,” a course Fidelity developed, at a middle school in East Harlem. Ms. Fontana said the class focused on teaching children the basics of saving, spending and budgeting but culminated with students counseling real people (her friends) on their financial situation. “The children embrace it and rise to the occasion,” she said. “We knew we were getting through to them when we had one student talk to a client about compound interest.” She said she now found herself talking enthusiastically about the children and the program to all of her friends. Of course, there are those who can have it both ways, giving a lot of time and money each year. Trisha Perez Kennealy and her husband, Michael J. Kennealy, an entrepreneur and private equity executive, said they took a three-step approach to their educational philanthropy. They work with the public schools in Lexington, Mass., where their three children go, finance scholarships at their alma maters and donate to and serve on the boards of national educational reform groups. “It’s multipronged because we want to make a big change,” Ms. Perez Kennealy said. “You only go through third grade once. This is our future.” But like everyone else I talked to, the Kennealys, who put their annual cash giving in the six figures, are true believers in what a great education can do. “Everything we have in life we attributed to having a great education,” Mr. Kennealy said. “It’s gratitude. But it’s also the recognition that a great education is not available to everyone else.” A version of this article appears in print on November 10, 2012, on page B5 of the New York edition with the headline: Some Prefer Giving Time, Not Money, to Schools. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe

http://web.archive.org/web/20160730222943id_/http://www.nytimes.com:80/2012/11/10/your-money/giving-time-to-schools-sometimes-beats-giving-money.html?emc=eta1

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The New York Times

Offering knowledge and experience by volunteering at a school can be far more satisfying for donors than simply writing a check.

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Northern Ireland’s first minister, Peter Robinson, has been discharged from hospital as he recovers from a suspected heart attack. The Democratic Unionist party leader was admitted to the Ulster hospital in Dundonald on Monday, before being moved to Belfast’s Royal Victoria hospital (RVH), where he was fitted with a heart stent. After leaving the RVH on Friday the 66-year-old paid tribute to the hospital’s staff. “Happy to be discharged and back home. Thanks to the wonderful RVH cardiac team – everyone a star,” he tweeted. The first minister also thanked all those who wished him well during his five-day stay in hospital. Among those who visited him was the deputy first minister, Martin McGuinness, who brought a bowl of fruit to his bedside. “Many thanks to all who sent messages of support and encouragement in the last week. Your thoughts & prayers have been really appreciated,” he wrote. As a result of his illness, Robinson missed a crucial vote in the Northern Ireland assembly this week which threatens to destabilise cross-community power sharing in the region. The DUP attempted to push through a motion in the regional parliament to overhaul the local welfare system and implement austerity measures already in place throughout the rest of the UK. Sinn Féin, the SDLP and the Green party’s sole assembly member vetoed the bill by triggering a “petition of concert”, which torpedoes any legislation that does not have sufficient cross-community/unionist-nationalist approval. Unionists and the cross-community Alliance party accused nationalists of refusing to govern Northern Ireland and now claim the failure of the bill has resulted in a £600m hole in the power-sharing government’s budget, which they say the UK Treasury will not be prepared to fill.

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DUP leader Peter Robinson discharged from hospital after heart scare

Northern Ireland’s first minister, who was taken ill on Monday morning, tweets thank you message to well-wishers and hospital staff

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Representative Tim Huelskamp, a member of the hard-line conservative Freedom Caucus, lost to a political newcomer on Tuesday in the Republican primary for his Kansas district. Mr. Huelskamp, who was elected to Congress in 2010 and quickly earned a reputation for frustrating Republican leaders, was defeated by Roger Marshall, an obstetrician from Great Bend, in the primary for the First Congressional District, which covers western Kansas and much of the state’s center. Mr. Marshall won with the support of business groups and the agriculture lobby, which had turned its back on Mr. Huelskamp after Speaker John A. Boehner had him removed from the Agriculture Committee in 2012, a crucial position for a legislator from a farm state. Mr. Huelskamp was a frequent critic of Mr. Boehner, who resigned last year amid strife with the Republican Party’s right wing. “Getting kicked off the Agriculture Committee is a crime that can’t be forgiven,” Brian Scheideman, a 52-year-old driver’s education instructor, said after voting for Mr. Marshall in Wamego, The Associated Press reported. “I don’t mind the independent voice, but you’ve got to figure out how to work with people.” Mr. Marshall had the support of the Kansas Farm Bureau, the Kansas Livestock Association, the National Association of Wheat Growers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, according to The A.P. Mr. Huelskamp had the backing of the billionaire Koch brothers’ political network, the Club for Growth and conservative colleagues who visited the state to campaign for him. Mr. Huelskamp, who is also a Tea Party Caucus leader, quickly earned a national reputation after his election for frustrating Republican leaders. Born and raised on his family farm in Fowler, Kan., Mr. Huelskamp went on to attend a seminary in Santa Fe, N.M., where he earned his bachelor’s degree, according to his official biography. He then attended American University in Washington, where he received a Ph.D. in political science with a specialty in agriculture policy. He returned home and became a state legislator. While the campaigns of both men raised more than $700,000, interest groups spent over $2.7 million on the race, much of that benefiting Mr. Marshall, according to The A.P. There is no Democratic challenger for the seat, though Alan LaPolice, a farmer and educator who challenged Mr. Huelskamp for the 2014 Republican nomination, is poised to run as an independent.

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Tim Huelskamp, Anti-Establishment House Republican, Loses Primary in Kansas

The member of the hard-line Freedom Caucus lost to a political newcomer, Roger Marshall, who had the support of business groups and the agricultural lobby.

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Besides the island’s many seaside eccentricities, everywhere there are little reminders of the Cold War. Rectangular, beachfront bungalows in GDR-grey sit alongside plush new apartments and the odd turquoise Trabant still chugs around the island looking for a mechanic and a garage selling its high-polluting fuel. Most visitors travel around on mountain bikes or aboard the island’s narrow-gauge steam train Rasende Roland and, with destinations called Spyker Castle and Cockroach Bay, it’s hard not to imagine you’re part of a Famous Five adventure. Johannes Brahms used to go for a dip in the warm sea off Sassnitz on the east coast. Its cobbled harbour was one of Germany’s main bathing centres in the 19th century; today it’s a centre for arts and crafts. The striped swimsuits have disappeared but there are plenty of boathouses smoking fish and, moored to the quayside, a huge, black submarine that was formerly part of the British fleet. No one seemed to know why she had ended up there, but HMS Otus is open to the public all year round. I kept seeing the dachshunds on every promenade and clifftop walk and they followed me to the great chalk cliffs of the upper-east coast. The vast white façades were made famous by the German Romantic artist Caspar David Friedrich, who painted them during his honeymoon here in 1818. Large sections have since been eroded and, in the past two years, swathes of chalk have crashed into the sea. It is a great location for fossil-hunters but, just when the island has opened up to the world, it is starting to disappear. I already had a little piece of Berlin wall in a perspex globe and now I’ve got a tiny shard of Friedrich’s chalk to go with it. But I’m most proud of my Baltic amber, found lodged in a piece of driftwood on the beach near Sassnitz. Amber turns up all along the Baltic coast. “It’s best to hunt for it after a storm when the sea is cold enough for amber to float and everything has been churned up,” said Georg Heissler, director of the island’s AVR hotel group. “I don’t go for walks with my wife on the beach any more as every time I turn round she is bending over some rocks 50 metres away.” You can buy amber (or pretend you found it) in Rügen’s swish east-coast resorts. Restaurants there serve the usual beer-and-sausage spectaculars as well as large portions of perch, sander and — for one month only — the green-boned hornhecht that swims up from the south Atlantic, fills up on herring eggs and vanishes. “Because 99 per cent of the holidaymakers are German, you don’t find menus in English or with pictures of your food,” said Porter. In fact, it’s still very unusual even to hear an English voice on the island. It was nice to go into a hotel in Europe where you still need sign language to explain that you’ve lost the key to the minibar. The writer Christopher Isherwood visited the island in the early 1930s and described seeing a roe deer being chased through the woods by a Borzoi dog. You could still imagine seeing the chase. Nothing has changed. The beech forests are still thick and dark, hiding tall hunting platforms and wooden lodges where you can have a picnic and a proper swing. Handkerchiefs tend to be worn in blazer pockets rather than on heads. It’s a place where the sandcastle is still king and where the locals spend their afternoons talking to birds in thatched roofs and mending wicker baskets. Newcomers to the island (there is a new bridge linking it to the mainland) should head first to the seaside mansions in Binz or to pinstriped Sellin, just down the coast. I took the glass elevator down to the sand there and settled into a Strandkorb, a cross between a Brighton deckchair and something an illusionist would use to make his assistant disappear. The double seat tips backwards and there is even a locker underneath where you can store your towel and any amber trapped in your flip-flops. With swans tracking you from the sea, it’s a two-hour walk down the coast to Göhren. You need to be strong-willed not to stop for every glint of amber and also be aware that most people who bid you good day will not be wearing any clothes. Most will also be holding a glass of freshly pressed Sanddorn juice with an appropriately placed serviette. The amber-coloured Sanddorn berry (sea buckthorn) is meant to increase stamina and everyone on the island drinks it. You need to if you want to swim out to the Buskum rock off Göhren’s beach, a Lilo-foundering outcrop a few hundred yards from the shore. Newly-weds swim out and dance on it to ensure a happy life; in winter, when the sea freezes, you can skate out almost to Sweden. “In the summer, southern Rügen has the most sunshine and lowest rainfall in Germany and the ground temperature is the same as Sicily’s,” said Heissler, who came to the island 12 years ago and fell in love with a former Miss Rügen. Beauty pageants were banned elsewhere in East Germany but, as a holiday destination, Rügen was spared the worst excesses of the Stasi regime. Exercising and bathing were encouraged, but there was no going to the beach after dark. What has made Rügen notorious, however, is something left over from an altogether darker period. Running alongside one of the island’s finest beaches, Prora is a vast, reinforced-concrete holiday camp built by Adolf Hitler in the late 1930s to prepare people for the forthcoming war. The building stretches for more than three miles and it takes 20 minutes just to cycle along it. A six-storey seaside hotel for 20,000 people, Prora would have been dreadful to stay in despite the guaranteed sea-view. Construction was never completed and no one ever did have a holiday there. “The locals think of Prora more in terms of its use as a soldier training camp during the Cold War rather than as part of Hitler’s holiday plans,” said Heissler. The building currently houses Rügen’s largest discotheque, a youth hostel and museum. A large slab of it was recently sold to a developer from Hamburg who wants to turn the listed structure into — what else? — a budget holiday camp, although Prora’s ceilings are so low it might be better used as a retirement home for dachshunds. Rügen is certainly up there with the best family holiday destinations in Europe and, even better, most British holidaymakers have never heard of it. Ryanair (www.ryanair.com) flies twice daily from Stansted to Lübeck (Hamburg) airport , which is a two-hour drive from Rügen. Berlin and Hamburg airports are both less than three hours away. There is also a train connection from Berlin or Hamburg to Binz (08718 808066, www.bahn.co.uk), with singles from €41. Hotel MeeresBlick, Friedrichstr.2, 18586 Göhren (00 49 (0) 38308 5650, www.avr.de/english/hotel-meeresblick/. The restaurant has the best reputation on the island and also offers courses in cooking with herbs. Double rooms €46-€81 (£36-£64) per person. Schloss Spyker, Schlossallee 1, 18551 Spyker (38302 770, www.schloss-spyker.de). Unusual to find a hotel the same colour as your passport; rates at this supposedly haunted castle are €50-€100 per person. Hotel Badehaus Goor, Fürst-Malte-Allee 1, 18581 Lauterbach (38301 88260, www.hotel-badehaus-goor.de). This 19th-century, colonnaded bathing house near picturesque Putbus has been turned into a smart hotel and business centre. Double rooms cost between €110 and €210, including breakfast and dinner.

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Rügen, Germany: Brighton for Berliners

The Baltic island of R&uuml;gen has been a popular holiday destination since the 19th century. Jon Bryant finds out why.

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Before you go, we thought you'd like these... The Olympics are a showcase of athleticism as well as patriotism. Many nations use high-fashion designers to show their team pride from head to toe. Here are some of the best looks to watch out for during the events in Rio... USA & Polo Ralph Lauren Ralph Lauren is the official outfitter of Team USA for the fifth time time. The flag bearer Michael Phelps will stand out with his very own light-up jacket SEE MORE: Everything you need to know about the Summer Olympics Christian Louboutin collaborated with former pro handball player Henry Tai to create this collection. The athletes may not be wearing heels, but expect to see red shoes, a signature of Louboutin. Giorgio Armani is an ambassador for the committee rallying for a Rome 2024 Olympic Games. The EA7 Olympic Collection includes everything from sunglasses to polo to jackets and swimsuits. Stella McCartney has been a creative director for Team Great Britain since London 2012. The looks feature a specially-commissioned coat of arms for a bit of patriotic flare. Expect to see the signature crocodile logo embellished with the colors of the French flag. Lacoste first styled Team France at Sochi 2014. Rio Olympics : Brazil's synchronized swimmer's Brazil's synchronised swimming team performs during a training session at the Maria Lenk Aquatic Centre in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, May 20, 2016. Brazil's synchronised swimmers Maria Eduarda Miccuci (R) and Luisa Borges perform during a photo session at the Rio Olympic Park in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, April 29, 2016. REUTERS/Pilar Olivares Brazil's synchronised swimming team watches a video during a training session at the Maria Lenk Aquatic Centre in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, May 20, 2016. REUTERS/Pilar Olivares Brazil's synchronised swimmer Lara Teixeira poses for a photograph after a training session at the Maria Lenk Aquatic Centre in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, May 20, 2016. REUTERS/Pilar Olivares SEARCH Brazil's synchronised swimming team poses for a photograph after a training session at the Maria Lenk Aquatic Centre in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, May 20, 2016. REUTERS/Pilar Olivares Brazil's synchronised swimming team performs during a training session at the Maria Lenk Aquatic Centre in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, May 20, 2016. REUTERS/Pilar Olivares Brazil's synchronised swimming team performs during a training session at the Maria Lenk Aquatic Centre in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, May 20, 2016. REUTERS/Pilar Olivares Brazil's synchronised swimmer Maria Eduarda Miccuci puts on her makeup before a training session at the Rio Olympic Park in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, April 7, 2016. Brazil's synchronised swimming team performs during a training session at the Maria Lenk Aquatic Centre in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, May 20, 2016. Brazil's synchronised swimming team performs during a training session at the Maria Lenk Aquatic Centre in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, May 20, 2016. REUTERS/Pilar Olivares Brazil's synchronised swimmer Luisa Borges puts on her makeup before a training session at the Rio Olympic Park in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, April 7, 2016. REUTERS/Pilar Olivares Brazil's synchronised swimming team poses for a photograph after a training session at the Maria Lenk Aquatic Centre in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, May 20, 2016. REUTERS/Pilar Olivares Brazil's synchronised swimmers Luisa Borges (R) and Maria Eduarda Miccuci pose for a photograph after a training session at the Rio Olympic Park in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, April 7, 2016. REUTERS/Pilar Olivares Brazil's synchronised swimmers Luisa Borges (front) and Maria Eduarda Miccuci perform during a training session at the Rio Olympic Park in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, April 7, 2016. REUTERS/Pilar Olivares Brazil's synchronised swimmer Maria Eduarda Miccuci uses her makeup before a training session at the Rio Olympic Park in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, April 7, 2016. REUTERS/Pilar Olivares Brazil's synchronised swimmers Maria Eduarda Miccuci (R) and Luisa Borges pose for a photograph before a training session at the Rio Olympic Park in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, April 7, 2016. REUTERS/Pilar Olivares Brazil's synchronised swimmers Maria Eduarda Miccuci (R) and Luisa Borges fix their hair before a training session at the Rio Olympic Park in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, April 7, 2016. REUTERS/Pilar Olivares Brazil's synchronised swimmers Maria Eduarda Miccuci (R) and Luisa Borges perform during a photo session at the Rio Olympic Park in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, April 29, 2016. REUTERS/Pilar Olivares Brazil's synchronised swimmers Luisa Borges and Maria Eduarda Miccuci perform during a training session at the Rio Olympic Park in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, April 29, 2016. REUTERS/Pilar Olivares

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The most stylish Olympic uniforms from Rio 2016

Expect to see plenty of luxury brands during the Olympics Opening Ceremony. Many nations employ high-fashion designers to show their team pride.

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The New York flagship of Saks Fifth Avenue doesn't carry Lanvin. But Fay Ricotta does. In a closet-sized office within the section known as the Fifth Avenue Club, Ms. Ricotta, a personal shopper, runs what amounts to an exclusive boutique with some of fashion's most sought-after labels, from Haider Ackerman to Azzedine Alaïa. Her clients, many of them women with image-conscious jobs, seek clothing that is chosen for them, often without being filtered through Saks's merchandisers. Ms. Ricotta's services are about as elite as personal shopping gets. Many department stores employ personal shoppers—Saks has 18 in womenswear—to help clients select, fit and style their clothes. But few personal shoppers have their own budgets to shop for clients. Ms. Ricotta says she interviews prospective clients, who often come by referral. She notes that her clients need to share her aesthetic, which revolves around simple, chic pieces like a crisp white blouse or a figure-flattering dress. "I think a woman should be dressed like a lady," she said recently, wearing a leopard-print wool-jersey "Audrey" dress by Samantha Sung, a Los Angeles-based designer. Her 27 clients tend to be trim and big-spending. She estimates 90% of them wear a size 4. As for the rest, there are "two sixes, one 10, one 12." Ms. Ricotta, who works on commission only, says she doesn't turn away people for not spending enough. As with other Saks personal shoppers, there's no charge for her service. But her average client spends of $150,000 to $200,000 per year with her, she estimates, though she's had clients spend as little as $1,000. Ms. Ricotta, who is 49 years old, has built a network of access to designer labels, after years of working at fashion brands such as Céline and Calvin Klein and at stores such as Jeffrey and Bergdorf Goodman. She was lured away from Bergdorf in 2005, bringing a string of clients along with her. She says she was tapped by Ron Frasch, Saks's vice chairman, who was formerly Bergdorf's chairman. Employing Ms. Ricotta gives Saks access, too—not just to her clients but to exclusive clothes that the store doesn't carry on its floors. High-fashion clothing brands limit their purveyors to keep up the luxury quotient of their labels. Lanvin is available at Bergdorf Goodman in New York, and won't sell to Saks there. (The only Saks to carry Lanvin is in Chicago). When Nancy Novogrod, editor in chief of Travel + Leisure magazine, found one of her most versatile pieces of clothing—a black cashmere Azzedine Alaïa sweater—"Saks didn't have them. Fay had them." "We don't carry Thom Browne" at Saks, Ms. Ricotta says of the menswear designer's new women's label. "But I'm going to carry it." Designer labels respond to her sales power as well. Brant Cryder, president of Yves Saint Laurent North America, says, "You need to jump on whatever Fay may need." He adds that he listens when she says that a fabric is too stiff or a client needs a coat in a different color. Gucci last season sent over two runway samples for one of her clients. Once, when an investment banker client was set on a Chanel suit but found the skirt too short, Ms. Ricotta dialed up Chanel's New York offices. She requested extra fabric and trim so that she could have Saks's seamstresses add four inches to the length. Chanel obliged. Ms. Ricotta travels to Paris fashion week twice a year. This fall, she expects to attend 20 shows there and to place orders directly with brands including Stella McCartney, Céline, Dries Van Noten, Nina Ricci and Chloé. She is keenly aware she must sell what she buys. "If I don't sell that $500,000 worth of clothes, I have to face Mr. Frasch," she says. "And he makes me nervous." "Good," responds Mr. Frasch. "A good merchant is paranoid and insecure." But he adds that he often refers influential new clients to Ms. Ricotta and that she is one of a very few Saks personal shoppers entrusted with a clothing-buying budget. He declines to divulge its size, but notes, "It's a meaningful amount of money. And if she needs more because she needs something for a client, we give it to her." Ms. Ricotta offers clients more than access to labels. After pulling clothes for clients, she often tries them on herself to assemble a whole look. Clients try on the clothes in front of mirrors in her office with her by their side. When one client was delivered a $7,000 sequined gown with the security tag still attached just hours before an event, Ms. Ricotta leapt up from the table at her acupuncture appointment, raced to the store to get the right tool, and met the client's limo at the curb to remove the tag. She works hard to make sure her clients don't get the same looks that other clients are buying. She has been careful since two clients who are editors at Condé Nast wound up at a meeting in the same Giambattista Valli jacket. "It's actually my biggest fear. I'd rather lose the sale and not sell it to anyone," she says. CNN correspondent Alina Cho, who reports on topics including fashion, displays Ms. Ricotta's work in some of the clothes she wears on and off camera. She says, "I've got her on speed dial." Close relationships can involve honesty and abuse, and Ms. Ricotta, who hasn't lost the accent of the Bronx, where she was raised, provides both. She once pointed to a shiny dress that one first-time client wore and announced, "You know that tech look has been out for about five years." "She's brutally honest," says Ms. Cho, citing a time when Ms. Ricotta told her a dress made her look like "a little old lady." She adds, "There is no editor in her brain." Ms. Ricotta has rules: She doesn't dress clients in Oscar de la Renta. "Everybody's wearing Oscar," she says. Once a proponent of Christian Louboutin, she has moved on to the next new thing: Brian Atwood's sexy heels. On the forefront of labels that aren't yet household names, she currently favors Haider Ackerman, Erdem and Sophie Theallet. Ms. Novogrod calls Ms. Ricotta the "Delphic oracle of fashion." "If I took you on a tour of my closet, you'd see the full extent of what knowing Fay has done for me," she says, "not to mention how it's affected the inheritance my children will receive."

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Inside a Department Store's Secret Shopping Service

Within Saks, a personal shopper runs what amounts to an exclusive boutique with some of fashion's most sought-after labels

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This influx of visitors has resulted in a surge in spending in the last five years, assisted by the change in the make-up of the tourists – there are now fewer Western European travelers and more Russian and Asian shoppers in Prague, head of consultancy and research at Cushman & Wakefield in the Czech Republic, Michal Soták said. The Chinese middle class are leading the way – Asian tourists visiting Prague, with the majority from China, are mostly interested in fashion, Czech glass, watches and jewelry and based on information gathered from retailers, they form around 15-30 percent of the clientele of Pařížská Street, according to JLL data. Retailers have noticed the increased demand and have responded by hiring shop assistants that are able to speak Chinese, the group said. Read More'Game of Thrones' boosts this ex-communist country Russian tourists, which are the biggest spenders in total numbers among non EU countries last year and behind 50 percent of all spending, which were the second largest group visiting Prague . The average spend by a Russian tourist in Prague in 2013 was 6,771 CZK ($306), this compares with the average Chinese tourist spend of around 15,000 CZK ($678) according to recent Global Blue data. With over 13 million foreign overnight stays in the city a year, Prague is the most visited capital in CE, meaning its local tourism market is larger than that of Berlin or Vienna and has the combined volume of Budapest, Warsaw, and Bratislava according to Cushman & Wakefield. MasterCard estimated that tourists visiting Prague will spend $3.8 billion dollars in 2014 and the appetite from retailers is showing no signs of abating. Read MoreWhy a weaker Germany could hit eastern Europe "We keep on attracting the big names, I cannot tell you who they are, but there are still a number that want to enter the market," Mouton said. "We are not competing against Russia yet, but definitely against the likes of Madrid and other European capitals," she added.

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Wealthy Chinese and Russian shoppers flock to Prague

Some 25 years after the fall of communism, Prague has become a favorite shopping destination of Russian and Chinese rich.

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Richard Green graduated from high school 20 years ago, eager to get a college degree in computer science and launch a career. So when a recruiter from what was then DeVry Institute of Technology told him he could finish his bachelor's degree in three years instead of four, he signed on."You want to be something by a certain time frame," said Green, of Matteson. But that decision ended up long delaying the independence Green sought. Green, 38, just this summer went through the graduation ceremony at Prairie State College, a community college in Chicago Heights, posing for a photo in his cap and gown draped in more than a dozen honors medals and stoles. He is proud of his accolades. But he also says he is on food stamps. He still has two classes to finish to get his degree and juggles school with part-time jobs at GameStop and overnight shifts at 7-Eleven. As Green continues to pay down federal loans he took out to attend DeVry, the life he hoped to jump-start still struggles to get off the ground. "I shouldn't have to go through all that trouble just to get to where I need to go," he said. Students seeking to improve their lot in life often look to college for a leg up, but a lack of information and an urgency to land a job can drive youth from lower-income communities to enroll in for-profit trade schools they often can't afford. Students trying to climb out of poverty tend to receive less guidance about their college choices than their more well-heeled peers. Those who opt for for-profit schools sometimes find themselves in greater debt while enrolled in programs that are less flexible when it comes to shifting gears or transferring credits. As a result, big generational gains in high school completion are thwarted at the college juncture. "What we're seeing here is a real loss of potential," said Stefanie DeLuca, an associate professor of sociology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore who has studied the issue. The for-profit industry, whose reputation has taken a beating in recent years with a spate of fraud investigations, lawsuits and tightening regulations, said its purpose is the opposite. "Our schools provide that bridge to a better skill, a better income, a real place in the middle class," said Steve Gunderson, CEO of Career Education Colleges and Universities, an industry trade group. Without them, he said, "for many of these students there would be no chance." DeLuca co-authored a study, published in the October issue of the Sociology of Education, that examined the post-secondary decisions of low-income black 15- to 24-year-olds in Baltimore. She found many of the 150 students in the study who ended up at for-profit trade schools were trying to make the best decision they could with little information beyond what they saw on advertisements. Most had modest goals, wishing to become truck drivers or certified nursing assistants, and thought they were choosing short college programs that laid out a straightforward path to a career. Yet many didn't end up finishing. Like other 18-year-olds, some discovered the career they thought they wanted wasn't the right fit. But transitioning from phlebotomy to an HVAC technician career track is not as easy as switching majors at a nonprofit college, and some had to start over in new programs, or even new schools, racking up more expenses. Those who completed their postsecondary programs often found themselves in jobs that didn't pay a living wage, DeLuca said. Downers Grove-based DeVry, now known as DeVry University, said DeLuca's research doesn't apply to the school because the research focused on certificate programs, not the degree programs that DeVry offers in business, technology and health care technology. DeVry's students are "busy, working adults with a millennial mindset, who are often balancing the demands of school, work and family life," said spokeswoman Donna Shaults. DeVry is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission, the nation's largest regional accreditor. Still, to Green, who felt he did "what you're supposed to do to have the American dream," the experience was disheartening. Green, raised by a single mom in Englewood until they moved to suburban Matteson when he was 9, dropped out of DeVry in 1999 just a few classes shy of completion because he was told he was no longer eligible for financial aid. He joined the Army for its loan repayment program, but left on a medical discharge before he could take advantage of it. He spent the next decade working various jobs in retail and call centers in an effort to dig out of debt before starting school over again. He wishes his high school counselors had more proactively given advice around the pros and cons of different types of schools. With college cast as a must for upward mobility, the number of students enrolling in for-profit schools has risen dramatically over the past 15 years. And low-income minority students are 3-1/2 times more likely to enroll in for-profit institutions than higher-income students, according to a 2015 study from the Pell Institute, a research institute that examines educational issues. But students leave for-profit colleges with higher levels of debt than students from the other types of institutions. On average, attending a two-year for-profit institution costs a student four times as much as attending a community college, according to the Department of Education. Student loan default rates are also two to three times higher for borrowers who attend for-profit schools than those who attend private nonprofit and public four-year schools, according to a 2015 study by the nonprofit College Board. Yet all that money doesn't get them far. Six years after initial enrollment, 23 percent of students who had graduated or otherwise left for-profit colleges were unemployed and seeking work compared with about 15 percent in the other institutions, according to a 2013 paper from Harvard researchers. To be sure, the quality of for-profit programs ranges widely and some are well-regarded. Graduation rates for two-year for-profit schools are higher than for community colleges. But claims of fraud have recently led to the demise of some of the industry's big players. Last month, Carmel, Ind.-based ITT Technical Institute ceased operations at its more than 130 campuses after the Education Department cut off access to federal financial aid for new students following investigations into whether ITT misled students about future job prospects and might have accepted students who weren't qualified. Last year, California-based Corinthian Colleges closed or sold most of its 107 campuses and liquidated its assets through Chapter 11 bankruptcy under pressure from regulators, who alleged deceptive practices. DeVry this year was warned by the Education Department over its marketing claims and sued by the Federal Trade Commission over how an ad portrayed graduates' employment rates and earnings. Shaults said DeVry believes it measured the outcomes "in a sound, rational and transparent manner." The case is pending. Gunderson, of the career college trade association, said he doesn't defend schools that engage in bad conduct. Still, he said, undergraduate enrollment at for-profits has dropped by 100,000 per year over the last five years because of what he called "ideological attacks" by federal regulators. DeLuca said "information poverty" in high school leaves students unaware of their options. Chicago resident Maria Masso, 34, said she knew nothing about college when she graduated from high school in 2001. Her father was an electrician and her mother owned a cleaning company. Both were immigrants from Mexico who did not have college degrees; they offered support but not much advice. Masso waited tables, but wanted more, and recalls she was telling that to a friend at a coffee shop in the Loop one day when a recruiter from Westwood College, a for-profit chain based in California, overheard and engaged her in conversation. Masso said the brochures were enticing and, best of all, said she could finish in two years. Masso said her thinking was, "Let me just hurry up and get my degree and get to work so that in two years I will be more useful to my parents." She started on a sales and marketing track, but soon discovered it wasn't the right fit so she switched to health care to become a medical assistant. She loved it, and hoped that once she got her associate's degree she could transfer to a four-year school for a bachelor's. But when she approached four-year schools to pursue her next steps, she was told they couldn't accept her credits. Westwood did, as promised, offer resources to seek jobs, but Masso recalls one employer losing interest once he saw the school on her application, commenting that the certificate she received there "doesn't count." "Every day there was a lack of confidence because I'm just another person who only finished high school," Masso said. Masso is now at Malcolm X College, one of the City Colleges of Chicago, where she is studying to become a certified nursing assistant. She hopes to eventually get a master's degree to become a nurse practitioner, a career that pays a median salary of more than $97,000 in the Chicago metro area; the median for nursing assistants is $27,000. Programs have emerged to fill the information void. OneGoal, which works with 5,000 students in Chicago Public Schools, helps students find their best college fit and supports them from the start of their junior year of high school through their freshman year of college. OneGoal counselors advise students to keep expenses and loans to a minimum, said Laura Cummings, senior managing director of programming. They also teach students to look at each school's data and are advised, for example, to ensure that the graduation rate for under-represented minorities is close to the graduation rate of the school at large, Cummings said. A big problem with lack of information is that students aim low. Of the most competitive CPS students, 38 percent of those who matched with selective colleges ended up going to undermatched schools, said Regina Abesamis, a postsecondary coach at Network for College Success, a program that advises schools on how to best counsel students about their postsecondary options. For-profit schools are particularly good at marketing, offering the best trinkets at college fairs, and the attention recruiters lavish on students can distract them from better fits, Abesamis said. "For a student who is first generation ... when someone is seeking you out, you feel important and like someone wants you," she said. Alexis Murray, 19, said she felt armed with good information when she made her college choice. Murray, who lives in South Chicago and aims to be a chef, wanted badly to attend Kendall College on the Near North Side, a for-profit school well-regarded for its culinary program. But her OneGoal counselor urged her to consider the cost and the commute, which would have taken her two hours each way. Murray now is on her way to getting her associate degree at Kennedy-King College in the Englewood neighborhood, which houses the culinary and hospitality path in the City Colleges system. She doesn't yet know if she will transfer to a four-year school or go straight to work. What she does know is that she has options.

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Why lower-income students are drawn to for-profit schools

Richard Green graduated from high school 20 years ago, eager to get a college degree in computer science and launch a career.

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"It's great for Daily Candy and exciting for the industry," said Sascha Lewis, a founder of flavorpill, a publisher of e-mail newsletters about cultural happenings. "But what we have to do today is keep the lights on. You've got to learn from the lessons of the past. All that is just noise until things happen." Not so long ago Silicon Alley was all but obliterated. Dozens of companies went out of business during the burst of the technology bubble, and the economic slow-down following the 9/11 attacks took still more. Employment in information technology in New York City plummeted to around 35,000 at the end of 2005 from around 50,000 in 2000, according to the New York State Labor Department. Along the way any semblance of a digital community in New York dissolved as well. Launch parties gave way to pink slip-parties and then to no parties at all. The Silicon Alley Reporter, a trade publication, folded, and the New York New Media Association, a focal point for the tech community during the boom, quietly closed its doors in 2003. Nerds went underground. "In 2002 it was definitely embarrassing to say you were doing Internet stuff," said Mr. Heiferman, who founded the Web advertising firm i-Traffic in 1995 and Meetup in 2002. "It seemed so passé." A number of factors have contributed to the rebound, investors and online executives said. Start-up costs and overhead for running a consumer-oriented Internet company have plummeted, as hardware prices have fallen and packaged or open-source software has taken the place of the programming departments that once had to build sites from scratch. New forms of targeted advertising from companies like Yahoo and Google have allowed small companies to sell adds online without sales staffs. And large established companies with hefty marketing budgets have been spending more on online advertising. But perhaps the biggest change on the Alley has been the shift from a culture of profligacy to one of financial discipline. While first-generation Web entrepreneurs once boasted of mountains of venture capital, massages for staff and Aeron office chairs for all, the current crop of Alley executives can't let a conversation go by without pointing out how utterly miserly they are. "I was crazy cheap," said Dany Levy, the founder and editor in chief of Daily Candy, explaining how she built her business. She said she has long urged employees to print on both sides of a sheet of paper, and that she bought candy for her company's media kits in bulk from Duane Reade just after Halloween, when it was on sale. In the SoHo offices of Thrillist.com, a three-man start-up that aims to be a kind of Daily Candy for men, Ben Lerer, 24, one of its founders, said his business plan "is all about saving every possible penny." He said he and his partner, Adam Rich, 25, pay their sole employee, a writer named David Blend, "beer money," a claim Mr. Blend disputed. "Actually it's half my beer money," Mr. Blend said. During the dark years, some first-generation Silicon Alley companies held on by laying off employees and cutting costs. Rufus Griscom, the chief executive of Nerve, the sexy literary site and Web community, said he employs half the number of people he did in 2001. Other true believers started pared-down companies from the rubble of the bust. Mr. Lewis and Mark Mangan, for example, were partners in an e-commerce company that sold furnishings and accessories and went belly up in 2001. As part of their marketing campaign, the two published a weekly e-mail letter about cultural events, which they called flavorpill. They continued to publish the newsletter from their part-time jobs — Mr. Mangan as a Web developer and Mr. Lewis as a D.J. — and organically built an audience before pitching big companies for advertising business. Since then, flavorpill has run ads for American Express, Audi and Anheuser-Busch. The company now publishes nine e-mail letters with 300,000 subscribers, and it has been profitable for the last three years, Mr. Lewis said. Last year revenues were close to $2 million.

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Alive and Well in Silicon Alley

Though few new-media entrepreneurs would say it loudly for fear of jinxing themselves, Silicon Alley is buzzing again.